Hasta La Creative!

Android wants to be with you. Everywhere. All the time. Is that so wrong?

The Google-developed platform doubles down on the “togetherness” theme in work touting its new Android 5.0 Lollipop OS. That system runs across mobile, wearables, TVs and a range of other devices, including the Nexus 6 smartphone (built by Motorola) and Nexus 9 tablet (from HTC), both of which dropped this week amid much fanfare.

“Be together. Not the same” is Android’s new tagline, introduced in a trio of 30-second animated spots on Sunday during the season premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead. The South Park-y visuals are strictly G-rated and give the ads, which teased the Nexus 6 and 9 handsets a few days before their Wednesday release, a distinctive flair.

Those clips were followed by a pair of minute-long spots that expand the campaign’s message by emphasizing the “And” in Android. One mixes animation with live-action shots of diverse folks enjoying life and interacting in positive ways with technology (backed by the inspired musical choice of Andrew W.K.’s anthemic “Party Hard”).

The second spot ditches the animation but really lays out Google’s vision. A voiceover begins: “Remember back in school, when you either invited the new kid over to your table, or you didn’t? If you did, that was a cool move. That was an AND move. ‘And moves’ take guts, but they can mean everything.”

Footage of the Wright Brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. follows, stressing how inclusiveness combined with independent thought drives innovation and change. “Everyone doing the same thing won’t move us forward. Everyone doing their own thing, together, can.”

“As you switch from one screen to another, the experience should feel the same. So Lollipop has a consistent design across devices,” writes Sundar Pichai, svp of Android, Chrome and Apps, on Google’s blog. “Now, content responds to your touch, or even your voice, in more intuitive ways, and transitions between tasks are more fluid.”

Overall, the campaign, devised by Google Creative Lab, presents an appealing tech-topian notion that’s on point for our hyper-connected times. Still, there’s a nagging Big Brother vibe just beneath the surface. Isn’t Google ubiquitous enough already? When we’re “being together” with others, must a piece of software participate in every interaction?

There are enough distractions when you’re driving. Your phone, the tunes, your coffee. But Russian drivers have to put up with so much more—like meteors fall from the sky, and very suggestive truck-side billboards.

A Russian mobile advertising company recently sent a fleet of 30 trucks out on the streets of Moscow with self-promotional ads on the side showing breasts cupped by a pair of hands and copy that translates to “They attract”—to illustrate the power of truck-side ads.

And attract they did—to the tune of 517 traffic accidents in one day, says the Daily Mail.

“I was on my way to a business meeting when I saw this truck with a huge photo of breasts on its side go by,” said Ildar Yuriev. “Then I was hit by the car behind who said he had been distracted by the truck. It made me late and left my car in the garage, and although I am insured I am still out of pocket.”

A spokesman for the company, AdvTruck, added: “We wanted to draw attention to this new format with this campaign. In all cases of accidents, the car owners will receive compensation costs from us that aren’t covered by their insurance.”

The image above has been blurred. See the (NSFW?) version below.

If you’re going to drop an upper-decker, you might as well help fight a drought in the process.

“Drop A Brick” is a nonprofit Indiegogo project created by a partnership of several California businesses, including San Francisco agency BarrettSF that encourages you to buy an eco-friendly rubber brick filled with hydro-gel that expands 200 times its size when water is added. Putting the brick in the top tank will displace half a gallon of water, saving about 50 gallons a week for a family of four.

If every Californian dropped a brick, the initiative says, it would save 67 million gallons of water a day.

The crowdfunding video is basically one big poop joke, but it’s surprisingly amusing and has been getting quite a bit of passaround. Still, organizers say they’d like to see more bricks being ordered to help alleviate California’s crippling drought as soon as possible.

So check out the video and explainer photos below, then go see about dropping a fat one in the tank. No need for a courtesy flush.’

Via Osocio.

CREDITS

Advertising Agency: BarrettSF, San Francisco, USA
Creative Directors: Jamie Barrett, Pete Harvey?
Art Directors: Martina D’Alessandro, Brad Kayal?
Producer: Nicole Van Dawark?
Account Manager: Brooks Dennard
Account Intern: Libbie Maine
Senior Proofreader: Elle Banyo
?Production Company: Pre-Future?
Director: Pete Harvey?
Director of Photography: Joel Jackson
First AD: Jamie Barrett
Grip/Electrical: Gus Hoffman
Sound: Paul Dorough
Line Producer: Nicole Van Dawark
Production Designer: Martina D’Alessandro
Locations Manager: Libbie Maine
Hair & Make-up: Brooks Dennard
Production Assistant: Stefanie Ku
Editorial Company: Pre Future
?Editor: Ian Montgomery?
Audio Record & Mix: Mark Pitchford / M Squared
Animator: Tom Yaniv?
Color Correction & Online: Mark Everson, Everson Digital?

If it’s more comedy you want from your billboard, Sprite is happy to oblige.

Ogilvy Kenya recently put up “Bill the Billboard” at a busy intersection in Nairobi, and programmed him to endlessly crack jokes. He’s sort of an outdoor version of the famous Pringles banner ad from 2009, offering seemingly stream-of-consciousness quips to keep viewers entertained.

The jokes aren’t exactly side-splitting, and the case study’s boast that Bill is the “first ad ever with mental issues” isn’t exactly P.C. But at least he’s a little different than your typical boring digital ad.

There are ads where you can’t quite believe the premise, and this is one of them.

How did the Fiat 500X SUV come to be? Well, it seems a little Fiat accidentally swallowed a little blue pill—and quickly grew bigger. Seriously, that’s the plot of this commercial from The Richards Group. It’s even odder because it’s so nicely shot. (It was reportedly filmed in Pitigliano, Tuscany.)

Says the YouTube description: “The Fiat 500X is bigger, more powerful and ready for action. In this official Fiat 500X commercial everyone who comes into contact with the 500x gets a little excited and you will too.”

Or you could be left wondering what you just saw.

Raw footage of 38-year-old motorcyclist David Holmes smashing into a car at 97 miles per hour, as captured by his GoPro helmet camera, is being used in a British road safety ad with the permission of his mother.

“I know he rode fast that day. He loved speed but he also loved life,” she tells the Telegraph. “This hasn’t been an easy thing to do, but I just hope that somebody benefits from the warning; that people slow down and take time to look for bikes. I’m not a perfect driver. I’ve done silly things sometimes, and I’ve been lucky to get away with them. David wasn’t lucky. The driver wasn’t lucky.”

The ad interlaces the crash footage and an interview with his mother about the incident. The crash video isn’t graphic. It is chilling, though. The absolute and permanent stillness of the final image is intense without trying to be, which is rare in advisories like this. It also provokes that uncomfortable contradiction about things like this needing to exist even though they shouldn’t have to exist.

Via Design Taxi.

Dragan Trenchevski, an industrial designer from Macedonia with maybe the coolest name ever given to a person, has come up with a prototype for an Electrolux Mobile Kitchen, which is basically a laptop with a hotplate built into it—so you can easily cook while looking at recipes online.

Well, it’s a bit more upscale than that. The Mobile Kitchen is a touch-screen laptop that includes a four-tier induction cooktop, a cutting board, and, one would imagine, a friendly reminder to wash/wipe off your hands before touching the screen. It’s just a poop sock away from being complete enough for Google to install in every programmer’s workstation.

Obviously, any commercial release of such a product would have an uphill battle convincing people that just keeping their laptop or tablet in the kitchen is too inconvenient. But as a one-off novelty, it’s pretty cool.

Via Design Taxi.

Already known as the wedding capital of the world, Las Vegas is about to host a lot more weddings. And Las Vegas tourism couldn’t be happier.

After Nevada legalized gay marriage last week, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and agency R&R Partners—creators of the famed “What happens here, stays here” campaign—quickly rolled out a full-page ad in USA Today celebrating the momentous occasion.

Now more open, 24/7. http://t.co/ghNhPSeL6T #MarriageEquality #MarriageMomentum #Proud pic.twitter.com/DGEzhfTdyZ

— Vegas (@Vegas) October 10, 2014

“This is an historic day for Las Vegas and the great state of Nevada,” the LVCVA said in a statement. “As the ‘Wedding Capital of the World’ and one of the top destinations for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender visitors, Las Vegas welcomes LGBT couples wishing to legally recognize their relationship. There is simply no better destination to host a fabulous wedding followed by a one-of-a-kind honeymoon.”

The ad points to a new microsite, lasvegas.com/gaytravel.

See the full newspaper ad below.

Sex sells everything—cars, hamburgers, even air fresheners. But what sells sex?

As it turns out, pencil sharpeners.

A Slovak artist who goes by the name of Matus the First claims to have created the world’s first advertisement “purely to promote sex and for no other reason.” (In other words, it’s not for a pill or a product or anything else. It simply promotes the sex act.)

He tells Britain’s Mirror: “When sex becomes a routine it is necessary to change something. Therefore this is not a product commercial, because you can’t buy a solution to some things. … I felt though that in some cases it might be important for people to change something in their minds, and this commercial is not only about sex but also about thinking.”

We won’t spoil the fun, but let’s just say you might look at your desk a little differently after watching this. (Don’t be confused by the Metropolitan Film Institute logo at the end; that’s the production company that worked on the spot, not the advertiser.)

Fair warning: The spot might be a little unsafe for work, but it’s less about the metaphor and innuendo than about the one carefully placed F-bomb. Take a look:

What do you get when you talk to a group of teen and tween girls about gender roles and stereotyping? A lot of surprisingly insightful opinions.

This past spring, in the midst of heated public debate surrounding Sheryl Sandberg’s “Ban Bossy” campaign, women’s lifestyle site SheKnows released a video asking 9-year-old girls what they think bossy means. It was fresh and inspiring, and became the impetus for SheKnows’ latest project, called Hatch—a program that empowers kids to use media and technology in positive ways.

Now, SheKnows just released the video below, featuring girls talking about gender roles and the pro-female advertising movement and what all of that means to them.

The video is fun and endearing, but also full of great little insights. They weigh in on everything from the Always #likeagirl campaign to the effects of media on girls to social mores. Among their notable remarks:

• “I think most toys are geared towards girls or towards boys. Girls plays with dolls, and for guys, it’s like, building things.”
• “Usually girls’ dolls look a certain way. I don’t think they consider that sometimes girls have short hair.”
• “You don’t have to have pink toys if you’re a girl … That was the olden days. Now it’s 2014. Catch up, people.”

In an interview with AdFreak, Samantha Skey, chief revenue officer of SheKnows, explained the motive behind creating these kinds of videos. For one, SheKnows has a large readership of moms who are stressed about integrating tech into their kids’ lives in a productive way. They want their children to be tech savvy, but they’re concerned that the messages they’re receiving aren’t positive.

“We’re focusing on digital storytelling and teaching kids to make a good video,” Skey says. “Eight- and nine-year-olds are really contemplative about the topic when posed to them in this context. Kids can talk about social issues sometimes more easily when they’re on camera. The girls were really willing to have these conversations, and the filming was a useful device for them to think about their points of view and articulate them clearly.”

“Why do they think science is for boys? And why blue? And dragons?” asks a little girl on the video.

Girls are paying attention, their parents are spending the money, and they’re willing to support brands that empower their children. “Catch up, people.”

Check out some more Hatch videos below.