Hasta La Creative!

In case you missed its multiple airings during the NFL playoff games over the weekend, here’s a new anthem ad for the iPad Air, which perhaps interestingly enough is not a TBWA\Media Arts Lab joint according to folks on the Spy line. (we’re checking on this)

That may come as less of a surprise after viewing the spot, which is something of a departure from Apple’s recent tone and style. The 90 second long “Your Verse” attempts to inspire via an ode to poetry and beauty, while documenting a wide range of different ways people use their iPad Air. While the device is never mentioned during the ad, it is shown in action during almost every shot, in locations around the world. The title of the ad comes from the Walt Whitman poem, “O Me! O Life!” (you may recognize it from the movie, Dead Poets Society) which it directly quotes from. “Your Verse” ends by repeating the final line of the poem — “That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.” — before asking, “What will your verse be?”

The visually impressive, Whitman quoting spot is, while a departure from recent advertising strategies for Apple, also something of a restatement of the company’s supposed core values. Instead of telling you about device functionality, or attempting a sentimental family scene, the spot instead tells you about what Apple stands for, or at least what they’d like you to think they stand for. For Apple, that’s something of a return to the fundamentals. Whether that’s inspiring or overblown and pretentious will depend largely on the viewer.

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Okay, so we’ll start this one by admitting we have no idea what cricket is all about, but Saatchi and Saatchi New Zealand are behind a new campaign for Tui beer, called “Catch A Million,” giving fans the opportunity to win their share of one million dollars.

Fans can win $100,000 by making a one-handed grab in the stands while wearing a special orange Tui t-shirt. So far the campaign has been a big success, says William Papesch, Tui marketing manager, with “a sea of Tui orange at grounds and the first one-handed winner, Michael Morton in Hamilton on Jan 8th.” The promotion is  a pretty clever way to get a bunch of people to advertise your product for free, even if it comes with a potentially hefty price tag. Now if only someone could explain the rules of cricket to us… Credits and footage of the first winning catch after the jump. continued…

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Goodby Silverstein and Partners‘ latest work for Frito-Lay is a new campaign promoting Tostitos fajita flavored scoops! tortilla chips and Tostitos queso blanco dip — two products launched around last week’s 2014 Tostito’s Fiesta Bowl — as well as Tostitos cantina thin and crispy toritlla chips and Tostitos cantina chipotle salsa. Entitled “Bring The Party,” the campaign is centered around two new television spots: “Grandma” and “Speaker Dancer” (featured above).

Both spots focus on the over-the-top “O’Hare’s Party Repair” company, who bust in on boring parties to save them with their party expertise. It’s a goofy  jab at classic, local home-repair ads that finds the company taking obvious measures like replacing lame snacks with the aforementioned Tostitos products, as well as more drastic ones, like removing grandma from the house for a day or installing a speaker dancer. I think someone forgot that grandmas buy Tostitos, too.

What sets the ads apart is the engagement they offer after the commercials are over. Both the phone number provided and the website are fully operational. At the Bring The Party website, you can find “Pocket Party Repair Tools” such as Conversation Escape Call, Pocket Dancer, and Party Foul Cards, as well as a list of other services. I think we’ve all been to a party that could have benefited from a few Party Foul Cards being handed out. The “Bring The Pary” campaign “also includes digital, social media, in-store activations and public relations.” Stick around for “Grandma” after the jump. continued…

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To promote The Power of Movement, Canada’s largest yoga fundraiser, Lowe Roche wanted to show that not only would the event raise money for arthritis, but that yoga can bring increased mobility to arthritis sufferers as well.

To link these ideas, Lowe Roche crafted a 30 second spot featuring yogis lined up to resemble “shapes of the human bone system.” The spot uses this as a striking visual representation of the ties between yoga, arthritis and mobility, accompanied by text explaining how you can help those with arthritis simply by doing yoga. All of this is accompanied by the obligatory new age music you’d hear at a typical yoga studio.

For Lowe Roche creative director Jane Murray, this was a very personal project. Murray suffers from a rare form of arthritis called Ankylosing Spondylitis, which causes the spine to fuse. When client Sabrina Young approached her asking if she knew any agencies who would take on pro-bono work for the Arthritis Research Foundation, she volunteered and made it her pet project.

Print elements of the campaign launched last month, while the television component of the campaign was only recently unveiled. The Power of Movement event is scheduled for March 2. Credits after the jump. continued…

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Well, Havas-related news is definitely on our radar today. Just to clarify for the tipsters out there, we received word from sources familiar with the matter that Arnold, which had worked on Unilever brands including Nexxus, Simple and St. Ives (from Alberto Culver, which were sold to Unilever in 2011 and awarded creative duties to Arnold and Mullen back in summer 2010), has been relegated to a project basis. While coping with the Unilever loss, Arnold is somewhat balancing the scales by picking up brand work for Sanofi and Regeneron cholesterol drug,  alirocumab. We’ll keep you posted when we hear more.

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Mountain View-based Symantec Corporation has awarded its global creative and brand strategy duties to Grey San Francisco for its anti-virus brand, Norton. In addition, Grey SF will join forces with sister WPP shop Mediacom to handle global media buying/planning/strategy duties for both Symantec and Norton. Regarding Symantec’s decision, VP of brand, digital and advertising Alix Hart says, “As part of Symantec’s company-wide transformation, we are changing the way we market our brands, and have sought a creative partner to help strengthen our brand messaging and ensure we are communicating our brand value propositions in an integrated fashion around the world. Grey’s creativity, strategic thinking, strong digital capabilities and deep understanding of our Norton brand were unbeatable when coupled with Mediacom’s media management sophistication, scale and buying power.”

No word on who else participated in the review, but the Norton biz was previously handled by Leo Burnett. Expect first work from Grey SF for Norton to launch in spring of this year. As far as Symantec creative duties go as a whole, fellow Bay Area shop Godfrey Q retains duties for the brand, which includes identity and naming.

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A&E hasn’t been the serious “Real. Life. Drama.” channel it once presented itself as for a long time, and the current network bears little resemblance to its former self, so a rebrand only seemed obvious. Troika, who also recently rebranded the Encore channels, delivered a more appropriate brand image for the network now most know as the channel to turn to for marathons of Duck Dynasty.

In addition to Duck Dynasty, sadly the most-watched nonfiction series in cable history, the rebrand also focuses on recent hits Bates Motel and Longmire. Touting the network’s “100% original programming lineup” and recent successes makes sense for the network, which really couldn’t be more different from the channel that  called itself “Arts and Entertainment.” “Be Original” works as both the tagline and “internal brand platform,” anchoring the rebrand while simultataneously touting the 100% original content of the network and the distinct characters of its most-watched shows. You can get a good idea of the rebrand from the montage above, but for the full experience head here for an in-depth case study.

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Gerry Graf’s Barton F. Graf 9000 NY has worked with production company Psyop, fresh off their game-developing debut with the Susan Sarandon-narrated Nightmare: Malaria, to develop this charming spot for the Supercell-developed strategy game Clash of Clans.

The one-minute anthem ad places the viewer in the middle of the action, on the same level as the melee taking place. To bring the game to life in the spot, Psyop “embraced the bright, stylized and saturated look of the game,” explained Psyop Director Fletcher Moules. “We wanted to fully conceptualize what the world would look like if we were running alongside the horde of barbarians, what would it feel like to be covered in their saliva.”

The impressively animated ad really does a good job transporting the viewer into the world of Clash of the Clans, thankfully without any saliva. One noteworthy moment occurs when two giants chuckle as they are hit with cannonballs. It was one of Psyop’s favorite segments to animate, as well. “It added the heart and the warmth that was only achieved when we removed ourselves a little from the ruckus to enjoy it from their perspective,” said Moules.

It would appear that Supercell’s audience is enthusiastic about Clash of Clans as well. The video was released on December 23rd, and garnered 14 million views in its first week. Credits after the jump. continued…

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Is there anything more heartwarming than watching children of all ages fall over repeatedly?

From Proctor & Gamble and W+K comes “Pick Them Back Up,” a new spot that’s part of the “Thank You, Mom” campaign running during the length of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. If you’ll recall, P&G and Wieden have been leaders in mom joy, child guilt and intermittent bouts of crying since a 2010 Mother’s Day campaign, which set the stage for the very viral 2012 London Olympics spot “Best Job.” Since the initial broadcast of “Best Job,” most of the world has been stuck in a routine of enthusiastic weeping followed by hugging their mom until it hurts.

Adding a little humor to the affair (this is, if you’re a sociopath like me), “Pick Them Back Up” sees attractive young mothers repeatedly watch their children fall down before picking them up, thus transforming them into successful Olympic athletes. For those mothers whose children didn’t grow up to be competitive in winter sports on an international scale, well, your time was better spent leaving your kid on the ice and just working on you for a while.

Of course, this spot also begs the question, how did they film so many babies falling over? Were they stunt babies, or did they trip them with invisible wires or something? In any case, after seeing this on TV, your mother’s gaze will slowly drift over to the photo she has of you as a baby on her nightstand, and she’ll sigh a million disappointed sighs because you were once so cute and loving and now you apparently don’t “have the time” to give her a call once in a while. She’s right, you know, because you just watched this and it caused you do to nothing. Credits, and one in a series of new athlete-specific video, follow after the jump.

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I don’t own a PS4, but I catch myself periodically humming the cover of Lou Reed‘s “Perfect Day” in BBH NY’s video game spot with the same title. For a brief refresher: the 60-second spot shows two gamers as iterations of the characters they’re competing with, such as medieval gladiators and race car drivers. If you watch enough TV, you’re bound to watch it. And it sticks with you, mainly because of the song, but compared to typical ad humor and action, this spot just marches to the beat of a different drummer.

One of those drummers – Ari Weiss, executive creative director of BBH NY – recently sat down with ADC for their Behind the Cube series to talk about the creative decisions that helped shape “Perfect Day.” Weiss talks about how the song actually guided the visuals, how the gamers were established as characters, and how editing set the spot’s unique pacing.

And on a somewhat-related note: ADC just announced they are launching an iPad app to show off their annual work developed in conjunction with Brazilian shop the goodfellas, ADC member/Google Creative Lab motion designer Monica Eunji Kim and U.K.-based creative director, Pete Rossi. It is the first time in the company’s 92-year history that the annual book will not be in print. ADC is also giving away free limited-edition iPad cases to the first 500 people who download the app.

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