Hasta La Creative!

Baffled about what to do with your worst-performing employees? Reward them with a trip to the Cannes Lions festival in the south of France this summer!

That’s the tongue-in-cheek message of the festival’s official ad campaign, which launches Monday. Don’t think of it as a reward. Think of it as an investment in creativity. After all, as the tagline points out, sending underperforming staff to Cannes as delegates is “cheaper than severance.”

Photographer Dan Burn-Forti shot both the print ads and the online videos, created by McCann London.

“Although our campaign is humorous, it makes a very sensible point. Why should being a Cannes Lions delegate be the preserve of the already excellent?” says Rob Doubal, co-president and chief creative officer of McCann London. “If we really want a more creative world, as we all profess, we should also be encouraging the not-so-excellent performers to be inspired by Cannes Lions.”

So, if your boss hasn’t penciled you in for a Cannes trip, now’s the time to evolve your approach from sucking up to just plain sucking.

 
The print ads:

 
The videos:

Saatchi & Saatchi uses suggestive visual humor, and deadpan delivery from actor Alan Cumming, to skewer the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration’s rules around donating blood.

At issue is a recent revision in the FDA’s regulations that allows gay and bisexual men to give blood, but only if they have haven’t had sex for a year. (They were previously barred entirely, based on concerns about exposure to HIV.)

With tongue firmly in cheek, Cumming introduces a series of eight non-sexual activities that that are “guaranted to make your year without sex fly by.”

Among them: Apply your manual dexterity to packing powder into a Civil War musket; thrust your hips into yoga; and polish your trophies. The logo “Celibacy Challenge” logo also is a riot—a pair of red briefs with a white lock over them.

The ad points to celibacychallenge.com, where you can sign a petition.

Saatchi and Bullit director Ari Sandel created the mock PSA for GLAAD and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, which want the FDA rules to be based on risk factors, not sexual orientation, and are petitioning the federal agency to make that change. The pro-bono ad, which is being distributed online via the hashtag #CelibacyChallenge, went up Thursday on YouTube.

CREDITS
Clients: GLAAD, Gay Men’s Health Crisis
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Jay Benjamin
Creative Director, Art: Johnnie Ingram
Creative Director, Copy: Chris Skurat
Design Director: Juan Saucedo
Art Directors: Mete Erdogan, Matilda Kahl
Copywriters: Callum Spencer, Viktor Angwald                                                 
Chief Production Officer: Tanya LeSieur
Director of Content Production: John Doris
Executive Producer: Dani Stoller
Integrated Producer: Matt Micioni
Lead Creative Technologist: Steve Nowicki
Digital Strategist: Shae Carroll
Information Architects: Robert Moon, Kelly Redzack           
Head of Art Buying: Maggie Sumner
Lead Retoucher: Yan Apostolides
Proofreader: Ed Stein
Chief Marketing Officer: Christine Prins 
Talent Director: Akash Sen
Account Director: Rebecca Robertson
Associate Director, Business Development: Jamie Daigle
Account Supervisor: Carly Wallace
Project Manager: Bridget Auerbach
Production Company: Bullitt 
Director: Ari Sandel
Directors of Photography: Warren Kommers (Alan Cumming)
Benjamin Kitchens (vignettes)
Executive Producer, CEO: Todd Makurath
Line Producer: Nathaniel Greene
Editing House: Arcade Edit
Editor: Jeff Ferruzzo
Assistant Editor: Mark Popham
Producer: Fanny Cruz
Executive Producer: Sila Soyer
Music House: Nylon
Producer: Christina Carlo
Audio: Sound Lounge
Mixer: Glen Landrum
Post House/Telecine: Company 3
Colorist: Tom Poole

It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for—the 2015 .GIFYS.

What are the .GIFYS, you might say? They are, obviously, an award show for the best animated GIFs on the internet—as nominated by a panel of GIF experts, insofar as such people exist—and ultimately decided by you, the public.

Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Los Angeles is the organizer. And now, in the competition’s second year, GIF search engine Giphy has joined as co-host.

There are awards for animal GIFs, and cat GIFs—a separate category, of course—and art, and music, and politics, and film and television. There are awards for GIFs that will hypnotize you (“Can’t Look Away”), and make you nostalgic (“Throwback”), and just kind of creep you out (“Weird”).

Some of the 55 nominees are excellent, like baby goats doing backflips off other baby goats, and a Roy Lichtenstein cartoon man swiping the face of a Roy Lichtenstein cartoon woman like an iPad, and a Nick Offerman head bouncing through a field gobbling bacon.

The judges who picked the nominees include writers and visual artists for news sites like Mashable, The Huffington Post, New York magazine, and, naturally, BuzzFeed, as well as execs from companies like Daily Motion and Reddit. Internet-famous cat Lil Bub is also somehow a judge, which seems perplexing, given cats thankfully don’t have thumbs.

If you like wasting your time looking at GIFs, it’s worth a gander at the full collection. Voting ends Feb. 22, and your voice could help decide which mini works of circular clip art earn the highly questionable honor of becoming “permanent fixtures in an Internet hall of fame.”

But you also know that when an ad agency creates, as a means of self-promotion, a crowdsourced competition celebrating snippets of self-referential web culture, that the award show glut truly has imploded into a black hole.

You probably didn’t know bros were an endangered species.

Dairy brand Organic Valley is out with “Save the Bros,” a mock PSA asking for help weaning musclebound dudes from conventional protein shakes in favor of the company’s new Organic Fuel product—which it’s touting as free of “artificial flavoring, sweeteners, GMOs, toxic pesticides, antibiotics or artificial hormones often found in other ‘health’ products.”

The two-minute, tongue-in-cheek video, created by Humanaut, stakes out its position early, opening with the smirkingly ambiguous claim, “Bros are pretty amazing,” before proceeding to make a slew of other dubious arguments. One woman actually worries to the camera that in a world without bros, no one “would make comments about your physique that aren’t appropriate, but still appreciated.”

In other words, for an ad that, at moments, panders to its target by trolling everyone else, it’s pretty funny—deftly sending up cheesy public-service tropes, while also largely poking fun at the consumers it’s trying to woo. Ultimately, everyone is treated to images of bros doing yoga, bros looking at eggplants like they’re aliens (because, let’s be real, they are), bros meditating on mountaintops, and bros making pottery, as part of bros’ efforts to better themselves. 

There’s also an accompanying website that hawks “Save the Bros” paraphernalia, like T-shirts and duffel bags, and obviously, tank tops and trucker hats. (They might want to do a slightly tighter job of filtering the Instagram posts it pulls in by hashtag—on Monday night, one screenshot of an iChat, under #brolife, read, “Life is like a penis; it is simple, soft, and relaxed. Then women make it hard.”)

Luckily, you can rest assured that even if you don’t share the ad, the bros will be fine.

CREDITS
Client: Organic Valley
Product: Organic Fuel
Campaign: “Save the Bros”
Agency: Humanaut
Creative Adviser: Alex Bogusky
Creative Director: David Littlejohn
Associate Creative Director: Mike Cessario
Copywriter: David Littlejohn / Mike Cessario
Art Director: Stephanie Gelabert / Sean Davis
Production Company: Fancy Rhino, Chattanooga, TN
Director: Daniel Jacobs
Producer: Katie Nelson
Director Of Photography: Annie Huntington
Editor: Tyler Beasley
Production Designer: Chad Harris
Music Company: Skypunch Studios
Composer: Carl Cadwell

Ever since Microsoft introduced Cortana, its personal assistant for the Windows Phone, it’s been slamming Siri for her vanity and uselessness. Now, for Valentine’s Day, it’s proposing that you give Siri the old heave-ho for good—and begin a torrid affair with her archrival.

Check out the two new spots below, from m:united. The second one has a particularly cute subtext, although Siri would tell you to watch out—that this is one suitor with a menacing agenda under all the sweetness.

CREDITS
Client: Microsoft
Agency: m:united
Co-Chief Creative Officers: Andy Azula John Mescall
Executive Creative Director: Yo Umeda
Senior Copy Writer: Thom Woodley
Senior Art Director: Trinh Pham
Director of Creative Technology: David Cliff
Head of Integrated Production: Aaron Kovan
Executive Producer: Carolyn Johnson
Junior Producer: Monique Fitzpatrick
Managing Director: Kevin Nelson
EVP Group Account Director: Tina Galley
SVP Group Account Directors: Darla Price, Jason Kolinsky
Account Director: Melissa Trought
Account Supervisor: Greg Masiakos
Assistant Account Executive: Emily Glaser
Project Management: Stella Warkman
Production & Post-Production: CRAFT
Director of Photography: Larry Kapit
Editors: Nate Troester Carlos Hernandez
Music: “Big Top Polka” Erin Gemsa
Media Agency: EMT

Beauty is in the eye of the … um … sorry, I lost my train of thought. While I try to remember how that saying goes, enjoy “The Ugly Couple Song,” a Valentine’s Day music video by RPA for XO Mints.

Unlike Cartier’s pretty posers, who pine for love, XO presents some hairy, less-than-hunky, socially awkward dudes who look like refugees from cover bands and sitcoms. (The guy with the curls resembles “College Ted” from How I Met Your Mother. He’s even got the “spectacles”!) They lip-sync along with the titular ditty, a folky number performed by Run River North, about finding that certain special someone no matter how unattractive you are.

“She’s got a heart that’s bigger than her hair/She might never be a model, but who cares?/She’s one cloud and some wings from being an angel/And who knows, we might make—something beautiful.” (Aww … isn’t that nice? #SomethingBeautiful is also the campaign’s hashtag.)

Frankly, the guys aren’t all that homely, and I expected a wacky payoff, like maybe they’d all marry each other. Instead, the clip stays minty sweet and low-key, gently poking fun at social stereotypes as it invites us to hum along.

Of course, fresh breath as a requirement for romance is also a stereotype. Still, it never hurts, and the brand’s heart is clearly in the right place.

Right Shark and Left Shark had great time at the Super Bowl in Arizona. (Well, one of them had a better time than the other.) But now it’s back to the grind. And that means returning to the ESPN offices in snowy Bristol, Conn., and getting back to their day jobs—next to every other athlete, mascot and halftime-show dance partner in the world.

And here, we even get to see who’s underneath those suddenly famous fish costumes.

Wieden + Kennedy New York’s “This Is SportsCenter” campaign is always pretty fresh and memorable, but it’s great to see them jumping on this topic—which fits the campaign’s goofy humor so well.

Snickers and BBDO New York have followed up their brilliant “Brady Bunch” Super Bowl ad with an inspired print piece—taking over the back cover of Sports Illustrated’s new Swimsuit Issue with this fantastic “You’re not your when you hungry” ad.

Hannah Davis, of course, is on the front cover of the magazine. But on the back is a much less traditionally attractive female—Medusa, in fact, whom models apparently act like when they haven’t had a Snickers in a while.

Cynics will suggest models are always hungry, and wouldn’t be caught dead rectifying that fact by wolfing down a Snickers bar in public. But leaving aside the issues of verisimilitude, this is a pretty great ad and media placement. The recasting of Sports Illustrated as “Super Irritated” is a particularly nice touch.

See the front cover, and credits for the Snickers ad, below.

Front cover:

CREDITS
Client: Snickers
Ad: Medusa

Agency: BBDO New York
Chief Creative Office, Worldwide: David Lubars
Chief Creative Officer, New York: Greg Hahn
Executive Creative Director: Gianfranco Arena
Executive Creative Director: Peter Kain
Senior Creative Director: Danilo Boer
Senior Creative Director: Grant Smith
Executive Art Producer: Betsy Jablow
Account Director: Josh Steinman
Account Manager: Dylan Green
Planner: Alaina Crystal

Photographer: Vincent Dixon

CGI: Parker & Biley
Production Company: Jake Mills Productions

Truth is out with a new anti-smoking ad, and it’s a long way from stacking body bags outside the offices of tobacco companies.

“Left Swipe Dat,” created by 72andSunny, features a parade of young pop stars and YouTube personalities singing a novelty song about rejecting people on the dating app Tinder for featuring cigarettes in their profile pictures. Singer Becky G anchors the video, with X-Factor-born girl group Fifth Harmony handling backup. Comedians King Bach and Timothy DeLeGhetto act as hype men. Harley Mortenstein of Epic Meal Time, Grace Helbig of it’sGrace, and AlphaCat each spit a guest verse. There are also cameos from Anna Akana, Jimmy Tatro and Terrence J.

In other words, if you were born before 1992 and don’t spend all of your time on YouTube, it’s exactly the right thing to make you feel old and confused and terrified.

Back in the late ’90s and early ’00s, teenagers smoked even though they knew it was bad for them, because the cool thing to do was not caring that it was bad for them. In fact, this video is exactly the kind of thing that would have made a teenager want to smoke, because a distant slow and painful death would have seemed preferable to the shame of being in any way aligned with such an earnest train wreck of an attempt to make something seem cool or not cool. Teens used to be smart, and dumb, like that. So, putting piles of dead people on screen was, like the other melodramatic but statistically driven scare tactics of the classic Truth campaign, in those days a much better bet.

Now, who knows?

Over-the-top crazy antics, bubblegum pop and exploding rainbows are what the kids are into these days, right? Also smartphones and Tinder? Or is all that stuff passé? It goes almost without saying that any teen anti-smoking message is a good message (assuming it doesn’t send them running in the opposite direction). It’s good, even if it is a bald-faced play to make teens think smoking means they won’t get laid, which is probably pretty scary for a lot of teens, too. Though ostensibly this is also aimed at millennials? Or are they just like overgrown teens? Questions abound.

Some Becky G fans, and Fifth Harmony fans—Harmonizers, as they call themselves—seem to like the clip, when they’re not busy hating it, and each other, for the perceived slight that their preferred stars didn’t get enough screen time. Others seem baffled, too, but they watched, for their idols.

So it maybe the whole thing is pretty sensible. Or maybe it’s better described as Satan-spawned earworm with a heart of gold.

Either way, after watching it, you’ll need a drink.

CREDITS
Client: Legacy
CMO: Eric Asche
VP, Marketing: Nicole Dorrler
Marketing Director: Mary Dominguez
Marketing Brand Manager: Jasmin Malone
Agency: 72andSunny
CCO, Partner: Glenn Cole
GCD: Mick DiMaria
GCD: Justin Hooper
Writer: Rebecca Ullman
Designer: Sarah Herron
Group Brand Director: Judson Whigham
Brand Director: Kristine Soto
Brand Manager: Everette Cooke
Brand Coordinator: Chelsea Gilroy
Chief Production Officer: Tom Dunlap
Director of Film Production: Sam Baerwald
Senior Film Producer: Marisa Wasser
Film Producer: Esther Perls
Director of Business Affairs: Michelle McKinney
Group Business Affairs Director: Amy Jacobsen
Business Affairs Manager: Amy Shah
Group Strategy Director: Matt Johnson
Strategy Director: Kasia Molenda
Strategist: Josh Hughes
Jr. Strategist: Spencer Adrian
Production Co.: DNA
Director: Director X
Partner: David Naylor
Executive Producer: Missy Galanida
Producer: Clark Jackson
DP: Omer Ganai
Casting: David Kang
Art Department: David Courtemarche
Editorial: Arcade Edit
E.P. Managing Partner: Damian Stevens
Executive Producer: Nicole Visram
Post Producer: Kirsten Thon-Webb
Editor: Nick Rondeau
Editor: Dean Miyahira
Assistant: Ryan Andrus
Post: Timber
Creative Directors: Kevin Lau & Jonah Hall
Executive Producer: Chris Webb
Managing Partner: Damian Stevens
Producer: Lauren Loftus
Digital Effects Supervisor: Nick Hiegel
Flame Artist: Miles Kinghorn, Lisa Tomei
Nuke: Josh Bolin, Krystal Chinn, Nick Hiegel
Roto/Tracking: Dylan Holden
Telecine: The Mill
Executive Producer: Thatcher Peterson
Colorist: Gregory Reese
Audio Mix: Lime Studios
Executive Producer: Jessica Locke
Mixer: Dave Wagg
Assistant Mixer: Adam Primack
Composer: Adam Schlesinger
Music and Talent Supervision: Jash
Executive Producer: Doug DeLuca
Executive Producer: Daniel Kellison
Executive Producer: Mickey Meyer
Executive Producer: Ty Braswell
Producer: Nick Veneroso
Producer: Celeste Hughey

Thanks to Sunday’s downer Super Bowl spot, we all learned that Nationwide isn’t exactly on the side of the angels.

Now, the divine comedy of this “extended cut” parody from Funny or Die and director Alan Richanbach (who co-wrote it with Travis Helwig) drives that message home. (“Funny or Die,” by the way, nicely sums up Nationwide’s approach to its two ads on Sunday.)

The shaggy-maned kid from the big-game commercial—actually, a kid actor playing the kid actor—shows up at the pearly gates, and whines on and on about meeting his demise in a preventable household accident.

If that punk keeps “harshing the vibe,” he doesn’t stand a prayer of getting into paradise, which is, after all, “chill as hell.” There’s a cute bit at the end, when a new shaggy arrival reminds us of the enduring popularity of a certain tried-and-true Super Bowl ad trope.

Funny or Die aren’t the only ones poking fun at Nationwide this week. Check out Conan O’Brien’s spoof of the commercial below.