Hasta La Creative!

Snask, an agency in Stockholm, made a huge 3-D poster for this year’s Malmö Festival, which is essentially a massive street fair that runs through the second half of August. The “poster” is actually a series of giant 3-D letters, numbers, and shapes that took 14 people over 900 hours to make. They’re made out of plywood, in case anyone out there cares.

Calling this thing a poster feels a bit off. It’s more of an art installation. You can’t even see the whole image from the ground; you have to be up in the air to do that. That said, it’s way cooler than your typical poster, and it’s going to be a centerpiece of the festival, so visitors can climb all over it and stuff.

See more images and the photographed poster below.

Via Joquz and Design Taxi.

Levi’s is trying on a simple, straightforward message in its first big push since reuniting with longtime agency FCB (and also hiring The House Worldwide) in February.

Unveiling a global campaign tagged “Live in Levi’s,” the iconic brand is using print ads and posters to show twentysomethings strolling around, cavorting and generally enjoying life while clad in Levi’s denim. Copy lines include “A classic since right now,” “Fall head over heels” and “Look good on your way to what’s next.”

“It’s intended to be both inclusive and inspiring,” CMO Jennifer Sey explains on Levi’s Unzippe” blog. “It’s a celebration. It’s not cynical. Or dour. Or overly serious—as many fashion and style-oriented brands can be. It’s fun. People have fun in jeans. It should be fun.”

Digital and social elements are also in the mix, along with TV and cinema ads launching next month from director Fredrik Bond, who lensed the memorable Cannes Lion-winning “Simon the Ogre” mini-epic for Thomson Holidays.

Recent efforts from previous agency Wieden + Kennedy, themed “Go Forth,” weren’t cynical, exactly, nor dour nor overly serious, though some observers believe they worked too hard too be cool, plugging into the zeitgeist while sacrificing Levi’s unique heritage. I kind of agree. There were some memorable moments, but, overall, “Go Forth” seemed to be flying by the seat of its pants, chasing random hipness.

The back-to-basics approach of “Live in Levi’s” strives for a more comfortable brand fit. It’s well-shot by photographer Jason Nocito and nicely understated, though it risks blending in with all the other fashion ads that show happy/moody young people who like wearing clothes.

To be fair, that’s a very preliminary impression. Print is, after all, just the first leg of a multifaceted campaign.

We’ve reached peak hipster. And we’ve also reached peak anti-hipster. But South Africa’s Garagista Beer Co. is barging ahead anyway with a campaign that positions the brand as absolutely not the right choice for the coolest people on earth.

Watch below as a bunch of unkempt cool white people battle each other with records, typewriters and bicycles for a taste of the brewery’s limited-edition batch of suds. And also check out the onslaught of anti-hipster print ads the brand has put together.

Over at the brand’s Facebook page (because having an actual webpage is so January 2014), it’s clear that Garagista is pretty normcore about the whole thing. “In a world where some people care more about the craft beer image than the actual beer,” it says, “we care about one thing—damn good beer.” 

Cool. Now, can we make all the selfies go away?

Newcastle Brown Ale had a big hit with its “If We Made It” ambush campaign around the Super Bowl. Now, the British brewer has done something similar for July 4.

The new campaign, from Droga5, is called “If We Won,” and it imagines what America would be like if Britain had won the Revolutionary War. It also continues the tradition, begun last year, of celebrating July 3 as Independence Eve—so the Brits can sneak in with their bangers and mash ahead of Independence Day on July 4.

It’s all a bunch of bollocks, of course—or rather, no bollocks.

Stephen Merchant kicks things off with the amusing video below. Elizabeth Hurley and Zachary Quinto will join the campaign with their own videos in the coming days. There will be 16 pieces of filmed content in all, “to help Newcastle celebrate the land that nearly became ‘Great Britain 2,’ ” the brewer says.

“It’s not easy to sell a British beer during a supremely American holiday, so we’re imagining how great America could have been—and how much beer we could have sold—if the Brits had won the Revolutionary War,” says Quinn Kilbury, brand director for Newcastle Brown Ale, who spoke to Adweek earlier this month about the brand’s Facebook advertising.

“In the late 1700s, colonial Americans risked life and limb to fight for their freedom. Today, we’re running the very real risk of people totally not getting the joke here, and we think that’s pretty patriotic.”

CANNES, France—All this past week, Cannes Lions judges and presenters talked endlessly about how the best ads are those that inspire and even improve the world.

So, why was the festival’s most awarded campaign an unapologetic (if tongue-in-cheek) homage to selfishness and greed? One whose centerpiece video has a relatively meager 500,000 views on YouTube—and was, in fact, the only ad jeered by attendees at Saturday’s award show here?

The Harvey Nichols holiday campaign “Sorry, I Spent It on Myself” from agency adam&eveDDB took home no less than four Grand Prix, making it the second most awarded campaign in the festival’s history. (McCann Melbourne set the record last year with five Grand Prix for “Dumb Ways to Die.”)

The campaign centered on the creation of cheap products, such as gravel or rubber bands, sold in Harvey Nichols stores with the label “Sorry, I Spent It on Myself.” The video showed customers giving these crap gifts to relatives and loved ones at Christmas while enjoying expensive clothing and handbags for themselves.

It’s a good campaign, and may well have deserved the Integrated Grand Prix. It also won the Press Grand Prix, the Promo & Activation Grand Prix and a Film Grand Prix—one of two awarded in that category, along with Volvo Trucks’ “Epic Split.” And it’s that Grand Prix in Film—where it bested some truly powerful and popular pieces of cinematography—that’s the real head-scratcher.

At a press conference Saturday afternoon, the Film Lions judges gushed about the spot’s “boldness” but struggled to explain how it merited such lofty accolades. I asked them how it could possibly have been a unanimous selection as one of the two best pieces of advertising film in the past year.

“To take greed and make people laugh and smile about it is, I think, incredibly difficult,” said jury member Pete Favat, chief creative officer  of Deutsch L.A. “And as a film, it’s a perfect piece of film.”

I disagree, and it was clear I wasn’t alone when, during a screening of the ad at Saturday’s big award ceremony, some derisive whistling could be heard.

To illustrate why its Grand Prix selection was so baffling, we’ve decided to highlight some of the work it beat for the top spot. You might not agree that any one of them was Grand Prix material, but you’d be hard pressed to argue that they’re lesser films. 

Below are our picks for seven ads that could have, and should have, ranked higher than Harvey Nichols:

 
• Lacoste: “The Big Leap” by BETC Paris

Somehow this stellar piece of cinematography only won a silver Lion in Film. French journalists told me they felt the video was largely snubbed at Cannes, where it was shortlisted in Film Craft but awarded no Lion in that category.

 
• Wren: “First Kiss” by Durable Goods L.A.

While this viral juggernaut with nearly 85 million views has its share of critics, it’s hard to deny it was one of the most compelling, talked-about and just plain interesting videos of the year. Judges clearly liked it quite a bit, awarding it bronze and gold Lions in Film and a bronze in Film Craft.

 
• Coca-Cola: “Parents” by Santo Buenos Aires

Surprising, funny, perfectly crafted. It’s just so damn good. Judges liked it enough to give it a gold Lion in Film.

 
• Guinness: “Sapeurs” by AMV BBDO

A real story, told really well. This piece starring a super-stylish group of Congolese gentlemen won a silver Lion in Film and a bronze Lion in Film Craft. 

 
• Lurpak: “Adventure Awaits” by Wieden + Kennedy London

Anyone who’s ever made a food ad (or, hell, watched a food ad) will realize what a masterpiece of innovative visuals this is. It won gold in Film Craft.

 
• Skype: “The Born Friends Family Portrait” by Pereira & O’Dell

It’ll make you smile. It’ll make you cry. It’s a touching piece of documentary that’s as stylish as it is emotional. But oddly, it didn’t win any Lions in Film. (It did win two silver Lions and two bronze Lions in Cyber and a bronze in Branded Content & Entertainment.) Read the story behind the story in our interview with creator PJ Pereira.

 
• Volvo Trucks: “The Epic Split” by Forsman & Bodenfors

The other Grand Prix winner in Film, and deservedly so. Let’s revisit it to remind ourselves how different these supposedly equal spots are.

 
What do you think? Did the Film judges overreach, or was the Harvey Nichols spot really that good? And what would you have selected?

For better or worse, Fiat’s latest TV commercials might make your head spin.

The brand recently commissioned some wacky GIFs from The Richards Group for the Fiat Tumblr page, but Chrysler CMO Olivier Francois liked them so much that he had them stitched into 15- and 30-second spots—now airing on TV under the tagline “Endless fun.”

Robots, cats, narwhals, people in horse masks, a guy in a rabbit suit twerking against a Fiat. The spots are frenetic, goofy, weird, loud and—at least according to Fiat—fun. They’re getting a mixed reaction on YouTube, though.

If you don’t like them, maybe you can do better. Fiat will soon ask consumers for their own #MyFiatUSA GIFs and will post the best ones to its Tumblr page.

Plucking Angora rabbits to use their fur in clothing is like waxing the hair off unwilling humans, says PETA’s latest human-shaming ad.

Characteristic of the animal advocacy group’s PSAs, it’s designed to make your skin crawl, complete with close-ups of grimacing faces, and squelchy sound effects, most of which end up seeming kind of ridiculous. The most disturbing part of the spot, created with agency Lowe & Partners Singapore and production company Great Guns, is the brief edit of a man tearing out the hair from a squealing Angora at a factory in China. The footage is excerpted from PETA’s exposé last year, which sparked a scandal in the fashion industry and spurred major brands like H&M to stop producing Angora wool wear.

The spot is effective enough in terms of refreshing awareness about the cruel techniques behind the rabbit fur products, even if the overwrought metaphor isn’t as powerful as the uncut reality. As much as PETA may love anthropomorphizing animals, this isn’t one of those scenarios where drawing a melodramatic comparison to people is necessary, or even helpful—especially not to illustrate the obvious point that the rabbits are treated worse than crybaby homo sapiens who are getting a voluntary, if perhaps unpleasant, preening procedure.

Still, as shrill as PETA’s marketing often manages to be, it has come a long way from the days when it was just a never-ending punch line.

Hey, millennials, 20 years ago you might’ve been riding in the third row of a Volvo station wagon, staring out the back window and maybe trying to stave off the slight nausea that can accompany your body’s sense that it is hurtling in the wrong direction through space.

If you were, Volvo and Seattle creative studio World Famous would like to point out to you that you’re now old enough to buy a Volvo of your own, and drive it forward through space on outdoorsy adventures with your pals.

Isn’t it fun to grow up?

This is a nice spot that seems likely to resonate with viewers in the target—based on the entirely anecdotal evidence that I, a twentysomething who grew up in one of those white refrigerators on wheels, find it manipulating me into feeling nostalgic … even though I can tell, rationally, that the forward-and-backward metaphor is advertising pseudo-philosophy.

In the true version of the story, the millennial probably buys the vintage version of the car and pimps it out with 22-inch chrome spinners with blue lights, then leaves it in a heap on the lawn, because the millennial doesn’t know oil changes are actually important.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Volvo
Production Company: World Famous
Director: Jesse Harris
Writer: Jesse Harris
Executive Producer: Megan Ball
Head of Production: Nick Hegge
Producer: Kyle Seago
Editor: Nick Pezzillo
Director of Photography: TJ Williams Jr.
Color: Lightpress
Sound Mix: Clatter&Din
A co-production of NFFTY

How far are people willing to go, physically and emotionally, to get a free sample? Australian agency Clemenger BBDO continues its quest to find out by making consumers work hard (and sometimes look a bit foolish) for free Fantastic Delites rice snacks.

Shoppers were asked to queue up for ridiculously long periods of time, even when there was no one standing ahead of them, to get a bag of Fantastic Delites Curls.

After making folks wait and then navigate a winding maze at an outdoor mall, the scenario was repeated at an ice rink and in a pond where the water looks kind of scummy, but no one seems to mind getting wet. Hey, they saved about $2, and the snacks are gluten-free!

The “How Far Would You Go” campaign’s been around for a few years, and it’s generated a couple of viral videos, so I’m assuming some, if not most, of the people who lined up had a notion of what they were in for. 

“It seems no matter what challenge we throw out there, be it mindlessly pressing a button on a vending machine 5,000 times, or the indignity of dressing as a rodent and spinning a mouse wheel for five minutes, the punters always seem to come back for more,” says agency cd Matt O’Grady. “Maybe we’re not making them difficult enough?”

Wondering what sadistic challenge they’ll dream up next? Get in line.

Epic ads are crowding the field ahead of Thursday’s World Cup kickoff, but Adidas doesn’t mind just having a little fun, sometimes.

This spot from the official sponsor, via TBWAChiatDay, finds retired giants of the game David Beckham (age 39) and Zinedine Zidane (41) bored while watching whippersnappers Gareth Bale (24) and Lucas Moura (21) playing EA Sports’ 2014 FIFA World Cup video game. The old men challenge the young men to kick a ball around in real life, and the foursome proceed to trash Beckhingham Palace, the posh home Becks used to occupy with his wife Victoria (before they moved to a much more expensive one).

The roguish spot is a welcome respite from anxiety-ridden opuses like Nike’s animated takedown of knockoff players, or Beats by Dre’s ode to pre-game rituals, or Adidas’s own Messi nightmare, or the brand’s PETA-trolling cow-heart campaign.

It is a game, after all. And given that it’s one where players tend to tap out well before 40, it’s nice to see age trump beauty for a change.