Hasta La Creative!

The Hamburglar got the Internet’s attention last week—the jury is still out on whether he’s hot or creepy—but he won’t be pitching the Sirloin Burger on TV, at least not this month. That job has been taken by New Girl’s Max Greenfield, whose cute—dare we say, adorkable—ads debuted Monday. 

The actor shot 25 spots in a single day, says McDonald’s vp of marketing Joel Yashinsky, telling Burger Business that the campaign is part of the brand’s mission to be transparent.

“That’s what really led to our doing 25 different TV commercials,” Yashinsky says. “They talk about different attributes and the flavors, about it being sirloin and North American sourced. That’s what the overall campaign is designed to get across to the customer. From everything we’ve seen, we think it will connect with customers.” 

Check out some of the new work, by Leo Burnett, below.

CREDITS
Client: McDonald’s
Agency: Leo Burnett Chicago
Campaign: “Sirloin Third Pound Burger Lovin’ Reminders”
Chief Creative Officer: Susan Credle
Executive Creative Director: John Hansa
Senior Creative Director: Tony Katalinic
Creative Directors: Michael Porritt, Frank Oles
Associate Creative Director: Gloria Dusenberry
Art Director: Scott Fleming
Copywriters: Brandon Crockett, Chris Davis, Leigh Kunkel
Head of Production: Vincent Geraghty
Executive Producer: Denis Giroux
Senior Producer: Scott Gould
Business Manager: Shirley Costa
Senior Talent Manager: Linda Yuen
Music Supervisor: Chris Clark
Managing Account Director: Jennifer Cacioppo
Account Directors: Josh Raper, Jennifer Klopf
Account Supervisor: Dave Theibert
Account Manager: Sue Rickey
Planning Directors: Claudia Steer
Legal: Carla Michelotti, Laura Cooney
Clearance: Michelle Overby
Editorial Production: Cutters Studio
Post Production: Flavor Chicago
Audio: Another Country

German DIY home-improvement brand Hornbach adds to its long list of advertising successes with this fun twist spot from Heimat Berlin.

A man storms out of his house in a fit of rage. He’s so preoccupied, he hasn’t even bothered to put on pants. He checks the trash cans, and finds them empty, throwing a tantrum while his baffled wife—presumably to blame for accidentally chucking a precious item—looks on.

Still in his boxers, the guy frantically hitches a ride on a garbage truck, then a trash barge, and then he treks through the landfill to dig up his lost treasure (somehow, he’s able to find out exactly where it is buried). What could inspire such passion and effort?

Cheekily titled “Spring Collection,” the spot does a nice job of slow building drama around what’s essentially a lone sight gag—a man in his underpants—by escalating it with each more-ridiculous scene. The copy, meanwhile, justifies the epic sequence by punching up the the fact that the guy’s pants are unique to him—”designed” (read: destroyed) by his labor.

It’s a fun sideways take on the familiar dig at expensive, pre-distressed brand-name jeans, and by the same token, a relatable celebration of that pair you can’t quite let go, even though its seen more than a few too many days of wear. More pointedly, it’s a pretty effective way to show that, by the time you get done with your home improvement projects, your pants are going to look like they’ve been to the dump and back—a testament to your hard work.

In the end, the camera cuts back to the front yard, where the hero, wearing his beloved pants, is still wielding a shovel. That leaves it a little unclear whether the whole quest was just a metaphor for the man’s DIY project itself—tearing up the grass in pursuit of the perfectly wrecked pair of jeans—or just for how far he’d be willing to go to get his already tattered pants back, because he’s too proud to keep going without them.

It doesn’t really matter. Either way, the wife’s getting the bad end of the deal, what with the crazy husband and the giant hole in the lawn.

Agency: Heimat Berlin.

Who needs a Mayweather-Pacquiao rematch?

Big Lots stages a “Battle for Ultimate Cuteness” between dogs and babies to promote the retailer’s American Kennel Club Select products for dogs and B*loved line of baby goods.

Episodes of the not-so-epic war for supremacy pit kids against pups in competitions ranging from an election-style debate (“Goo-goo,” “Arf”—both make good points), to a chess match with ridiculously outsized pieces (I thought the pooch was going for a Ruy Lopez, but it just wanted to gnaw on the queen). In most cases, the tykes were teamed with their own family pets to ensure harmony on the set.

OKRP created the campaign for maximum sharing across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, with consumers prompted to use the hastags #TeamDoggies or #TeamBabies to indicate which side they favor. (Unless they have lives, of course.)

Originally, Big Lots planned two separate campaigns backing each product line, but the agency decided to double down. “We have less than three seconds to get customers’ attention on social platforms and thought we’d play to the most popular Internet content,” says OKRP’s Tom O’Keefe. “Nothing seems to activate social sharing and comments like funny and cute, and there’s no subject that can deliver that better than doggies and babies.”

I can think of one species that might disagree.

Here’s a nifty invention for people brave enough to eat McDonald’s—the new “BagTray” from DDB Budapest.

It is, as it sounds, a bag that’s also a tray. Just tear off a tab at the bottom of the brown paper bag, pull off the top and watch the whole thing turn into a cardboard tray that will reduce the odds of spilling your oversized soda all over the back seat of your car, or your laptop, or the lawn where you’re having a picnic (though surely the ants would love that).

Hopefully, you also won’t have to worry about the grease from your fries soaking through a flimsier vessel and dumping its golden payload on the floor, ruining your day and staining your property (though odds are there’s enough oil packed in there to eat through foamcore).

The product name is more or less perfect, clear and direct but also just the right amount of silly. It helps that the graphics in the demo video are charmingly twee, in a corporate sort of way—even if the willfully quirky ukelele-and-whistling-and-handclaps soundtrack wants so badly for you to be happy that it might make you claw your ears off instead.

Regardless, whether you’re a mom feeding her kids while shuttling them around (though she’s still pretty blasé about tilting the whole thing) or a cool kid just hanging out with your friends on your skateboard (are teenagers really that polite these days?) or a busy business executive cramming in lunch at your desk (that guy totally looks like he works at the ad agency), it’s clear the BagTray is the bag/tray for you.

Whether the tool actually works is probably a different question. And it’s also not clear whether you can use one without going to Hungary, which sort of undermines the whole convenience factor.

CREDITS
Client: McDonald’s
Agency: DDB Budapest
Chief Creative Officer: Péter Tordai
Head of Art/Art director: Guilherme Somensato
Copywriter: Vera Länger, Giovanni Pintaude
Illustrator: Adrián Bajusz
Product Designer: Márk Dávid, András Bálint
Animation: Réka Horányi, Anita Kolop
Business Director: Judit Majosi
Account/Producer: Rozália Szigeti
Promo film: Somnium Studio

Coca-Cola isn’t just a soft drink. It’s an essential part of the human experience—the key to true happiness—says a grand new ad from the brand in Europe. So, suck up your laziness and bootstrap yourself some soda.

The 70-second anthem by Ogilvy & Mather Amsterdam (it’s the office’s first work for the brand) introduces a new theme, “Choose Happiness,” and continues Coke’s tradition of casting itself as synonymous with joy. But it takes a more aggressive tone than usual. Not only can you be happy, you should be happy, right now, and all you have to do is reach out and grab it. That Coke, right there on the shelf, that is.

Set to a song and rap by Amsterdam-based HT, the spot (plus a more exhausting, full-blown branded music video, complete with an indecipherable hook) argues that happiness is a choice. Which is sort of true in some contexts, but is also oversimplified advertising-speak.

The broad-reaching argument rests in large part on urging you to consider all the dandy things your hands can do. They can make beats, and hold jump ropes, and give hugs. (Incidentally, Coke would also like you to know your hands can make the shape of Coke bottles, if you join them together with other hands.)

The spot deserves credit for including moments that aren’t totally pollyanna—there’s a lover’s spat, and even a pseudo-political statement encouraging protest. But it’s also a bit divorced from reality. If you have a hard time smiling with a face full of pepper spray, try washing that down with a Coke—it might settle your stomach, too.

Naturally, what Coca-Cola really means by “Choose Happiness” is that you should choose among the red, green, black and white versions of its product. The branding at the end of the spot includes four bottles—representing Coke’s Classic, Life, Zero and Diet offerings—part of a new European strategy to lift the profile of the smaller brands by attaching them to marquee advertising.

That may or may not work, but the creative approach in the anthem spot stems from a familiar problem for any soda marketer: It can’t pitch the product on the grounds that you actually need it, so it has to manufacture your desire as well. This is how you should be living, the ad says, in an overbearing, if still somewhat convincing, attempt to lift millennial spirits by pandering to vain conceptions of empowerment.

The extended version:

CREDITS
Client: Coca-Cola
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Amsterdam
Chief Creative Officer: Ogilvy Darre van Dijk
Sr. Copywriter Ogilvy: Jesse Ridder
Sr. Art Director Ogilvy: Jurriaan van Bokhoven
Agency Producer Ogilvy: Pirke Bergsma
Client Services Director Ogilvy: Annelouk Kriele
Account Director Ogilvy: Frouke Vlietstra
Director Caviar: Arnaud Uyttenhove
Executive Producer Caviar: Eva van Riet
Producer Caviar: Lynn Bernaerts
Producer Caviar: Neil Cray
DOP: Dimitri Karakatsanis
Editor the Whitehouse: Martin leRoy
Editor Gentlemen’s Club: Will Judge
Editor Kapsalon: Brian Ent
Colourist Glassworks: Scott Harris
Colourist Glassworks: Matt Hare
Flame Glassworks: Kyle Obley
Nuke Glassworks: Jos Wabeke
Executive Producer Glassworks: Jane Bakx
Producer Glassworks: Christian Downes
Sound engineer Wave: Randall McDonald
Music Ogilvy: Darius Dante
VO: Haris Trnjanin (HT)
Client Coca-Cola: Guido Rosales

Hallmark’s “Put Your Heart to Paper” campaign featured interviews with people who didn’t know their moms were watching. Now, Tempur-Pedic has hit it big with the opposite—interviews with moms who didn’t know their kids were watching, and didn’t know they were about to get a very nice surprise.

It’s not tied together as simply or as obviously as Hallmark’s campaign, but this spot does a reasonable job of pointing out how little moms get to sleep, and showing some very happy moms lolling around on the product.

RPA made the ad, which tries to tell moms, “You’re important. Sleep like it.” And it’s actually based on some pretty interesting research. In a Tempur-Pedic survey of 1,000 moms, 87 percent of them said they’re kept up at night by family concerns, finances, jobs and wondering if little Timmy is going to need braces.

In case you were wondering what Mom really wants for Mother’s Day, 40 percent of moms said waking up from a good night’s sleep and spending a whole day with their families, while another 30 percent said they’d prefer to sleep late and enjoy breakfast in bed.

So, if your mom is having sleepless nights, consider getting her a bed for Mother’s Day. It might not be the coolest or most affordable option, but it’s still way better than a vacuum.

CREDITS
Client: Tempur Sealy
Title: Moms: You’re Important

Agency: RPA
EVP, Chief Creative Officer: Joe Baratelli
SVP, Executive Creative Director: Jason Sperling
SVP, Chief Production Officer: Gary Paticoff
VP, Creative Director: Alicia Dotter Marder
Jr. Art Director: Dennis Haynes
Jr. Copywriter: Megan Leinfelder
VP, Director – Content: Mark Tripp
VP, Director of Digital Production: Dave Brezinski
Sr. Digital Producer: Ana Ponce
Digital Production Coordinator: Kristin Varraveto

EVP, Management Account Director: Tom Kirk
VP, Account Director: Rebecca Mendelson
Account Supervisor: Amanda de la Madriz
Supervisor, Digital Content Strategy: Joanna Kennedy

Production Co: Bö’s House of Visual Arts
Director: Mark Tripp
DP: Stephen Carmona
Producer: Tracy Chaplin
Production Designer: Kristen Vallow

Editorial: Butcher Post
Editors: Teddy Gersten/Nick Pezzillo
Assistant Editor: Amy Rosner
Executive Producer: Rob Van
Post Producer: Alexa Atkin
Lead Flame Artist: Moody Glasgow
Telecine Company: The Mill
Artist: Adam Scott
Executive Producer: Thatcher Peterson

Audio Post Company: Lime
Audio Post Mixer: Dave Wagg

Casting: Cornwell Casting
Casting Directors: Jason Cornwell, Damon Collazo, Sandra Petko
Casting Producer: Tina Eisner

Seeing ultrasound images is a special part of most pregnancies, but women who are blind, of course, don’t get that experience. So, Huggies Brazil approximated it for one visually impaired woman by 3-D printing a sculpture of her unborn child that she could touch.

Ad agency Mood worked on the project with 3-D printing firm The Goodfellas.

“As a brand, Huggies considers each moment of this new phase in the lives of many women—the maternal role,” says Priya Patel, birector of baby care at Kimberly-Clark Brazil. “Huggies believes that such protective embrace and bond help babies grow up happy.”

CREDITS
Client: Kimberly-Clark / Huggies
Agency: Mood
Creative VP: Valdir Bianchi
Head of Digital: André Felix
Creative Director: Bruno Brasileiro, Felipe Munhoz, and Rafael Gonzaga
Creation: André Felix, Bruno Brasileiro, Felipe Munhoz, Rafael Gonzaga, and Ricardo “Brad” Correia
Artbuyer: Rita Teofilo and Thiago Campos
Project Manager: Rafael Coelho
Client Services: Fabio Meneghati and Andrei Sanches  
Digital Media: Mariana Costa and Sabrina Titto
Planning: Daniel Rios and Rafael Martins
3D Production: the goodfellas
Graphic Production: Julio Coralli and Dayane Souza
Post-production: Byanca Melo 
Photographer: Lucas Tintori, Rodrigo Westphal Galego, and Fábio Kenji
Soundtrack: Lua Nova – Conductor Fred Benuce
Producer: La casa de la madre
Stage Director: Jorge Brivilati
Screenplay: André Castilho
Client approval: Lizandra Bertoncini, Maria Eugênia Duca, Priya Patel, and Simone Simões
Public Relations Agency: Edelman Significa and Giusti Comunicação

Warren Buffett is known for many things, but singing hasn’t been one of them—until now.

Buffett played “I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke” on a custom ukulele (presented to him recently by Wieden + Kennedy) in a video Wednesday that opened the company’s annual meeting as it celebrates its 100th birthday. 

Odd? For sure. But certainly on brand. The billionaire investor and philanthropist does love Coke. Not only does he own $16 billion in Coca-Cola stock, but he told Fortune in February that he’s “a quarter Coca-Cola” and drinks five 12-ounce servings of the soda daily.

The custom ukulele, which has a sound hole in the shape of the classic Coke bottle, was made by Portland-based luthier Mark Roberts. Crafted in five weeks out of European Carpathian spruce from Romania, reclaimed Honduran mahogany and Malagasy ebony, the red ukulele was given to Buffett last month at his Berkshire Hathaway office in Omaha.

“He picked it up and practiced the song, changing the key a few times,” said Thomas Harvey, account director at W+K. “You can see him tuning up and singing at the start of the film. The whole process only took about 30 minutes.”

A wedding day is among the happiest moments in a person’s life, a milestone to look back on for years to come—which makes it all the more strange that people are still denied the right just because they love someone of the same sex.

“Nobody’s Memories,” a new ad from FCB for LGBT advocacy group PFLAG Canada, imagines—and laments—the joys missed by couples unable to legally marry in years past. They’re seen walking down the church steps to applause, piling into the wedding car, sharing a bite of cake at the reception, and the myriad other little images and traditions associated with the big day.

It’s a simple, powerful illustration of why the right to gay marriage matters in societies that purport to pride themselves on ideals like freedom, equality and the pursuit of happiness. (The fact that whole thing looks like it was shot through various Instagram filters, much of it with shaky homestyle hand cams, could border on distracting, but actually sets the right, intimate tone).

Same-sex marriage is currently legal in Canada, as well as 36 states in the U.S., Washington D.C., and some 15 other countries around the world. But with the U.S. Supreme Court currently hearing arguments on the constitutionality of other states’ bans on the right, the spot certainly makes for a timely reminder of what’s at stake.

And for anyone who’s having trouble wrapping their head around it, it’s also a good cue to remember that gay marriage, in fact, does not spell the end of the world.

CREDITS
Client: PFLAG Canada
Title: Nobody’s Memories

Agency: FCB Toronto/FCB Chicago
Creative Director: Jon Flannery Chief Creative Officer & Jeff Hilts Creative Director
Writer: Krystle Mullin
Account Team: Cynthia Roach, Rebecca Gorveatt
Print Producer: Victor Carvalho
Media: Initiative Shannon Pluem, Ryan Ghaeli

Production Company: Lord + Thomas, Duckpond Creative
Executive Producer: Katie Roach, Josh Greenberg
Line Producer: Carra Greenberg
Director: Ben Flaherty
Editing House: LORD&THOMAS
Editor: Ilsa Misamore
Music House/Sound: RMW
Sound Engineer: Jason Ryan
Executive Producer, Audio: Jared Stachowitz

Extra Space Storage—which offers storage space for your old drum set and boxes of Beanie Babies, not your digital files—created this ad, believe it or not, about the joys and woes of parenting.

In “10 Things I Wished I’d Known Before Having a Baby” (created by Utah agency Issimo), parents run through pieces of advice like “Take time for yourself” and “Be prepared for the unexpected.” It gets increasingly emotional (watching the parents choke up stirs up some feelings) and ends with the No. 1 poignant piece of advice—about love.

It’s an interesting (strange?) angle for a storage company to take. But it’s clearly resonating, having already topped the 1 million view mark on YouTube. And Extra Space Storage quietly ties it together with simple copy: #makeroomforlife.