Hasta La Creative!

Both women and the word “erection” have been conspicuously absent from Viagra’s advertising — until BBDO’s most recent ad for Pfizer’s erectile dysfunction medication, that is.

A new spot features a woman with a British accent giving men an idea of what erectile dysfunction is like from the partner’s point of view. “It’s just you and your honey, the setting is perfect,” she begins, with beach scenery in the background. “You know what, plenty of guys have this issue, not just getting an erection but keeping it,” she goes on, sounding a bit like a partner reassuring a man having troubled in the bedroom. She goes on to offer Viagra as the solution (and says “erection” again), while touting it as something you only take when you need it. “If ED is stopping what you started, ask your doctor about Viagra,” she concludes, before the list of health risks is accompanied by a barrage of ridiculous phallic imagery, including flag poles, a ship’s mast off in the distance, a long pier extending into the ocean, etc.

It’s definitely a change in approach for Viagra, whose advertising previously avoided discussing erectile dysfunction directly (and explicitly the word “erection”). Perhaps the new approach is a sign that people are ready for more direct discussions about the issue, rather than the insinuations of past ads. Still, despite the new direction, the spot still comes across as somewhat awkward in tone and the phallic imagery at its conclusion seems a bit overkill. Then again, this isn’t a category that has seen any non-awkward advertising, so maybe we should just be thankful that there aren’t his and her bathtubs.

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Toronto agency Cossette has a new Canadian campaign for Cheerios celebrating togetherness.

The campaign is built around a 15-second broadcast spot, exploring the phenomenon of stray Cheerios attracting each other in the bowl. Cossette likens the phenomenon to “our need to connect,” ending with the lines “We all love to connect. That’s the Cheerios effect.” The emotional approach is extended online, via a series of heartstring-tugging videos telling the stories of connected individuals, such as cousins who are more like sisters, a married couple and a woman and her dog. We’ve included a couple of these, along with credits, after the jump. (more…)

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Cavalry has a new campaign for Coors centered around a 30-second anthem ad.

The spot opens up with man with goggles on staring at a bottle of Coors, presumably at a bottling plant, accompanied by the message “Coors Light is always cold filtered.” Then the scene shifts to a group of friends out at a bar and the message continues, “Because Friday” and the scene shifts again to a house party as we see “Leads to Saturday” on the screen. The spot goes on to suggest that “…every day deserves cold bottled” Coors Light. It’s all pretty straightforward and not a bad approach for a beer whose biggest selling point is how cold it is. Still, we can’t help but wish that they’d air this one as well. (more…)

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BBDO New York has received a fair deal of attention for its recent work for GE, including an Emmy nomination for wistfully surreal “Childlike Imagination.” More recent spots like “Ideas are Scary” and “The Boy Who Beeps” followed in a similar tone, celebrating ideas and innovation in imaginative ways. So the agency’s fake infomercial for GE Lighting, directed by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (better known as Tim & Eric) and starring Jeff Goldblum, comes right out of left field.

The over two minute-long mock infomercial (mockfomercial?), entitled “Enhance Your Lighting” sees Goldblum playing “Terry Quatro, Famous Person” as he hocks the GE Link light bulb, which offers “successful guy lighting at normal guy prices.” It’s also so easy to install, you can do it while painting a portrait of yourself. It should come as no surprise that the spot is all over the place with random humor, but Goldlum plays the part perfectly and when it’s on it can be pretty funny. And while it may seem like an odd approach for the brand, especially coming off BBDO’s recent spots, it should garner some attention for the new product as the YouTube views (currently at around 115,000) inevitably pile up. (more…)

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Amsterdam-based international agency Etcetera/DDB has a new integrated campaign for TNT, introducing the new tagline, “The People Network.”

For a 50-second broadcast spot, Etcetera/DDB created a delivery truck made out of people. As traffic builds up heading into a tunnel, the people break away and run with packages through the tunnel, reassembling once the traffic dies down, as a boy looks on amazed. The campaign took 100 days for Etcetera/DDB to create, from ideation to execution, working closely with TNT. It rolls out in eight key markets this week, with the broadcast effort supported by digital, OOH, direct, promotion, print and radio components, eventually rolling out in 30 different European countries.

Dick van der Lecq, MD of Etcetera said, “Previously customers bought products or brands. Nowadays customers consciously buy a company. The DNA and the people behind the brand. Talking to dozens of TNT employees showed us the only way to express their attitude towards clients: the human transport company. A ‘human truck’ captures that belief in the TV-commercial in one sight.”

Stick around after a jump for a look at the making of the human truck in the spot. (more…)

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Ogilvy & Mather New York teamed up with Miami sister shop David in a new campaign for Spotify entitled “#thatsongwhen.”

The campaign is built around the emotional impact of music and how songs become linked to certain life events and then trigger certain memories every time you heard them. In “Waterfalls,” for example, a man talks about TLC’s 90s hit and how he will always associate it with an unrequited crush from middle school whom he taped the song for. It’s a cute story, and one which many viewers will be able to relate to on some level, even if (like a lot of Spotify users) they have never actually used a cassette player.

Other spots in the campaign include a man walking out on a job he was just fired from to Whitesnake and a soundtrack to some good old-fashioned teen vandalism. Vine celebrities Vincent Marcus and Kenzie Nimmo get in on the action as well, through a campaign component on that platform. It’s a fun approach which makes a lot of sense for Spotify, and the campaign also includes a social extension via a hashtag people may actually feel compelled to use, (#thatsongwhen) since it offers a way for people to tell their own stories. The campaign just rolled out in the US and will expand to the UK and Germany, featuring localized content for each market.

“The realness of this campaign is the key point,” Adam Tucker, Ogilvy New York president, told Adweek. “We wanted to tap into the truth about music and it was really important to tap into real people and their feelings and the songs that inspire them.” (more…)

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mcgarrybowen launched a spot for Verzion, entitled “Mr. Amazing,” which celebrates the company’s XLTE service and football season.

In the spot, some rather fantastical football leads into a man screaming “Yeah” at a field day type event, accompanied by the voiceover, “Don’t just dream about being the hero, make it happen.” The man, it is revealed, is streaming a football game at his daughter’s event, much to the relief of another father present. “So be that guy,” Verizon implores at the end of the spot, “with Verizon XLTE.” It’s a bit of an odd sendoff, as the phrasing of “that guy’ the way they use it usually has a negative connotation. It’s almost as if they can’t decide whether they want to make fun of the protagonist (who screams “Yeah!” after the initial fantasy segment) or celebrate him as “Mr. Amazing” and instead the spot attempts to do both. (more…)

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72andSunny has a suggestive new ad for Carl’s Jr./Hardee’s to promote the chain’s new Mile High Bacon Thickburger.

The Paris Hilton-free spot, entitled “Propositioning,” begins with Israeli model and actress Bar Paly asking her boyfriend if he wants to join the “mile high club.” When he replies, “Not right now, babe,” she turns to the guy across the aisle, who happily accepts. Then proceeds to hand him a Mile High Bacon Thickburger and they both chow down, accompanied by a voiceover effectively saying “see what we did there?”

The brand has such a history of demanding overtly-sexual advertising that it would be silly to expect them to “grow up” overnight. Still, given the controversial 2012 Kate Upton spot, “Propositioning” feels relatively tame. (more…)

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Durham-based agency Baldwin&, Burt’s Bees’ agency of record, is bringing the brand to television for the first time in its 30-year history with a new campaign promoting its line of flavored lip balms.

The campaign is built around one 30-second and two 15-second ads utilizing whimsical animation to illustrate the variety of flavored lip balms from the brand. In the the 30-second spot, bees drop a tube of the brand’s original mint-flavored lip balm and a mint parachute opens. We then see grapefruit butterflies representing Burt’s pink grapefruit variety, chased by a honeycomb net on top a tube of honey-flavor. The scene unfolds to represent all of the brand’s flavored varieties, followed by the new “Uncap flavor” tagline.

“Lip balm is becoming something more like a gum product that brightens up consumers’ day,” Tad Kittredge, associate director of marketing at Burt’s Bees, explained to The New York Times. So while lip balm has traditionally been marketed to treat conditions like chapped lips,”…recently you’re starting to see a lot more of what I would call personality-driven and lifestyle-focused advertising, and we’re focused on the flavors as a way to reinforce the fun aspect of the brand,” Kittredge said.

In addition to the brand’s first television spots, which break Monday, the campaign also includes a print component, which uses similar imagery to promote the brand’s variety of flavors in full-page print ads. (more…)

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Carmichael Lynch has another new spot for Subaru, following the release of a campaign promoting the Subaru Outback just last week.

This time around, Carmichael Lynch has crafted a spot for the Subaru Legacy. In the 30-second ad, a teenage boy is distracted by girl-minded daydreams when the Legacy’s obstacle-detection technology comes to the rescue. While his daydreams are squeaky clean compared to what actual teenage boys fantasize about, it’s still a relatively realistic scenario which makes a lot of sense as an approach for a family car, whose customers are likely to have to lend to their adolescent kid at some point. So while there’s not enough truth here for a full laugh, there’s more than enough to effectively make a point about the Legacy’s safety. (more…)

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