Hasta La Creative!

Do not adjust your monitors: Busta Rhymes is repping Toyota.

In July, we discussed the automotive industry’s desire to distance itself from the famous “Soccer Mom” demographic. The solution to that problem came, in this case, via Mr. Trevor Tahiem Smith, Jr. and the proven “white people rapping” formula:

While the video does have more than half a million views at the moment, it has yet to approach the levels of its predecessor, which earned 12.5 million clicks and qualified as a runaway success.

The spot will certainly get your attention, but various publications have offered their opinions on its merits – and you may be surprised to learn that they are, for the most part, somewhat critical.

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Advance Auto Parts has named Minneapolis-based agency mono its creative agency of record. The Virginia-based company, which recently purchased competitor General Parts International, will partner with the agency to “oversee many aspects of its marketing and brand strategy.”

“We’re thrilled to build a relationship with an agency unafraid of challenging the category standards,” said Charles Tyson, EVP-Merchandising, Marketing & Supply Chain at AAP. “With mono we’ve found the perfect partner to foster innovation in our upcoming marketing campaign as we look ahead to the second half of the year.”

“We are incredibly excited to be working with AAP,” said Chris Lange, co-founder and creative co-chair of mono. “AAP is a brand that is laser focused on who they are and who they want to reach. They are up for thinking differently and approaching the auto parts category in new ways. For us, that is inspiring.”

mono will hit the ground running, with new work launching this summer.

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The Barn at BBH, “a training program for emerging advertising talents” has a new social campaign hijacking popular dating app Tinder for Social Tees Animal Rescue, a non-profit animal charity that rescues animals from kill shelters and “provides them with a safe haven and veterinary care until they are placed in a proper home.”

Social Tees Animal Rescue and The Barn at BBH hope that some of the 10 million users browsing through Tinder daily looking for love will love fall in love with their dogs’ profiles instead and bring one home for adoption. Since some Tinder users are not into the whole commitment thing, BBH has set up “the option to foster an animal for two weeks or to adopt for good.” It’s a cute idea, and it has already proven successful.

The Barn at BBH began populating Tinder with animal adoption profiles on July 31st and received over 1,500 matches in the first 24 hours. The goal of the campaign is to raise awareness about pet adoption and the 7.6 million dogs sent to animal shelters yearly in the U.S., in addition to finding individual homes for the pets involved. Check out the video above for a better look at the campaign, and stick around for credits after the jump. (more…)

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Professional cyclist Danny MacAskill turns the Playboy Mansion grounds into his personal trick course in a new online spot for Red Bull (which appears to have been made in-house).

MacAskill can be seen grinding on railing, riding backwards on one wheel down a hill and jumping over walls, with some Playmates thrown in for good measure(although featured less prominently than you might expect). There’s not a lot to the 2:08 video: just MacAskill’s tricks with the Playboy Mansion’s attractions in the background; but the video is well shot and edited, and the song selection (“9.2.5? by Ghosthouse), although quite cheesy, fits the footage well. The brand may risk alienating some casual consumers with the spot (especially women), but their core demographic will likely appreciate the low-brow mix of extreme sport and silicon-enhanced cleavage.

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Havas Worldwide Chicago tapped former college football stars Matt Leinart, Heath Shuler and Brian Bosworth in their latest spot for DISH Network, promoting the DISH Anywhere app.

Also featuring the kangaroo mascots that just refuse to go away, the spot finds the three athletes deciding to head back to college after misunderstanding a conversation about watching live college football anywhere with DISH’s app. This is about as painful as the rest of DISH’s recent advertising, with the involvement of Leinart, Shuler and Bosworth the only thing really differentiating it. Hardcore college football fans might get a kick out of seeing the trio, but for the rest of us this is just another annoying DISH ad. Credits after the jump. (more…)

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A new campaign from the Marcus Thomas agency in Cleveland for the Ohio Lottery focuses on the instant gratification of scratching a ticket rather than promises of future prosperity.

“The people we’ve talked to have said how much fun and joy they get from scratching off a ticket,” Marcus Thomas Account Supervisor Glenda Terrell explained to The New York Times, referring to focus groups. “One gentleman shared that he keeps a few instants in his wallet so when the day is getting a little heavy at work or he’s feeling a little down or frustrated, he can pull out an instant ticket and he can scratch it off, and it erases that down feeling and just resets his day and he’s feeling positive again.”

In one spot, actor Tim Stoltenberg selects a handful of sweaters at a store called Everything Wool. He then takes the sweaters into a fitting room and emerges wearing all of them, and proceeds to scratch his back against a door frame. The similarly themed “Poison Ivy” and “Mosquitos” show Stoltenberg going to even greater extremes to get his scratch on. Each spot ends with him at a convenience store buying a scratch off ticket. The campaign, which launched August 1st, also includes mobile and radio components. Stick around for “Poison Ivy” and “Mosquitos” after the jump. (more…)

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Procter & Gamble disclosed in an earnings call this morning that it plans to divest or shed 90-100 of its brands, in an attempt to streamline and focus on its more successful brands.

“Less will be much more,” P&G CEO A.G. Lafley said. “We are going to create a faster growing, more profitable company that’s far simpler to operate.”

The announcement is the latest attempt by P&G to trim back, following the sale of P&G pet food brands Iams, Eukanuba and Natura to Mars Inc. for $2.9 billion in cash in April, and the sale of Pringles to Kellogg Co. for $2.7 billion in 2012. P&G reported a net sales increase of only one percent last quarter, which Lafley saying the company “could have and should have done better.”

Obviously, the move will effect the agencies working on P&G’s brands, including Publicis Groupe’s Publicis, Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi and WPP’s Grey. As Adweek points out, “Although these agencies work on big brands like Tide and Crest that won’t be affected by the divestiture, they also handle smaller, regional brands that collectively represent significant chunks of revenue from the world’s biggest marketer.” Last year P&G spent over $9.7 billion on advertising worldwide.

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If you like watching bad karaoke, you’re going to love Saatchi & Saatchi Europe’s newest spot for the Toyota Yaris Hybrid.

The agency turned Prague into a playlist by replacing street signs with the names of songs (much to the chagrin of local cabbies) and connecting the car’s stereo to the GPS so that the song changed every time the driver changed streets. In this way, drivers could select the song by altering their route. Supposedly the “best performers” were chosen to appear in the television spot, which airs in Poland, UK, Czech Republic, Sweden, France, Hungary, Italy, Denmark, Germany and Spain, but we think you’ll agree “most entertaining” is a more accurate description.

So what does karaoke have to do with the Toyota Yaris Hybrid? (more…)

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For the latest in the brand’s “Learning Meets Doing,” Y&R New York teamed up with Über Content and director Adam Gunser to create a mockumentary celebrating “5 Second Filmmaker” Marty Goldberg.

Goldberg is the (fictional) king of the the 5-second film, taking home the “Cinco” award year after year and employing “The Goldberg Method” while grooming his assistant and protege. Seemingly targeting the growing popularity of the short-format Vine, the mockumentary mostly seems to be trying too hard and its humor never really hits it mark and struggles to find a cohesive tone. Most of the time, the spot seems to be mocking Goldberg, but elsewhere seems to celebrate his working methods showcasing Dell technology. Also worth noting is that the brevity-mocking video feels long at 2:15. Goldberg could have done it in five seconds. Stick around for credits after the jump. (more…)

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Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney has a new campaign for Toyota, entitled “Bad in Dad,” featuring one dad’s “bad” antics, attributed to his new Camry RZ.

Set to George Thorogood‘s ubiquitous “Bad to the Bone,” the dad is pictured using his leaf blower to blow leaves onto the neighbors yard (kind of funny), spraying his wife with a hose (cute) and embarrassing his son with the locked door trick as he picks him up from soccer practice (just plain cruel). The narrator at the end of the 45-second spot asserts that the new Camry will “bring out the bad in dad,” making the positioning of the vehicle as the motivator behind dad’s behavior explicit. While he may occasionally step over the line, the dad’s antics are mostly presented as the kind of things most of us think about doing, don’t, and then wish we had, which fits with the vehicle’s presentation as a sort of liberator. Stick around for credits after the jump. (more…)

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