Hasta La Creative!

It’s not every day that an automaker launches a new, brightly colored car based on social media demand. Or names the model after the hashtag that helped bear it.

The 2017 Special Edition Volkswagen #PinkBeetle (its official name) hits showrooms this fall, and the brand is celebrating with a blatantly magenta ad from agency ISL, running exclusively through marketer-owned channels like Facebook.

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The first trip a person makes to Ikea is often with his or her parents. Buzzman Paris brings that bittersweet visit to life in “My Son,” an ad that opens on a mom strolling the store with a boy who can’t be more than 10 years old. 

For someone so young, the kid proves oddly precocious. He makes a beeline for a kitchen island, admiring the surface material. He lauds the practicality of slide-out drawers, and measures furniture while his mother wistfully observes. 

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Tecate thinks building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico is a great idea—as long as it’s 3 feet tall and is used as a meeting place for guys from both sides of the border (and all sides of the political spectrum) to get together and have beers.

The spot below, from Saatchi & Saatchi New York, will get a perfect media placement, too. It will debut Monday night on Fox News, Univision and Telemundo during the presidential debate between Donald Trump—who has proposed a much higher, less beer-friendly wall separating the nations—and Hillary Clinton.

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Gatorade is back to gleefully shame more of its own consumers for being lazy and out of shape—this time with a roving crew of top athletes and nasty sportscasters, who all pop out of the back of a box truck to mock them for drinking the beverage while not sweating.

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Never mind goji berries, chia seeds and kale. On Sept. 9, Suja Juice, a trendy entry in the ongoing battle for our superfood dollars, released Midnight Tonic, an all-black, limited-edition beverage that it spent weeks seeding, without explanation, to health-conscious celebrities with active social media lives. 

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Timberland wants to give liars the boot—a comfy boot, that is, and shoes too, with anti-fatigue technology, so folks won’t have to invent ridiculous excuses when their tired, aching feet make them goof up in the workplace.

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Every brand story contains an element of myth.

In the case of Jack Daniel’s, legend has it that the brand’s founder, Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel, had a mysterious safe that led to his death. 

One day, after forgetting the combination, he kicked it so hard that he gave himself gangrene. An infection passed from his sore toe to his whole foot, then to his leg, which was amputated. This didn’t stop the gangrene from traveling, however, and Daniel ultimately died in 1911, at age 61, of progressive gangrene complications. 

Since then, the safe has never left his office, which is part of a living museum in Lynchburg, Tenn. In terms of brand lore, this is Jack Daniel’s Heart of the Ocean—a weird talisman that’s traveled, untouched, through time. Maybe it’s even cursed. 

But for the first time ever, it’s hitting the road. From now until Saturday, you can see the safe that cost the brand its founder at a pop-up experience called Jack Daniel’s Lynchburg General Store, located at 155 5th Ave. in New York City. 

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Here’s a pretty great out-of-home execution for Oliver Stone’s upcoming film Snowden, about the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden—a billboard that’s been spying on pedestrians in Toronto and streaming footage of their movements on the street.

Snowden’s revelations about the NSA, of course, raised troubling questions about mass surveillance. And the billboard—timed to the Toronto International Film Festival, where Stone’s movie premiered—itself embodies those very issues.

DentsuBos and Elevation Pictures set up surveillance cameras with motion tracking technology around Dundas Square. The cameras tracked pedestrians’ movements and livestreamed them onto a giant video board.

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If you fancy hanging out in the sizzling-hot middle of nowhere, with an endless expanse of sand all around and the occasional scorpion scuttling by for distraction, Audi’s got the promotion for you.

As part of its Emmy Awards sponsorship, the auto brand and Airbnb will offer fans the chance to book three-day getaways at the luxury Rondolino Residence in Death Valley, Nevada. The place is so isolated, it has no actual address—just coordinates on a map.

Guests get to drive a 2017 Audi R8 during their stay, which also includes chauffeur service from the airport, meals prepared by a personal chef and, according to press materials, “evening entertainment/activities.” (Scorpion races, perhaps?)

To tout the promo, Venables Bell & Partners created the fun spot below—it almost feels like a Supwer Bowl ad—which is running online and will also air during ABC’s Emmys telecast on Sunday.

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Have you ever heard what people say about Latinos? They’re intense, passionate and “macho”—a quality that’s often seen as protective.

Obviously, these are stereotypes. Another side of the “Latin man” is that he can be sensitive and expressive. But embracing “machismo” for its good qualities, without examining the bad stuff, can have unpleasant cultural side effects—like controlling behavior, which can lead to femicide, not to mention relatively unpunished rape. 

(Hey. Sounds familiar.)

To show its support ahead of an Aug. 13 protest in Peru, Grupo el Comercio-owned newspaper Peru 21, one of the most popular papers in the country, tossed its cover pages into the ring. With help from McCann Lima, the paper converted its front and back pages into signs that protesters could grab off newsstands, flip open and carry in the streets. 

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