Raise your brushes and rollers to toast Lithuania's McCann Vilnius, which recently packaged France's famed Beaujolais Nouveau in limited-edition paint cans for a fun self-promotion.
McCann says it wanted to show clients "that we are constantly reinventing ourselves and looking for a fresh perspective."
The creative concept began with a discussion about how the annually anticipated Beaujolais stains drinkers' teeth and lips purple. So the paint cans include a color chart showing how much you'll need to drink to achieve a specific hue.
For the promo, bags filled with wine were placed inside the tins, so there's no fear of a metallic taste. If you're in Lithuania, pick up a few when you head out to paint the town red!
Click over to the site to zoom in and scroll around the comprehensive chart. It's organized by varieties of beer, with examples of brands for each type. Says the company: "This wall map is the most complete charting of beer ever, breaking down ales and lagers into over 100 delicious styles from hoppy IPAs to fruity lambics, and including over 500 individual beers as notable examples of each style as well as glassware recommendations."
Woodstock Bourbon's ad showing its hometown's enthusiasm for the brand is pretty funny (well, besides that "Barrellel Parking" sign—groan). But it's right on the brink of being one of those fake homespun liquor ads that Henry Rollins used to laugh at, what with the fiddle music and rural aesthetics. It's like O Brother Where Art Thou? but less subtle.
Perhaps this is because it was made by Australian agency CumminsRoss for the Australian market, and so it needs to show a somewhat cartoony version of Kentucky.
Still, you can't deny the funny visuals. Perhaps Mila Kunis can take a day trip from the Beam distillery in Clermont and learn how to barrel roll like this.
Credits below.
CREDITS Client: Asahi Premium Beverages General Manager, Marketing: Kate Dowd Woodstock Brand Manager: Kelly Jones
Creative: CumminsRoss Chief Executive Officer: Sean Cummins Executive Creative Director: Jason Ross Copywriter: Chris Ellis Art Director: Aaron Lipson Managing Director: Chris Jeffares Group Account Director: Hayden Isaacs Account Director: Damiano Dipietro Account Manager: Jessica Chamberlain Agency Producer: Susannah George
Media: CumminsRoss Chief Media, Innovation Officer: Kirsty Muddle Media Manager: Tom Johnson
Production Company: Guilty Producer: Jason Byrne Director: Tony Rogers Director of Photography: Shelley Farthing-Dawe Postproduction: The Butchery, The Refinery Offline Editor: Tim Parrington Online Editor: Eugene Richards Grade: Vincent Taylor Sound Design: Flagstaff Studios Sound: Paul Le Couteur Stills Photographer: Christopher Tovo
The new face of Jim Beam, the iconic bourbon brand, might not be quite what you expect. While a rough-around-the-edges cowboy or country rock star might seem to fit the bill—Jim Beam has used Kid Rock at times in the past—its newest spokesperson is the petite and beautiful Mila Kunis.
The 30-year-old actress, who says she is a big fan of bourbon in general, is featured in two new 30-second Beam ads, as well as five other videos ranging in length from 15 seconds to more than three minutes.
The first commercial features a series of quasi-historical events (the transition to the '60s is a little visually jarring), and in the second, Kunis is seen branding her own barrel of bourbon. She narrates, and smolders, in both. "Make history" is the tagline of the new global campaign.
The supporting videos are pretty fun. Save for "Mila Kunis & Hibernation," which feels a little bit too much like a production of a scene in Indiana Jones, the other shorts are funny and quirky and a little less serious than the two main spots. And if you find yourself feeling the need to whisper "Shut up, Meg," it's because Kunis—no stranger to voiceover work—has been the voice of Meg Griffin on Family Guy for the past 14 years.
Nice move on Jim Beam's part in an attempt to appeal to millennials. The campaign is by FutureWorks, a new entity comprised of three regional Beam creative agencies—StrawberryFrog in New York, The Works in Sydney, Australia, and Jung von Matt, Hamburg, Germany.
How does the world's oldest tequila maker introduce a brand-spanking-new website? By keeping one foot firmly in the past.
McCann New York has launched a new site for Jose Cuervo that's actually five sites in one. In addition to its new site for 2014, the brand also imagines what the brand website would have looked like in 1795, 1880, 1945 and 1974.
"Fully actualizing the concept in an authentic way required researching the language and design tropes of each chosen year, and then presenting what we needed to say about Cuervo through those stylistic realities," the agency says.
It's a fun idea, and 1945 and 1974 are both particularly groovy. The only downside, in fact, is that the 2014 version feels visually staid by comparison.
Screen shots and credits below.
1795 website:
1880 website:
1945 website:
1974 website:
2014 website:
CREDITS Client: Cuervo, Proximo Spirits Client: Elwyn Gladstone Agency: McCann, New York
Chief Creative Officers: Tom Murphy, Sean Bryan Group Creative Director: Mat Bisher Design Director: Brad Blondes Senior Art Director: Elinor Beltrone Copywriter: Sarah Lloyd Designer: Ledi Lalaj
Production Chief Production Officer: Nathy Aviram Executive Integrated Producer: Catherine Eve Patterson Senior Integrated Producers: Geoff Guinta, Jill Toloza Associate Producer: Lauren Bauder
Production Company: Transistor Studios Executive Creative Director: Aaron Baumle Executive Producer: Damon Meena Head of Production: Jesse Kurnit Creative Director: Jamie Rockaway Art Director: Geoff Keough Developer: Brian Hersey Designers: Ryan Weibust, Diana Park, Mauricio Leon, Edgardo Moreno, Tesia Jurkiewicz, Chris Murray and Carolyn Frisch
Scotch whisky brand Bell's and ad agency King James might just lift your spirits with this South African ad with an elderly man struggling to overcome his illiteracy so he can celebrate a family milestone.
Director Greg Gray of Velocity Films employs a restrained cinematic style to show "The Reader" diligently practicing his A-B-Cs at every opportunity. There are some deft details: Our hero initially misspells "Kat" while playing Scrabble but gets it right later on, and he places cards reading "Kettle," "Oven" and "Taps" on corresponding objects around his home.
The literacy angle might sound like a stretch, but the idea of celebrating personal triumphs by toasting with Bell's feels on target, and the heartfelt acting and storytelling are strong enough to yield a potent emotional payoff.
Indeed, good scotch should leave you with a warm feeling inside.
BBDO New York is on a roll with Guinness. Following last year's "Basketball" spot, truly one of the best of 2013, here's a great new commercial starring U.S. biathletes Tracy and Lanny Barnes. If you don't know their story, just watch the commercial—it's remarkably affecting, given that it's mostly just a static image and some text coming and going.
The spot is on YouTube for now, but will be pulled off the site at midnight Wednesday (Jan. 29), Guinness confirmed. That's because Guinness is not an Olympic sponsor and cannot air advertising featuring Olympic athletes between Jan. 30 and Feb. 26.
Credits below.
UPDATE: The ad was made private on YouTube last night, but you can still see it, for now, at the non-YouTube embed below.
CREDITS Client: Guinness Spot: "Barnes Sisters"
Agency: BBDO, New York Chief Creative Officer, Worldwide: David Lubars Chief Creative Officer, New York: Greg Hahn Executive Creative Director: Tom Darbyshire Associate Creative Director, Copywriter: Jon Yasgur Associate Creative Director, Art Director: Jim Cancelliere
Director of Integrated Production: Dave Rolfe Producer: Whitney Collins
Editorial, Animation: My Active Driveway Creative Director: Steve Choo
Music: Andrew Knox Music Music Producer: Loren Parkins
Lakemaid Beer, a beer created from scratch by ad agency Pocket Hercules and sold throughout the Midwest, put out a fun new ad that explains who their primary demographic is—ice fishermen wearing dorky hats. It also shows the brew's cool new beer-delivery system—courtesy of drones.
Sadly, the awesome quadcopter delivery isn't a service they're actually providing, but there are seasonally appropriate icons on the underside of each bottle cap (fish, a weather condition, snippets of fishing lore, etc.) that are part of a cryptic bottle cap game.
As neat as this ad is, I wish they'd focused more on the bottle caps instead of the cool thing they're not doing. Via The Denver Egotist.
God bless Newcastle Brown Ale. As much as we all enjoy advertising when it's good, so much of it—as Newcastle would say—is bollocks. The British brewer (with help from Droga5) has always excelled at skewering irritatingly transparent marketing tactics, and now it sets its sights on the Big Kahuna itself—the Super Bowl.
The faux teasers below launch an "If We Made It" campaign, celebrating the Super Bowl commercial the brewer would have made—if it had been able to afford one. The deadpan copy is spot on, and as ambush marketing goes, the whole campaign is hilariously done as it takes down the overblown process of Super Bowl ad rollouts.
Gird your loins for more content to roll out into the middle of next week.
The world-traveling Molson Beer Fridge became famous for being exclusive—when it visited European cities earlier this year, only people with a Canadian passport could open it. Now, the fridge is back, and being even nicer to one Canadian guy, with help from his friends.
This new spot, from agency Rethink, tells the tale of two friends who surprise a third friend—a rabid hockey fan who for some reason has fled Canada for the remote Gili Islands in Indonesia—by bringing him a red fridge of his own to keep in his little hut, which may or may not have the electricity to run it. The friends also bring a satellite system so the other guy catch the Olympic Games this winter.
It's a fine stunt, as far as it goes, though the surprise isn't quite as delightful as the premise of the earlier video (which was apparently the second most viewed commercial online in Canada this year). Plus, the emotion remains mostly bottled up. Unlike some other heartwarming ads, where people weep only, the fridge recipient here claims he's actually "sweating" and not in fact getting weepy over his buddies' thoughtful gesture.
A 30-second version of the ad will begin airing in Canada on Dec. 26.
CREDITS Client: Molson Canadian Title: "The Beer Fridge: Project Indonesia"
Agency: Rethink Creative Directors: Aaron Starkman, Chris Staples, Dré Labre, Ian Grais Art Directors: Aaron Starkman Joel Holtby, Vince Tassone, Christian Buer Writers: Aaron Starkman, Mike Dubrick, Account Director: Ashley Eaton Broadcast Producer: Dave Medlock
Production Company: Untitled Films Director: Tyler Williams Executive Producer: Lexy Kavluk Line Producer: Tom Evelyn Director of Photography: John Houtman
Postproduction: Rooster Post Executive Producer: Melissa Kahn Editor: Marc Langley Assistant Editor: Nick Greaves
Postproduction: Fort York VFX Music, Sound Design: RMW Music
No good deed comes without a little punishment. That's Newcastle Brown Ale's "No Bollocks" take on responsibility messaging, judging by a recent stunt in Los Angeles orchestrated by Droga5.
The brand is introducing a new beer, Newcastle Cabbie Black Ale, and decided to promote it by driving drinkers home in black British taxis, on one condition—that they advertise the new brew through an enormous taxi-top megaphone for the entire ride. You can see footage from the rides below. The passengers are seen largely reading from a script, although there's some improvising going on, so perhaps the driver was also a copywriter.
Newcastle somewhat proudly declares that there were 67 noise complaints, but it was worth it to get 54 beer drinkers home safely. ("Don't be a wanker. Take a bloody cab," says copy on the back of the taxi.) The brand is also taking the taxi campaign further through a partnership with Taxi Magic, the nation's leading taxi app. In the more than 60 cities where Taxi Magic rides are available, Newcastle Cabbie point-of-sale displays will offer $5 toward a cab fare booked through the app.
"We're not exactly pioneers in declaring drinking and driving to be utter bollocks, but we're proud of the fact that we're putting our money where our mouth is and offering people a tangible incentive to enjoy our product safely," says Brett Steen, brand manager at Newcastle Brown Ale.
Bad news for grinches who still hate ugly holiday sweaters despite their newfound ironic popularity: Budweiser U.K. is adding some charm to the practice of capitalizing on them.
The beer brand has created a "Knitbot"—what it calls a tweet-powered knitting machine—to knit ugly sweaters for designated drivers. Every tweet tagged with the hashtag #jumpersfordes (jumper being British for sweater, and des being short for designated drivers) causes the machine to knit a little more. Everything about this—the grasping for relevance in social media, the uninvited participation in a tradition not directly connected to any brand—should be annoying. But it's hard to argue against celebrating non-drunk-drivers. People always get sloppy wasted during the holidays, after all, so why not foster good will—and look less mercenary—by focusing on the chaperones?
A quick Twitter search for #jumpersfordes returns only a few dozen mentions since Nov. 27. Now, the brand plans to hand out the sweaters to actual designated drivers via a contest on its Facebook page. Sure, it's not the first holiday campaign to tie in Twitter, knitting and wooly giveaways. But the campaign's real problem is that the sweaters aren't near ugly enough. Coke Zero's are way worse.
And the award for best disembodied mouth in a commercial goes to … Australian beer Tooheys Extra Dry for this memorably unnerving 45-second spot from BMF Sydney and director Hamish Rothwell.
Popping loose from a dude's jaws and plopping down on a countertop during a party, the garrulous gob promptly mouths off at its understandably speechless owner. "You made me do things, bad things, I can't forget," says the mouth, referring to things like sucking on women's toes, eating mystery meat and kissing dogs' mouths. "I need something back." That something, of course, is the taste of Tooheys Extra Dry.
"The new ad is sure to grab attention and drive talkability," says marketing director Matt Tapper. "It's provocative, but that is what's great about Tooheys Extra Dry as a brand. We can be a little more adventurous with our creative."
The White Agency assisted with digital elements, and the campaign stretches across TV, online and outdoor, with the animated mouth as its focus. That pugnacious piehole was created by Alt.VFX, which sent a horde of deer to a rave in a memorable Tooheys spot a while back. The mouth is like something out of a David Cronenberg film—amusing and disturbing at the same time. This is very dark humor, and whether praised or panned, I expect it will set tongues wagging.
A dreary rainstorm and a friend's apparent death might not seem like promising raw materials for an uplifting ad. But this one takes place in Ireland, so it all makes sense. The two-and-a-half minute spot for Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey was made by New York ad agency Opperman Weiss and directed by Laurence Dunmore of RSA Films. It features four friends all dressed up and trudging through the gloriously bleak countryside of Ireland, bottle of booze in hand, seeming to eulogize a fallen friend by singing the Irish folk song "A Parting Glass." Lovely stuff. Fast Company has an interview with creative director Paul Opperman, who says the men recorded the song in Saint Kevin's, the stone church in the film, known for its great acoustics. The film tries to capture what Irish music is like, he adds—"that sense of both melancholy and victory at the same time."
CREDITS William Grant & Sons Marketing Ltd Shane Hoyne – Global Brand Director
Opperman Weiss Paul Opperman – Writer Jeff Weiss – Art Director Mark Johnston – Executive Producer
Duotone Creative Director/Arranger: Jack Livesey Vocal Arranger: Eamon O'Leary Executive Producer: David Leinheardt
Bug Edit Andre Betz Editor Caitlin Grady Executive Producer
La marque Heineken a récemment présenté à l’occasion de son 140ème anniversaire The Sub, une machine de bière à domicile dessinée par le designer Marc Newson. Un objet au design rétro-futuriste inspiré des sous-marins qui sera disponible à partir du 1er trimestre 2014. A découvrir en images dans la suite.
L’abus d’Alcool est dangereux pour la santé. A consommer avec modération.
R/GA London showcases a large, intricate retro-scientific device that mixes ingredients and pours a perfect glass of Baileys in this spot, which helps introduce a line extension infused with Belgian chocolate for the venerable Diageo brand.
The short online film, Liquid Alchemy—the Art of Baileys Chocolat Luxe, created without any CGI, channels the spirit of Honda's classic "Cog" ad from a decade ago. This machine/factory/Rube Goldberg-esque approach is overused in ads and a tad too familiar for my taste. Still, this one's stylish and could find an audience.
A trippy companion TV spot from ad agency 101 shows chocolate, cream and whiskey flowing and swirling, coalescing into an iPhone 5S—wait, sorry, no, coalescing into a wraithlike woman. It's visually impressive, though the female face that bobs amid the liquor and ice looks a bit like a drowning victim. Waiter, I'll have the Kahlua instead!
Afin de célebrer les 140 ans de la marque, Heineken a imaginé la Next Gallery, une péniche transformée en sous-marin présentée sur la Seine, voulant ainsi plonger les visiteurs dans un univers rétro-futuriste, rappelant les origines de la marque. Une création inattendue et visuelle présentée le 10 octobre dernier.
« L’abus d’Alcool est dangereux pour la santé. A consommer avec modération. Bateau-sous-marin de la Cie Transport Culturel Fluvial-Cargoplume »
« L’abus d’Alcool est dangereux pour la santé. A consommer avec modération. Bateau-sous-marin de la Cie Transport Culturel Fluvial-Cargoplume »
« L’abus d’Alcool est dangereux pour la santé. A consommer avec modération. Bateau-sous-marin de la Cie Transport Culturel Fluvial-Cargoplume »
« L’abus d’Alcool est dangereux pour la santé. A consommer avec modération. Bateau-sous-marin de la Cie Transport Culturel Fluvial-Cargoplume »
Steinlager, New Zealand's biggest export beer, is concerned about the growing trend at house parties and fraternities everywhere that starts off with people drinking and ends up with people drawing genitalia on the face of the first of the passed-out-wasted.
"Be the artist, not the canvas" (aka, "Party hard, but not too hard, y'all"), Steinlager urges in print ads and a YouTube video from DDB in Auckland. The spot serves as a PSA to partygoers everywhere by showing cleverly, strategically and mortifyingly placed drawings on bodies. A bra on a topless dude. A monocle on a face. A face on a bald head.
But wait, "Be the artist"? So Steinlager wants us to draw on unconscious people, but not be drawn on ourselves? I'm confused. I may need a drink.
Now, on to questions of heavier significance: Where do people get all these Sharpies when they're out partying?
CREDITS Client: Steinlager Agency: DDB, Auckland, New Zealand Executive Creative Director: Andy Fackrell Creative Director: Chris Schofield Art Director: Gavin Siakimotu Copywriter: Natalie Knight Account Director: Susie Darling Photographer: Troy Goodall Account Manager: Jonathan Rea Photographer, Producer: Michele Richards
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
