British light artist Bruce Munro has turned a piece of the Wiltshire countryside in England into a giant Lite Brite breast. Dubbed the "Beacon on the Hill," the installation is actually a dome made of thousands of plastic bottles that Munro illuminated with pink and blue fiber optics. Munro's intentions were good—the installation supports the Cancerkin charity and has gotten a lot of sponsors—but he's still being criticized for insensitivity, and his beacon has been called "poorly thought out [and] unresearched." I wouldn't go that far, but I will say that I'm not sure how much more awareness-raising breast cancer needs. But for Munro, it was also a personal project. "This hill and surrounding countryside has long been my 'canvas,' " he said last year. "I lost a dear friend very young to breast cancer. By illuminating the night sky for a brief moment, I hope to send the message 'You are not alone.' "
High school would've been so much more bearable if we'd had a tipsy teacher spouting U.S. history, pausing during key Watergate moments not for dramatic effect but just long enough to puke. Who wouldn't ace that part of the test? Comedy Central is doing its part to make up for those slept-through second periods. The cable channel has nabbed a popular Web series, as it's done successfully in the past, for one of its new summer offerings called Drunk History, which is combination re-enactment, cult celebrity fest and kegger. Stars like Adam Scott, Aubrey Plaza, Bob Odenkirk, Fred Willard, Stephen Merchant and Jack Black will take part in loopy re-enactments of the Scopes monkey trial, the Battle of the Alamo, the Haymarket riot and other seminal historical events. They aren't really shitfaced, but the show's narrators are (for the sake of argument, that is). Advertising for the series, launching July 9, is appropriately booze-soaked. Suds float up to cover dynamic online banner ads, like cold draft being drawn from a tap, and famous politicians flash bottles of hooch instead of peace signs. Lingering question: How in the world did George Washington ever make it across the Delaware with all that beer? Our 11th-grade class left out all the good stuff.
Household cleaner CLR not only has a no-nonsense name—it stands for Calcium, Lime and Rust remover—but it has also long leaned on simplehow-to commercials that demonstrate the product's cleaning power. Its new ad, though, gets a little dirty.
The 30-second Web and broadcast spot, from Moon Pie Media in Austin, Texas, jumps on the near-obscenity bandwagon popularized recently by the likes of Kmart with its viral "Ship My Pants" spot, Kraft's Jell-O "FML" campaign and Booking.com's "You Booking Did It." In the CLR ad, people who use the product can't resist blurting out obscenities, which are then bleeped out. Dirty tub? Scuzzy toilet? Spotty wine glasses? CLR makes everything sparkling clean. Well … almost everything.
Dirty cleaning ads are always fun. Have a look back at probably the best one ever—Droga5's Method ad starring the pervy scrubbling bubbles.
AMC on Tuesday released the official key art for the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad, premiering Aug. 11. "Remember my name," warns an intimidating, clenched-fisted Walter White, echoing the famous "Say my name" scene from the first half of Breaking Bad's fifth season. Beyond that, who knows what will happen as this great series comes to an end?
In more playful Breaking Bad news, AMC has also launched the Breaking Bad Name Lab, which allows you to see your name transformed with element symbols like the iconic Breaking Bad logo. You can then share the image on social media or download it as an animated GIF.
Let's say it like Comic Book Guy: Best. Collaboration. Ever. Fox's dysfunctional yet loving animated family, The Simpsons, have joined with Converse for a line of screen-printed Chuck Taylor sneakers. Through Converse retailers and Journeys.com, you can get your paws on these colorful high-tops festooned with Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, Maggie, catch phrases, chalk scrawls and more. The Simpsons, in production now on its 25th season, is the longest-running scripted show in TV history and one of the biggest licensing hits of the past few decades. It's a multibillion-dollar franchise in swag alone, with plenty of footwear over the years. You didn't have puffy, oversized Bart-head slippers? What a sad childhood that must've been. The Chuck Taylor All Star collection comes in adult and kid sizes. All together now: Woo-hoo! More images below.
Ad agency Jung von Matt/Neue Elbe and directing duo Alex & Steffen stage an orgy of CGI insanity, referencing various effects-driven fantasy blockbusters from the past 20 years, in this lighthearted yet heart-pounding German spot branding Fanta as "The official sponsor of FANTAsy." When a giant Transformers-type cyber-terror lays siege to a desert castle, a pro wrestler gets catapulted into the fray, bouncing harmlessly off the bot's metal hide, and a plucky princess slides down a saurian's back to save the day. Turns out the action—superbly staged and worth several viewings—is taking place in the imagination of a little girl at a family picnic. The intricate sandcastle they've built sits nearby, its parapets manned by action figures. Some might say it's a sad commentary that a kid's imagination is fueled by soda-pop-culture/Hollywood hype, though in our media-saturated age, this seems about right, and the melee she envisions provides more thrills than most mega-budget flicks can manage. Good thing they didn't probe her brother's imagination. That little devil would've used the robot to conquer the world and hogged all the Fanta for himself!
If there were a Crowd Pleasing Lions contest at Cannes, this Smart car commercial from BBDO Germany would have run off with it this year. It's all the more delightful because it was something of a surprise—a TV spot that hadn't been blogged and reblogged endlessly over the past year. It's a great little David and Goliath story about a Smart Fortwo that goes offroading, leading to all sorts of amusing sight gags—and a killer ending that had the crowd cheering loudly when it was screened Saturday at the Palais with the other Gold Lion winners. (It won gold in both Film and Film Craft.) The soundtrack is great, too—rounding out the ad's attitude perfectly. Smart, indeed.
Publicis's poignant print ads for suicide-prevention group Samaritans of Singapore use ambigrams to give upbeat messages negative meanings when viewed upside down. "I'm fine" becomes "Save me," "Life is great" morphs into "I hate myself" and "I feel fantastic" reads "I'm falling apart." The tagline, "The signs are there if you read them. Help us save a life before it's too late," is also printed upside down. The campaign does a fine job of depicting the subtle, often hidden nature of depression and anxiety disorders. It's novel for the category, taking an approach that's clever enough to generate broad coverage, extending the message far beyond its original market. Perhaps those reading about this work will question declarations of happiness from friends and family members that don't quite ring true. The writing may be on the wall, but sometimes you've got to look at things in a different way to avert disaster.
Texas copywriter Matt Bull became an ad-industry folk hero of sorts last month, when his first solo client work became an instant Internet sensation. But if you thought his billboard promoting Chicken Scratch restaurant—located "between some trailers and a condemned motel"—was odd, check out his first self-promotional board.
Bull, the owner (and sole employee) of The Department of Persuasion, tells Adweek that the coverage of his work for Chicken Scratch won him even more free publicity in the form of donated ad space. "Clear Channel Outdoor wanted to do something with me after your article," he tells us. "They gave me a month of digital boards to promote myself. I decided on something very, very silly."
As you can see above, the billboard simply says "SlothPunchClub.com." Once again illustrated by artist Elliott Park, the board directs viewers to a blog post by Bull, who says he's going to donate the URL to whomever comes up with the most creative way to use it. "Slothpunchclub.com is your domain to do with as you please," Bull writes in the post. "Anything at all. It could be an online graphic novel, a flash game hub, a text-based MUD, a collection of skewed illustrated poems disguised as children's picture books, a poorly written blog about second-tier sororities, an elaborate mythos for sloth-based fantasy neckbeards. Those are some free starter ideas. It would even make an excellent base for spreading malicious trojans. Not my business, frankly."
Ideas for the URL can be sent to slothpunchclub@gmail.com. Bull is also encouraging the winner and any participants to consider donating to Dallas-based charity Baal Dan, dedicated to helping street children in India.
"Everyone wants to control video game characters by chewing. Right? Right?!" Working off a brief that apparently read something like that, Stride Gum, Wieden + Kennedy London and Johnny Two Shoes have launched Gumulon, which uses the front-facing cameras of iOS devices to detect your mouth movements. By chewing, you can make a helmeted alien named Ace jump around to avoid the clutches of a prehistoric cave beast. Once Ace gets eaten, the camera take a shot of your crazily chewing face, which you can share on social media. (That's an improvement on the barf faces some party hearties like to send around.) Gumulon is available for free in the App Store because, really, who would pay for such a thing? It can also be played by tapping iPhone, iPad and iPod touch screens, so those with lockjaw won't miss out. Where will it end? Silicon Valley investors may soon be lining up to back Belchulon, SpitScreen! and Musical Toots—at all of which, by the way, I'd be unbeatable.
This seven-minute Red Bull video cements Scottish cyclist Danny MacAskill's standing as a badass brand spokes-man.
It took 68 weeks over a two-year period to shoot this mix of fantasy, memory and dazzling bicycle stunts. A former museum in Glasgow was transformed into a Land of the Giants-style version of MacAskill's childhood bedroom, cluttered with outsized rubber balls, playing cards, colored pencils, comic books, a Rubik's Cube, a Twister game, alphabet blocks, a race-car loop-de-loop track and even a toy-train-and-station set.
As arena-rock ("Runaway" by Houston) blares on the soundtrack, the YouTube star, who's notched 60 million views across his video catalog, performs a crazy array of jumps, turns, spins and landings among the kids' stuff scattered across the floor. In the best bit, he lands on a tank turret and rides down the cannon, only to have green plastic army men spring to life and make off with his bike.
All this fanciful action is taking place inside the mind of a pre-pubescent Danny MacAskill as the boy sits on the floor, surrounded by toys and games, devising wild stunts for an action-figure cyclist to perform. Playtime abruptly ends when his mother threatens to "shoot the boots off ye" if young Danny doesn't hurry down to tea. (The daredevil's real mom, Anne, makes a cute cameo.)
MacAskill wears a Red Bull helmet, but the brand's presence is never intrusive. Instead of just peddling image or product, the film scores as entertainment, and this pumps up its value as branded content. Of course, it doesn't scale the heights of Red Bull's Felix Baumgartner viral. It's similar to the marketer's Rube Goldberg clip, which also featured MacAskill, but I prefer this new video, part of his "Imaginate" series. It unabashedly celebrates creative play and suggests you just might be able to ride the dreams of youth and make them come true.
Witness this bizarrely amusing ad for John McAfee's personal blog. If that name sounds familiar, it's because John McAfee is the man who started McAfee anti-virus software. He's also the eccentric millionaire who was accused of murdering his neighbor, which led the media to look into his paranoia, gun obsession, rumored drug habits, multiple nubile girlfriends and the story of how his great white messiah complex played out in the backwoods of Belize. With that in mind, just watch this little viral, in which McAfee tells you how to uninstall the software that made his name, while making fun of all his purported vices—including snorting coke out of a crazy straw before giving up and face planting in the coke pile.
To say that I understand what John McAfee is doing here is to imply that one could ever understand what John McAfee is doing in general, but I'm going to take a shot. Upon realizing the enormous commercial success of the story of his own life, John McAfee (who, regardless of any other poor choices he might have made, has always been a marketing genius) decided to pull a full-on Charlie Sheen—winning by combining his bat-shit crazy bad-boy persona with our culture's love of train wrecks to make money off his larger-than-life image … despite his repeated claims elsewhere that he's been drug-free for decades. On that note, his autobiography (in graphic novel format) and his biography (written by a former coke baron) are reportedly coming out in the near future. Somebody get this man a TV show before he ODs on Viagra.
Say what you want about Domino's (it's an abomination unto the Lord), but it has one of the better branded Pinterest projects I've seen in a while—Second Hand Logos. Since Domino's recently redesigned its logo, Crispin Porter + Bogusky got to thinking about what happens to a company's old signage, clothing, store materials, etc. So, the agency commissioned 10 artists to make stuff with old Domino's employee shirts, pizza boxes and other company ephemera. Lots of it is for sale, and Domino's is being gracious enough not to demand a cut of the artists' sales, which is pretty cool of the company. More of the work will roll out in the coming days. Doesn't make this any less accurate, but this is a good example of effective consumer outreach.
My colleague Tim Nudd recently wondered if Apple, at a crucial time of transition in the company's history, had lost its voice in the new "Our Signature" manifesto commercial. The company speaks clearly and with great confidence, however, in "Making a Difference One App at a Time," a 10-minute film by TBWA\Media Arts Lab that focuses on how third-party iOS apps can profoundly change people's lives.
Now, I initially assumed that such aspirational advertising, especially in a long-form outing, would veer into mawkish, tear-jerk territory. I was mistaken. The muted, documentary-style approach strikes the perfect tone, and "Making a Difference" says a whole lot without ever getting overly sentimental or offering pie-in-the-sky promises about making the world a better place.
"Making a Difference" both tells us why Apple's products are great and shows us that they are, introducing viewers to a range of people who use or develop vastly different apps that run on iPhones and iPads. We meet a nurse who uses the technology to make diagnoses in remote, rural areas of Kenya; an Olympic medal-winning amputee rower who programs her prosthetic legs; a Native American woman striving to keep the Cherokee language alive; and, most poignantly, a non-verbal youngster who finds his virtual voice and now talks to his family and friends via iPad every day.
In a way, these are small, intimate stories that gain considerable power (and a truly universal vibe) when woven together. Yet, the piece as a whole never feels forced or overblown. There's a cool, almost detached aspect to "Making a Difference"—achieved with lingering Steadicam shots, fluid editing and an elusive ambient soundtrack—that's analogous to Jonathan Ive's Apple product designs. His vision, at its best, is gorgeous yet restrained, evocative and efficient with all elements in harmony, and the same can be said for this film. It has great form but also function, with viewers learning quite a bit about iOS apps and feeling like we're part of the conversation.
Intriguingly, all four stories are ultimately about enabling and facilitating various types of communications. The apps—and, by extension, the Apple products they run on—are convincingly cast as high-tech translators. Working together, humans and machines create a new language of hope, change and deeper understanding.
Back in January, Red Robin basked in the glow of good publicity after the manager of one of its North Carolina restaurants comped a pregnant patron $11.50 and added a good-luck message to her bill. Aww! The coverage this week, however, is closer to aww-ful, as the chain is taking heat from vegetarians for a commercial touting its 24 burger options. The 15-second spot includes the line, "We even have a garden burger … just in case your teenage daughter is going through a phase." The actress's overdone delivery, probably intended as conspiratorial, comes off as condescending. Now, you'd think vegetarians would be too scrawny and weak to kick up a fuss, but they flocked to social media (where else?) and accused the chain of being disrespectful and callous, demanding that it pull the ad and/or apologize. On Monday, Red Robin's communications chief, Kevin Caulfield, told the Huffington Post that the ad "is planned to be out of rotation and no longer on the air very soon." The controversy will have no lasting impact, and I expect any ill will to vanish as soon as the commercial does. It's not like the chain's employees posted videos of themselves licking garden burgers or sticking their toes in the lettuce—yet. Behave, burger people! See a few more spots from the campaign after the jump.
red robin says it offers a gardenburger "just in case your teenage daughter is going through a phase." how many groups did it just insult?
Kraft's saucy ad campaign (via ad agency Being) for its Zesty Italian salad dressing launched in early April, but it's taken a rebuke from One Million Moms to give it a sudden enormous boost of visibility. The moms are super pissed off about the print ad above, featuring the campaign's hunky model, Anderson Davis, enjoying a naked picnic. The ad is far from subtle—the picnic blanket has pretty obviously been pulled over Davis's privates in such a way that it looks somewhat obscene. This infuriated the moms, which write on their website: "Last week's issue of People magazine had the most disgusting ad on the inside front cover that we have ever seen Kraft produce. A full 2-page ad features a n*ked man lying on a picnic blanket with only a small portion of the blanket barely covering his g*nitals. It is easy to see what the ad is really selling." Nope, they can't even say the words naked or genitals. The moms add: "Christians will not be able to buy Kraft dressings or any of their products until they clean up their advertising." Kraft responded with this statement: "Our Kraft dressing's 'Let's Get Zesty' campaign is a playful and flirtatious way to reach our consumers. People have overwhelmingly said they're enjoying the campaign and having fun with it."
Microsoft vents its inferiority complex with Apple yet again—by humiliating Siri—in this new spot from Crispin Porter + Bogusky, following a similar ad last month that got more than 5 million views on YouTube. The new spot compares Dell's XPS 10 tablet to the iPad. Microsoft is still smarting about the "Mac vs. PC" ads, to judge by the tone of these ads, which is a shame, because that Dell tablet looks cool enough to stand on its own. And if you think this is harsh, I wouldn't be surprised if future ads take potshots at the Sony Xperia after what happened at E3 this year.
Mother New York made up a word, "MIDWULS," using the last seven digits of Optimum's phone number, and created an integrated campaign around it. MIDWULS, we're told, is "that incredible feeling that comes when you get a great deal on TV, phone and Internet" by signing up with Optimum. The launch commercial shows folks in different situations saying "MIDWULS," and goofs on sci-fi-game addicts, Game of Thrones fanatics and Web-lovin' street gangs ("Yo, this is our hotspot!"). The campaign goes all-in, with a Wikipedia page (it's been deleted), a Tumblr (fairly amusing), an online store (every item is "sold out"—ha!) and the requisite #MIDWULS hashtag. (It's possible that Michael Bolton's next album will be titled MIDWULS.) I initially wondered if perhaps Mother deleted the Wikipedia entry itself as a postmodern, meta media move. Then I realized, even if they had, it would be a meh-ta move at best. The work tries a little too hard to be clever, like I just did with "meh-ta," and already feels played out. "MIDWULS" is amusing as a one-off, but I doubt it will spell success in the long run.
A year ago this week, Max Page—known to ad geeks as the 8-year-old actor who played Little Vader in Volkswagen's 2011 Super Bowl ad—had open-heart surgery for a congenital heart defect. He's had eight surgeries in all at Children's Hospital Los Angeles. Now, People magazine has an update on how he's doing. In short, he's healthy—and making a difference. "He's doing remarkably well," his mom, Jennifer Page, says. "He's a full-throttle kid who loves doing charity work, making appearances in hospitals nationwide, raising funds and cheering up other kids." Max serves as a junior ambassador for Children's, and has raised more than $50,000 for the hospital. "I love being able to help kids who are less fortunate," he says. "It's all about giving back." It looks like the Vader suit comes along with him, too. "It was fun filming it," he says. "It's never going to get old to me."
If you are male, the moment you have a child you are required to drastically alter your sense of humor in ways both profound and irreversible. Where before you were witty and sharp, you must now become broad and pun-heavy. This is mostly so you can embarrass your offspring, although, counterintuitively, it is also guaranteed to make them love you more. (The whole thing is probably evolutionary in some complex way.) This Sunday, for Father's Day, Heineken will celebrate this oddity of the human condition with a #dadjokes campaign from Wieden + Kennedy in New York. You submit your cheesiest dad joke with that hashtag to @Heineken_US, and the brewer will meme-ify its favorites—posting your joke next to stock photos of awesome dads through the ages. Heineken will add its own #dadjokes throughout the day, too, and all of them will be archived on a special #dadjokes Tumblr. Join in Sunday, and make it the most groan-inducing site on the Internet. Credits below.
CREDITS Client: Heineken Project: #dadjokes Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, New York Executive Creative Directors: Scott Vitrone, Ian Reichenthal Creative Directors: Erik Norin, Eric Steele Creatives: Mike Vitiello, Jessica Abercrombie Designer: Cory Everett Account Team: Patrick Cahill, Jacqueline Ventura Brand Strategist: Jeremy Daly Art Producer: Michelle Chant Interactive Producers: Mutaurwa Mapondera, Victoria Krueger Director of Integrated Production: Lora Schulson Director of Interactive Production: Brandon Kaplan Business Affairs: Quentin Perry
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