Hasta La Creative!

In the past, water filter brand Brita has targeted plastic bottles as public enemy No. 1, but now it has its sights on a new foe: Soda.

A new spot created by DDB California uses towering piles of sugar cubes to show the impact of drinking one sugary soda a day (which would be pretty a moderate intake for some families). In the ad, we see a stack of cubes illustrating a single day of cola, followed by a skyscraper modeled from a year’s sugar, ending on a cityscape built from the  221,314 sugar cubes a soda fan could consume “over an average adult lifetime.”

It’s a striking visual, one taken even further by the brand’s #ChooseWater campaign in an exhibit this week at New York’s Chelsea Market, where roughly 1 million sugar cubes (weighing 7,000 pounds) were shaped into an even larger skyline to reflect the amount consumed by a family of four over their lifetimes:

If you thought 200,000+ sugar cubes sounded like a lot check this out! #ChooseWater pic.twitter.com/SjNedletA7

— Brita USA (@BritaUSA) October 21, 2014

The sculpture features 28 buildings, varying in height from 2 to 7 feet. That’s one tall drink of terrifying.

Esquire recently asked three ad agencies to help with its male mentoring initiative. Today, Barton F. Graf 9000 unveiled its campaign: a political initiative to establish mentorship of children as a legal excusal from jury duty. The idea is that more mentors would mean better guidance for at-risk youth, and eventually, reduced crime rates and the need for fewer jurors in the first place.

The proposed Mentor Act is explained in a print ad in Esquire’s October issue. The ad itself could be mailed to state representatives, and it also points to TheMentorAct.org, which features a powerful film—directed by Michael Bonfiglio of Radical Media—asking prisoners who their mentors were. The bill can also be sent to lawmakers directly from the site.

“Ultimately, The Mentor Act aims to use the same court system that convicts people, to help children avoid committing crimes and entering the court system in the first place,” say Barton F. Graf and Esquire, which are “already beginning talks with state politicians to adopt this bill and hope to move the bill forward on a state-by-state basis.”

The other two agencies that got involved in the Esquire project are Makeable and 72andSunny. The former built a campaign around the website webuildmen.org, while the latter made ads with the theme “F*ck off, I’m helping.” See three of those ads below.

Heeeeeere’s … Ikea’s parody of The Shining!

BBH Singapore re-imagines the spooky hallway scene from Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 horror classic in this spot-on 90-second Halloween ad. Instead of a haunted hotel, however, the little kid peddles around a spooky Ikea store late at night. Nice touches include eerily flickering lamps and ghostly diners in the kitchen display, and the word “REDRUG” above, yes, a red rug. It goes on a tad too long, just like the movie it’s based on.

The point of the spoof is that Ikea stays open late (until 11 p.m.) for your shopping pleasure, and it’s also is part of a social-media contest to win gift cards. So, when you chop down your door in an axe-wielding frenzy, you can get a replacement for less at Ikea.

Ikea has done plenty of scary-good promos lately, from hilariously pitching its 2015 catalog as “cutting-edge” technology (also by BBH Singapore) to inviting shoppers to spend a night in one of its stores to challenging them to climb this amazing outdoor apartment/wall.

Assembling its furniture, of course, remains a frightening experience.

Activist T-shirt maker FCKH8 asked the world a question. What makes you more uncomfortable: the way society fucks women, or a little girl saying the work fuck? And it turns out that for a lot of people, the answer is watching a little girl say fuck.

Even though that’s the point, and the complainers say they get that’s the point, the hilarious part is they just can’t get over it. So, of course, they’re already crying about child exploitation. Though, if you watch the video, it’s pretty clear that these little girls are not shocked by their own potty mouths. In fact, they seem to be having way too much fun. Kids, after all, love breaking the rules.

Still, can’t FCKH8 make its point (and sell its shirts) without cursing? Sure, but would people watch? The statistics are old; little girls saying the F-word is pretty much the only new thing in this video. Besides, it was created by a company called FCKH8, not SCREWH8 or DARNH8. They’re so comfortable with the F-word they slapped it right in their name.

What I also love is that I think most people who are complaining never got to the end of the video. I say this because there is a 12-year-old boy dressed in a princess costume at the end (making a really good point about how sexism affects men), and not a single YouTube commenter has yet suggested he’s going to turn out gay. (UPDATE: The video has actually been removed from YouTube now, but is up on Vimeo.)

Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I’m less concerned with the swearing, and more concerned with the loss of innocence that results from telling these 6- to 13-year-olds that between one and five women will be raped in their lifetime and then having them count off and wonder if they’re going to be the one. Yes, “fuck” is a sound we’ve deemed “bad” to say. Rape is a horrific concept that little girls shouldn’t ever have to worry about.

And I guess the fact that they will have to worry about it is kind of the problem. Certainly before age 13 these girls will already know about how they’re supposed to dress to avoid it, and how they should always walk in groups and not go out too late at night and how to avoid those “rapey” looking alleys and such. You know, the terrifying advice we all give our girls in the hope that it will keep them safe.

Because really, as much as we don’t want little girls saying fuck, I think we can all agree that we’d much rather create a world in which no one fucks them.

Video producer Mike Kon (yeah, a guy made this) agrees with me, saying, “Some adults may be uncomfortable with how these little girls are using a bad word for a good cause. It is shocking what they are saying, but … the big statistic that one out of five women are sexually assaulted or raped is something society seems to find less offensive than a little four-letter word, and we love how these girls draw attention to that imbalance.”

Speaking of imbalance, one point of amusement: FCKH8’s own press release about the video censored the F-word. C’mon, FCKH8, if the little girls can say it, so can you.

Everyone knows that if you tell people what you wish for when you blow out the candles on your birthday cake, it’s not going to come true. Unless, of course, you wish that you could eat a giant piece of cake in two minutes.

Old Navy turns 20 this year, and to celebrate, it’s sharing the fun with a giant machine that takes your selfie and converts it into a giant balloon portrait. Yes, if you happen to be in Times Square on Wednesday or in Los Angeles on Saturday, and you tweet a birthday wish with the hashtag #Selfiebration, you could see your mug rendered in blue balloons. 

It might not be quite as sophisticated as the Grand Prix-winning MegaFaces Pavilion from the Sochi Olympics, but the Selfiebration Machine is a neat contraption consisting of almost five miles of wire and 1,000 balloons custom-made to withstand the city elements. It will generate two selfies per minute, and 1,000 selfies per day. 

My wish is to install this thing in my living room. 

Via Design Taxi.

If you like any combination of pretty colors, night skiing and striking imagery, Philips has an ad for you.

To promote its color-backlit Ambilight televisions, the electronics manufacturer teamed up with Stockholm agency Ahlstrand & Wållgren, film company Sweetgrass Productions, and a crew of pro skiers to create “Afterglow,” a 12-minute clip shot on the slopes at Golden Alpine Holidays in Aleyska, Alaska, under giant colored lights during the dead of night. The result is snow like you’ve never seen it before.

Under 4,000-watt spotlights of varying colors, spraying powder takes on an iridescent quality, calling to mind the pigments thrown during Holi. (As such, it’s slightly reminiscent of the project that photographer Chase Jarvis did for Samsung monitors, also featuring colorful dust clouds. Screen manufacturers are generally fond of playing up brilliant, hypnotizing palettes, the most famous example perhaps being Sony Bravia’s bouncing balls.)

The skiers also strapped on 7,000-LED suits for some of their downhill runs, making for even more dramatic footage.

If you’re not ready to commit to a 12-minute short film, which we’ve put at the bottom of this post, here’s a 3-minute short that gives you a solid idea of what to expect:

A cut of the LED-suit footage posted to Vimeo a week ago has over 1 million views.

Commenters there point out some similarities to other works—one to the 2012 art piece “L.E.D. Surfer” by filmmaker Jacob Sutton, featuring snowboarder William Hughes plying his craft in the dark (but without the polychromatic vibe of the Phillips clip), another to a Sony Xperia smartphone commercial from a few weeks ago featuring night snowboarders in colored LED suits (though that one clearly took a fraction of the effort shown in the Philips spot). This summer, Lexus also put out an LED-suit nighttime acrobatics ad. So it’s probably safe to call this a trend.

When the mood is right but you’re all out of condoms, most amorous adventurers would simply run to the 24-hour pharmacy. But in France, the back-up plan seems to be a tad more mundane.

In a series of new anti-AIDS ads from TBWA Paris, the participants in a would-be threeway end up interlocking jigsaw puzzle pieces rather than limbs, and several couples find equally bland ways to spend their naked time together. 

“No condom, no sex,” is the tagline for these spots for AIDES, the advocacy group behind a wide range of enjoyable videos.

While the premise is rather silly, it’s a charming way to tackle a decades-old message that usually feels like a high school lecture. And hey, a naked puzzle party doesn’t sound all that bad. 

Via Osocio.

YouTube censors who greenlight nudity as long as it’s artistic must have spent a fair bit of time on this video from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris—advertising an art show about the influence of the Marquis de Sade on representation of sexuality.

That’s because almost every frame could be age-gated.

It was made by video artists David Freymond and Florent Michel. “In the end, it doesn’t come off as something pornographic or obscene. It’s rather beautiful, very aestheticized, like a painting by Renoir, Courbet, or a Rodin,” Emmanuèle Peyret writes in Libération, per Artnet. “In brief, another artwork amid those already inhabiting the museum.”

Video contains nudity and is NSFW.

If you’re the type of jet-setter who flies a seaplane to a Scottish estate so you can put on a tuxedo and have a drink with a handful of your posh friends, David Beckham would like you to buy some of his new whisky.

The recently retired soccer icon stars in this glitzy launch ad for Haig Club, a single grain scotch that Beckham produced with liquor giant Diageo and American Idol creator Simon Fuller. Filmmaker Guy Ritchie, a friend of Beckham’s—who directed him in this H&M ad last year—directed this one, too (and makes a cameo as the fisherman under the bridge).

It’s worth watching mostly for the gorgeous scenery (shot in the Scottish Highlands, at locations like Glen Affric). The people are pretty, too. Alt-J’s “Left-Hand Free” serves as the soundtrack. The storyline is thin, leaving you free to focus on the lush trappings—not unlike a fashion or perfume ad. That’s all the more appropriate, given that the bottle looks like it should hold something you splash on your person, not pour down your gullet.

Regardless, you should also be ready to drink it at the Great Wall, Easter Island, the Egyptian pyramids and Antarctica, among other places. In other words, get your travel budget in order—and don’t forget to bring your point-and-shoot camera, because everyone still uses those.

Homeless signs have been a font of ideas for creatives, but rarely has the focus been on the fonts themselves.

The Arrels Foundation in Barcelona has created Homelessfonts—typefaces based on the unique handwriting of the homeless people it helps. Each font comes with the story of the person who penned it and their personality. After all, few things are more personal than our handwriting.

The work not only helps fund the foundation, it humanizes the homeless and lets people see them as unique individuals, not as an amorphous problem. The video about the process is moving, but moreover, the fonts are actually good. The glyphs were captured with fat sharpies on poster board and then transformed by volunteer typographers.

If you are a typographer, you can donate your time and expertise to help create more fonts. If you just like the concept, you can download a free app to use the fonts in social media (be a nice person and make a donation, too). And if you’re a brand, you can purchase the fonts and the stories that come with them for professional use at surprisingly affordable prices.

Samples of the scripts as they might appear on packaging are included, so you can see just how beautiful and unique the font—and the people behind them—truly are.