Hasta La Creative!

With the holidays around the corner, it is the season of awkward conversations with relatives and family friends you’d rather forget. Picking up on this, adam&eveDDB explores a conversation a young man has with one particularly tactless guest, who makes a lasting impression for all the wrong reasons.

The woman tells the young man of the holiday she took with her husband in Greece. He initially appears bored, but soon the conversation veers from the mundane to the uncomfortable as the woman talks about the “very secluded balconies” in the hotel room and the opportunities they afforded. We’ll avoid giving away too much as the cringe comedy involved is fairly dependent on some level of shock value, but let’s just say things degenerate from there. It’s easily one of the funniest holiday ads we’ve seen. The comedy it manages to pull off is no easy feet either, as this kind of thing easily derails from awkward funny to just awkward. But the perfectly paced writing and stellar performances from the actors hold everything together with just the right amount of cringe. At the end of the spot, the camera cuts to a jar of Maille mustard, with the tagline “Be a memorable guest for the right reason” explaining the scene preceding it. The spot itself is more than memorable, and should get its fair share of attention leading up to those awkward holiday parties. (more…)

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A couple weeks ago FCB Chicago launched its “Jingle Bellies” holiday spot for Kmart and Joe Boxer, a follow-up to last year’s “Show Your Joe,” which was unofficially dubbed “Jingle Balls” and went on to score over 18 million views on YouTube. With “Jingle Bellies” now just past the one million view mark, the agency has unveiled a follow-up belly performance entitled “Santa Baby.” The twist? This time around it’s pregnant women dancing.

The women shake their posteriors to an upbeat rendition of the song “Santa Baby” (most famously sung by Eartha Kitt) and then turn around, exposing their pregnant bellies. The reveal comes early in the ad, with the pregnant women dancing for the remainder of the spot, in their pajamas, until they stop and one woman extolls the virtues of Kmart and Joe Boxer. So basically more of the same goofy humor FCB has been employing in its holiday efforts for Kmart and Joe Boxer since the original, although a slight departure from the “body parts as instruments” schtick. The ad comes as a bit of a surprise, however, as there was no immediate sequel to last year’s spot. With Sears Holdings’ Kmart account currently in review (Sears is also up for grabs), this could potentially be FCB’s last work for the struggling brand. Kmart, meanwhile, badly needs its holiday marketing efforts to drive sales to make up for a very tough year for the company. (more…)

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When Arby’s received a friendly reminder in October that they had yet to release the second of their promised ads featuring Pepsi they realized they had a problem. The brand and its agency, Fallon, had already wrapped on their creative for the rest of the year.

Rob Lynch, chief marketing officer and brand president of Arby’s, explained to The Wall Street Journal that with the brand focusing on its revamped marketing, centered around the “We have the meats” tagline, the obligations to Pepsi simply got forgotten. Lynch did not look forward to breaking the news to Fallon. “Their ads are kind of like their babies. To go in after we shot them and shoehorn something in is like the worst client move you could ever make,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

But Fallon proved up to the challenge. The Minneapolis-based agency created a new, 30-second ad poking fun at the whole debacle. A tall glass of Pepsi stays on camera for the entire ad as the sonorous Ving Rhames explains the situation: “Arby’s has an agreement to feature their good friend Pepsi in two commercials a year…Well Arby’s messed up and forgot about the second commercial!” In a clever touch, the ad ends by replacing the usual “We have the meats” tagline with “We have Pepsi.” So what did Pepsi think of the approach?

“We applaud Arby’s unconventional approach to marketing and when they came to us with this idea, we thought it would be a fun, creative way to highlight our partnership,” Roberto Rios, chief marketing officer for PepsiCo’s food service division, told The Wall Street Journal in an emailed statement.

So it seems like everyone is happy with the situation. The spot will run from December 7th-13th in the Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles markets, fulfilling Arby’s end of their agreement with Pepsi to feature the beverage in two advertisements this year. Presumably the creative Fallon had to put on hold for the ad will run in the near future.

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TD Bank gave 24 of its customers $30,000 to contribute to a community cause of their choosing, with just one stipulation: they had to complete the project in 24 hours.

Created in collaboration with Leo Burnett and Diamond Integrated Marketing, the campaign is captured in the above four-minute video (which fell through the cracks here last week). The video release was perfectly timed for Thanksgiving and easily went viral, having past the 3.5 million views mark on YouTube in under a week. “#MakeTodayMatter” shows surprised TD Bank customers learning they’ve been awarded the money for a cause of their choosing and then getting to work on making a difference in just one day.

The majority of those nominated for the campaign were chosen by TD employees, TD Chief Marketing Officer Dominic Mercuri told Adweek, with a few “chosen based on random live interviews in branches and stores with random customers.” Mercurri added, “We didn’t know if this idea would work. Would people drop everything to bring to life their idea? Turns out—yes, they would.”

Those ideas are on full display in the “#MakeTodayMatter” video, from buying all-new gear for a local youth football team, to making a woman’s home wheelchair accessible (allowing her to leave for the first time in years), to a gala event to boost the self-esteem of foster children. It’s hard to not be at least a little touched with people making their charitable ideas a reality. There are also separate videos for each project, hosted on a campaign website, as well as a social component. As you may remember, Leo Burnett and TD Bank went viral with the similarly charitable, “Automated Thanking Machines” this summer, and TD also collaborated with Philadelphia-based Tierney to commission “Art For Trees,” promoting eco-initiative MillionTreesNYC back in October.

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Today Mercedes-Benz announced its first major “global agency realignment” since 2006. The big winners appear to be BBDO, Merkley+Partners, and the custom team that will come from a “pooling” of creative talent in Europe.

The press release, in summary (thanks, Google Translate):

• Mercedes-Benz has established a “new agency model” based around three creative hubs: Europe, USA and China
• The company will create a new unit to handle its European creative after conducting “a screening of the European agency landscape”; efforts will be led by Kemper and Kroger in Berlin

(more…)

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The Martin Agency makes sacreligious use of Salt-N-Pepa’s iconic 90s hit “Push It” — as well as the group itself — in its latest spot for Geico.

The 30-second ad opens on a man trying to pull open a door that says “Push” on it. Soon Salt-N-Pepa show up behind him and break into “Push It” and the man walks in. Next we see the pair in an elevator (with Spinderella in the background), a Lamaze class, and at a football practice while performing the song. “If you’re salt and pepper, you tell people to push it. It’s what you do,” says a voiceover, in the campaign’s familiar formula. “If you want to save 15 percent or more on car insurance, you switch to Geico. It’s what you do.” The Martin Agency then manages to slip in a quick gag after the tagline.

The campaign, whose tagline feels like a response to Esurance’s “Insurance for the modern world” (with that company directly taking on Geico’s “15 percent or more “selling point in its advertising), seems like its running out of steam as its joke runs a bit thin, so bringing in an act nostalgic viewers will be pleased to see make sense. And Salt-N-Pepa’s presence certainly makes the ad more memorable, even if it can’t quite save the tired premise.  (more…)

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W+K Portland has launched a new campaign for Weight Watchers, its first for the brand since winning creative duties back in April.

In a new 60-second spot, W+K drops the celebrity-driven approach taken by previous agency McCann (whose latest work featured Jessica Simpson), instead going for a universal theme of “eating your feelings.” The ad, entitled “If You’re Happy…” is set to an adaption of the popular children’s song “If You’re Happy And You Know It” by Tony Babino. “If you’re happy and you know it, eat a snack,” he sings at the beginning of the spot over shots of people happily enjoying ice cream, burgers and cake. Around 15 seconds in the tune changes to “If you’re sad…” and later on to such feelings as “bored,” “lonely” and “sleepy” before finally ending with “If you’re human and you know it, eat your feelings, eat a snack” and ending with the tagline, “Help with the hard part” before finally showing the Weight Watchers logo.

It’s an interesting tactic, tapping into the insight that people associate eating with all types of emotions rather than relying on a celebrity endorsement, which seems to be the standard for the category. W+K seems to be banking on the empathy and relatability of the message being more persuasive than association with celebrity.

According to The New York Times, the ad will “be introduced broadly on Sunday” with an emphasis on “programming apt to draw multiple members of a household” like “the midseason finale of The Walking Dead on AMC on Sunday and the season finale of The Voice on NBC on Dec. 15.” The ad will also “appear widely in cinemas,” which Lesya Lysyj, president of Weight Watchers in North America, told The New York Times “…is great because you’re sitting there with your huge thing of popcorn.”

“We’ve never actually said that weight loss is easy, but when you use celebrities and show before-and-after photos, what you’re doing is kind of implying that it is easy,” she added, explaining the move away from celebrity endorsements.

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Grey New York has introduced yet another Rob Lowe in its ongoing campaign for DirecTV.

Following on the heels of “Painfully Awkward Rob Lowe,” which apparently drew some criticism from shy bladder sufferers, the agency has returned with the self-explanatory “Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe.” The formula is the same as in previous spots, with Rob Lowe introducing himself as a DirecTV customer before a more unfortunate version of himself, who also happens to be a cable customer, comes along for comparison. In the new spot Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe watches ping-pong on a small screen and attempts to open a jar of mayonnaise. Like previous ads, it ends with Lowe saying “Don’t be like this me.”

While it may be that the series is running out of steam, “Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe” just seems like the weakest of the bunch so far. Whereas “Super Creepy Rob Lowe” and “Painfully Awkward Rob Lowe” found convincing ways of tying Lowe’s alter egos to the inferior quality of cable, “Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe” feels like an empty gimmick. Let’s hope Grey can up the ante with the inevitable follow-up and recapture the potential of this campaign. (more…)

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While in recent years many retailers have made infamous Black Friday sales into even more of a behemoth by pushing back their opening times so sales start earlier and earlier on Thanksgiving day, others, such as Costco, have gained public respect by bucking the trend. In a new campaign aimed at the most infamous shopping day of the year, Arnold Worldwide came up with a series of Black Friday alternatives for Santander Bank in an attempt to take back the “true meaning” of Thanksgiving (and make Santander look good by association).

In the above, 30-second spot, “Black Bean Soup Friday” for example, we see shots of a family rising early and piling in the car. “On…Black Friday, Tom and his kids will rise before the sun,” the voiceover informs us, “They will beat the crowds” it goes on as the car speeds along. But, in what’s designed to be a surprise, they “…pass the department stores with lines around the block,” and instead go volunteer at a local soup kitchen. “There are many ways to make the day after Thanksgiving meaningful,” the spot concludes, “How will you spend your day?”

This may seem like an unusual move for a financial institution who stands to benefit from a rush of holiday spending, but Santander claims its “family-values focused European roots run deep” and that they have a “commitment to Real Change and challenging traditional perceptions of banking.” So by taking a stab at Black Friday, in a way designed to be heartwarming, Arnold is distancing Santander from other banks, and attempting to make people think that, unlike their competitors, Santander stands for something. Other Black Friday alternatives suggested in the campaign are “Black Top Friday” (spent playing basketball with friends and family) and “Black Belt Friday” (spent watching Kung-Fu flicks). (more…)

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W+K has a new spot for Old Spice’s “#SmellcometoManhood” campaign entitled “Dadsong,” a follow-up to to the goofy musical “Momsong,” in which mothers lament Old Spice turning their sons into men while engaging in some pretty creepy behavior.

The follow-up, with music and lyrics written by Bret McKenzie (Flight of the Conchords, The Muppets), reprises the sad moms of that spot, but with an answer from the dads. It opens on one of the moms from “Momsong” singing, “Where’s my little boy, I miss him so? Who’s this man living in our home?” while clutching her sons teddy bear as he slow dances with a girl. Soon a chorus of fathers replies that they’re “overjoyed” that they’ll be using their son’s room “for storage pretty soon.” The song is a step up from its predecessor — not a surprise given McKenzie’s involvement — and strikes more of a balance between goofiness and creepiness (which mostly comes across through visual gags). And while it deals in over-the-top portrayals of stereotypical motherly clinginess and fatherly aloofness, it’s also pretty clear that it isn’t dealing in anything resembling reality. Fans of McKenzie’s distinct style of musical comedy, and anyone who enjoyed the original “#SmellcometoManhood” installment, should get a kick out of “Dadsong.” (more…)

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