Hasta La Creative!

Derrick Coleman's recent ad for Duracell made him one of the most admired players in the NFL, and with one handwritten letter, he just proved he was worthy of all the praise.

This week, a father of hearing-impaired twin girls tweeted a letter written by one of his daughters to Coleman, a Seattle Seahawk whose lifelong struggle with deafness was chronicled in an incredible TV spot from Saatchi & Saatchi, New York.

Instead of simply tweeting a quick reply, Coleman handwrote a letter and then shared a photo of it with the father, saying: "Your girls are awesome! Read them my letter back when you can! Thank you for the support! Means a lot!"

The story has quickly escalated Coleman's reputation even further, and this morning the girls and their father were featured on Good Morning America. Check out the letters and original ad below.

Via Reddit.

Apple's "Your Verse" commercial, which rolled out 10 days ago, was a pretty nice start to 2014 for the company's marketing. The 90-second spot, advertising the iPad, is great to look at, and has an inspired—if borrowed—message. It's been airing all over and generally getting an enthusiastic response.

On Wednesday, Apple rolled out two 30-second cutdowns of the spot, titled "Light Verse" and "Sound Verse" (see both below). They carry the same Robin Williams voiceover, just truncated to focus on the Whitman quotes. More interesting, though, is the "Your Verse" page on the Apple website, which goes into greater depth about the people featured in the ad—and how they use the iPad in real life.

Marine biologist Michael Berumen, mountaineers Emily Harrington and Adrian Ballinger, Bollywood choreographer Feroz Khan, rock band Yao, New York filmmaker Josh Apter, the Los Angeles Kings hockey team—there are sections devoted to each. Berumen gets a lengthy and fascinating profile, in which it's revealed that he and his team developed an "iDive" iPad case that lets you take iPad deep under water. (Well, not you specifically. A footnote clarifies: "iDive housing is currently not available for sale.")

Apple did a similar thing with its "Life on iPad" campaign in the fall. The difference is, those stories expounded on the characters in an online spot. (The TV spot at the time was "Pencil" with the Bryan Cranston voiceover.) The "Your Verse" content online is connected to a better-known broadcast ad. In all, it's a solid content play backing up more evocative, less info-heavy broadcast work.

On another note, could we see Apple in the Super Bowl this year? It is the 30th anniversary of "1984," after all, and Lee Clow has been dropping hints.

Gonna be a goodSuper Bowl. Mac's gonna be 30 🙂

— Lee Clow (@_clow) January 20, 2014

After watching Terry Crews scream his way through many an Old Spice ad, it's hard to imagine him as boring. But that's the premise of Toyota's upcoming Super Bowl ad for the Highlander, in which Crews receives life lessons from none other than the Muppets.

Created by Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles and hashtagged #NoRoomForBoring, the 60-second spot, titled "Joyride," features an original song about "unborifying" your life. The Muppets partnership is a dual promotion, highlighting both the 2014 Highlander and Disney's upcoming film Muppets Most Wanted.

Here's the teaser clip, which sets the scene for the Super Bowl spot:

Humans fit a lot of stuff in the time capsule on Voyager 1 to give any aliens who stumble upon the space probe a sense of our civilization. But they might have just included this mock PSA by Tom Scott for the Interstellar Safety Council, warning alien species about human ferocity and unpredictability. So many good moments here, particularly the section on our vulnerabilities, which of course our arrogance causes us to all but ignore.

Scott says his video was inspired by this Tumblr meditation, which reads:

     It's funny how science fiction universes so often treat humans as a boring, default everyman species or even the weakest and dumbest.
     I want to see a sci fi universe where we're actually considered one of the more hideous and terrifying species.
     How do we know our saliva and skin oils wouldn't be ultra-corrosive to most other sapient races? What if we actually have the strongest vocal chords and can paralyze or kill the inhabitants of other worlds just by screaming at them? What if most sentient life in the universe turns out to be vegetable-like and lives in fear of us rare "animal" races who can move so quickly and chew shit up with our teeth?
     Like that old story "they're made of meat," only we're scarier.

We're certainly a threat to ourselves. Why wouldn't we be a threat to others?

Via Co.Create.

A mother bought a full-page ad on the front cover of the Chinese Melbourne Daily—a newspaper for the Australian city's Chinese community—begging her son to come home for Chinese New Year and promising not to pester him about getting married anymore.

The ad reads: "Peng, we have tried to reach you so many times by phone, but in vain. So maybe you will hear from us here. We hope you will come home for Lunar New Year. Dad and Mom will never again pressure you to marry. Love you, Mom."

Now everyone in the community will be curious to see whether Peng actually comes home—but you know, no pressure or anything. The mom's promise references a common problem among Chinese youth, who don't like getting nagged by their parents about their love lives any more than the rest of us do. This might also explain why Chinese online megastore Taobao.com's "Rent a Boyfriend" service exists.

Sadly, there's no girlfriend option for the poor guy being targeted by the Melbourne Daily ad, so he might just have to go home on Jan. 31 and make the best of it. His mom spent almost $2,500 on that ad, judging by the newspaper's advertising rate card. It would be a shame to see that go to waste.

Photo via CNN.

When you think of Kansas City, you don't think death-defying, super-fast waterslides. Actually, I'm not sure what you think when you think of Kansas City. But pretty soon you'll think Verrückt, a gigantic waterslide opening soon at the Schlitterbahn water park.

The Herculean teaser below for the larger-than-life, 17-story coming attraction has the works—the dirt battle field in which the slide was constructed, arial camera shots, dramatic title cards. But what really drives this virtual tour is the sensational score. It almost makes you feel like you're nervously peering over the edge and your best friend sneaks up behind you and gives you a good scare.

Verrückt—translated from the German, meaning "insane"—opens Memorial Day weekend and is billed as the world's tallest waterslide. It's taller than the Niagara Falls! And indeed, its 17 stories make a mockery of the previous record holder, the Brazilian waterslide Insano—see a naming pattern here?—and its measly 14 stories. (Insano definitely has the better email marketing, however.)

Schlitterbahn co-owner Jeff Henry says Verrückt riders will reach speeds faster than 65 mph. So, you and three friends—it's a four-person ride—can finally embark on the journey of a lifetime. Which will probably last 30 seconds. But hey, if you count the waiting in line and the terrifying climb up all those stairs. You might actually consider it a journey.

Also check out a parody movie poster for the ride, posted below.

Some folks are finding Barton F. Graf 9000's latest advertising excursion for travel site Kayak.com a less than uplifting experience.

In the 30-second spot, a middle-aged man commandeers his elderly mother's stairlift for a ride as he pecks away at his laptop, searching for a good hotel. He explains that he can't waste a second doing anything else, including walking up the stairs. Meanwhile, his mother grasps the bannister, gasping for air, as Sonny Boy glides past, bragging about the great deal he's just found.

"Forcing an elderly woman to struggle up stairs while her son uses her electric stairlift. Do you think this is funny? It's not. It's mean and juvenile," says one viewer on the company's Facebook page. A YouTuber on the opposite side of the argument writes, "For those that are offended: lighten up. It's funny precisely because it is insensitive." (In an odd twist, some commenters have actually praised the spot for raising stairlift awareness.)

Stirring controversy never gets old for Kayak, whose 2012 brain surgery commercial was banned in the U.K. over perceived insensitivity toward brain surgery patients. Clearly, ads like "Stairlift" and "Brain Surgeon" are designed to be somewhat over the top and elevate Kayak's buzz. Are they mean-spirited or offensive? That's a gray area.

If you like puppies, bikinis, babies, dinosaurs, pirates, Carmen Electra and Abraham Lincoln, then have I got the Super Bowl ad teaser for you.

Volkswagen, always a highly anticipated advertiser in the big game, has dedicated this year's promotional clip to mocking the many clichés of crowd-pandering Super Bowl spots—much as FedEx did years ago with its Burt Reynolds spot. Admittedly, VW has been known to crack a few of these chestnuts themselves (including the three-fer of a costume, child and dog.)

So, which of these curious characters will actually appear in the automaker's Super Bowl commercial? Based on the complete disconnect from 2012's awesome teaser and that year's somewhat disconnected game-day ad, the answer might be none of them. But I'll keep my fingers crossed for a baby-stealing Abe Lincoln.

This year's teasers and official spot for VW are being created by San Francisco-based agency Argonaut, ending the brand's multi-year run with Deutsch. For lots more Super Bowl advertising coverage, check out Adweek's Super Bowl Ad Tracker.

If I could stand up and Top Gun high-five a brand right now, it would definitely be Aerie and its new Aerie Real campaign.

The sister brand of American Eagle markets bras, panties and sleepwear to girls 15-21—girls in high school and college who are notoriously bombarded with the message "You need to be hot." Lest you think I exaggerate, surf Tumblr or the hashtag #thinspiration on Instagram, and you'll see what I mean.

Aerie's new ads are unretouched. The girls you see in the ads are what they look like in real life, which is, sadly, groundbreaking. The models are wearing makeup, they look healthy, the poses are flattering, and the lighting is perfect. But theres's been no Photoshop-surgery removal of skin folds or digital slimming of thighs and stomachs. The copy on the print ads declares, "The girl in this photo has not been retouched. The real you is sexy."

"But these particular girls don't need retouching," you say. And I would agree that the girls are probably pretty close to flawless in real life. But in a world where Photoshop morphs already super hot models into super hot models with thigh gap and flawless skin and inhuman proportions (Google Victoria's Secret Photoshop Fails for glorious examples), this is a step in the right direction.

The changes to the Aerie website might be my favorite part. When shopping for a bra, most websites let you shop by size, but whether or not you click 32AA or 40DD, you're still looking at the same model sporting the "ideal" 36C breast size. When you surf on the Aerie site, clicking on a 32AA bra size will show you a model wearing a 32AA sized bra on her 32AA sized breasts. Same for 40DD. And the models are all smiling.

I love that this is what 15-year-old girls will see when they go bra shopping. It's such a stark contrast to Victoria's Secret's Pink line (marketed to the same crowd), which features models that are so Photoshopped they kind of look like really glowy superhumans.

Nice work, Aerie. I hope other brands follow suit. I love seeing this for the high school/college crowd, but I'd be ecstatic if this trend worked its way up to brands that serve older demographics as well.

More images below. Via The Huffington Post.

In yet another example of why brands might just want to sit out serious events instead of posting "topical" social media updates, sleep aid ZzzQuil is being hammered on Twitter today for a post about Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The tweet wasn't patently offensive, to be sure, but it was definitely an awkward brand connection: "Today is the day for dreaming. Happy MLK Day."

As you can see below, the social media backlash began quickly, especially after being mocked by comedian Tim Heidecker. The brand account has tried defending the post, telling one critic, "Yikes, I gather you disagree with brands posting on such a significant day. No disrespect was intended."

Check out more reactions below.

Today is the day for dreaming. Happy MLK Day.— ZzzQuil (@ZzzQuil) January 20, 2014

Congrats to @ZzzQuil for winning "worst reference to MLK Day in a brand Tweet" this morning! pic.twitter.com/7WjBq60OlB— Mitsy (@misfit) January 20, 2014

"Wanna remember MLK? No you don't! Get drunk off of our stuff instead!" – @zzzquil— Nathan Nommensen (@NateNomm) January 20, 2014

“@ZzzQuil: Today is the day for dreaming. Happy MLK Day.” So wrong— Emily Earl (@EmilySurvive) January 20, 2014

On April 4th you guys should go with "death is the deepest sleep. Until then…" RT @ZzzQuil: Today is the day for dreaming. Happy MLK Day.— Pete Johnson (@PJohnsonWorks) January 20, 2014

@TotesMcGotes Yikes, I gather you disagree with brands posting on such a significant day. No disrespect was intended.— ZzzQuil (@ZzzQuil) January 20, 2014

@mrbitterness Do you disagree? You may disagree with brands posting, but as it echos his message, we felt it fitting. No disrespect intended— ZzzQuil (@ZzzQuil) January 20, 2014

@ZzzQuil RIP your job, social media guy.— dooger2 (@dooger2) January 20, 2014