Hasta La Creative!

Vodafone New Zealand is out with a heartwarming ad that tells the story of a mailman who finds and befriends a lost pig, then goes on a mission to reunite it with its owner.

It’s a path fraught with people who don’t know anything, except that pigs taste pretty good (truth). Eventually, thanks to Vodafone’s mobile network, the pig’s knight gallant is able to track down its home—though the story doesn’t end there.

The mailman’s escape might not be very smart, because doesn’t the woman already have his name and number, and all the necessary info to brand him a pig thief?

But ethics aside, the subtitled and punctuated oinks are pretty great, and Piggy Sue the Vodafone pig is definitely way less annoying than her American cousin Maxwell the Geico pig, even if she doesn’t actually have a Buddy Holly soundtrack.

CREDITS
Client: Vodafone
Creative Agency: FCB New Zealand
Executive Creative Director: Regan Grafton
Group Account Director: Karla Fisher
Head of Content Production: Pip Mayne
Planning Director: Simon Bird
Account Director: Dave Munn
PR: Angela Spain
PR Director: Joanna James
Producer: Amanda Langkilde
Regional Creative Director: James Mok
Senior Art Director: Freddie Coltart
Senior Copywriter: Matt Williams
Senior Planner: Hilary Dobson
Recording: Hammond Peak
Producer: Pen Cooper & Sarah Yetton
Music Production: Liquid Studios
Composer: Peter van der Fluit
Sound Production: The Coopers
Sound Engineer: Jon Cooper
Online Editor: Nigel Mortimer
Editor: Bernard Garry
Post Production House: Blockhead
Colourist: Ben Eagleton
Production Company
Production Designer: Margot Wilson
Production Company: Revolver
Managing Director: Michael Ritchie
Executive Producer: Michael Ritchie & Pip Smart
DOP: Nicolas Karakatsanis
Director: Steve Rogers

Riding the viral success of numerous other evolution videos, a genre that started with “The Evolution of Dance,” Breathless Resorts has scored a hit with “The Evolution of the Bikini”—an obvious crowd pleaser starring model and Vine star Amanda Cerny.

Vine stars are the new it thing in branded tie-ins, but there’s nothing new about scoring hits for your brand via hot girls in bikinis. The almost two-minute clip, by digital creative agency Forge Apollo, covers the bathing suit’s evolution from the 1890s to 2015 while it slowly uncovers Cerny in a through-the-decades striptease.

Her rack has already racked up 3 million views on YouTube and half a million more on Facebook. And as an extra bonus, you almost get to see Cerny topless. But the piece is more than pandering—it actually hits on the unique selling proposition of Breathless Resorts.

You see, Breathless Resorts occupies an interesting space in the resort market. It is an all-adults escape that is intended to save your vacation from the tyranny of other people’s children, while also saving those in monogamous relationships from the sort of talk they’d have to have before heading off to other adults-only places like Hedonism Resorts—designed for swingers.

But that doesn’t mean they still can’t imagine the sort of naughty adult fun that might happen at a resort called Breathless whose the advertising involves a woman almost going topless. The vacation possibilities, like the ad, will be too titillating for many to ignore.

Looking for a browser extension that approaches ad blocking a bit more creatively? D&AD and Paris agency BETC have just the thing.

The British ad organization, which just handed out its 2015 awards last week, has now released The Ad Filter, an extension for Chrome and Firefox that blocks regular preroll ads and automatically replaces them with D&AD winners from past years.

It might seem odd for an ad group and a famous agency to promote ad blocking, but D&AD and BETC say the plug-in is designed to “celebrate creativity by inspiring and stimulating people in the industry and beyond.”

“We wanted to demonstrate that people don’t hate advertising, they just hate bad advertising,” says Olivier Apers, creative director BETC Paris.

Check out the demo below, and download The Ad Filter here. It certainly works. I installed it, and quickly saw Vodafone’s “The Kiss,” Hahn SuperDry’s “Pioneering Beering” and LG Kompressor Elite’s “Somethings Lurking” spots.

CREDITS
Client – D&AD
Brand Management – Laura Kelly
Agency – BETC X BETC Digital
Agency Management – Niamh O’Connor, Anaïs Pirajean
Chief Creative Officer – Stéphane Xiberras
Executive Creative Director – Olivier Apers
Art Directors – Alphons Conzen, Jonathan Baudet-Botella
Copywriter – Adrian Skenderovic
Development – Cogit
Motion Design – Raphaël Benhamou

Are you a greedy person who doesn’t like to share your nachos with your friends? If so, Taco Bell wants you to buy its giant nacho for one.

In a new ad from Deutsch LA, a young man with exactly the kind of dour demeanor you’d expect from a nacho hoarder rants about the injustices of sharing, the social institution. In all honesty, it’s a sentiment we’ve all probably felt in one moment of weakness or another, which gives it some resonance. And the spot scores extra points for working in some dings against Facebook—namely, the culture of excessive baby photos and cat pics (though let’s be real, people who don’t like babies and animals are, in all likelihood, soulless). The look on the actor’s face when he’s swiping through his tablet is pretty much perfect.

Overall, though, the commercial doesn’t do a great job of making the gloppy, cheesy mess of a ground-meat pocket that can’t rightfully be called a nacho (the “Grilled Stuft Nacho,” which the brand just brought back from the dead) actually appetizing. But at least the brand’s marketing team knows to embrace the sociopathic demographic—when it’s not busy railing against the evils of a certain totalitarian clown.

CREDITS
Client: Taco Bell
Chief Marketing Officer: Chris Brandt
VP, Brand Creative Director: Tracee Larocca
Director of Advertising: Aron North
Manager, Brand Experience: Ashley Prollamante
Associate Manager, Brand Experience: Alexandra Bunn
Food Consultant: Lois Carson Hunter

Agency: Deutsch LA
Chief Creative Officer: Pete Favat
Executive Creative Director: Brett Craig
Group Creative Directors: Guto Araki, Tom Pettus
Creative Directors: Erick Mangali, Ryan Lehr
Senior Art Director: Chris Adams
Senior Copywriter: Ross Cavin
Director of Integrated Production: Vic Palumbo
Executive Producer:  Paul Roy
Senior Producer: Alison McMahon
Music Director: Dave Rocco
Group Account Director: Walter Smith
Account Director: Sandy Song
Account Supervisor: Kim Suarez
Account Executive: Karah duMaire
Chief Strategy Officer: Colin Drummond
Group Planning Director: Lindsey Allison
Senior Account Planner: Kelly Mertesdorf
Director of Integrated Business Affairs: Abilino Guillermo
Executive Business Affairs Manager: Ken Rongey
Director of Broadcast Traffic: Carie Bonillo
Senior Broadcast Traffic Manager: Sarah Freeark

Executives:
CEO, North America: Mike Sheldon
President, Los Angeles: Kim Getty

Production Company: Hungry Man
Director: Dave Laden
Director of Photography: Stoeps Langersteiner
Managing Partner: Kevin Byrne
Executive Producer: Dan Duffy, Mino Jarjoura
Line Producer: Jason Gilbert

Editorial Company:  Cut & Run LA
Editor: Lucas Eskin
Senior Producer: Remy Foxx
Executive Producer: Carr Schilling

Post Facility: Jogger LA
VFX Supervisor/Flame Artist:  Tim Rudgard
Graphics: Jorge Tanaka
Executive Producer: Lynne Manino

Color Facility: Company 3
Colorist: Dave Hussey

Audio Post: Lime Studios
Mixer: Mark Meyuhas
Assistant: Matt Miller
Executive Producer: Susie Boyajan

Composed Music: Massive Music
Creative Director/Composer: Tim Adams
Head of Production: Jessica Entner

Evian’s famous ongoing ad campaign from BETC is all about sight gags showing adults as children. It’s been enormously successful, at least in terms of staggering YouTube view counts on ads like “Roller Babies” and “Baby & Me,” though some people find the whole thing cloying, even creepy.

This new print campaign, though, is straightforward fun—without the CGI that can make the videos off-putting. The beach chair/cell phone one is particularly great. And the framing and simple product placement in each execution are perfect.

Via Adeevee.

CREDITS
Client: Evian
Agency: BETC Paris
Creative Director: Filip Nilsson
Art Director: Agnes Cavard
Assistant Art Dirextor: Felix Falzon
Copywriter: Valerie Chidlovsky
Photographer: Jean Yves Lemoigne
Retoucher: Pierrick Guenneugues, Sparklink
Art Buyer: Isabelle Mocq-Orain, Nathalie Gruselle
Production: Sarah Belhadj

Gatorade really does love sweat.

Last year, the brand’s hidden-camera ads with Peyton Manning and Cam Newton required customers at a convenience store to “sweat it to get it.” If would-be consumers couldn’t show visible signs of a workout, they couldn’t buy Gatorade.

Now, an epic new spot—created by TBWAChiatDay and voiced by Michael Jordan—makes it clear that “not all sweat is created equal.” In other words, if your sweat isn’t the intense kind, spilled in pursuit of sporting glory, then your sweat is pretty boring, and you should probably try harder. (That way, you’ll sweat more, and need more Gatorade.)

It’s a well put-together, if slightly obvious play—featuring celebrities like Serena Williams, April Ross and Usain Bolt, and released on the heels of the brand’s revival of its famous “Be Like Mike” campaign. The new ad does have at least one YouTube commenter a little nervous about the contents of the sports drink, though.

Adult movies have suddenly become the hot place to put cancer PSAs.

M&C Saatchi in Sydney worked with adult film studio Digital Playground and the Nonprofit Blue Ball Foundation to place an unexpected testicular-cancer PSA inside Game of Balls, an X-rated Game of Thrones parody, last month.

During one of the flick’s steamy scenes, actress Eva Lovia—who really should try harder with her porn name—briefly breaks character (such as it is) to demonstrate a cancer check on a male member of the cast. She also tells viewers to visit PlayWithYourself.org for more information. It’s stroke of genius, I’d say! (But I say lots of silly things.)

Check out the case study below, which is not explicit but might be a bit NSFW anyway.

So far, 200,000 people have visited the site, and total video views have passed 1.5 million, according to the video. “We’re overwhelmed with the amount of feedback we’ve been getting, from emails to Facebook messages to phone calls from all over the world,” says Blue Balls founder Jamie Morgan.

This isn’t the first ballsy way of generating exposure for the cause. McCann Lima and PornHub recently dispatched adult performer Charlotte Stokely—now that’s a porn-star name!—to show men how to perform self-examinations, and Cancer Research U.K. went all-in with last year’s selfie-sock campaign. (There was also DDB Bolivia’s breast-check adult clip, though Pornhub has questioned that case study’s claims of success.)

In any case, hopefully some of the messaging will rub off on the intended audience.

The striped patterns on dresses, shirts, tunics and sweaters become prison bars—with small, sad faces peeking through—in this Brazilian campaign against child labor.

Lew’LaraTBWA created the print ads for the Abrinq Foundation, which is affiliated with Save the Children, in the style of high-fashion magazine spreads. Each one features a single line of copy, such as, “A dress shouldn’t cost a childhood.” Brazilian model Caroline Ribeiro appears in some of the ads, which were shot by top fashion photographers.

#Dress4Good is the hashtag, and the public is encouraged to post “positive fashion-foward images” on Instagram. According to the agency, the initiative is not intended as an attack on the fashion industry per se, but is designed to spread the message that “child labor crimes are closer to the consumer than they might think.”

The work is similar in theme and execution to “What’s Behind,” a recent public-service effort from Brazilian human-rights group Cepia (though Abrinq’s use of stripes—note how the kids’ fingers clutch at them in desperation—really drives the point home).

Ultimately, both campaigns do a fine job of encouraging consumers to dig beneath the surface and find out what’s really going on.

CREDITS
Agency: Lew’LaraTBWA
Client: Abrinq Foundation – Save the Children
Campaign Title:
CCO: Manir Fadel
Executive Chief Creative: Felipe Luchi
Copywriter: Gabriel Sotero
Art director: Rodolfo Fernandes
Art Buyer: Ale Sarilho, Sabino and Caio Lobo
Image treatment: Arms Image
Photographers: Jacques Dequeker, Jayro Goldflus, Henrique Gendre, Daniel Klajimic and Gil Inoue
PR: Bia Ribeiro
Client: Victor Alcântara da Graça, Yeda Mariana Rocha de M. Pereira e Denise Maria Cesario

On Tuesday, Domino’s flooded its Twitter feed with a heap of tweets written almost completely in pizza emojis. They looked like sentences. They were even punctuated. Not only that, but Domino’s had the gusto to respond to people curious about the stunt with—what else?—pizza emoji-filled tweets.

Perplexing? Sure. Annoying? A little. A promotion? Of course.

Starting May 20, Domino’s customers will be able to order pizza via Twitter. You can hook up your Twitter to your online Domino’s account, and with a quick pizza emoji tweet at the brand, you’ll have an order on the way.

So, what better way to promote this than to confuse one’s consumers? Lots of people seemed to get into it, though, and JCPenney even briefly joined in the emoji-only banter.

“We wanted to start a conversation about why Domino’s has gone emoji crazy in the lead-up to the emoji announcement,” says Matt Talbot, vp and creative director of Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the agency that handles Domino’s creative business. He explained that the tweets were modeled after real tweets the brand usually sends to customers.  

“There’s no decoder machine to work back to the true answer of the text, though,” he said. 

Check out more from the the pizza emoji takeover below.

People in Britain who had settled in for a nice viewing of Prometheus this weekend were distressed, to say the least, when a realistic 30-second spot aired—completely unexplained—that advertised synthetic human housekeepers for sale.

“Meet Sally. The help you’ve always wanted,” the freakishly soothing voiceover began, as a lovely though dead-eyed cyborg is seen folding sheets, organizing the kitchen and putting the kids to bed. “She is faster, stronger, more capable than ever before.”

The ad then pitched a company called Persona Synthetics, which claims to make androids that are “closer to humans than ever before.”

By Tuesday, there had been 100,000 searches for the brand on Google, and the website was nearing half a million visits. It was all a hoax, of course—a campaign from Channel 4 for Humans, a Black Mirror-esque futuristic drama.

Along with the TV spot, there are print ads, a fake store on Regent Street, social accounts and a mock auction on eBay inviting visitors to bid on a robot (sadly, no one met the £20,000 minimum bid). At the Regent Street store, two screens used Microsoft Kinect technology to show giant robot models reacted to their movements of the people watching.

It’s freaky indeed, and we’ll only be seeing more of this kind of stuff going forward. The ads are also beautifully made by in-house agency 4Creative, whose prior work included the stunning “Meet the Superhumans” ad for the 2012 Paralympic Games.