Hasta La Creative!

Dollar Shave Club CEO Michael Dubin has a family history of colon cancer. So when his doctor recommended a colonoscopy, he decided he wanted to live-stream the procedure to help raise awareness about the importance of early screening.

It’s, well, not exactly riveting viewing, but that’s not the point. Mike has partnered with Colon Cancer Alliance, who have doctors standing by to answer any questions you might have about the procedure. You can tweet your questions with the hashtag #DSColon, and follow along for informative posts on colon cancer and the procedure. The stunt, by the way, is timed to coincide with Colon Cancer Awareness Month. Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death, so this is really an important cause. Hopefully Mike can raise awareness and get some guys to schedule an early screening. If you’d like to learn more about colon cancer and how getting a colonoscopy can help lead to an early diagnosis, head on over to the Colon Cancer Alliance website.

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The Onion.com, known for its deadpan humor and mock-news network, has been expanding beyond its namesake site. Onion Inc. now boasts The A.V. Club, its entertainment-based sister site and Onion Labs, its advertising/marketing layer.

Onion Labs has created campaigns for everyone from Microsoft to Ford to Home Depot. Mike McAvoy, president of The Onion, recently talked with Mediabistro about this new branch of the company. McAvoy says: “It became our pitch really as a business [to] evolve with the whole native-advertising movement, as well as advertisers’ decision to change how they tried to reach millennials.” McAvoy talks about the most successful campaign they’d had so far:

I think we’ve had quite a few that have been good and have gotten good plays. We haven’t had the Old Spice viral campaign just yet, you know, where we’ve gotten 100 million [hits]. But we’ll let you know when we do. I think our most successful piece, our most viewed piece was [an] April Fool’s joke for YouTube [last year about the social-media site selecting the best video on YouTube], which has been seen by [over 11 million people]. We do a lot of work that is behind the scenes, white label or work for hire, where we’re creating content for a brand and the audience, or the world, doesn’t know it.

To hear more from McAvoy, including how he deals with native ads on his own site, read: So What Do You Do, Mike McAvoy, President of The Onion?

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Bacardi has launched “Good Spirited: Building a Sustainable Future,” described as an “environmental initiative for sourcing, packaging and operational efficiencies across the entire Bacardi family of premium spirits brands.” The new initiative builds on existing programs and efficiencies in an attempt to “reduce water and energy use and greenhouse gas emissions.”

One aspect of the in-house campaign, highlighted in the above online video, is recycling of oak barrels used for aging Bacardi rum. Bacardi ages their rum in American white oak barrels, in some cases for many years, to instill their product with “richness, aroma and smoothness.” Usually these barrels are used continuously for about 20 years or so until they are retired. But even at this point, they haven’t become useless. At the Bacardi Corporation in Puerto Rico, “old barrels are ground into woodchips that are then spread as mulch for landscaping.” This commendable recycling effort helps beautify Bacardi’s 127-acre campus, while also supplying employees with nutrient rich mulch for their own lawns and gardens. “If we didn’t recycle, our barrels would eventually go to a landfill, which is not the best option for a small island like Puerto Rico,” explains Lissette Sepulveda, environmental health & safety coordinator for Bacardi Corp.

The “Good Spirited” campaign is built around specific goals in three areas: responsible sourcing, global packaging, and operational efficiencies. Bacardi pledges to source “all raw materials and packaging from sustainably sourced, renewable or recycled materials while maintaining or enhancing the economic status of growers and suppliers,” to “use eco-design to craft sustainability into its brand packaging and point-of-sale materials,” and has pledged to reduce water use and greenhouse gas emissions — with a “2017 goal to cut water use by 55 percent and GHG emissions by 50 percent.” To learn more about Bacardi’s “Good Spirited” campaign, head on over the the campaign website and check out the video above for more on their barrel recycling efforts.

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Saatchi & Saatchi NY are helping Walmart in their bid to get you to please not hate them, delivering a an emotionally effective (some may say emotionally manipulative, given how Walmart treats their own employees) online spot for their “Work is a Beautiful Thing” campaign telling the story of Patrick.

Patrick introduces himself by saying, “When I was born the doctor said I had a condition that affected every part of me, from my body to my brain.” His whole life, Patrick is treated differently: sent to a different school, put on a different team, talked to “a different way.” But Patrick doesn’t let his disability stand in his way, as his fierce determination to be independent leads him to learn how to drive, to learn to walk again when his condition causes him to lose feeling in his legs, and to get a job at a local factory where he’s part of a team.

“My whole life, people have been telling me I have a learning disability,” Patrick says in a line turning that phrase on its head, “I guess they’re right, because I’ve never learned how to give up.” This great line is followed by the “Work is a beautiful thing” tagline and Walmart’s message: “It’s why we’re committed to the American factory, and all the people who work there.”

As you’ve probably gathered, it’s impossible not to like Patrick, so Saatchi & Saatchi hopes that by aligning Walmart with him, it’s a little harder for people to hate Walmart, too. Patrick’s poignant story is already making waves on YouTube, where it’s garnered over 600,000 views in five days. If it wasn’t for people’s reluctance to have anything to do with WalMart (let’s say this was an ad for Target, for example) that figure would probably be even higher. As is, Saatchi & Saatchi NY did a fine job here, with a conversation changer that just may get a few people to rethink their views on the retail giant, and which stands as great work regardless. Credits after the jump. continued…

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Wow, talk about efficient. Fresh off winning the AB InBev Harbin Beer business back in November, BBH China has launched a series of ultra-short television spots for their Harbin Beer World Cup 2014 campaign.

Harbin, the official World Cup sponsor in China, will run the blink-and-you’ve-missed-them spots every night on CCTV1 news and OOH media, where they are expected to reach hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers. As might be expected given the short duration, the ads keep things simple. The above “Freedom Time” exemplifies the approach here: the spot sees a Harbin drinker ignore a call from the boss during the big game, instead using the phone as a coaster. There’s something admirable about the efficiency required of the format, especially in contrast to the lengthy online spots that we see on a daily basis. Check out “Red Card” below, and stick around for the lengthy (7 seconds) “Slide Tackle” after the jump. It won’t even take a minute.

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Well, touché. In case you need a refresher, less than a month ago, we received our usual monthly op-ed from Huge, this time from Andrew Kessler, founder/CEO of Togather, a startup out of Huge Labs. Kessler, whose Togather operation serves as a platform that helps clients deploy event marketing programs with “the same control and measurability of a digital ad buy,” seemed to have sounded the death knell for experience marketing. Well, someone has taken issue, namely Eric Murphy, former VP of marketing/promotions at RCA Records who’s now head of his own experiential/music marketing agency, Pop2Life. Murphy has taken some issue with Kessler’s piece as you’ll see below. Carry on, sir.

“The ‘experience marketing’ trend is close to extinction.” -Andrew Kessler, founder/CEO of Togather

I’ll be honest. When I first caught wind of Kessler’s Op-Ed piece, I wanted to punch him in the face. After all, he was basically labeling the very thing that’s made my agency successful a joke … a waste of time and money. Or more specifically, nothing more
than a “dazzling physical installation,” heavy on pointless, big-budget items like “colored lights, a giant logo,” lots of “freebie swag,” and little more to measure success than a fuzzy count of gift bags and “total impressions.”

So I put on a Jason mask™, gathered a few key clients, and headed over to Kessler’s house with a truck full of colored lights and giant logos.

Just kidding.

Actually, I channeled that initial surge of outrage into some deeper thinking about how and why someone as intelligent and successful as Andrew Kessler would conclude that the best possible outcome of experience marketing was “a large crowd … lots of
product interest … [and] photo albums of smiling fans.” (Which frankly is what a lot of brands hope to accomplish with the majority of their marketing efforts, experiential or otherwise. More on that later.)

To be fair, Kessler posed some worthwhile questions regarding the value and impact of experience marketing campaigns:

-”Are we providing the right kind of value to give us a return on brand favorability?

-”What kind of action did this drive?

-”Can we deliver an experience that also lives beyond the actual event?”

All of these are excellent questions. Every marketer worth their weight in swag should apply them to every marketing investment they make. Still, proclaiming the pending extinction of a species [of marketing] that, when done right, checks off all four boxes of the ubiquitous “AIDA” acronym (Awareness | Interest | Desire | Action)  with a big fat marker seems … well … a bit un-evolved.

Here’s why.

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DDB Chicago continues bringing out the bizarre for Skittles in a new campaign complete with some perhaps unintended implications.

The new spot features a cloud named Freddie, who, when walked by an elderly woman “rains” Skittles after being pet. Now, the problem with portraying a product as something that comes out of a pet while being walked is…well, pretty obvious right? Okay, I get that Freddie is a cloud and that DDB has been doing strange stuff for Skittles for a while now, but you don’t want viewers asking, “Is that cloud pissing Skittles?” — a distinct possibility here. In the 30-second spot, “Cloud,” Freddie responds very differently when a curious onlooker attempts to pet him, ending with the spot-specific tagline “Pet The Rainbow. Taste The Rainbow.”

The campaign features two more 30-second adverts, each following the same oddball theme, with Freddie going to the vet and the groomers. Additionally, DDB Chicago teamed up with PR agency Olson to build a remote-controlled, Skittles-dispensing cloud. Built from the ground up, the cloud “features two unique dispensing functions and a variety of fun lighting and audio features.” It’s a high-tech evolution of The Rainbow team’s past Skittles-dispensing gifts like pinball machines and vending machines, and a pretty cool extension of the campaign (we’ll hear more about this later in the week). Stick around for credits and “Groomer” after the jump. continued…

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W+K Portland have launched an campaign for Old Spice’s new line of electric shavers and trimmers (price range: $50-80), and have enlisted the help of a familiar face to help launch the new products.

Current Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Terry Crews, who helped introduce Old Spice Shave Gel last year with the spot “Baby”, returns to help market Old Spice’s foray into the shavers and trimmers world. The 45-second digital effort, “Get Shaved in the Face,” is reminiscent of Crews’ iconic work for the brand from years past, with a predictable amount of screaming and general mishigas. In the spot, Crews is in the process of shaving when a mini-crews realizes that he is a hair. As you might expect, things get pretty crazy by the conclusion of the spot, which you can watch for yourself above.

While the strategy might not have the shock value it did years ago, it makes a lot of sense to call on the iconic Crews for the introduction of a new product line. Among the products being introduced are: Old Spice Hair Clipper (“Like a lawn mower for your hair with 8 adjustable settings.”), Old Spice Beard and Head Trimmer, and Old Spice Shaver (“Like 3 smooth barbers for your face, this shaver features a triple-action cutting system with twin foils that shave off stubble and an integrated cutter that shortens longer hairs…”). Stay tuned for credits and a “Baby” refresher after the jump. continued…

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Culver City, CA-based Pitch has just launched an NCAA March Madness campaign for tournament sponsor Burger King, the agency’s first since taking over for Mother NY on BK general market duties in January (Pitch has been in charge of youth/family ad duties since 2010).

For the campaign, entitled “Watch Like A King,” Burger King and Pitch have teamed up with iconic Fab Five member, former NBA star and current NBA TV/TNT analyst Chris Webber, who stars in the Final Four 2 for $5 “Watch Like A King” spot. The 30 second spot sees a fan tell the guy in front of him in a Chris Webber jersey, “Seriously dude, we’re trying to watch the…” at which point Webber turns around and the man lets out a comical scream. Webber then asks him about his two sandwiches for five bucks from Burger King, and they work out a mutually beneficial agreement. The new spot, which unfortunately does not involve Webber attempting to call a timeout, will debut on March 16th. Webber will also be in attendance at the NCAA Men’s Final Four in Dallas cheering on participants of the Burger King-sponsored Kings of the Court 3-on-3 Tournament.

Meanwhile, from today through April 7th, fans can follow @BurgerKing on Twitter and tweet why they deserve to “Watch Like A King” and/or post a NCAA-themed photo with the hashtag #WatchLikeAKing for a chance to win a prize, including “$100 Burger King Crown Cards, mobile phone projectors, flat screen TVs, tickets to the NCAA Final Four and much more.”

“We know March Madness is about the fans, games and of course the student-athletes, so we’re celebrating by partnering with the NCAA to provide the fan base with a viewing experience fit for a king,” says Eric Hirschhorn, chief marketing officer, North America, Burger King Worldwide.

In addition to television and social media, Pitch’s “Watch Like  A King” campaign will also feature experiential elements, details of which have yet to be released (but according to the credits you can expect “Throne Installation” and “Crown Headbands,” so that should give you some idea). Stick around for those credits after the jump. continued…

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BBH New York continues its PS4 onslaught with a live-action spot at the center of their new campaign for Infamous: Second Son, the third game in the best-selling Infamous series and Sony PS4 exclusive (you might consider it Sony’s answer to TitanFall, which we reported on yesterday).

The entirely live-action (although there is some silent gameplay footage on the end screen before the Playstation logo), :75 spot “depicts a locked-down city of Seattle where the superhuman protagonist, Delsin Rowe, fights back against the oppressive Department of Unified Protection (DUP).” Rowe is depicted in the ad by a somewhat passable lookalike in his trademark red cap, trailed by the DUP. The new ad teases the kind of action players can expect from the game, while avoiding revealing anything about the story. It should draw interest from both fans of the series and newcomers.

BBH New York’s campaign rolls out with “TV advertising based on the short film,” as well as additional “complementary online advertising.” Gameplay developer Sucker Punch, meanwhile, has released a trailer showcasing gameplay features players can expect in the new game. Infamous: Second Son will be released on globally on March 21st. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

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