Bonkers candy. Betamax. McRib sandwiches. Madonna. Michael Jackson. Reaganomics. Mountains of cocaine. … Man, the '80s rocked. Or sucked, depending on your point of view. Thanks to Mullen's ExploreThe80s.com, folks of a certain age can relive that glittery, gluttonous era in all its gaudy glory. (And Generations Y and Z can experience those years for the first time. Damn their youthful swagger and '90s nostalgia!) The highly interactive HTML5 site promotes National Geographic Channel's upcoming series The '80s: The Decade That Made Us by serving up all sorts of mini factoids about those years. There's little depth, yet the experience is addictive and kind of overwhelming … just like the '80s! The retro-futuristic, arcade-style audio and visuals are especially evocative, recalling a simpler, yet amazingly complex and malleable time when the entire world looked and sounded like Tron.
Perrier is the sexiest sparkling water you'll ever taste, says Perrier. It's so sexy, you'll find yourself transported to a secret party at an underground nightclub in Paris. There, you may participate in all of the activities commonly associated with drinking sexy sparkling water—namely, you may dance to the latest hip indie band, or play high-stakes poker with a bunch of cheating mean mugs in a back room, or witness a game of checkers in which the pieces are replaced with macarons (not macaroons). You may also accept a woman's invitation to cut off her dress with a pair of scissors, or peep in on a private lap dance being given to a man who can't see, or watch another woman tear off her dowdy skirt suit for the steamy bartender, because of course everybody is getting naked, because, duh, Perrier makes people get crazy. Nonsense aside, you really can do all of this. Or at least, your eyes can. Because Perrier and Ogilvy have graced you with Perrier Secret Place, a rabbit hole of an online choose-your-own-adventure game. In it, you'll bounce around the different viewpoints of attendees at the "party," as you go on a treasure hunt for the "golden woman" and "secret bottle." Find them, and you'll be entered to win some not-virtual and swank and off-the-chain party, somewhere like St. Tropez, or Rio during Carnival, or Miami Art Basel, or Ibiza. Why bother? Because presumably everybody there will be getting hammered on Perrier, and taking off their clothes, too. More clips and credits below.
CREDITS Client: Perrier Title: Perrier Secret Place Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Paris Chief Creative Officer: Chris Garbutt Creative Directors: Frederic Levron, Thierry Chiumino Copywriters: Baptiste Clinet, Nicolas Lautier, Florian Bodet Art Directors: Baptiste Clinet, Nicolas Lautier, Florian Bodet, Chris Rowson, Global Business Leader: Constance Capy Baudeau Account Supervisor: Stanislas Vert Film Producers: Hugo Diaz, Diane de Bretteville Digital Producers: Hugo Diaz, Cyril Duval, Sandra Petrus Production Company: Fighting Fish, Olivier Dormerc, Cyril Couve de Murvil, Adrien Moisson, Benjamin Przelspolewski Sound Design: Le Comptoir du Son, Franck Marchal, Alexandre Poirier Film Director: Laurent King Story Development: Olivier Domerc Story Editor: Benjamin Bloch Production Manager: Caroline Petruccelli Production Designer: Arnaud Roth Director of Photography: Frédéric Martial Wetter Line Producer: Vincent Rivier Location Manager: Timothée Talandier Main Title Music: Toys Client: Head of Marketing, Category: Muriel Koch Sparkling Brand Director: Fabienne Bravard International Brand Manager: Armelle Roulland Social Media, PR Strategy: Buzzman Chief Executive Officer: Georges Mohammed-Chérif Head of Social Media, PR: Hubert Munyazikwiye Social Media Manager: Nicolas David
Can salad dressing be sexy? Well, Kraft will settle for zesty. A new campaign for Kraft Zesty Italian dressing from the Playa del Rey, Calif., office of Being features a shirtless male chef whose catchphrase is "Let's get zesty." Slyly suggestive and playful, the character feels like a cross between Old Spice's Isaiah Mustafa and the skillet guy from ads for another Kraft brand, Velveeta. In one new spot, the chef keeps adding Kraft Zesty Italian to a hot skillet, with flames shooting higher and higher each time. "How zesty do you want it?" he asks. "A little? A little more? How about a lot more?" The flames then consume his white V-neck T-shirt to expose smoldering abs and pecs. The sassy cook also will appear on Bravo's Watch What Happens Live as a guest chef and bartender. Other elements in the campaign, which breaks today, include a website, getmezesty.com, and electronic cards or "Zestygrams" that can be sent via social media platforms. A Kraft rep says the campaign is "targeted toward our salad dressings consumer, who we define as a mainstream foodie. They enjoy cooking and creative expression, and this campaign speaks to them in a way that recognizes she is an individual in addition to being a mom."
Roaches, rats and other pests had the starring roles in Orkin's campaign from The Richards Group in recent years. And while those spots were amusing, in a creepy way, it's the Orkin man himself who takes center stage in the new campaign, which broke today. And a resourceful man he is. Each spot shows a different Orkin man in some kind of undesirable position—wedged into a crawlspace with rats scurrying around; hanging from a tree above a parade of ants; suspended halfway up a wall to see cockroaches inside an air vent. "To catch a pest, you've got to think like a pest," he says in each ad. And then, you pretty much have to act like a pest. As this campaign suggests, that's not something most people want to do, or would even be able to do. The tagline is: "Pest control down to a science," which makes it seem even less DIY—a sly way of getting people to call Orkin instead.
Since every third ad has to be an Apple parody now, Carlsberg makes fun of Apple Store product launches in this TV spot for Somersby Cider from agency Fold7. Some of the computer jargon here works surprisingly well for drinking, but there's no forgiving the apple puns. While we're on the subject, "Less apps, more apples" doesn't make sense as a tagline since they're comparing different products. Apples and oranges.
Automobile test drives have been getting a bit more interesting lately. On the heels of the hugely popular Jeff Gordon video for Pepsi MAX comes this new campaign from Britain for the Renault Clio, in which unsuspecting drivers (guys in one spot, girls in another) get a sudden, unexpected dose of France when, prompted by the salesman, they push a "Va Va Voom" button on the dash. The interlude starts off romantic—a wheeled-in backdrop of the Eiffel Tower, lovers smooching, violins playing, roses and baguettes all around—but soon gets more salacious, as the drivers are treated to scantily clad hotties of the opposite sex gyrating around the car. Surprising everyday people during their mundane lives is all the rage in ads lately. This one certainly attempts to check all the boxes for virality. Scorch London and Unruly produced it. More credits below.
CREDITS Client: Renault Media Agency: Manning Gottlieb OMD Media Planners: Laura Quy, Lauren Fisher Production Company: Scorch London Video Distribution: Unruly
I've had way worse airline seatmates than the annoying, anthropomorphized, Jinx-playing serving of meat and mashed potatoes depicted in Energy BBDO's new commercial for Orbit gum. Beats getting stuck with ad-sales types ranting about CPMs, or bloggers with their sweaty palms and sad eyes. A second spot, set at a race track, features an outsized, whiny helping of nachos that would've been great as a '70s Dr. Who villain, intent on conquering the world by giving mankind indigestion. These latest helpings in the "Don't let food hang around" campaign are amusing—the costumes and makeup are, as always, fantastic—but they don't quite match the inspired culinary absurdity of that earlier spot in which a giant pita sandwich answers its cellphone "Falafel!" and ends the call with a deadpan, "Love you too." Classic! The challenge moving forward is to keep the campaign fresh, lest the talking-food joke repeats on you and spoils the fun. Credits below.
CREDITS Client: Orbit (Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co.)
Agency: Energy BBDO Chief Creative Officer: Dan Fietsam Executive Vice President, Head of Integrated Production: Rowley Samuel Senior Vice President, Group Creative Director: Leon Wilson Creative Director, Copywriter: Miller Jones Creative Director, Art Director: Aaron Pendleton Senior Producer: Kevin James Vice President, Senior Account Director: Pete Ruest Account Supervisor: Brian Sisson Senior Account Executive: Niki Shah Print Producer: Liz Miller-Gershfield
Production Company: Recommended Media Director: Chris Woods Executive Producer: Phillip Detchmendy Founder, Chief Executive Officer: Stephen Dickstein Line Producer: Darrin Ball Director of Photography: Neil Shapiro Production Designer: Alison Sadler
Visual Effects: Legacy EFX Visual Effects Supervisor: Alan Scott Visual Effects Supervisor: Vance Hartwell Visual Effects Assistant: Lyn-Del Pederson
Editing: White House Post Editor: Carlos Lowenstein Assistant Editor: Kenan Legg Producer: JoJo Scheerer
Visual Effects: The Mill Executive Producer: Jared Yeater Visual Effects Supervisor: Phil Crowe Visual Effects Supervisor: Iwan Zwarts Flame Artist: Melissa Graff Flame Artist: Randy McEntee
Here's a fun toy for obsessive baseball geeks: the new "Mission Control" installation at MLB's "Fan Cave" space in downtown New York. There, each year, a selection of the sport's most die-hard fans are paid to watch every game and crank out social-media content about the experience, part of a Lord-of-the-Flies-esque competition to get to the World Series. This year, the space also features a custom multi-screen computer rig, built by Breakfast, that's designed to pull in and display a wide range of data about the upcoming baseball season. The smaller screens on the left and right include video feeds of stadiums from American League and National League teams (even when the games aren't in progress). The toggles on the bottom calls up information like weather conditions and wind speeds at each location, as well as relevantly tagged Instagram and Twitter posts about the ballparks and their home teams. The dashboard meters measure stats like total games played and total number of hits for the season. The central monitor connects to a camera that can be used to record and broadcast video clips of the sports stars and other celebrities who stop by for concerts and other events, and of the "Fan Cave" marketing program's less famous participants. Why? Because all you've ever wanted since you were a little kid was to be a professional baseball commentator and astronaut at the same time. If that doesn't ring true, you're probably not invited.
Tiger Woods is a golf nerd, right? Right. But in fantasy video-game land, he destroys you and all your hoodlum friends, fake kung-fu style, because you're trying to steal his trophies. His charming geezer of a sidekick, Arnold Palmer, meanwhile, manages to seem much more badass, rocking his tournament hardware inside his blazer like he's fencing gold watches. Because while Woods is busy being all "intense," ice-cold Palmer clearly just couldn't, you know, care less. For EA Sports's new Tiger Woods PGA Tour 14. Agency: Heat.
On its website, creative agency mOcean in Los Angeles lists advertising, marketing, branding and production as its four areas of expertise. But I think you will agree: The single thing at which the mOcean guys are ludicrously skilled is shooting baskets at the mini hoop that hangs in their office. The agency claims that absolutely no special effects were used in the making of the video below, which stars agency writers Burke Campbell, Jon Wiley and Bryan Dobrik (made with the as-yet-unrealized hope of having it appear on Tosh.0). Rather, it simply required a whole lot of takes. Lots of agencies can promise great ad work in L.A. Perhaps only one can make a no-look double-bank shot from 20 feet away. A few more credits after the jump.
CREDITS Julie Pittman – for her help in writing nicknames and overall support Andrew Wright – for letting the guys use the Go Pro Cassie Tregellas – for shooting the intros Wesley Nisbett – obviously for cutting the hell outta the damn thing Katie Onuma – for making awesome graphics Sanaz Lavaedian – for helping the boys find and then license the music
Do you remember what life was like in Manhattan in 1993? The rats, the graffiti, the parties, the drugs, the … pay phones. Fear not. The East Village-based ad agency Droga5 and the New Museum have teamed up to give you a glimpse back in time—using that suddenly resurgent old communications device in the process.
Agency and client have launched "Recalling 1993," offering a raw, unfiltered listen to what was going on around New York City 20 years ago. The campaign turns pay phones into geo-located time capsules—dial (855) FOR-1993 from any pay phone in Manhattan, and you will hear a personal account of what was going down in that particular area in 1993, a pivotal year in the city's history. The recordings offer memories of everything from the World Trade Center bombing in the Financial District to the club culture at Limelight in Chelsea to the opening of Angels in America in Midtown.
The effort promotes a new exhibit at the museum, "NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star," which is running through May 26. There are more than 4.5 hours of content in total—over 150 recorded oral histories from real New Yorkers—so hopefully you have some extra time on your hands. See more in the video below, and listen to a sampling of the stories at the link above. Credits below.
CREDITS Client: New Museum Campaign: "Recalling 1993" Agency: Droga5, New York Creative Chairman: David Droga Executive Creative Directors: Ted Royer, Nik Studzinski Associate Creative Directors: Ray Del Savio, Jerry Hoak Copywriters: Colin Lord, Bryan Wolff Art Directors: Jen Lu, Daniel Sumarna Head of Integrated Production: Sally-Ann Dale Executive Producer: Scott Chinn Executive Interactive Producer: Lindsey Slaby Producer: Jennifer McKenzie Production Assistant: Goldie Robbens Technical Director: David Justus Creative Technology Lead: Fran Devinney User Experience Director: Kathrin Hoffman User Experience Designer: Eileen Tang Associate Digital Producer: Ian Graetzer Senior Print Producer: Jeannie O'Toole Print Production Assistant: Annick Thomas Brand Strategist: Matthew Gardner Strategy Intern: P.J. Mongell Researchers: Amelia Barry, Sarah Gancher, Bo Jacober Group Account Director: Olivia Legere Account Director: Caitlin Chandler Account Manager: Louisa Cronan
Considering how much you hear about drones these days, it's surprising we haven't seen more marketing stunts using remote-controlled hoverbots. But Paramount Pictures pulled off an interesting trick this weekend by using glowing quadrotors to create a Star Trek logo over London. The promotion, for the franchise's latest film, Star Trek Into Darkness, was timed to mark the end of the World Wildlife Fund's annual Earth Hour, which encourages cities to turn off nonessential lights for environmental awareness. As the hour of darkness ended, the 30 drones' LED lights (charged through renewable energy sources) turned on to form the insignia of Star Trek's Starfleet. Created by Ars Electonica Futurelab and Ascending Technologies, the result is pretty impressive—when viewed from the right angle, at least. Check out a video below, and enjoy the moment at 1:20 when two of the drones at the bottom of the frame seem to collide, sending one plummeting out of the sky.
If you've been under a rock, violence against women in India has been all over the news since last December following the horrific gang rape of a young woman who had the audacity to take a bus. She died from her injuries, sparking protests across India. So now when I tell you Ford has had to apologize for ads created by JWT India that depict women tied up in the back of a Ford Figo, you won't be quite so surprised. The ads never ran, but were picked up when the Internet, always on the lookout for something to be offended about, found them on Ads of the World. In one illustration, Paris Hilton has tied up the Kardashians and stuck them in her boot. In another, Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi has roped himself three scantily clad women. The tagline: "Leave your worries behind with Figo's extra-large boot." For those who say some people are just too sensitive to hilarious cartoon violence against women, let me explain a few things: 1) It's not less violent because it's a cartoon. 2) It's not less violent if the violence is perpetrated by another woman. 3) It's about time people got upset over casual violence toward women, which is all over the place. The sad thing is that it has to be triggered by extreme events for people to notice what's been there all along. 4) Yes, there are ads that show violence against men (though they're a lot fewer). No, people are not saying violence against men is acceptable in ads just because they're saying violence against women is unacceptable. 5) Yes, it's obviously intended as a joke. But jokes exist in context, and right now, it's really, really, superbly unfunny. It's just too bad for Ford that the brand will suffer for ads it didn't even approve. It's a good reminder that the Internet doesn't know the difference.
Advertising has been obsessed lately with scaring the crap out of people. So here, for your Friday enjoyment, is a more benign prank. Target, which is the exclusive retail partner for the release of Justin Timberlake's new album, got 20 of the pop star's biggest fans together for a commercial shoot. They thought they would just be singing a Timberlake song for the ad. They didn't realize the great and powerful JT himself would actually be there. Check out the spot below, and a behind-the-scenes video after the jump. All the reactions are genuine. Decent work by Deutsch in Los Angeles—though to be honest, the bar for this kind of thing was set by David Beckham and Adidas last summer. If you don't leave someone sobbing tears of joy, maybe you haven't gone far enough.
Heidi Klum is the latest person who doesn't eat Hardee's/Carl's Jr. to film an ad for the fast-food chain. The spot, from 72andSunny, which spoofs The Graduate for whatever reason, has Klum chowing into a Jim Beam Bourbon burger in front of a younger man (and his pathetic attempt at a mustache) while the voiceover sort of compares the experience to losing one's virginity. Gross. What they should compare it to is unhinging your jaw like a boa constrictor. That burger is as big as Heidi's head. Beyond that, ads like this are destined to underperform, in a way. As an audience, either we don't pay attention to the burger because of Heidi's fabulous body, or we do pay attention to it and, well, that's weird and off-putting. If Morgan Spurlock taught us anything, it's that fast food can't be sexy. Period.
The taxicabs in Denver are a bit hornier than usual, and it's all science's fault. Carmichael Lynch put ornamental mammoth tusks on a fleet of cabs to drum up attention for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science's "Mammoths and Mastodons: Titans of the Ice Age" exhibit. The cool thing about this idea is that when the exhibit ends, they can keep the tusks and do cab jousts for charity.
If your agency has a little extra desk space and would like to give it a higher purpose than storing empty binders, you might be interested in the Free Desk Here project. The international effort, created by the London-based Open Studio Club, provides aspiring creative professionals with free workspace at willing agencies. The squatter creatives do their own work, not agency projects. The goal is to give up-and-coming talent the facilities, tools and camaraderie to create professional-caliber work. Here are the rules:
Desks are 100 percent free. There's no charge. Guests are there to work on their own projects, not the agency's work. Agencies can end things at any point. WiFi and other facilities like the kitchen, toilet and windows are included. The desk is available only during agency hours. Guests should not invite anyone into the agency. Meeting rooms are off limits to guests. Use of stationery, printers, telephones, etc., are not included. Guests might be asked to sign a confidentiality agreement. Guests shouldn't play their own music. Guests should respect the studio culture. Guests should not remove anything from the studio. Guests might be asked to meet the agency before being offered the desk. Guests should be open to share ideas and talk about their work. Guests should be actively working on a project and attend the agency daily. The free desk is not a short cut to getting a job at the agency.
Interested in offering up space or browsing for a desk to jockey? Check out the Free Desk Here website for details and photos of participating shops.
Floyd Hayes, the former executive creative director of creative agency Cunning, includes a quote from a 2007 AdFreak story in materials touting his new venture, the World's Fastest Agency—although when my colleague David Kiefaber described the guerilla advertising veteran with a penchant for self-promotion as "pregnant with marketing genius," it was with anvil-heavy irony, and perhaps some confusion about which gender is able to conceive. Back then, Hayes was offering to think really hard about a client's products at least once an hour for a week in exchange for $10,000. Now, he's hawking a quick-turnaround service—selling concepts for $999. Send that amount via PayPal, DM your creative brief to @FastestAgency, and he'll issue a 140-character response within 24 hours. "Make the logo bigger" and "Put the CEO in the commercial" easily fit the space and would probably satisfy most clients. But Hayes offers this example, based on a real project he helmed at Cunning in London: "Brief: Gain media and buzz for our park-anywhere small car. Idea: Attach replica cars to landmark city buildings." Hmmm, that sounds like a $997 solution to me. And I don't see anything about a money-back guarantee. The World's Smallest Ad Agency should piggyback on Hayes's publicity by offering next-day ideas for 99 cents. Via PSFK.
UPDATE: Hayes tells AdFreak that the nonrefundable $999 is actually a plus for clients because "they will be forced to FOCUS on their challenge and get the problem to its essential core. Yes, they could do this without paying but money makes it happen." (The emphasis is his, so you clients better FOCUS!)
"Just because I fart at parties now and then, it doesn't make me a farter." That's how I plan to begin my memoirs, and it's also a key line in the Ontario Ministry of Health's "Quit the Denial" campaign from BBDO Toronto, directed by the Perlorian Brothers. We meet a gassy lass who lets fly when partying with friends, dancing or chatting up guys. She asks one dude coquettishly, "Do you want to go outside for a fart?" (Where's this noxious angel been all my life?) She is, of course, in denial, just like people who claim to be "social smokers" and insist they're not addicts. (A companion spot features "social nibblers" who mooch food from other people's plates. But there's no farting in that one, so who cares?) It's a splendidly sophomoric approach and definitely diverting, though I wonder if it's ultimately too light and insubstantial, lacking substance—like, oh I don't know, a passing wind, perhaps? Besides, if there were no more smokers, who's going to add some spark to these farty parties by lighting a match?
Just watch this astounding Tide commercial from Saatchi & Saatchi in New York. It came out in January, so quietly that we didn't even notice it. And that's the beauty of it. See the dad? He's an ordinary dad. I'll let that sink in. He's not a buffoon, the butt of a joke, a clueless child who needs his wife to take care of him. He's not afraid of washing his daughter's clothes, or even a guy who has to supplement his masculinity by doing pull-ups and crunches after he handles a princess dress, like Tide's overcompensating dad-mom from 2011. He's just a guy with a daughter—who also bucks gender roles, by the way, by managing to be a messy tomboy even while she's wearing a princess dress. Judging by the YouTube comments, parents are loving it. Tide deserves a standing ovation for this bold statement in the movement to take back fatherhood.
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