Hasta La Creative!

Parents grow increasingly frustrated as Siri-type phone assistants misunderstand their requests in a pair of 60-second Advertising Council PSAs from Publicis Kaplan Thaler.

The goal is to build empathy for kids with learning and attention disorders—watch the ads to see how—and to introduce Understood.org, a cooperative effort among several nonprofits providing access to support and resources. A print ad reinforces the theme, showing a notebook page with a child’s writing that’s been erased many times, while the words “I want to be understood” remain.

“Put yourself in children’s shoes, and you can truly understand their frustration,” says agency creative director Laura Kirschner, whose young son struggles with such issues. It’s a sharp approach, skipping familiar images of kids struggling to read or comprehend their schoolwork in favor of a deeper narrative about the importance of communication and connection.

“The crux of the campaign is that understanding is everything,” Kirschner says.

That message comes through loud and clear.

There’s a grand tradition of marketers building fancy vending machines, but it’s not every day you see one that doubles as a piano.

For the Alfa Jazz Fest in L’viv, Ukraine, this past June, mineral water brand Borjomi and its agency, Banda, set up a publicity stunt inviting passersby to play a sideways keyboard in exchange for free product.

The new video below shows some people eking out melodies and others banging out full-blown performances while crowds gather and cheer. It has some of the dubious over-enthusiasm of heavily edited case study videos—people get really, really excited, and jump up and down—despite (or maybe because of) how awkward it must have been to hit the right notes while craning over.

Then again, a piano-playing machine made of razors is probably still weirder.

If you’re the type of person who thinks Saturday Night Live’s best years are behind it, you can stop reading now, because nothing I can write will convince you otherwise. Yeah, I know, you grew up watching the most brilliant comedians of all time, and, well, the new players are terrible. It’s like hanging on to your glory days on the high school football field. 

But it was interesting to watch the rerun of a 1990s Tom Hanks episode that ran before this week’s show. There were some hilarious gems, including a Wayne’s World episode featuring Aerosmith—so good. But “Tales of Ribaldry: Wench, Wife, Boot”? What a dud. The point is, you only remember the classic moments. 

You might feel the same way about Jim Carrey. Some would say his best days are behind him. And I certainly thought so when watching his super odd and awkward “Helvis” monologue that opened Saturday’s SNL.

But then we were treated to this virtual noogie of a parody where Mr. Carrey took on Matthew McConaughey’s pseudo-philosophical Lincoln ads. The vignettes were peppered throughout the show, but NBC has combined them for us in the clip below. So, SNL haters, sit back and enjoy some of the best ad spoofs the show has done in a while.

Late at night, when Wes Craven and David Cronenberg sit around trying to scare each other at the Horror Movie Directors’ Spooky Mansion of Fear (look it up, it’s a thing), I’m pretty sure the most frightening movie either of them can think of is Disney’s disturbing 1940 classic, Pinocchio.

A dark meditation on vice, morality, whale digestion and the human experience, Pinocchio is unsettling and bleak on a level you just don’t see in modern movies aimed at kids.

So it makes total sense that the ominous audio from the first Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer could be reworked seamlessly into a creeptastic teaser for Pinoccio, source of the “I’ve Got No Strings” tune intoned by James Spader as the villainous Ultron. 

Check out Nerd Reactor’s sterling work on the mashup below, followed by the real trailer.

Walt Disney’s truly disturbing 1940 cartoon version of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio. So it makes total sense that the audio for the creeptastic trailer to Avengers: Age of Ultron…

Honestly, the mashup merely includes the top scariest moments. They don’t even have the bit where the Coachman goes from kindly old weirdo to Satanic monster and his grin fills the frame.

If anyone needs me, I’m under my desk.

As we learned again recently, professional creatives tend to get prickly when asked to do work for no compensation. But is it always a bad idea to work for free?

Jessica Hische’s handy flowchart should help you decide. It’s divided into four main types of jobs, and from there you snake around answering various pertinent questions—and hopefully reaching a satisfactory conclusion to your particular situation.

Notably, the “Is it for a legitimate business” section yields only “No” answers. That’s debatable, but Dan Cassaro would be proud.

Click here to see the full flowchart.

The wizards at Air New Zealand have conjured up their third J.R.R. Tolkien-themed video in as many years, ahead of the final installment of Peter Jackson’s second Middle Earth trilogy, “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.”

Directed by Taika Waititi, the new clip is modesty titled “The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made,” and it features appearances by Elijah Wood, Dean O’Gorman and Sylvester McCoy, all stars of the upcoming movie. No Ian McKellen, though. I guess he took the bus. Jackson also appears quite a bit, and his production company, WETA Workshop, helped develop the spot, along with Kiwi ad agency True.

“This latest offering combines members of our cast and our locations with Air New Zealand’s unique personality.” says Jackson. “I had a lot of fun on the set with Taika and the team and look forward to seeing the video on board.”

Elaborate effects—including one big-ass bird—and pointy-eared pageantry propel demonstrations of life vests, oxygen masks, aircraft exit procedures and the like. There’s plenty to savor, but one of the coolest elements is among the simplest: wood-carved tablet-type devices that perfectly capture the “magic mirror” ambiance of modern technology. MGM should market them as movie tie-ins. I want one!

“May your path always be guided by the light of the stars,” Wood says at the end of the fantastic journey. It’s a fitting way to wish viewers well and drive home the safety message once the enormous eagle has landed.

Air NZ’s first Hobbit-inspired flight-safety foray, “An Unexpected Briefing,” took off in 2012. A second spot, “Just Another Day in Middle Earth”—a fanciful long-form commercial sans safety message—taxied down the runway a year ago.

Apart from its elvish travels, the carrier’s taken off on other flights of fancy through the years. Far from the Shire, Air NZ visited a different land of enchantment in this Sports Illustrated safety collaboration, made its cabin attendants’ clothing disappear for no good reason, and let Richard Simmons exercise his own strange magic.

The industry is rapidly changing, but one thing remains the same: Literally the only thing that gets agency people to fill out their timesheets consistently is free beer.

The latest example comes from Minneapolis, where Colle+McVoy has built a wondrous machine called the TapServer—a “multi-keg beer deployment system” that uses RFID and custom-written software to verify whether you’ve stopped being a lazy git, finished your timesheets and earned your free pint. (According to the agency, the technology used includes “several Arduinos, a Node-based server, solenoids and a Raspberry Pi.” For all we know, so could the beer.)

Check out more pics below. And yes, similar things have been done before, including the beer fridge at JWT agency Casa in Brazil that unlocks only when timesheets are done.

The underwear brand Dear Kate, a big proponent of using real people instead of models, has a new plan to empower women: It’s putting inspiring female faces right on its panties.

Its League of Ladies Collection features illustrations of four historical women—Marie Curie, Harriet Tubman, Amelia Earhart and Frida Kahlo—reimagined as superheroes.

Additionally, Dear Kate has called on real-life influencers to model the collection, including science communicator Kelly Carnes, actor and playwright Zoe Travis, Golly Magazine editor Roxanne Fequiere, and comedian Jackie Zebrowski.

With names like “Supermarie” and “Superfrida,” the panties feature a cartoon depiction of each woman’s face on the front and a design on the back. Which begs the question, are women even wearing panties with cartoons on them? I asked Twitter, where reactions varied from a resounding no to an open-minded maybe:

Women of Twitter over 25, do you regularly wear underwear with cartoons on them? (This is a work question, I promise.)

— Roo Ciambriello (@roociambriello) October 23, 2014

@roociambriello I’m going to go with no. I didn’t even know they made adult underwear with cartoons. I’m so boring 🙂

— Elissa Plastino (@eplastino) October 23, 2014

@roociambriello I’ve apparently been out of the loop that there was even a cartoon option that wasn’t er… uh… weird… so. No. I don’t.

— Alayna Wetherhead (@awetherhead) October 23, 2014

@roociambriello I haven’t worn cartoon underwear since Underoos (so about age 3). And even my 3-year-old wears mostly cartoon-free panties.

— Nicole (@nmb74) October 23, 2014

That’d be a negatory, ghost rider. “@roociambriello: Women of Twitter over 25, do you regularly wear underwear with cartoons on them?”

— Ambra. (@ambranykol) October 23, 2014

@roociambriello If I could find adult Wonder Woman undies I would definitely wear them.

— Maureen Keefer (@mimifelineb) October 23, 2014

@roociambriello I don’t, but I totally would. I do have a pair that spells out “Tease” in rhinestones, so …I’m into fun underwear?

— Heather Laura Clarke (@HFXHeather) October 23, 2014

I love the idea of celebrating extraordinary women, but I wonder if this is an idea best suited for a (much) younger crowd.

I highly respect and admire Amelia Earhart, but I don’t know if I want to see her face every time I pull off a pair of jeans. I would, however, absolutely buy an 8-year-old girl a cute camisole and panties set featuring Marie Curie with a little hang tag that gives her a short lesson on Curie’s scientific accomplishments. (Business idea, Dear Kate, if you want to come out with a Dear McKenna line.)

We’ve seen how people react to brands that empower women, and I’m reulctant to criticize any effort to promote strong women. So allow me to soften the blow by saying that while I wouldn’t buy superhero panties for myself (and I am the target market), Dear Kate’s Sporty Bralets are off the chain.

Few design projects seem to require as much deep thinking as a corporate logo (some would say overthinking—remember Twitter’s tortured explanation for its new logo back in 2012)?

One of the most basic decisions for any logo, though, is color. And if you think color choice isn’t really that important, well—someday you’re going to be beaten up by a psychologist.

The infographic below explains a bit more about logos and their color—as well as the cost, value and evolution over time of some well-known corporate marks.

You probably have a few friends so opinionated about the sourcing and quality of their food, part of you wants to test whether they’d really know the difference between crap and cuisine.

You love those friends, but you also think they’re being snobs, and you’d just love to troll them hard. 

Well now you don’t have to, because two guys named Sacha and Cedrique did it for you. As you can see in the video below, they’re on a mission to prank organic food experts in the Netherlands. They pack their bags full of a mix of McDonald’s food and real organic food and present it to these connoisseurs of the finer things in life.

Check out this hilarious culinary experiment and skip to about the 2-minute mark if you want to see the real golden nuggets.  

Via Gizmodo.