Hasta La Creative!

Good lord, Beats by Dre is getting great at sports commercials.

We wrote at length last month about how the music company and ad agency R/GA have teamed up to make some of the year’s best sports ads—with Kevin Garnett, Colin Kaepernick, Richard Sherman and Cesc Fabregas. But nothing could prepare us for this five-minute World Cup extravaganza. It’s about pre-game rituals, yes, but Beats is proving to be surprisingly adept at all aspects of the sports ad game—which at times like these is supposed to be the purview of Nike and Adidas.

The top star in “The Game Before the Game,” fittingly for this World Cup, is Brazil’s Neymar Jr. His pre-game ritual involves talking to his father, whose pep talks are so inspiring, you’d think an agency copywriter wrote them (well, yeah). Among the other stars featured here: Spain’s Fabregas, who kisses the ring his girlfriend gave him exactly four times; Uruguay’s Luis Suarez, who kisses the tattoo on his wrist of his son and daughter’s names; and Mexico’s Javier “Chicharito” Hernandez, who prays on his knees as his father taught him. (Elsewhere you’ll see Bacaray Sagna, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Blaise Matudi, Daniel Sturridge, Jozy Altidore, Mario Gotze and Robin Van Persie.)

There are also many, many cameos by non-soccer players—everyone from LeBron James to Lil Wayne to Nicki Minaj to Serena Williams—which lends a very Nike-ish vibe. The latter’s grand World Cup spot this year sneaks in Kobe Bryant, Jon Jones, Anderson Silva, Irina Shayk and even the Incredible Hulk.

Being a music company, Beats can also get away with making its ad basically a giant music video. The stars just slip their headphones on, and away we go. (Indeed, the director here, Nabil Elderkin, is known for his music videos.) Jimmy Iovine is known to handpick the tracks for the Beats ads, and here we get the thematically apt and swagger-filled “Jungle” by Jamie N Commons & The X Ambassadors.

The concept precludes in-game footage, but you don’t really miss it. It could do with a dose of humor, maybe. But throw in some risqué moments (girl on top at 3:02!) and some globe-trotting glimpses of obsessive fan antics (love the British woman’s 1966 tattoo), and you have an impressive smorgasbord of hype, hysteria and hero worship.

Back in 2010, Nike claimed to be writing the future. But who knew the future would include such a determined usurper as Beats?

Credits below, along with some great movie-style posters from the campaign.

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CREDITS
Client: Beats Electronics
Agency: R/GA
Production Company: The Sword Fight
Directed By: Nabil Elderkin
Starring: Neymar Da Silva Santos, Jr.
Featuring: Bacaray Sagna, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Blaise Matudi, Cesc Fabrigas, Daniel Sturridge, Chicharito, Jozy Altidore, Luis Suarez, Mario Gotze, Robin Van Persie
Special Appearances By: Lebron James, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, Rafaella Beckran, Rio Ferdinand, Serena Williams, Sydney Leroux, Stuart Scott, Thierry Henry and Neymar Da Silva Sr.
Original Music: “Jungle” by Jamie N Commons & The X Ambassadors

“Who needs a fucking idea these days when you’ve got an awesome piece of tech?”

Those are the wise words of Steve Back from Ogilvy Australia in the case study below, presenting what is surely the greatest ad idea ever for a tech-fueled campaign. Every major player in the Australian creative community is totally blown away by this idea. And why not? It’s a game changer.

For more innovative thinking—and less utter circle jerking—check out the Creative Fuel conference in Sydney on July 28.

Via Adverblog.

Animal rights activists are upset about, well, everything, but they’re especially mad about an Adidas World Cup campaign in which soccer players are holding bloody cow hearts.

The tagline for the ads featuring players from various nations is reportedly, “During the World Cup, I will give my heart to the cause.”

After the images were leaked on German forward Lukas Podolski’s Instagram account, they were quickly criticized by Four Paws, an animal rights group from his own country. “He says he’d give his heart but it wasn’t his heart was it?” a group spokesperson said in a statement to the media. “It was the heart of an innocent animal.”

Podolski has defended the creative, saying, “I don’t find [the ad] disgusting,” adding that “it just shows my promise to give my heart in our bid to win the World Cup.” Thanks for that keen observation, Lukas.

The brand’s social media channels have also been flooded with comments from disturbed fans. “Seems like Adidas’ campaign managers did not realize people actually do like animals and don’t want their hearts being cut out, dripping with blood,” noted one Facebook commenter.

What I don’t get is why they had to use real cow hearts in a photograph-based ad campaign when fake anything hearts would have worked just as well. Unless they were trying to rile up the animal rights crowd for publicity purposes, it just seems like wasted energy. If a giant glob of Gummi Bear is good enough for Daenerys Targaryen, it should be good enough for the World Cup.

Via New York Daily News.

Every marketer in the world dreams of creating something useful, accomplishing a noble goal and scoring huge results. Here’s a project that nailed all three.

Y&R Moscow recently partnered with Azerbaijani cellular network Nar Mobile to create a wearable device called Donor Cable, which lets one smartphone owner easily donate power to another. Worn as a bracelet, the charging device is clever enough, but it’s also inscribed with the message, “Donate energy to save a phone, and donate blood to save a life.”

Why encourage blood donation specifically? As you can see in the case study below, Azerbaijan has the world’s highest number of children born with the blood disorder thalassemia, a hereditary disease primarily found among Mediterranean cultures. The illness requires extensive blood transfusions for babies, and hospitals often lack the needed amount of donated blood.

The Donor Cable bracelets were given away with Android smartphone purchases at Nar stores around the country, and mobile blood donation centers were parked nearby to catch phone buyers while the issue was on their mind.

The campaign increased the nation’s blood donation rate an astounding 335 percent, earning widespread attention and goodwill along the way. 

JWT Dubai teamed with FilmWorks and Psyop for this strange 80-second CGI-fest that shows travelers flocking to Atlantis The Palm, a luxury resort in Dubai. And they “flock” in the literal sense of the word, moving through the sky without even flapping their arms, to escape the gray chill of London and Moscow for a taste of sun-soaked, beachfront opulence.

This approach, though well realized from a technical standpoint and certainly memorable, might be a little too odd for its own good. At first, I thought the sky was filled with bees. Around the 30-second mark, we get a clear view of human beings aloft against the sun. They look like souls ascending to heaven, floating into the light … a notion that actually meshes with the tagline, “Check into another world.”

Of course, these people land alive and well at the hotel. The production team used acrobats fitted with special harnesses to make the scenes look realistic. Alas, some of the images serve the client poorly. Who wants to take a vacation in a place where people are constantly falling from the sky? (A stockbroker from Croydon could burst through the clouds and crush you at any moment.) And that hand skimming the surface of the sea is creepy.

Turns out we weren’t the only ones that found McDonald’s newest Happy Meal mascot, “Happy,” just a tad on the frightening side.

Online marketplace DesignCrowd challenged its graphic design community to a Photoshop contest that would drop the much-maligned mascot into horror movie posters. 

While tapping into the obvious unease over this character (who’s been used internationally for a while but is just now appearing in the U.S.), DesignCrowd also used this chance to stump for its approach to crowdsourced creative:

“The public reaction hasn’t been positive to the new McDonald’s mascot, and the company would have spent big money on it,” DesignCrowd spokeswoman Josephine Sabin tells AdFreak. “Had they gone through a crowdsourcing marketplace, like DesignCrowd, McDonald’s would have received hundreds of original designs for a great price.”

The first place winner received $200, which should afford the winner something like 66 Happy Meals. 

Take a look below at some of the better entries, and DesignCrowd’s contest page for more. The winner is at the bottom of our gallery.

The winner:

It pays to follow Newcastle Brown Ale on Twitter. Not much, but it pays.

The British beer brand continues its tongue-in-cheek ribbing of traditional marketing by pledging Monday night to pay the next 50,000 people who follow @Newcastle “the princely sum of $1.” To take the brewer up on this, visit follownewcastleontwitter.com.

This is all in the name of transparency. “Why should people endure the unsolicited marketing of other beer brands for free when they can endure Newcastle’s unsolicited marketing and get paid?” the brand rightly asks. The brand is actually going to mail 50,000 checks for $1 each. (“Newcastle-branded checks, of course.”)

The stunt, orchestrated by Droga5, is called “Follow The Money,” and it’s not a complete joke. Despite having some big YouTube hits, and almost 1 million Facebook fans, the brand has fewer than 16,000 Twitter followers. “We really do want 50,000 more Twitter followers,” the brand tells us.

There’s nothing worse than waiting for something to download on your phone, especially if you are a 14-year-old boy waiting for sexy models to appear in your Instagram feed. 

BBDO Moscow and Russian telecom MTS collaborated to baffle the crap out of followers of popular Instagram bloggers Victoria Bonya, Alena Vodonaeva and Anna Sedokova. In one of the troll-iest social media plays ever, these attractive Insta-celebrities posted photos captioned with the following hashtags: #sexy #oiled #myself #six #hot #naked #pumpedup #guys #red #latex #ass #withanimals #cat #bear #horse #experimenting #crazy #positions #wow #amazing #ohmygod.

Except the photos never loaded. In fact, they were just images of the loading screen.

Comments and engagement went through the roof as horny teens, animal lovers and basement dwellers freaked out upon realizing the images weren’t going to load at all. The models followed up by posting ads promoting MTS’s new 4G service and apologizing for the false expectations. 

What is unclear is how the users reacted to having their dreams shattered.

CREDITS
Agency: BBDO Russia
Nikolay Megvelidze, creative director
Alexey Starodubov, creative group head /  director / editor
Vladlena Obukhova, group account director
Luiza Vasyutina, account manager
Boris Anisonyan, head of tv production
Valery Gorokhov, producer
Kristina Malberg, celebrities producer (TMA)
Ekaterina Komolova, managing director (TMA)
Alexander Lubavin, art-director / composer
Elina Yaroslavskaya, digital account director

“Mobile Telesystems” (Client)
Natalia Glagoleva, director of marketing communications department
Maria Yakovleva, head of marketing communications department
Yaroslav Smirnov, head of marketing communications group
Anastasia Terekhova, marketing communications manager
Valery Kopytin, marketing communications manager

FreeParking (Production)
Alexander Polishuk, DOP
Maria Yakushina, producer
Andrey Rubtsov, head of production group

Life is like a Rubik’s Cube, says Google.

A new ad pays homage to the classic puzzle game by featuring its Hungarian inventor, Ern? Rubik, and by leveraging the toy as an ambitious metaphor for the importance of cultivating problem-solving skills among the species’s next generation of potential geniuses.

The commercial’s rah-rah voiceover, including use of non-words like “awesomest,” occasionally turn an otherwise smart message into the potentially off-putting sort of smarm that is often a hallmark of contemporary techno-enthusiasm. But it’s hard to argue the substance of the spot. Rubik’s own commentary speaks well for itself, and even the editing style offers a charming nod to the cube’s iconic three-by-three matrices.

It is too bad, though, that the creators couldn’t come up with some more clever ideas for the next great invention. Nobody’s every going to actually build a time machine. And anyone who’s convinced that the world really needs an easier way to make grilled cheese probably isn’t a visionary.

Shakira, whose last World Cup theme song practically conquered the planet, is back and hoping to dominate again as the games shift closer to home.

The Colombian singer, responsible for 2010’s astoundingly popular tournament track “Waka Waka,” has now teamed up with yogurt brand Activia to deliver “La La La” in celebration of this year’s World Cup in Brazil. The song is also a benefit for the UN’s anti-hunger group, the World Food Programme.

The video has racked up more than 50 million views in a week, possibly putting it on pace to someday match the staggering 668 million views on “Waka Waka.” It appears to be getting a better reception than the first theme song for the 2014 games, Pitbull’s collaboration with J Lo and Brazilian singer Claudia Leitte, “We Are One,” which has only 20 million views since launching in April, and a much worse like-to-dislike ratio on YouTube.

Some critics derided “We Are One” for reinforcing stereotypes of Brazil and for too prominently focusing on non-Brazilian talent. Others pointedly asked for “Waka Waka” back.

Not everyone is convinced the new tune addresses all those complaints, but it does feature Brazilian musician Carlinhos Brown, along with soccer stars like Argentina’s Lionel Messi and Brazil’s Neymar da Silva Santos Jr. And, of course, there’s the obligatory spectacle of a characteristically whirling and wiggling Shakira.

French musician and director Woodkid, meanwhile, has called out the visual style, claiming similarity to the 2011 video for his song “Iron.”

Whether Shakira’s song itself is good is another question, one we’ll leave up to you to decide. If you plan to watch the games, chances are good this won’t be the last time you hear it.

Via Jezebel.