Hasta La Creative!

Wieden + Kennedy New York’s latest World Cup spot is a welcome departure from their previous World Cup work, foregoing focusing directly on the on-field action in lieu of the conversations and connections among fans sparked by the World Cup, leading into the “Every Four Years” tagline.

The new 30-second spot, called “Global Issues,” follows a linear conversation between soccer fans from diverse backgrounds. “Global Issues” stars real soccer enthusiasts — including a German butcher, an Italian barber, and a cab driver from the Ivory Coast, who support a vast array of teams, but all reside in the U.S. It’s a clever direction, executed well thanks largely to the precision editing, from editorial company Final Cut, necessary to pull off such an approach, and illustrates the excitement leading up to the World Cup well.

Wieden + Kennedy New York also debuted eight of its 32 original World Cup posters for ESPN, designed by Brazilian artist and graphic designer Cristiano Siqueira. Each features a likeness of key players and stories from the featured country competing in the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Stick around after the jump for a look at several of these posters, as well as campaign credits. continued…

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Sony could be excused if they had decided not to bother advertising the release of MLB 14 The Show at all. The latest installation in the long-running franchise, the only baseball simulation for PS3 or PS4, has literally no competition (which is how Sony got away with releasing the PS4 version a full month into the baseball season). Instead, they tapped Portland-based boutique agency Mutt Industries, who teamed up with Eastbound and Down star Danny McBride for a integrated campaign spanning broadcast, digital and social media. At the center of the campaign is a really fun online spot starring McBride, who also stars in the broadcast version.

In the 1:45 spot, McBride tells you something you should already know: that “Baseball is Better” — better than all other sports, and better than babies. He goes on to list all the reasons baseball is the best: no crying, no flags, no clocks, etc., all while sporting a badass old school Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. McBride is inserted into the game itself (Hey Sony: You really should make Kenny Powers a playable character) allowing Mutt Industries to show MLB 14 The Show‘s shiny new graphics, which really do look great. Most fans of the franchise have been eagerly anticipating the title for months now, but “Baseball is Better” may convince a few converts that The Show is worth picking up this year.

Broadcast spots will air on on Adult Swim, ESPN, Discovery, FX, History, MLB Network, Comedy Central and other cable stations, while digital and social media content highlights top MLB players, including Miguel Cabrera, Andrew McCutchen, Brandon Phillips, and Buster Posey. Over the course of the baseball season, Mutt Industries will release over 100 unique videos for the campaign, with each player given a unique role and character. Interestingly, Mutt Industries developed, directed and  produced the entire campaign in-house with creative director Mike McCommon doubling as the commercial director. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

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Ace Hardware tapped FCB Chicago to help introduce The Paint Studio, which seeks to provide a “more style-inspired and personal paint shopping experience” for Ace customers with exclusive paint collections from Clark+Kensington, Valspar Optimus and Valspar Aspire. The resulting campaign, “Helpful Is Beautiful” is the largest ever for Ace Hardware, spanning television, radio, print, social and digital.

“Helpful Is Beautiful,” which was developed by FCB Chicago in association with Ace and Valspar, riffs on tropes from beauty advertising in an effort to emphasize the more design-oriented aspects of The Paint Studio. The attempts at humor fall flat (painfully so), but the spots do get across the more personalized approach Ace’s new Paint Studio takes when compared to other hardware mega-stores. Still, the three 30-second spots are pretty tough to watch.

“For years, women have expressed loyalty to their favorite cosmetics brands and the inspiring shopping experience that comes along with it,” explains John Surane, executive vice president, marketing, merchandising, and sales for Ace Hardware. “Ace and Valspar recognize the emotional response evoked by color and built the ‘Helpful is Beautiful’ campaign and The Paint Studio at Ace around this connection as a way to offer consumers a differentiating paint shopping experience featuring the brands they know and trust.”

Ace also launched a new website for The Paint Studio today, created by GSD&M, and will be featuring special offers to get customers to experience The Paint Studio throughout the month of May. Stick around for credits and a second spot after the jump. continued…

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Operating under the assumption that more people would recycle if it was fun, Coca-Cola and Grey Dhaka placed six “Happiness Arcade” machines around Dhaka, Bangladesh. The machines were operated by inserting an empty Coca-Cola bottle and played a branded version of arcade relic Pong. As some might remember (and Adweek readers noticed), DDB Stockholm made the same hypothesis regarding fun and recycling back in 2009 (dubbing it their “Fun Theory”) with their similar “Bottle Bank Arcade” campaign for Volkswagen.

“Bottle Bank Arcade” differed in that it turned recycling itself into a game: lights above bottle deposits lit up and, the faster you inserted the bottle, the more points you got. It seems like it was both more fun and a better way to promote recycling than Coca-Cola’s more branded effort, in which it appears the only type of bottle that makes the game work is a Coca-Cola bottle.

At the very least, these seem like two executions of the same idea. We’ve included DDB’s “Bottle Bank Arcade” after the jump for comparison.

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Electronics retail chain Radio Shack, online collaborative Quirky and Austin-based, Omnicom-owned GSD&M have teamed up to extend the brand’s “Do It Together” mission by launching an invention challenge for kids and budding inventors. The Shack is inviting its target audience to contribute “smart” toy ideas with the opportunity for the best one to become a sellable product on the chain’s shelves. It doesn’t look like there’s much time (well, seriously, there isn’t much time), but you can check out the site here to submit your concepts, which will be judged live on June 5 at Quirky.com. This effort marks the latest partnership between Radio Shack and GSD&M, which began working with the brand last year and created their well-received, 80′s-loving Super Bowl spot.  And if you can bear the crap weather here today in NYC, tonight, the brand and Quirky are hosting a Sketch and Design night at the Radio Shack Concept store on 150 E. 42nd St. from 4-7. Enjoy, kids.

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At the beginning of the month, Wongdoody debuted a new spot for Amazon Fire featuring Gary Busey — which was predictably weird. Now Wongdoody is back with an interactive video, just in case that wasn’t enough Gary Busey for you.

The new video allow viewers to select from 23 items, from a blowfish to a surfboard to a monkey with a party hat, which Busey will then talk to. “Talking to Things With Gary Busey” contains over 450 individual annotations within a 15:30 YouTube video, with each item selected bringing the viewer to a different point in the video. Options to click through to purchase Amazon Fire are spread throughout the video. Apparently the video “also features several secret clips that users can only find by navigating deeper within the experience,” although it’s unlikely most viewers will stick around to discover them as the interactive video adds little to the joke from the original spot, basically drawing out a kind of funny idea well past its welcome point. Credits after the jump. continued…

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With a few hidden cameras in tow, airliner KLM along with DDB and Tribal Worldwide Amsterdam decided test whether travelers waiting at the gate in what we imagine is the hometown airport would go “flat or not.” /What the hell does that mean exactly? Well, if you watch above, KLM is hyping its new business class “flat seat” by installing such seats in select areas of the gate. Those who wen t  flat would ultimately win a pair of biz class tickets, like the lucky person in the clip. While we doubt we’ll be flying KLM in the near future, the chairs look pretty comfy and seeing as it’s difficult getting decent sleep on an airline to begin with thanks to the positioning, we’d be glad to see domestic airlines follow suit in adopting the contraption. In addition to the case study video, MediaMonks has also developed an online game to tying into the effort that lets you gauge whether certain unsuspecting travelers would go flat. The site’s a tad sluggish but why not give it a go if you got a few.

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Papa John’s is releasing a new ad promoting their Sweet Chili Chicken Pizza today starring Indiana Pacers all star Paul George alongside Papa John’s founder, chairman and CEO, John Schnatter. While John’s named Grey its national agency of record back in February, this spot comes to us via ZGroup, an arm of Zimmerman Advertising.

The cheesy spot features typically terrible acting from Schnatter, who trades lines with George. “Here’s how I make my dough,” George retorts, before the spot cuts to footage of him dunking. “Sweet,” says Papa John, “like my new Sweet Chili Chicken Pizza,” in some of the most transparent copy we’ve seen in awhile. In a surprise move, George then dunks his slice in one of Papa John’s artery-clogging dipping sauces. The spot is the latest in Papa John’s line of sports-themed advertising that in the past has included the likes of Peyton Manning and Joe Montana. It’s a shame they couldn’t go a less obvious route with the Pacers star, but the Papa clearly likes to play it safe. The new ad will run nationally on cable entertainment and sports channels, as well as syndicated shows, until May 11th.

“Papa John’s is about fresh new tastes, which is why we love our partnership with Paul George,” said Schnatter in a painfully rehearsed statement. “Paul brings a fresh approach to basketball as one of the game’s new stars, which works perfectly with Papa John’s because new and fresh is the message we’re delivering with our partnership and with our new Sweet Chili Chicken Pizza.”

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About a month ago we brought you the sneak peek of “How to Do Everything in the World,” the web series Rooster created for Vans starring creative director/baby fighter/punk rock dad Gavin McInnes. Given some of Gavin’s funny hijinks in the past, we had high hopes for the series.

In “How to Do Everything in the World,” McInnes takes on such topics as how to drink in a bar, what to do if you get in a fight, how to fly the friendly skies, and how to survive prison with an expected dose of absurdity. Unfortunately, the humor misses the mark, occasionally painfully so. There was a lot of potential here, but something about the series just feels off, and not in a funny way. The highlight is probably “How To Fight,” which mostly just sees Gavin coming up with ways to get in a cheap shot and run away. That’s really the only one of these to even merit a chuckle, as they mostly confuse awkward with funny. (Awkward can be funny, but isn’t necessarily in and of itself funny, a mistake on full display here.) Mostly, the series sees McInnes screaming at people for being jerks (especially in  “How To Fly” and the painful “How To Drink”), which is basically one joke stretched over several “episodes” that are each several minutes long. It’s hard to imagine these catching on and getting shared, or even someone sitting through the entire series for its entertainment value. Let’s chalk this one up as a disappointing miss and hope Rooster delivers the goods next time. You can check out “How to Fight” above, and stick around for “How to Fly” and “How to Survive in Prison” after the jump, if you’re so inclined. continued…

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This one’s been making the rounds for awhile, but we figured we’d add our two cents since it involves the ruining of a classic Beach Boys track. BBDO New York employs the Beach Boy’s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” for their latest AT&T campaign. In the debut spot, “Sing Anthem” people in everyday situations randomly start singing the song as if they’re on Glee or something.

To be fair, BBDO does a passable job of connecting the song to AT&T’s message of helping “people and things speak the same language” and a good job of illustrating the point visually. But people of various walks of life (including an operatic news reporter) randomly bursting into song is a lot to swallow, and that the song is a personal favorite makes it even harder to take. The spot, which BBDO collaborated with Biscuit Filmoworks and editorial company Rock Paper Scissors to make, is part of a broader campaign that employs “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” as a theme song in each of its commericals. Thankfully, “Sing Anthem” is the only one of these to turn everyday life into a cheesy impromptu musical. Stick around for credits and “Sing Network” after the jump. continued…

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