Hasta La Creative!

The greatest idea for a billboard has been realized: one made entirely of cake.

Actually, 13,360 cakes. British confectionary brand Mr. Kipling and agency JWT London are the geniuses responsible for this gift to the the world. Because they are benevolent leaders who understand how things should work, they let everyone lucky enough to be near the billboard, at a mall in London, also participate in the eating of the billboard.

That makes it even more perfect, because a billboard that disappears quickly is the best kind. It’s also even more selfless, because making a billboard out of 13,360 cakes is a feat that takes grand vision and steely perseverance—approximately seven hours worth of grueling cake assembly alone, even with the help of a professional food artist like Michelle Wibowo, whose credentials also include making a portrait of Prince William and Prince George out of 16,074 triangle pieces of Toblerone chocolate.

Other, less-conservative estimates place the total commitment required to build a single giant ad out of many small cakes at three days, plus two months of presumably painstaking design. Also assisting were other fine marketing companies like Outside Line, Carat, and Cirkle. Regardless, it is an infinitely more courageous move than a bus shelter ad that hands out a measly 500 Mr. Kipling cakes.

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Fortunately such Herculean efforts do not go unappreciated by passersby of strong character. “I really like the board because I love cake, and that motto quite fits me,” says one woman in a video about the giant cake ad. “Life is better with cake,” says the motto, which 72 percent of the U.K. population believes, according to Mr. Kipling’s surely bulletproof research, and also according to common sense.

So, let it be known that for anyone who does make a billboard henceforth, moral imperative dictates it should be made of cakes—perhaps cakes more delicious than Mr. Kipling’s cakes, which if they are anything like pre-packaged cakes in America, might not be the best cakes in the world. (These French pastries might be a good place to start.)

Some exceptions to the rule: A billboard that cleans the air is OK, because humans need breathable oxygen to eat cake; a billboard that condenses humidity into water, because humans might be thirsty after eating all that cake, even though milk would be a better companion; and billboards featuring exceptional art, in case someone needs something nice to look at while eating their cake, though such a student probably isn’t focused enough on the task at hand. 

But before anyone suggests making a billboard out of ice cream or pie, let’s just all remember that we are practical folk who only engage in civil debate about reasonable ideas—and also do not give rise to false hope.

Via The Drum.

Embracing music has become a popular strategy for making potentially dull brands seem cool, and Gillette is leaning hard into the approach with a new spot that turns its razors into part of an elaborate piano-playing machine.

Son Lux, an artist and producer who recently collaborated with Lorde, performs an original composition on the contraption, which rigs a second keyboard into a pulley system that controls the razors—which in turn press the keys on an actual piano.

The ad is meant to demonstrate the rotational capacity of Gillette’s Flexball technology. That ends up succeeding well enough, which is a good thing, because otherwise it might just look like an awful lot of trouble to make a perfectly functional instrument unnecessarily complicated just to squeeze in the product. Regardless, Gillette, agency Grey and production company 1stAveMachine get props for helping to bring viewers a nice song.

The project also recalls Gillette’s symphony of sweaty dudes on gym equipment from last fall (via BBDO), meant to promote the P&G brand’s deodorant. GE, meanwhile, has been teaming up with electronic artists to sample the sounds of its heavy machinery, and turn them into very listenable records.

It’s hard to say whether razors, free weights, shipping containers or jet engines make the best tunes, though.

CREDITS
Client: Gillette
Spot: “Piano”

Agency: Grey

Brand Agency Lead: Debby Reiner
Senior Vice President/Account Director: Sarah Beaumont
Vice President/Account Director: Elizabeth Gilchrist
Account Supervisor: Thomas Ghiden
Account Supervisor: Katie Stirn
Account Executive: John Nelson

Executive Strategy Director: Howard Roberts

Cinematographer: Zach Mulligan
Composer: Ryan Lott (“Son Lux”)

Production Company: 1st Avenue Machine

Agency President/Global Chief Creative Officer: Tor Myhren
Group Creative Director: Jeff Stamp
Group Creative Director: Leo Savage
Associate Creative Director: Lance Parrish
Associate Creative Director: Steve Nathans
Copywriter: Nick Terzip

Director: Asif Mian (1st Avenue Machine)
Editor: Akiko Ikawaka (Cut + Run)
Executive Producer: James McPherson
Mix: Heard City, Phil Loeb
Music Producer: Zachary Pollakoff
Film Producer: Katy Fuoco
Assistant Film Producer: Megan Swan

Microsoft is making a habit out of mocking Siri.

Apple’s personal assistant faces her Windows Phone rival, Cortana, in a new ad from M:United hawking the HTC One M8 smartphone. Cortana also sized up against the iPhone’s voice concierge in a commercial earlier this summer. That spot focused on how Siri was comparatively inept. Now, she is cast as a diva.

That probably rings true for anyone who’s ever wrestled with that functionality on an iOS device. Cortana, though, is at the disadvantage here of having to explain why she’s better, and what hardware she occupies. Everyone recognizes an iPhone and Siri—the whole concept stands on the competition’s shoulders.

At the same time, Apple bashing is a quick and easy way to get millions of YouTube views, as Samsung proved. So, it’s not surprising to see Microsoft try a similar strategy. Plus, it’s paying Apple back, in a small way, for all the knocks in the old “Get A Mac” campaign.

Though it is perhaps telling that this approach frames the battle primarily in terms of miniature faceless robots, instead of humans.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Microsoft
Product: Windows Phones
Spot: HTC “Mirror/Sitting” M8
Agency: M:United
Global ECDs: Andy Azula, Con Williamson
Creative Director: Mike Lear
Copywriter: Cedric Giese
Art Director: Ron Villacarillo
Director of Creative Technology: David Cliff
TV Producer: Mel Senecal, Emilie Talermo
Strategy Team: Kevin Nelson, Michelle Kiely, Jeremy Davis, Lauren Curtis
Account Team: John Dunleavy, Darla Price, Melissa Trought, Reena Factor, Liam Mulcahy
Video Production: No6
Music:
“You Always Make Me Smile” – Kyle Andrews
“I Feel Pretty” – written by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim, performed by Stingray Music
Media Agency: EMT
VFX: Method

It’s no secret that Marshawn Lynch loves Skittles. And now, the brand’s real-life No. 1 fan is helping to kick off its official NFL sponsorship by showing how he (probably not in real life) works out with the candies.

The spot below, from Olson Engage—the first in a series of NFL-related Skittles marketing—claims that Skittles make game day “awesomer.”

Lynch, 28, whom Skittles honored last year with a special-edition “Seattle mix,” has known this for years. As his mother told Seahawks.com a couple of years ago: “When Marshawn was 12 or 13, we’d go to his games and I’d always have little candies in my purse,” she says.

“Before the game, I would say, ‘Here Marshawn, come and get you power pellets.’ I would give him a handful of Skittles and say, ‘Eat ’em up, baby. They’re going to make you run fast and they’re going to make you play good.’ “

The guy in this sublimely sophomoric spot for a Vancouver science museum should be in a world of hurt.

Yet he smiles and shrugs off a nail through his shoe, a bitey dog, a neighborhood kid’s expertly executed kick to the crotch and a couple of even more potentially painful (probably deadly) indignities. His relience throughout his 30-second odyssey, promoting for Science World at Telus World of Science, is explained at the end with a little scientific factoid. (The wimpy Walmart clown could learn a thing or two from this guy.)

This latest installment in the client’s “Now You Know” campaign from ad agency Rethink was deemed too violent for TV by the Television Bureau of Canada. Of course, that’s the perfect formula for maximizing press coverage and interest on the Web.

Among the campaign’s many notable past efforts, you might recall these racy ads from 2012 that promoted a “Science of Sexuality” exhibit and scored significant media exposure.

After 15 years on the business, Rethink’s got this stuff down to a science.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Science World
Creative Agency: Rethink
Creative Directors: Ian Grais, Chris Staples, Rob Tarry
Art Director: Felipe Mollica
Writer: Morgan Tierney
Broadcast Producer (in house): DW
Account Services: Solomon Gauthier
Production Companies: OPC//FamilyStyle, Reco
Director: Chris Woods
Executive Producers: Harland Weiss, Donovan Boden, Liz Dussault, Michael Haldane
Director of photography: John Houtman
Line Producer: Darrin Ball
Post Production House: Cycle Media
Editors: Rob Doucet, Mathew Griffiths
Audio House: Vapor Music
Producer (Audio House): Kailee Nowosad
Engineer: Andrew Harris
Visual Effects: Crush

Here’s one way to pitch your design shop directly to an ad agency: Buy a billboard right across the street from them.

Intridea, a D.C.-based product design and development consultancy, did just that this month by buying a billboard for a week right near Ogilvy & Mather’s headquarters at 636 Eleventh Ave. in New York with the headline, “Ogle this, Ogilvy.”

The board included the URL oglethis.co, which featured goofy GIFs along with the text, “Made you look. Now hire us. AngularJS, Rails, UX/UI and more.”

It’s a little blunt, but it seems to have gotten Intridea in the front door. The agency says it got a call from Ogilvy New York CEO Lou Aversano and OgilvyOne managing director Dimitri Maex—and will be meeting with them on Sept. 3.

“This was the first time our team has ever spent any money on outdoor advertising,” says Intridea co-founder Yoshi Maisami, “and we’ve been very happy with the results.”

I love the smell of Hemnes in the morning.

Some lucky Australians will soon wake up in an Ikea store in New South Wales after spending a night there as part of an oddball promotion with Airbnb.

Interested parties can sign up on the lodging rental site for a chance to win a sleepover in one of three groovy showrooms: “Rustic Charm,” “Inner City Living” and “Modern Elegance.” Three groups of up to four guests will get to stay in the store overnight on Aug. 31, enjoy a fancy dinner and even keep the sheets they slept on. Local marketing shops The Monkeys and Mango helped devise the stunt.

Ikea says the promotion is designed to inspire people to make more of their homes “from clearing and creating space to making homes guest ready in the sharing economy.” Because nothing’s better than taking in boarders to make ends meet. That rocks!

Lots of folks would probably savor the chance to enjoy pre-assembled Ikea merchandise. I hope the contest winners gain a measure of revenge for consumers worldwide by going through the store and taking all the furniture apart.

CREDITS
Clients: Ikea and Airbnb
Creative Agency: The Monkeys
Event: Mango
PR: Mango and Espresso Communications

On Monday, we posted Miller Lite’s new national TV spot, featuring a handful of fan photos selected from some 180,000 gathered through the immensely successful #ItsMillerTime hashtag campaign.

Now, with impeccable timing, Newcastle is here to call bollocks on the whole idea.

The British brewer, known for its anti-marketing marketing, just launched its own hashtag campaign, #NewcastleAdAid, in which it’s also asking for fan snapshots—and promises to use the wonders of Photoshop to turn them into really shoddy-looking ads.

Why the sudden embrace of low-cost user-generated content? Because it blew its marketing budget on celebs for the Super Bowl and the Fourth of July.

“Newcastle recognized it needed more ‘engaging social content’ to keep all of its new followers interested, but this lazy branded content wasn’t going to make itself,” the brand tells AdFreak. “Newcastle definitely is not the first brand to ask fans to post photos on social media to ‘build a stronger community’ and whatnot, but Newcastle definitely is the best at turning those photos into into obvious, exaggerated, poorly executed ads.”

Here’s the pitch video from Droga5, running on Twitter and Facebook:

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This Honda Civic campaign by Wieden + Kennedy London is cool. And pretty warm, too.

The centerpiece is an engaging 30-second film that shows the freezing and thawing of a Civic on a stylized desert set. This dramatically illustrates that the automaker tests its vehicles at temperatures ranging from -22°F to +176°F. (This is helpful in case you’re planning a road trip from the North Pole to Hell.)

The tagline for the pan-European campaign is: “Reliability in the extreme.”

Delightful details include a cowboy skeleton that morphs into a snowman and a rolling tumbleweed/snowball. According to a post on W+K’s blog, the agency (and Johnny Hardstaff, who directed through RSA Films) encased the car in ice and let it melt over five hours—filming 200 takes using a motion-control rig, with 3-D enhancements providing the skeleton’s transformation and other effects.

An interactive version is in the works that will allow users to control temperature changes and see the results. I wish they’d let us melt the Civic into a plastic-metal soup, then freeze it until it explodes into sparkling, razor-sharp shards of ice. Now that would be some fancy branding!

Nissan also recently launched ads that show the temperature testing of its vehicles. Though with Poison’s Bret Michaels performing a power-schlock version of “Endless Love,” that campaign is extreme for entirely different reasons.

Check out a print ad from the campaign below.

It was at this time last year that we first met Ted Lasso, an American football coach (played by Jason Sudeikis) hired to manage London’s Tottenham Hotspur Football Club—and manage very, very poorly—in a hilarious short film promoting NBC Sports’ English Premier League coverage.

Well, Coach Lasso is back. And he’s better—or rather, worse—than ever.

In this sequel from New York agency The Brooklyn Brothers, Lasso has lost his Tottenham job (he lasted just six and a half hours) and has given soccer sportscasting a try. That goes wretchedly too, though, as Lasso can’t get a grasp on the concepts of relegation, the offside rule or really anything requiring a modicum of basic intelligence.

So, he returns to America, where he creates a Little England in his own home, gets drunk with friends in the morning while watching the EPL (games kick off at 10 a.m. ET, or even earlier, on Saturdays) and finds his next great coaching gig. He even catches up with Adweek cover boy (and sometime professional goalkeeper) Tim Howard.

The original film was great, but this one might be even better. It’s even more packed with jokes, most of which hit the mark, and Sudeikis has settled even more comfortably into the role of clueless buffoon.

This is one wanker you don’t mind spending a little more time with.

NBC Sports’s EPL coverage returns for another season on Aug. 16.