Hasta La Creative!

Thinking of littering in Hong Kong? You could soon be a poster child for the problem.

A remarkable campaign from Ogilvy & Mather takes DNA from trash on the ground and uses Snapshot DNA phenotyping to generate physical likenesses of the litterers, who then end up on outdoor ads telling people not to litter. (DNA phenotyping is the process of predicting a person’s physical appearance based on their DNA alone.)

The legalities of labeling people as litterers this way must be awfully complicated, and it’s not entirely clear how close the images might be to the real people. But the campaign is certainly fascinating in a CSI kind of way.

“This campaign is one of a kind,” says Reed Collins, chief creative officer at Ogilvy Hong Kong. “It’s interactive. It’s innovative. It’s our own science experiment that we’re using to create social change. Litter is such a major problem in Hong Kong, and thanks to technology, we can now put a face to this anonymous crime and get people to think twice about littering.”

Read more at Ecozine. Via Laughing Squid.

The best marketing embodies, rather than just projects, the message it’s trying to deliver. And 360i’s new tourism campaign for New Orleans is a good example of that.

Three TV spots all use the same voiceover script, but completely different characters and locations, to cleverly communicate the point that you can have all sorts of diverse experiences in the city.

Check out the ads below, directed by Henry Mason and produced by Chelsea Pictures, with an original score by David Torkanowsky and renowned New Orleans musicians:

The ads, for the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation, must be played sequentially to make the most sense, and that’s the plan on TV and digital (via Facebook) in 35 target markets.

The campaign continues the “Follow Your NOLA” theme and showcases the city as a unique, one-of-a-kind experience. It will also use radio, influencer marketing, mobile and live events to court travelers. On mobile, the upgraded followyournola.com will feature curated itineraries for each of the TV ads, as well as celebrity itineraries by Anthony Bourdain, Emeril Lagasse and John Besh.

NOTMC is also getting social influencers to create their own ideal New Orleans trips and share them on Instagram, YouTube and their own blogs.

“New Orleans has an incredible range of experiences and attractions for people of all mindsets and interests—that’s the insight at the heart of ‘Follow Your NOLA.’ Our challenge was to bring this to life with stories that live up to the beauty and creative spirit of the city itself,” said Pierre Lipton, chief creative officer at 360i.

“The result is an integrated campaign with digital at the core. Our videos and TV executions illustrate visitors’ top interests discovered through social listening; the mobile site showcases itineraries featured in the spots; social influencers bring their own NOLA trips to life online; display and mobile ads target the right people at the right time; and the events bring the NOLA experience to life across the country.”

Foot Locker is happy it can finally celebrate the upcoming Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao fight—for real.

Last fall, the shoe store released a commercial in which Pacquiao thought Mayweather had agreed to face him in the ring (when in reality, two guys he overheard at a gym were actually talking about a different wildly anticipated event … a sale at the retailer).

But now, with details of the May 2 match finalized—both fighters were committed as of February after years of failed negotiations, though an 11th hour impasse between promoters wasn’t resolved until Wednesday—Foot Locker is patting itself on the back for the old spot by running a new one, in which Pacquaio revisits the ups and downs of his false hope.

The boxer gets credit for self-deprecating charm, even if the whole thing is like the Russian nesting dolls version of a Foot Locker commercial. And while he may be confused in the end, rest assured that—as a manager type explains—the fight is, in fact, really happening.

That, even if the $90 pay per view price ($100 to watch the pros beat the crap out of each other in high definition) costs about the same as a pair of sneakers.

Check out the 2014 spot here:

CREDITS
Client: Foot Locker

Agency – BBDO New York
Chief Creative Officer, Worldwide – David Lubars
Chief Creative Officer,  New York – Greg Hahn
Executive Creative Director – Chris Beresford-Hill
Executive Creative Director – Dan Lucey
Copywriter – Mike Motch
Art Director – Austin Mankey
Director of Integrated Production – David Rolfe
Executive Producer – Anthony Curti

WW Senior Account Director – Troy Tarwater
Account Director – Janelle Van Wonderen
Account Manager – Nick Robbins
Account Executive – Samuel Henderson

Production Co – O Positive Films
Director – Kenny Herzog
Exec Producer – Ralph Laucella
Exec Producer – Marc Grill
Line Producer – Grayson Bithell
Director of Photography – Marc Laliberte
Editorial – MackCut
Editor – Erik Laroi
Executive Producer – Sasha Hirshfeld
Assistant Editor – Patrick Blumer

Sound – MackCut
Sound Mixer – Sam Shaffer

Online – Smigital
Flame – Jim Hayhow
Asst. Flame – Joseph Miller

Color – Company 3
Colorist – Tim Masick

If your brand hasn’t made custom emojis yet, sorry—it’s now mandatory.

Or so it seems, given the rush of marketers doing so. And the latest brand to jump quite literally into the mix is Foot Locker, which is stocking its smartphone app with a library of “Shoemojis,” beginning with 80 individually drawn sneakers from iconic brands like Nike, Adidas, Asics, Under Armour and more.

“Communicating with your fellow sneakerheads will never be the same,” says BBDO New York, which conceived the concept with the client. More images below.

CREDITS
Client: Foot Locker
Project: Shoemoji
Agency: BBDO New York
Chief Creative Officer, BBDO Worldwide: David Lubars
Chief Creative Officer, BBDO New York: Greg Hahn
Executive Creative Director: Chris Beresford-Hill
Executive Creative Director: Dan Lucey
ACD: Damjan Pita
ACD: Derek Harms
Director of Creative Technology, Experience and Design: Simon Mogren
Art Director: Bhanu Arbuaratna
Senior Designer: Jason Merenda
Copywriter: Allie Townsend
Director of Integrated Production: David Rolfe
Director of Digital Operations: Clemens Brandt
Senior Producer: Carissa Ranelycke
Director: Janelle Van Wonderen
Account Manager: Nick Robbins
Account Executive: Samuel Henderson
Senior Digital Strategist: Rhys Hillman
Production Company: The BBBDO Digital Studio
Technical Director: Michael Condouris
Associate Technical Director: Konstantin Rosinov
Studio Director: Marty Ford

This Trebor Mints ad from Wieden & Kennedy London has a bit of that 1990s Gushers weirdness to it, either as a tribute to nostalgic thirtysomethings or just for shiggles.

It opens with a teen admitting to his father that he prefers soft mints to their harder contemporaries, which makes his dad go all Malory Archer and crush his whiskey glass out of anger. Weird how that never cuts anyone’s hand on TV.

And it only gets stranger from there.

Though the concept is hardly revolutionary, they kept the weirdness to one element of the ad that mostly delivers, so it works. For my own sanity, I won’t get into the Punnett square logistics that resulted in minty dad’s human son. No sense asking questions I don’t want answered.

CREDITS
Client: Trebor
Marketing Manager, Gum & Candy, Mondelez: Elena Germani
Senior Brand Manager, Mondelez: Elena Mallo
Project Name: “Choose Your Trebor”
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy London
Creative Directors: Kim Papworth
Creative team: Max Batten & Ben Shaffrey
Executive Creative Directors: Tony Davidson / Iain Tait
Agency Executive Producer: Danielle Stewart
Group Account Director: Andrew Kay
Account Director: Hanne Haugen
Head of Planning: Beth Bentley
Planning Director: Georgia Challis
TV Producer: Lou Hake
Creative Producer: Danny Wallace
Designer: Michael Bow
Production Company: Hungryman
Director: Taika Waititi
Executive Producer: Matt Buels
Producer: Camilla Cullen
Director of Photography: Bob Pendar-Hughes
Editorial Company: Work Post
Editor: Rachel Spann
Post Producer: Josh Robinson, The Mill
VFX Supervisor: Dan Adams, The Mill
Music+Sound Company: Wave
Sound Designer: Dugal Macdiarmid
Producer: Rebecca Boswell
Mix Company: Wave
Mixer: Dugal Macdiarmid
Producer: Rebecca Boswell

Nike FuelBand may have fizzled out, but luckily the Joe Boxer Inactivity Tracker is here to take its place.

Kmart is promoting its Joe Boxer pajamas with a new digital bracelet that’s just like any of the other quantified-self fitness pieces on the market, only instead of making you feel guilty for missing your workout, it will celebrate you for it.

The brand is giving away the devices with select pajama purchases while supplies last—an accompanying app rewards extended sloth with badges like “Cryogenic” and “You rock!” (in this case, meaning the noun first, and the adjective second).

Even if you don’t snag one of these hot ticket items, you can enjoy the hourlong launch ad below—a window into the “2015 Joe Boxer Lounger Games,” where two guys sit in recliners trying to move as little as possible.

It really goes all in—purportedly focusing on the ninth hour of the fierce completion—and delivering 60 minutes of impressively inane announcer commentary, which makes it just like any other sport, really. (There are plenty of amusing tidbits mixed in if you skip around. Or if you have the stamina to watch all the way through, presumably, you can also tune back in for hour 10 on ESPN 35.)

The whole FCB project pokes some excellent fun at the tech-driven zeitgeist, and the world can always use more paeans to laziness. But any real pro couch potato will tell you it’s better to skip the long pants altogether, especially with summer coming up fast.

It’s a red box, but in some ways it’s more like a red carpet.

Ogilvy Cape Town has been giving a remarkable welcome box to employees over the past year. And now, it’s been shortlisted in the design competition for this year’s One Show. Deservedly so, as it’s probably the best agency employee welcome package we’ve seen.

The so-called “Induction Box”—made by Ogilvy’s RedWorks production arm (which was recently merged with its other production agency Hogarth Worldwide)—is based around David Ogilvy’s short book The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness and his famous eight habits of highly creative communities.

The box brings the concepts to life in a tangible way, making employees much more likely to read and absorb the philosophy underpinning the agency. Check out the contents of the box in the images below.

Click the images to enlarge.

We spoke to Ogilvy Cape Town about how the box came about, and how it’s been received.

What was the motivation for creating something like this?
The idea behind this is to give someone a piece of Ogilvy & Mather, because at the end of the day, the box represents who we are and what we stand for. It is easy to pull someone aside and say, “Welcome to the agency.” But with the Induction Box, we want to make people feel like they belong, like they have found a place here. Working at Ogilvy is so much more than just another job. We wanted to create something that reflects this.

How did David Ogilvy’s ideas inform the design of the boxes?
When you are hired by Ogilvy, it is because someone saw something great in you and that you would be a good fit here. There is a definite “Ogilvy Way” based on The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness (or Divine Discontent) and David Ogilvy’s 8 Creative Habits—Courage, Idealism, Curiosity, Playfulness, Candor, Intuition, Free-Spiritedness and Persistence. Getting new staff to understand and embrace all of this in a fun and engaging way was our main focus. The Induction Box solidifies the importance of what we stand for.

What was RedWorks’ role in designing the boxes?
Inspired by The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness, Redworks decided to unpack the eight habits by making them tangible. Their solution was a layered box containing interesting, fun, quirky elements representing the eight habits, accompanied by phrases elaborating on it. It not only reflects Ogilvy’s rich heritage, but also provides all the necessary information about the working environment in a visually stimulating way.

How do new hires generally respond?
The response has been well beyond what we could have imagined. It ties everything together beautifully. People light up when they receive them. We often get a nudge from existing employees asking if they can get one, too.

Have other Ogilvy offices shown interest in using the boxes, too?
Not only has the Ogilvy Induction Box been introduced to staff at Ogilvy & Mather Johannesburg and Durban, but O&M London and Australia have been working on their own adaptations to give to new employees.

If famous ad agencies were ice cream brands, what flavors would they be?

Aditya Hariharan and Joshua Namdar, a pair of students at the Miami Ad School in New York, took a swing at visualizing the answer with Agency Scoops, a Tumblr that features mockups of ice cream names and package designs for well-known agencies, themed around their more famous campaigns.

That means scary but tempting mashups like “Cookies ‘N Bacon” for 360i (for its well-known clients Oreo and Oscar Meyer). Other fun visuals include one of McCann’s “Dumb Ways to Die” blobs, who’s very plausibly eaten himself into an early grave by way of chocolate ice cream (the only flavor that really matters, in the end).

It’s a nice, simple job-hunting gimmick from Hariharan and Namdar, who are looking for summer internships. The front of the cartons also feature taglines that trend toward ingratiating, with some of them perhaps less flattering than intended. (DDB Lemon Sorbet, “a slow-churned classic agency with a hint of forward thinking,” might take exception to the idea that it’s only slightly innovative, like a 55-year-old VW Beetle with a new paint job, squeaking toward the future.)

Where real ice-cream might list ingredients, these cartons feature past creative highlights for each agency, as well as recent awards. There’s even a timely nod to the Mad Men craze, with a 10th design featuring fictional agency Sterling Cooper & Partners.

Ogilvy & Mather, represented as Coca-Cola, is maybe the only one that seems a bit off the mark, in spirit. Yes, the smash hit personalized bottle campaign originally came out of Ogilvy’s Sydney offices. And the “2nd Lives” campaign from China was a head-turner. But everyone and their mother has worked for Coke, somewhere in the world, and the agency’s brand might be more strongly associated IBM or Dove.

Then again, nobody wants to eat mint chocolate microchip or soap flavored ice cream.

See more at the Tumblr site.

The hills are alive with the sound of Unicef Sweden singing about cholera.

A jolly grim reaper does a Broadway number on waterborne diseases in Forsman & Bodenfors’ insane new ad from the children’s charity. Titled “The sound of Death,” it parodies The Sound of Music—namely the song “My Favorite Things,” performed by children in the musical. But instead of whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string, it turns out that Death loves dysentery and leptospirosis.

The clip is firmly in the Mel Brooks tradition of dark comedy (Think “The Spanish Inquisition” from History of the World, Part I, or maybe more appropriate, the Nazi-themed “Springtime for Hitler” from The Producers). And any macabre, musical PSA these days is likely to evoke, however slightly, “Dumb Ways to Die.”

Frankly, the lyrics could be better. And the extra wry approach makes the concept tough to swallow, but that’s kind of its point. It doesn’t quite trivialize the horrors it’s trying to address, it just pretends to do so, as a way to guilt viewers—essentially saying, “Enjoy this silly song … about the thousands of kids dying every day.” Whether that’s an effective call to action, who knows? It’s certainly memorable.

And at least it keeps up musical theater’s raison d’etre of having people burst into song about everything, all the time, even when it’s totally inappropriate.

Holy mackerel, this octopus can use a camera!

Sony and FCB Auckland trained a female octopus named Rambo (no relation) to take pictures with a Cyber Shot TX30 camera for this captivating minute-long video.

This particular sea creature was used to promote the water- and shock-resistant camera because octopuses are among the most intelligent denizens of the deep. (Besides, clams can’t take direction, and lobsters are too darn tasty.)

A special rig helped Rambo push a shutter button to capture images of visitors outside her tank at Kelly Tarlton’s Sea Life Aquarium in New Zealand. Rambo’s trainer, Mark Vette, says it took her just three attempts to understand the process, though at times she behaved like an eight-armed diva, smashing several cameras to bits during a two-month training process. (Elsewhere, this little dude mastered octo-selfies in no time!)

Sony’s “Octographer” ad has gotten nearly 400,000 YouTube views in a week and lots of media play. Still, the brand message, while present in most coverage, has been somewhat overshadowed by the sheer novelty of a photo-taking octopus, especially in casual social mentions. For many, Rambo is the breakout star, while the camera is an afterthought. Props to the cephalopod for playing her mammalian, land-lubbing overlords for suckers.

FCB group account director Toby Sellers answered some of our questions about the stunt.

Why use an octopus?
We wanted to show the world that even an amateur photographer can take amazing underwater photos with Sony’s TX30. That led us to the idea of using a photographer who actually lives underwater.

They are one of the most intelligent underwater creatures, so we felt they would be a really good fit with our amazing underwater camera. We enlisted the help of Mark Vette, the animal expert behind our hugely successful “Driving Dogs” campaign (for Mini and the SPCA). He was really excited about the chance.

Was the concept a tough sell?
FCB Auckland had a lot of success with the “Bottled Walkman” campaign, so Sony was keen to see what we could do with their TX30. Their first reaction to the idea was amazement that it could be pulled off. We talked them through the plan we had developed with Mark, and they got very excited.

Was it more difficult than you imagined?
This project was far harder than any of us imagined it would be. Rambo got her name because the first few times we put the rig in the water she wanted to fight it. You could say she drew first blood. Despite the reports that it only took three tries [to learn the process], Rambo and Mark worked their way through 10 rigs and nearly as many cameras.

What would you say to activists who disapprove of using animals in ads?
Mark Vette and Kelly Tarlton only agreed to be involved because the process was enriching for the octopus. These creatures thrive in an environment where they are being mentally stimulated. When you have nine brains, you need to keep yourself occupied. So the project was not only fun for the octopus involved, it was also a chance to show the public how amazing these creatures are. The money people paid to have their photos taken goes to Kelly Tarlton’s Marine Life Trust.

Tell me about the April 10 photo event at the aquarium.
Rambo had a great time. She photographed over 100 visitors. Many were there because they had seen the story on TV, but a few foreign tourists just walked in and lined up. They were blown away to have their photos taken by the world’s first Octographer, and we were happy to give them a unique memento of their visit.

CREDITS
Client: Sony
Agency: FCB Auckland, New Zealand
Regional Executive Creative Director: James Mok
Executive Creative Directors: Tony Clewett, Regan Grafton
Writer: Peter Vegas
Art Directors: Leisa Wall, Christiaan Van Noppen
Head of Content, Executive Producer: Pip Mayne
Head of Art: Nick Smith
Director, Director of Photography: Michael Braid
Group Account Director: Toby Sellers
Account Director: Hannah Downes
Account Executive: Laura Little
Lead Behaviourist, Animals on Q: Mark Vette
Assistant Handlers, Animals on Q: Jazmin Vette dal Bello, Rosie Miles
Curator, Kelly Tarlton’s Sea Life Aquarium: Andrew Christie
Marketing Manager, Kelly Tarlton’s Sea Life Aquarium: Claire Wheeler
Rig Developers, Harrison & Watkins Ltd.: Harry Harrison, Blair Muchamp
Director of Photography, Event Coverage, Traction Films: Nic Fay
Editor, 6Twenty: Simon Wade
Editor, FCB: Grant Nicholson
Media Director: Rachel Leyland
Media Planner, Buyer: Erin McCaughley
General Manager, Public Relations: Angela Spain
Senior Account Director, Public Relations: Kimberley Kastelan
Digital Director: Kate Grigg
Customer Experiences Director: Ele Quigan
Music Composer: Peter van der Fluit
Music Composition: Liquid Studios
Studio Producer: Sarah Yetton