Hasta La Creative!

After years of weirdness and grotesquerie, Skittles has found its calling—breaking Grandma's knickknacks. This enjoyable interactive YouTube video from DDB Chicago features a young man who breaks a porcelain unicorn after it promises it will turn into Skittles if he does so. Naturally, the interactive part involves clicking on, and watching the guy break, a bunch of other stuff, including two frogs, two birds and a monkey. It's pretty fun, and I'm glad to see Skittles run those anarchic creative tendencies of theirs through some quality control. Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Mars/Skittles
Agency: DDB, Chicago
Ewan Paterson: Chief Creative Officer
Mark Gross: ECD
Alex Zamiar: ACD/Art Director
Jonathan Richman: ACD/Copywriter
Will St. Clair: Exec. Producer
Jon Ellis: Exec. Digital Producer
Matt Green: Producer
Scott Terry: Production Manager
Director: Harold Einstein, Station Film
Editorial: Beast Editorial

The notion of being secretly photographed, digitally manipulated and publicly displayed might make some folks shudder. But the furtive surveillance in Adobe's "Street Retouch" stunt, via Swedish agency Abby Norm, seems almost jolly. While waiting at a Stockholm bus stop, people were surprised and, judging by the video below, mostly delighted to see themselves Photoshopped by retouch wizard Erik Johansson (operating from a nearby van) into various scenarios on a seemingly typical outdoor ad panel. One particularly crabby-faced gent steals the show, his sour demeanor sweetening as he watches himself transformed into a city-smashing monster on the electronic billboard a few feet away. The guy winds up smiling, and like others caught up in the stunt, promoting Adobe Creative Day this Tuesday, he snaps a picture of the panel as a keepsake. Unlike more malevolent ad stunts that hinge on provoking fights, flight or just plain fear, this prank gives more than it takes—instant gratification, a novel and positive experience and a cool product demo. So, despite the invasive setup, the stunt succeeds because the people involved seem less like "targets" and more like partners in the campaign. That righteous vibe pervades the highly viral clip (9 million views since Friday) and helps put viewers in the picture about Adobe's creative potential.

Forgetting that a lot of improv comedy stinks, ad agency 18 Feet & Rising is partnering with British improv troupe Mischief Theatre to produce a live ad that will air on U.K. Comedy Central on the evening of June 17. The idea is simple: With no advance preparation, the Mischief players will get three minutes to improvise an ad live on the air for a product selected without their knowledge beforehand. Three-minute ads are too much when the material is written ahead of time, but I have to admire Mischief's willingness to take this project on. Pulling a legitimate commercial—even a bad one—out of thin air is no easy task, although it's probably more pleasant than soliciting topics from a typical improv comedy audience.

It's a shame what powerful G-forces will do to one's face. The latest reminder of this comes in new ads for amusement park Cedar Fair by Cramer-Krasselt in Chicago. The flappy, wind-crushed faces will also appear on out-of-home boards and in print—the actors' visages frozen in a clown-like rictus of fun, allowing friends and family members to make fun of them for years to come. The ads are part of C-K's "Thrills Connect" campaign, which helped drive record season-pass sales for Cedar Fair in 2012. In related news, to see some of your favorite advertising people being pummeled in the face by high winds, click here.

Burger King in Puerto Rico celebrated its 50th anniversary by giving away "Hands-Free Whopper" holders to 50 lucky customers. DLC/Ogilvy & Mather helped develop the gag gift, which is still the most brandtastic invention since, I dunno, that Nivea print ad that charges your cell phone. The clip below shows folks feeding their faces while the holders free up their hands for other important stuff, like boxing, working in a tattoo parlor and taking dogs for a walk. (After about 30 seconds, I wished the dude strumming his guitar and belting out the "Hands-Free Whopper" song would take a big beefy bite and give my tortured ears a rest.) Actually, I'm not so impressed. Looks like there's plenty of room on that thing for a French fry dispenser and sippy-cup holder. I don't want to live in a world where I have to burn a single calorie reaching for my big gulp at lunchtime.

That hunky Bradley Cooper can do anything he wants, you understand, including strolling into an elegant cocktail party eating ice cream straight out of the container. Lapses in etiquette be damned—just look at those baby blues! And he even brought his own spoon. It helps that he's visiting The House of Häagen-Dazs, which isn't a real place but more of a sugar-fueled fever dream, in this new spot from Team One in El Segundo, Calif. There's a raven-haired supermodel (Jana Perez) who latches onto the smokin' hot Oscar nominee and onetime Sexiest Man Alive for canoodling purposes. Oh but wait, she just wants his dessert. Sure, she does. The General Mills brand, which shot this all-slow-mo, no-dialogue commercial in an 18th-century Baroque chateau in Prague, has never used a celebrity before. (European brand Magnum used a car-hopping Rachel Bilson in a campaign directed by Karl Lagerfeld for its decadent ice-cream bars a few years ago. Could this be a trend?). The Häagen-Dazs ad, meant to luxe up the brand, comes from director Allen Hughes of the famous filmmaking Hughes brothers. It fairly sizzles, and it's hot outside. Eat up!

When longtime Richards Group copywriter Matt Bull finished his first highly visible solo gig in Dallas this week, it felt like a pretty big deal to him. And apparently Redditors agreed, giving his billboard for the local Chicken Scratch restaurant a massive boost in publicity by voting it to the site's front page on Wednesday. Part of the appeal was the creepy, counterintuitive tone of the board, which highlights Chicken Scratch's location "between some trailers and a condemned motel." But another key to Bull's success was his clear excitement at creating something on his own after a lengthy stint in agency life. "After 16 years, I quit my ad agency job to work for myself and spend more time with my family," he wrote in his Reddit post. "Thought I'd share my first solo ad with you guys—for a great local restaurant. I've worked with much bigger budgets in every media imaginable, but I've never been more proud of the outcome than this." Created with illustrator Elliott Park, the R. Crumb-esque billboard has quickly launched Bull and his one-man shop, The Department of Persuasion, into the public eye. We caught up with him for a quick Q&A about the story behind this odd bit of outdoor.

How did you get connected with this gig?
Chicken Scratch is in Oak Cliff, which is a pretty tight-knit neighborhood in Dallas. The owners traded a party for an outdoor placement with CBS and needed something to put up. They wanted to work with someone locally, and another neighbor I'd done some work for recommended me. That was all there was to it.

How much direction did they give you?
The initial direction was only, "We're thinking we want something kind of Church of the SubGenius." Which I can honestly say I've never ever heard from a client. In retrospect that was probably them vetting me, to see if I was on the same wavelength. Then later the co-owner, Christopher, was talking about the challenging sell the restaurant has and said, "I mean, we're between a trailer park and a condemned motel!" And I thought, "That would make a pretty great ad, actually."

Were they (or you) concerned about the general creepiness of it?
Not in the slightest. In fact, the only feedback they made when looking at pencils was, "Can we make the guy creepier?"

How about the fact that you don't show the address?
Nah, no concerns. They didn't even ask for it. I've done a lot of outdoor and had given them the basic ad agency party line on what to expect from outdoor. This one was already on the crowded side, and everyone has a smartphone anyway.

What's your take on the Reddit response? Did you ever expect it would blow up the way it has?
I'm genuinely shocked. I only did it on a whim. I expected, like most of my posts there, that it would get swiftly downvoted into oblivion. How much time have you spent there? They hate ads more than they hate organized religion. I imagine there are entire nu-marketing shops packed with interns leading deeply frustrated lives chasing the front page of Reddit for global brands. That we did it for a fried chicken biscuit sandwich place is gratifying.

The best part of the comments is all the ad-strategy criticism. I think because everyone's grown up assaulted by ads from day one on the planet, they end up a) feeling like they're experts by virtue of passive experience and b) carrying a lot of low level resentment around over having no say in being forced into becoming an audience for thousands of pitches a day. Which they then work out on a billboard for a one-off chicken place. But overall, they really seemed to love it.

For more on Matt Bull and to see his previous work, visit DepartmentOfPersuasion.com.

Microsoft says a mouthful in this ad from Crispin Porter + Bogusky. And—surprise!—those words are spoken by Siri, Apple's voice assistant, from an iPad sitting next to a Windows 8 tablet. As the latter wordlessly flips through various features, Siri apologies for being unable to run those programs and perform the same functions. "I'm sorry, I don't update like that," she says. "I'm sorry, I can only do one thing at a time." I half expected a tax app to pop up on the tablet's screen and be greeted by an awkward silence from Siri. Maybe in the sequel. This is Microsoft's second spot in a week to deftly parody a rival's ad style (in this case, Apple's stylish minimalism), following its skewering of Google's Chrome browser. The tablet ad, which references the iPad mini's "Piano" spot from last October, is approaching 2 million views on YouTube in just a couple of days. There are some chatty personal assistants, like Indigo, available for Windows devices. But for my taste, the ultimate Microsoft PA voice would speak in measured, calm-yet-crazy cadences, providing sadly poignant commentary as the OS crashes into a sea of blue when its mind begins to go.

Here's a clever little gimmick. Australia's Cascade Brewery recently made a limited-edition batch of beer with special "experimental" hops from a secret garden in Tasmania's Derwent Valley. There was only enough for 5,000 cases, and so the brewer—with help from Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne—made an ad for it that can only be watched 5,000 times. Check it out below. The special embed code (which can take some time to load) includes a ticker that's counting down to zero. "Whether you caught the film in time or not, make sure you don't miss the beer," the brewer says on its website. Come on, people, we can make this thing obsolete within the hour if we put our minds to it. Via The Denver Egotist.

UPDATE: Video has been having trouble loading—either that or it hit 5,000 and ran.

Young & Rubicam is celebrating its 90th anniversary with a fun project in New York that, fittingly, brings old and new together. It's a billboard in Times Square that will feature—from 2 to 3:30 p.m. Thursday afternoon—a giant mosaic of tweets and Facebook posts from everyone who has posted a message with the hashtag #advertisingis. Thus, you still have a little while to get your social-media account up in lights with a post on that topic. The company doing the mosaic is Hyperactivate, which is part of Y&R's Spark Plug incubator program, which we wrote about last year. We'll have a photo of the billboard later this afternoon. For now, check out Y&R's 90th anniversary reel, featuring the work the agency is most proud of through the years.

#Advertisingis "…yes mom, we make commercials, like the ones you see on TV. No, mom, I didn't make that one."

— Javier O. Garcia (@OG_Jav) May 22, 2013