Hasta La Creative!

Twenty bucks says college students around the U.S. will be racing to their computers at 3 p.m. ET this afternoon. Why? Because Olive Garden, purveyor of sort-of Italian food, has—in a fit of PR genius—announced a Never Ending Pasta Pass.

And that’s when it goes on sale online.

For $100, you can get unlimited pasta, salad, breadsticks and soft drinks for seven entire weeks. That’s right—49 days in a row of all-you-can-eat carbs, more carbs and bunny food. Alcohol and gratuity not included. Food coma and chocolate mints likely are.

I did the math, and this is cheaper than eating two packs of Ramen noodles for every meal for those 49 days (that would be $133 if you Amazon Prime it).

But you’d better act fast right at 3 p.m. The chain is selling only 1,000 of these pasta passes. (It’s a kickoff to the annual “Never Ending Pasta Bowl” promotion, running Sept. 22 to Nov. 9., which lets you eat all the pasta you want for $9.99.)

Clever move from Olive Garden, even if all their Facebook fans are super weird.

A same-sex couple locked in an embrace (or is it a tackle?) smash through their home in slow-motion in a surprisingly inclusive spot for DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket.

These guys have a “friendly rivalry.” One roots for the New York Giants, and the other for the Dallas Cowboys. At first, viewers might think it’s just a moment of roughhousing between friends, but they eventually make it clear by saying that, while they may argue sometimes, “we’re just like any couple.”

Despite the nod to the Cowboys, the ad from Grey New York was almost certainly filmed before the team signed Michael Sam, the first openly gay player to be drafted into the National Football League. The spot broke last Thursday during the NFL’s first regular-season game between the Green Bay Packers and the Seattle Seahawks.

Sports has factored into several pro-LGBT ads lately. To protest Russia’s anti-gay laws ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a Canadian equal rights group created a PSA that claimed, “The games have always been a little gay,” a reference to the visual association one might make concerning the two-man luge. While applauding the spot’s good intentions, some felt the humor reinforced stereotypes. Norwegian apparel firm XXL took a different tack with its mini-epic Olympic commercial with a lesbian twist .

Some commenters have disparaged the “little yippity dog” in the DirecTV spot as a homosexual cliche, but it otherwise has received a pretty warm response from LGBT advocates. The ad scores because it levels the playing field and presents its themes in the same loud, goofy and accessible style as the client’s other “Most Powerful Fan” commercials. Here, sports fandom becomes a fun, credible metaphor for inclusiveness. DirecTV called the right play.

Via The Advocate.

The greatest idea for a billboard has been realized: one made entirely of cake.

Actually, 13,360 cakes. British confectionary brand Mr. Kipling and agency JWT London are the geniuses responsible for this gift to the the world. Because they are benevolent leaders who understand how things should work, they let everyone lucky enough to be near the billboard, at a mall in London, also participate in the eating of the billboard.

That makes it even more perfect, because a billboard that disappears quickly is the best kind. It’s also even more selfless, because making a billboard out of 13,360 cakes is a feat that takes grand vision and steely perseverance—approximately seven hours worth of grueling cake assembly alone, even with the help of a professional food artist like Michelle Wibowo, whose credentials also include making a portrait of Prince William and Prince George out of 16,074 triangle pieces of Toblerone chocolate.

Other, less-conservative estimates place the total commitment required to build a single giant ad out of many small cakes at three days, plus two months of presumably painstaking design. Also assisting were other fine marketing companies like Outside Line, Carat, and Cirkle. Regardless, it is an infinitely more courageous move than a bus shelter ad that hands out a measly 500 Mr. Kipling cakes.

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Fortunately such Herculean efforts do not go unappreciated by passersby of strong character. “I really like the board because I love cake, and that motto quite fits me,” says one woman in a video about the giant cake ad. “Life is better with cake,” says the motto, which 72 percent of the U.K. population believes, according to Mr. Kipling’s surely bulletproof research, and also according to common sense.

So, let it be known that for anyone who does make a billboard henceforth, moral imperative dictates it should be made of cakes—perhaps cakes more delicious than Mr. Kipling’s cakes, which if they are anything like pre-packaged cakes in America, might not be the best cakes in the world. (These French pastries might be a good place to start.)

Some exceptions to the rule: A billboard that cleans the air is OK, because humans need breathable oxygen to eat cake; a billboard that condenses humidity into water, because humans might be thirsty after eating all that cake, even though milk would be a better companion; and billboards featuring exceptional art, in case someone needs something nice to look at while eating their cake, though such a student probably isn’t focused enough on the task at hand. 

But before anyone suggests making a billboard out of ice cream or pie, let’s just all remember that we are practical folk who only engage in civil debate about reasonable ideas—and also do not give rise to false hope.

Via The Drum.

Matthew McConaughey takes his time in his first Lincoln ad through Team Detroit.

There are almost more pauses than words of dialogue in the 60-second spot, as the Oscar-winning actor and new brand endorser sits nearly motionless in his MKC on a country road, transfixed by a giant bull who won’t let him pass.

There’s plenty of Rust Cohle here, but this is also just pure McConaughey—quietly audacious. That could also describe the approach of the whole spot, in fact, which barely shows the vehicle in action. (Indeed, it’s vanquished in the end by a creature clearly more powerful than itself.)

Two other spots rolled out Thursday—a :60 that’s more conventional, with McConaughey driving around and philosophizing on whether you can or can’t “go back,” and a meta :30 in which he says straight out that he drove Lincolns long before he was paid to do so.

The spots were directed by feature filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, who was last seen crafting this 90-second Grey Goose ad.

When you think about all the people you need to appease in life, it can get pretty hairy. Your parents, your friends, your significant other, your boss, your co-workers—it’s rough.

Well, here’s a commercial that sympathizes, and presents a unique solution.

The downright hare-brained spot comes to us from Japanese shampoo brand Mesocare and agency Dentsu. It plays out like Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s insane night terror, and will freak you out, too. So, without further hairdo, watch people scream at each other while dangling from hair follicles.

Via Ads of the World.

And here’s the extended cut (no subtitles), which is worth it for the ending alone:

CREDITS
Client: Mesocare
Agency: Dentsu, Tokyo
Creative Director: Yosuke Hiraishi
Copywriter: Yuto Ogawa
Director: Wataru Sato
Photographer: Onomichi
Producers: Sumina Sugita, Tomomitsu Nakano, Yuki Awatsu, Naomi Yamamoto

Embracing music has become a popular strategy for making potentially dull brands seem cool, and Gillette is leaning hard into the approach with a new spot that turns its razors into part of an elaborate piano-playing machine.

Son Lux, an artist and producer who recently collaborated with Lorde, performs an original composition on the contraption, which rigs a second keyboard into a pulley system that controls the razors—which in turn press the keys on an actual piano.

The ad is meant to demonstrate the rotational capacity of Gillette’s Flexball technology. That ends up succeeding well enough, which is a good thing, because otherwise it might just look like an awful lot of trouble to make a perfectly functional instrument unnecessarily complicated just to squeeze in the product. Regardless, Gillette, agency Grey and production company 1stAveMachine get props for helping to bring viewers a nice song.

The project also recalls Gillette’s symphony of sweaty dudes on gym equipment from last fall (via BBDO), meant to promote the P&G brand’s deodorant. GE, meanwhile, has been teaming up with electronic artists to sample the sounds of its heavy machinery, and turn them into very listenable records.

It’s hard to say whether razors, free weights, shipping containers or jet engines make the best tunes, though.

CREDITS
Client: Gillette
Spot: “Piano”

Agency: Grey

Brand Agency Lead: Debby Reiner
Senior Vice President/Account Director: Sarah Beaumont
Vice President/Account Director: Elizabeth Gilchrist
Account Supervisor: Thomas Ghiden
Account Supervisor: Katie Stirn
Account Executive: John Nelson

Executive Strategy Director: Howard Roberts

Cinematographer: Zach Mulligan
Composer: Ryan Lott (“Son Lux”)

Production Company: 1st Avenue Machine

Agency President/Global Chief Creative Officer: Tor Myhren
Group Creative Director: Jeff Stamp
Group Creative Director: Leo Savage
Associate Creative Director: Lance Parrish
Associate Creative Director: Steve Nathans
Copywriter: Nick Terzip

Director: Asif Mian (1st Avenue Machine)
Editor: Akiko Ikawaka (Cut + Run)
Executive Producer: James McPherson
Mix: Heard City, Phil Loeb
Music Producer: Zachary Pollakoff
Film Producer: Katy Fuoco
Assistant Film Producer: Megan Swan

All the electrical products in your house will start doing Busby Berkeley routines once you sign up with solar power company SunRun.

Cutwater in San Francisco crafted the stop-motion ad below with help from Australian animator Dropbear (aka Jonathan Chong), the creative force behind the music video for Hudson and Troop’s “Against the Grain.” It’s funny that an environmentally friendly company like SunRun would tap an animator who wasted so many pencils (don’t we need pencils?!), but such is life. 

All of the animation was done by hand, and it took the team roughly a month to complete the 30-second spot.

CREDITS
Client: SunRun
Spot: “Solar Motion”
Agency: Cutwater
Founder/ECD: Chuck McBride
Creative Director: Luke Partridge
Executive Producer: Daniel Tuggle
Producer: Danielle Soper
Art Director: Gong Liu
Copywriter: Deidre Lichty
Group Account Director: Christian Navarro
Senior Account Manager: Sarah Owens
Production Company: Hustle Co Director: Jonathan Chong
Director of Photography: Nick Kova
Editorial: Dropbear Digital
Stop-motion animator/Editor: Jonathan Chong
Postproduction Company: Creative Technology
Flame Artist: Zac Dych Colorist: R. Adam Berk
Postproducer: Melanie Bass
Audio Record & Mix: M Squared Audio Engineer: Mark Pitchford Assistant Engineer: Phil Lantz
Music Supervision: Blue Scout Music Music Supervisor: Joey Prather
Music Track: Dragon “Chase the Sun”

For six years, Gregory Ng has held the uncontested title of Frozen Food Master, a grocery guru who has eaten his way through 1,000 microwaved meals and recorded the results for a loyal audience. 

But a few days ago, in mid-review, he abruptly quit. The breaking point? A $2 children’s meal that Ng felt was “breading with a hint of chicken on the inside.”

“You know what? I can’t do this anymore,” he said into the camera after a pause. “This is horrible. We should not be feeding our kids this. We should not be eating this frozen food anymore. I’m done with this.”

Obviously, it’s not the frozen food industry that’s changed since Ng’s video review series, Freezerburns, began in 2008. What’s changed is Ng himself.

In recent years, while working his day job as CMO for optimization firm Brooks Bell, Ng has become an advocate for healthy, active living. He even quit Freezerburns briefly in 2012, noting, “I was feeling great every day, and shooting more episodes of Freezerburns was my daily downer.”

He soon returned to the show, reinvigorated with ideas for how to make it better. Today, he estimates the Freezerburns audience across multiple video platforms totals 75,000-100,000 viewers per episode.

This time, though, he says the end is truly the end. In a blog post, he explains how he’s become increasingly uncomfortable with the influence the show has had on his life, such as motivating him to feature the unhealthiest items because he knew they’d be the most popular.

We wanted to know more about his decision to close down a niche he’s spent so much time carving out. Check out our Q&A with Ng below:

AdFreak: So, what are the final stats for your time creating Freezerburns? How much frozen food did you eat? How much video did you create?
Gregory Ng: I published my first episode on Oct. 4, 2008, and in the nearly six years since then I reviewed over 1,000 frozen food items in nearly 700 episodes. One fan calculated that it would take four days to watch every video back to back. Not quite the longevity of The Simpsons marathon, but still a lot of time to watch me eat.

You’re an all-around healthy guy and committed father. Do you feel Freezerburns did more harm than good by promoting the frozen food category?
Absolutely not! While the issue of healthy eating eventually ended the show for me, the frozen food category as a whole did not and does not contradict my health and my parenting.

There are a ton of items in the freezer aisle that are extremely nasty, unhealthy, sodium-laden and fattening. They truly fit the stereotype of frozen food. But there are also a ton of options that cater to organic, healthy eating as well as special dietary needs like gluten-free or vegetarian.

As the Frozen Food Master, I was able to uncover those gems in the freezer aisle that were great tasting and good for you with the added convenience that frozen meals provide. And when I reviewed things that were great tasting but not great for you, I feel like I represented the tradeoffs in eating them. Because of this, I feel like I promoted the frozen food industry in a positive but realistic way.

How did your “mic drop” moment of walking off set come about? A lot of people would probably assume a scene like that was staged.
In the last couple of months I had a few “moments of clarity” that caused me to question my motivations in keeping my show going. Some of it was simply the time aspect of producing online video in addition to my day job as well as my family commitments and whether the financial benefits outweighed the effort.

I’m typically an impulsive person but I didn’t want to make an impulsive decision to end something I spent a lot of time building. My brand was strong, my relationships with frozen food companies were strong, and my revenue coming in was strong. I had told myself that I would finish out the calendar year. I felt that would be a great time to end things.

Then I reviewed this particular Kid Cuisine meal and I just got very angry during the review. It is geared at kids, and it just isn’t anything I would serve to them. It was also a meal that has a commercial tie-in with the How to Train Your Dragon 2 movie, and the commercialization of the meal made me upset. I record every episode in one take and it just happened. So it wasn’t staged, but there was certainly a buildup to this moment.

You mentioned when you quit that you were starting to be bothered by the fact your audience was closer in age to your kids than yourself. Why was that uncomfortable for you?
I knew that college-aged kids is a great segment to be marketing to, and I exploited that in the beginning years of my show. It fueled a lot of the decisions I made regarding content, publishing times, sponsors I pitched, and merch I designed.

As the years progressed, I tried to evolve the age of my audience into grocery shopping moms. I was successful doing that on my website and on Facebook but not so much on YouTube. My average audience is 19. My oldest child is nearly12. I’m nearly 40.

Good YouTube community management involves conversation and engagement. It was getting to the point where I was no longer aware of what my audience was talking about. And when I dropped a pop culture reference in my dialogue from a movie like Back to the Future, most of them didn’t get it.

You also noted that you felt a bit corrupted by the allure of traffic. Did you feel you were starting to lose control of your content and your own choices?
Absolutely. Over the years, I optimized everything about my show: which items I reviewed to gain the most views and comments, the time to publish, the best way to title my videos for SEO benefits, and the best video length for my audience.

There are a lot of best practices around YouTube optimization but those should just be viewed as guidelines. Every channel is afferent because every show is different. I figured out mine and I didn’t like the decisions I was making to drive more subscribers and revenue.

For example, I would review a Hot Pocket over a vegan Indian meal because I knew the views would be 10 times larger. I could have reviewed what I wanted, but that wasn’t my goal. I was in it to build audience, prove that you could monetize by owning a niche and fine tune my camera presence.

Eventually I realized I accomplished those things and it wasn’t good for me to continue down this path just for a little more revenue.

Like most YouTube personalities, you get a lot of nasty comments. While you seem to have fun mocking them, did they factor into your decision to quit?
Oh no. I know for people not used to publishing a lot on YouTube the troll comments are very scary, emotionally damaging, and offensive. I have always said that a sign that you are popular on YouTube is that the trolls come out. They did not factor into me ending the show.

Do you see yourself starting another ongoing video series with revenue potential? Will you be conquering another niche?
Yes! I am already in the ideation phase of my next project. Freezerburns was the result of careful planning and identifying of a profitable, untapped niche. My next project will be online video-based but not necessarily capitalizing on an exploitable niche. I will not be eating on camera nor will I be reviewing things. This one is coming more from my soul as I will be focusing on crafting behind the camera instead of in front of it. If revenue comes, great. My goal on this one is to create something where the reward is in the emotion it creates.

Microsoft is making a habit out of mocking Siri.

Apple’s personal assistant faces her Windows Phone rival, Cortana, in a new ad from M:United hawking the HTC One M8 smartphone. Cortana also sized up against the iPhone’s voice concierge in a commercial earlier this summer. That spot focused on how Siri was comparatively inept. Now, she is cast as a diva.

That probably rings true for anyone who’s ever wrestled with that functionality on an iOS device. Cortana, though, is at the disadvantage here of having to explain why she’s better, and what hardware she occupies. Everyone recognizes an iPhone and Siri—the whole concept stands on the competition’s shoulders.

At the same time, Apple bashing is a quick and easy way to get millions of YouTube views, as Samsung proved. So, it’s not surprising to see Microsoft try a similar strategy. Plus, it’s paying Apple back, in a small way, for all the knocks in the old “Get A Mac” campaign.

Though it is perhaps telling that this approach frames the battle primarily in terms of miniature faceless robots, instead of humans.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Microsoft
Product: Windows Phones
Spot: HTC “Mirror/Sitting” M8
Agency: M:United
Global ECDs: Andy Azula, Con Williamson
Creative Director: Mike Lear
Copywriter: Cedric Giese
Art Director: Ron Villacarillo
Director of Creative Technology: David Cliff
TV Producer: Mel Senecal, Emilie Talermo
Strategy Team: Kevin Nelson, Michelle Kiely, Jeremy Davis, Lauren Curtis
Account Team: John Dunleavy, Darla Price, Melissa Trought, Reena Factor, Liam Mulcahy
Video Production: No6
Music:
“You Always Make Me Smile” – Kyle Andrews
“I Feel Pretty” – written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, performed by Stingray Music
Media Agency: EMT
VFX: Method

The Corcoran Group wanted some nice portraits for its latest “Live who you are” ads. So, naturally, the high-end real estate company went with a high-end photographer.

Check out 12 new ads below, shot by Annie Leibovitz, featuring well-known, talented, affluent individuals in their own homes. The ads were shot in Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Hamptons and Palm Beach, which are the markets Corcoran serves (and are auspicious places to photograph nice-looking homes—and nice-looking people, for that matter).

The subjects range from singer Jimmy Buffett to NBA player Tyson Chandler to ballerina Misty Copeland (above, in her second high-profile ad gig in a month).

“Annie Leibovitz is the preeminent documentarian of our day,” says Corcoran president and CEO Pamela Liebman. “For her to lend her experience and skill to Corcoran and our campaign is a very powerful gift. People will look forward to seeing each of the 12 sensational portraits as we unfold them over the next few months.”

See them all below.

 
• Jimmy Buffett
Singer/Songwriter/Author
Palm Beach, Fla.

 
• Mara Miller, Jesse Carrier and family
Interior Designers, Carrier & Co.
Carnegie Hill, New York

 
• Tyson Chandler and family
Professional Basketball Player
Upper East Side, New York

 
• Misty Copeland
Soloist, American Ballet Theatre
Upper West Side, New York

 
• Quincy Davis
Professional Surfer
Montauk, N.Y.

 
• Michele Oka Doner
Artist
SoHo, N.Y.

 
• Evan and Oliver Haslegrave (brothers)
Founders, hOmE
Greenpoint, Brooklyn, N.Y.

 
• Mario Nievera
Landscape Architect
Palm Beach, Fla.

 
• Francesca and Hans Pauli
Restaurateurs, Sant Ambroeus
Southampton, N.Y.

 
• The Topping Family
13th Generation Equestrians
Sagaponack, N.Y.

 
• Andrew Solomon, John Habich Solomon and son
Writers and Editor
Greenwich Village, N.Y.

 
• Christina Tosi
Chef/Owner, Milk Bar
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, N.Y.