The parodies of Jean-Claude Van Damme's "Epic Split" for Volvo Trucks are already getting old, but this one's good for a chuckle. Channing Tatum set aside some time on the set of his upcoming sequel to 21 Jump Street (awesomely called 22 Jump Street) to attempt his own leg-spreading demonstration. While flexibility is clearly not his strong suit, I'm sure this clip will still do well among a certain demographic or two. With that hair, Tatum could probably just pose in front of a camera for 93 minutes and still earn more in box office sales than The Fifth Estate. Via Reddit.
Arrghh … can't breathe … too much cuteness! TBWA\Chiat\Day in Los Angeles crafted these 60 seconds of adorable hi-jinks as part of Best Friends Animal Society's pro bono campaign to raise awareness for pet adoptions, a cause near and dear to the heart of legendary adman and agency chairman Lee Clow. The clip shows Instagram photos of four rescued pets—Lil Bub, Nala Cat and two pups named Ginny and Tuna—who each enjoy various measures of Internet fame. Ginny's got a space helmet. She's a widdle dog-stronaut! Sorry. This stuff's face-meltingly cute. And I don't even like cats. But I'll make an exception here. Clow says, "Wouldn't it be great if we could get people to see that the smart, cool and socially responsible thing to do is to rescue a pet rather than buy them from a breeder or a pet store?" Fair enough. Plus, if they had pets, folks wouldn't act all catty like that woman in the Tenth Life Rescue spot from a few months back.
Few things are more perilous and panic-inducing than getting separated from your companions in an Ikea—an experience that some young filmmakers have now captured in a perfect parody of the trailer for Gravity.
"If I don't make it … promise you'll keep shopping," pleads the Sandra Bullock stand-in, wandering the desolate consumer wasteland and cowering in the throes of Ikeaphobia. "Promise you'll find everything else on the list."
With her cellphone battery almost drained, will she make it? Will they be reunited? Will the self-serve area even have half the stuff they just spent nine hours picking out? My blood pressure rises just imagining such a nightmare.
Most presidents go through a second-term depression, but Obama's has been particularly dismal. To help out, Saturday Night Live has introduced Paxil Second Term Strength, a depression medication for the narrowest target market imaginable: the president of the United States. Paxil Second Term Strength makes you feel like you're giving a speech on a college campus in 2008 or getting Bin Laden all over again. It's even powerful enough to deal with symptoms from Benghazi to that time Jay-Z and Beyoncé went to Cuba. Not a Democrat? No problem. There's also new Paxil Republican Strength for when you have to answer to Congress or the Koch Brothers. It's not the funniest of SNL, but it's worth a chuckle. It also appears to be some excellent product placement, given that Paxil is a real medication with a registered trademark whose packaging and logo were used in the spot—a fact which should be far from depressing for Paxil's brand managers.
UN Women sparked a global debate last month, surprising even the group itself, when their modest print campaign, The Autocomplete Truth, went viral across the Web. Now, the organization and agency Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai are back with a video extension of the campaign, as they hinted at in a recent interview with AdFreak. The clip is mostly a collection of great moments in the history of female empowerment, and I was a bit disappointed to see just one of the Google autocomplete examples at the end. It feels like this could have been an opportunity to truly expand the campaign, showing new examples of search suggestions worldwide or even just highlighting the countless blog posts, articles and online conversations generated by the print ads. Still, it's good to see UN Women building on that initial success and creating something—including the hashtag #womenshould—that gives fans more content and context to share.
Honda loves Michael Bolton. Maybe even more than the Bobs, the doofus business consultants from Office Space, who really, really, love Michael Bolton.
The 60-year-old pop crooner—who has popped up in ads recently for brands like Optimum and Starburst—stars in the automaker's holiday campaign, called Happy Honda Days, because marketers also love bad puns. The short original songs Bolton belts out are characteristically saccharin, meant to capture the feeling of spiritual-love-ecstasy that some men of a certain age can only get from Bolton—and, the automaker would have you believe, anyone can get from buying a Honda.
The generally fantastical series wins points for poking fun at itself with melodramatic guitar solos and idiotic lyrical gems like "This special time of year, it's filled with joy and cheer, for me and you and you and you, too." Most realistic, though, are the dumbstruck stares of the relatively young buyers, whose sometimes ambiguous expressions seem to range from charmed to baffled to terrified to regretful (at least Honda didn't include him in the crash package it sent to that poor couple's wedding).
Still, if you're a sucker for punishment—or just want to torture your loved ones—Honda has arranged for Bolton to deliver season's greetings to the family and friends of people willing to tweet the hashtag #XOXOBolton. Because if you didn't want to buy a Honda already, maybe Bolton can sing you into submission. Plus, once you own the car, you can insist nobody ever play Michael Bolton in it again.
Here's one for the file on unexpected PSAs: Exploding chipmunks that warn you against purchasing bootleg electrical goods. U.K. charity Electric Safety Council is using a gruesome, two-minute mock documentary to push Christmas shoppers to buy "genuine goods" that are less likely to cause violent electrical fires. It's fun, if a bit of a head-scratcher—begging for attention by striking the right mix of stupidity and shock value (yes, we're taking the bait) but also trivializing the cause it's meant to spotlight by making the punch line so absurd. Yes, the group needs people not to ignore an easily overlooked problem, but it also needs them to take it seriously. Then again, maybe it'll get lucky and draw fire from PETA—the kind of charity troll that's able to make an exploding-rodent tactic look sane by comparison. Agency: Code Computerlove. Via The Drum.
Proving John St.'s point that prankvertising has gone way too far, here's a stunt from Brazil in which an actor dressed up as Chucky, the diminutive Child's Play villain, ambushed people at bus stops by crashing through the glass of a Curse of Chucky ad—and proceeded to chase them with a knife. The stunt appears to be the work of a TV show, though it's clearly an ad for the movie, too. The best part is when the victims fight back, sending Chucky himself running for cover. It's all quite over the edge, though when you're promoting a horror movie, anything goes. Via Disco Chicken, who really hates this kind of stuff.
Sometimes, the best parodies are the most subtle. Case in point: This truly impressive face dub of disgraced Toronto Mayor Rob Ford onto the body of Jean-Claude Van Damme in his "Epic Split" ad for Volvo Trucks. There's really nothing to it beyond the face switch, but the effect is so perfectly executed by New York-based visual effects shop Artjail, it's plenty satisfying. "We were completely in awe of the Volvo-Van Damme 'Epic Split' spot," Artjail writes in its YouTube summary, "and remain completely in awe of Mayor Ford's epic lifestyle north of the border." Check out Artjail's demo reel after the jump and see some images of how it was done over on Fstoppers. Hat tip to Evan Travers for sending me this one.
Taking its cues from the great 1997 documentary Hands on a Hardbody, Dodge and Wieden + Kennedy will launch a contest Tuesday called Hands on Ron Burgundy—an online test of endurance that will feature daily prizes as well as a grand prize of (as in the movie) a new car. In the film, contestants put their hands on a pickup truck, and the last person to take his or her hand off won the truck. The Burgundy contest, part of a larger campaign promoting the Dodge Durango and the upcoming film Anchorman 2, will go live at noon ET on Tuesday—and it looks like it will challenge users to click on Burgundy in photo after photo. The details will become clearer tomorrow, but it will surely take some serious stamina to win the car.
This kind of advertising as punishment was popular a few years back, when Burger King made people watch a spinning Whopper for hours on end to get coupons—and, in a somewhat similar idea to Dodge's, Peugeot had people click and hold their mouse button on a car for a chance at a free week's rental. People lasted up to 15 hours in that contest (and 77 hours in the movie)—so, proceed with this Burgundy thing with caution.
There will be no question about who rummaged through the trash, shredded the sofa or butt-scooted across the carpet. The pet cam will tell all. But that's not really the purpose of this lightweight collar camera, the centerpiece of a digital campaign for Nature's Recipe pet food. The device is supposed to capture the world from your dog or cat's perspective, snapping photos so you can create an online scrapbook under headings like "So That's What My Shins Look Like."
The campaign, from JWT's Digitaria in San Diego, public relations firm Hill+Knowlton Strategies, media shop Starcom and social agency VaynerMedia, launched recently with online scrapbooks from bloggers and pet advocates. (Nonspoiler alert: there's lots of sky, trees and food bowls in a day in the life of a pet.)
From now until March, animal lovers can win their own collar cams and, possibly, a pet-friendly vacation as part of the "Nature's Recipe for Moments" contest. Or they could just end up with a bunch of pictures of the inside of their toilets.
And you thought the NBA guys were talented for playing "Jingle Bells" via well-timed three-pointers. Check out the Kmart studs in the retailer's crazy Christmas cross-promotion with Joe Boxer via Draftfcb in Chicago—swaying their sacks to chime out their own impressive version of the holiday standard. That's some musical junk right there. It caps an offbeat year for agency and client, stretching from "Ship My Pants" through last week's evil-filled "Boardroom" spot. Sometimes it's just better to be on the naughty list.
UPDATE: For what it's worth, Chippendales did a similar video back in 2010.
Sears puts some stupid in your stocking as the Denskies, an enthusiastic but hapless family of four, return in a trio of spots by mcgarrybowen. We're talking Little Caesar's-level silliness here, with lots of sight gags, screaming and stuff exploding, and I salute the retail chain for steering clear of safe and sedate yuletide fare.
One ad riffs on The Exorcist, revolving around a possessed fortune teller with really creepy eyes. It's enough to make your head spin. In another spot, a bear chases dad through the woods. Talk about Santa Claws!
In the stupidest and best commercial of the bunch, dad builds a "Robo Granny." She looks a bit like Rosie from the Jetsons, but this bot's way more destructive, zapping everything in the house, including the family cat, with laser-beam eyes. (The daughter deserves an award for the impassioned yet absurdly funny way she screams out "Fluffy!" as the feline's hair goes flying.) I'd like to see granny battle the violent vermin of "Squirrel Revolt," the popular Denskies installment from a few months back. She'd really roast their nuts!
Man, this holiday season is all about forcing me to confront my unfair assumptions. Kohl's delivers with an ad that starts out with a photogenic couple decking out an apartment with lights, a tree and such. I was mentally preparing a nice Grinchy rant about it until the reveal that there's more going on than meets the eye. (Watch the video below before reading on if you don't want me to spoil the surprise.) There's still the question of how they got into this woman's apartment, but poking plot holes in an ad this touching just makes me feel like I'm lecturing Bob Cratchit to go easy on the coal.
The Internet not only doesn't forget, it will slap you around if you pretend it does. JPMorgan Chase, which has racked up more than $30 billion in fines and legal fees, announced a Twitter chat earlier this week—a Q&A with JPMorgan vice chairman Jimmy Lee.
Tomorrow at 1pm ET $JPM Vice Chairman Jimmy Lee takes over @JPMorgan to answer your questions for 1 hour. Tweet your Q early using #AskJPM
It's a touch reminiscent of last year's #McDStories debacle. McDonald's had started that hashtag with the hope that its followers would share nostalgic stories about Saturday-afternoon Happy Meals with their grandparents. Yeah, no.
These #McDStories never get old, kinda like a box of McDonald's 10 piece Chicken McNuggets left in the sun for a week.
New York is a stressful place, and Times Square isn't the most soothing of its neighborhoods. But thankfully, Draftfcb New York and the Jamaica Tourist Board recently plunked down an enormous stress ball on Broadway between 45th and 46th Streets, giving New Yorkers and visitors a chance to "squeeze their burdens away." The giant ball doesn't work like a regular stress ball—you'd never get your hand around it—but perhaps you were meant to just give it a big hug, mon. In any case, its big smiling face served as a de-stresser by itself. And if all else failed, reggae artist and Jamaica native Gyptian was on hand to perform his mellow tunes for the crowd. More images, and credits, below.
CREDITS Client: Jamaica Tourist Board Agency: Draftfcb, New York Chief Creative Officer: Javier Campopiano Group Creative Director: Kevin Jordan Creative Directors: Bruno Acanfora, Ariel Abramovici Associate Creative Director: Lucas Bongioanni Group Management Director: Wendy Glass Account Supervisor: Ashley Hughes Account Executive: Molly Burns Producers: Joe De Franco, Susie Rofe, Daunno Jason
Baileys becomes the latest big-name marketer to place an epic holiday spot under the tree with BBH London's modern take on Tchaikovsky's seasonal ballet The Nutcracker. We're treated to a Candyland holiday ball punctuated by a lengthy and superbly choreographed dance-fight between the Mouse King and the Nutcracker Prince, which ends when Clara, the object of their affection, joins in and turns the tide in the prince's favor. (You'd think a guy called "nutcracker" could take care of himself.) The film closes with our heroine rejoining her two pals for more partying, along with the line, "Spend time with the girls this Christmas." (Celebrating the spirit of women has been a recurring Baileys theme.)
Despite its contemporary trappings—the Mouse King is ripped and tattooed; the venue looks like an "in" SoHo dance club—the spot doesn't stray far enough from its source material to feel like a true reinvention. There's no magical moment or boffo payoff. Yes, it's extremely well made, and the dancing is impressive, as are the sets, costumes and direction. Maybe it needed a bit more holiday warmth? Instead, I found myself reaching for a glass of Baileys to chase away the chill.
The two-minute spot premieres Saturday during the U.K.'s first telecast of Black Swan, and there's a tie-in with that Oscar-winning film, as Benjamin Millepied, its choreographer, also designed the athletic ballet in the ad. And he's not the only notable talent involved. Royal Ballet dancers Steven McRae, Thiago Soares and Iana Salenko perform the lead roles, while Ringan Ledwidge, of "Three Little Pigs" fame, directs.
When the 1947 India-Pakistan partition ripped the two nations apart, Baldev was forced to relocate overnight, leaving behind his best friend Yusuf. Before that, they had been inseparable, flying kites together in the square and stealing Jhajariyas from Yusuf's family shop. Decades later, Baldev's granddaughter uses Google and those few tidbits of information from her grandfather's memories to find Yusuf and arrange a heartwarming reunion for her grandfather's birthday. It's three and half minutes long, and you will want it to be longer. I seriously think Google sent out some advertising memo demanding that all its spots have to be heartwarming, tearjerking or both. Hats off to Google in India. With their recent success covering Saroo Brierley's unbelievable story and now this, it's killing me how hard they're killing it!
Click on the Closed Captioning button to read the subtitles and truly enjoy.
Want a free subway ride in Moscow? Get ready to do 30 squats. And make sure you drop it low, because the specially designed ticket vending machine can tell if you're cheating.
The health-conscious stunt was created to promote the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The number isn't arbitrary, either. A metro ride costs 30 rubles, so each squat is worth one.
The vending machine piece is just one element of a larger campaign to get Russians more involved in the sporting lifestyle. Moscow officials and the Russian Olympic Committee have installed a bunch of exercise-related, reward-based activities around the city. From turning bus handles into resistance bands to providing stationary bikes that also charge your cell phone, they're working hard to, in their words, "add elements of sport into daily life."
Hopefully, some of them will catch on in the long term. Olympics or not, we could all use a couple more squats in our daily commute.
Droga5, an agency that knows a thing or two about fearless creative, has designed the call for entries for the 2014 International ANDY Awards—the show's 50th anniversary—around the idea of bravery. Lines like "Brave work is always the most fun to make" and "Bravery is one concept worth stealing" will be used in banners urging creatives to submit their best and bravest work. (David Droga is this year's ANDYs jury chairman.) The agency has also designed a special ANDY award for a new category—the Bravery Award—with a statue whose head is tilted up in a nod to the future. The ANDYs are sponsored by The Advertising Club of New York. Click here to learn more about submitting work to the 2014 show.
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