Hasta La Creative!

Making music with Pizza Hut pizza? Well, it sure as hell beats eating it.

Toronto agency Grip Limited took a fun idea and ran with it for their celebration of Pizza Hut Canada reaching a quarter of a million fans on Facebook. They hardwired 12 of their dipping sauces (designed to distract you from the awful taste of their pizza) to become a kind of interactive keyboard. The sauces were then “played” by being dunked with pizza by a DJ/composer/whatever you call a dude who makes music by dunking pizza in dip, to create the first song performed with pizza. (Why hasn’t anyone done this yet?)

Although I was skeptical about this process yielding anything that actually sounds like music, Pizza Hut and Grip Limited pull it off surprisingly well. It’s not Timbaland or anything, but hey, it was made with pizza. They fail, however, at making the pizza look even remotely appetizing.

Has Pizza Hut just created a new genre of music/use for pizza? Your move, Domino’s. continued…

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Jung von Matt/Alster Werbeagentur GmbH go for the “just throw a bunch of crazy shit together” approach over the “actually makes sense” approach with their “Add Power” spot for Vodafone.

The 1:38 spot, directed by RadicalMedia’s Sebastian Strasser, feels more like a trailer for a Michael Bay movie than a commercial for a telecommunications network. It features everything from robocats and shark riding to a rocket train (that the spots’ protagonist somehow manages to keep a grip on while it’s moving at supersonic speed).

Presumably, all this craziness is a testament to the Vodafone high speed network. It’s pure testosterone over common (or any other kind of) sense. The spot certainly left me with a lot of questions: What kind of drugs is this dude on? How exactly does one ride a shark? How might I acquire a robocat? Will Vodafone be partnering with Axe Bodyspray in the future? These and other questions remain unanswered.

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According to Advertising Age, Apple will nearly double it in-house design team by adding 200-300 new designers. The addition aims to give Apple more control over its creative product. A source inside Apple told Ad Age the group has traditionally been kept small because Steve Jobs wanted Apple to be a product company, not a marketing company.

The increase dovetails with a recent Association of National Advertisers study which found marketers with in-house ad shops increased to 58% from 42% five years ago.

While likely not in reaction to the brand’s failed Designed by Apple in California campaign, which was designed by TBWA/Media Arts Lab, here’s hoping this beefed up internal creative group can come up with something better.

But to clarify, the brand will continue to work with outside agencies on major campaigns.

Hmm, do you really want to be listening this much? Well, if so, here’s RPA’s latest project, which according to the parties involved, is “a fluffy data-driven light sculpture that visualizes social media conversation in real-time.”  According to a statement from RPA CD Perrin Anderson, “We wanted to build something that could show what’s happening in the social media ‘cloud’ in real-time, not as data or a visualization on a screen, but as a fun, sensory, physical thing. We hope that others will share their ideas on the marriage of creativity and data by using the hashtag #ListeningCloud on their social accounts.”

If you happen to stroll by RPA’s Santa Monica digs–which cater to the likes of Honda and Farmers Insurance–and love lights, colors, etc., “Listening Cloud” is there for the picking, featuring real-time data from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram public APIs. According to the parties involved, you the agency’s client will be in the mix as, via wireless bridge to LEDs, will track hashtags, likes or comments about a client, with cloud “storming” via multi-colored lightning that corresponds to the different social media channels.  To be honest, this cloud shit is still new (yeah we know, blah blah) and we’ll absorb it when we can, but an interesting peek into agency and old client moving forward.  Check out making-of clip after the jump.

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It seems like there’s an awful lot of Back to the Future nostalgia invading the Internet these days, with posts about the series on sites like Reddit leading to listicles about the trilogy on nostalgia-aggregators like Buzzfeed which then go viral on Facebook and eventually find themselves on large emails your mom sends to her friends and CC’s you on for some reason. And, what with it being 2013 and all,  where advertising campaigns are becoming increasingly informed by memes, we get GE and BBDO NY using the “1.21 gigawatts” thing to sell you technology or something. Where we’re going, we don’t need roads to perdition; we just fly there through space and time.

And yet, nostalgia has a way of endearing you to things in a way totally out of your control. Call it manipulation, call it “effective advertising” using one of the oldest tricks in the book. Any way or slice it, it’s hard as even a casual fan of the series not to get a little giddy when you see what are ostensibly Marty McFly’s Nikes pop out of a souped-up Delorean. While Pepperidge Farm dares us to remember a time when people died of dystentary and snakebites like in Oregon Trail, Back to the Future‘s original audience has aged to the point where brands see the 1980s as a way to get consumers on board 30-something years later.

In fact, I hope this becomes a whole campaign where GE powers David Bowie‘s castle from Labyrinth, E.T.‘s glowing finger, and the computer from Weird Science. And, though it wouldn’t make much sense, maybe Michael J. Fox could narrate those spots too. Maybe in another 30 years, GE will power the ships from Avatar and Robin Thicke can provide us with his own deep-voiced VO. Trust me, it will make sense by then. Credits after the jump.

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Haven’t we all seen enough movies, TV shows and other forms of entertainment that take steps, often extreme and comical ones (think stuffed animals standing in for real ones), to insure we never, ever, under any circumstances whatsoever, have to bear witness to animal cruelty — even the most innocuous — in any of the content we consume?

Whether or not one feels this is a bit of overkill is really irrelevant, the cause groups and their public have spoken. No harm — even of the fake variety — shall come to animals.

So it’s really no surprise running shoe brand Pearl Izumi is catching heat for an ad if created which shows a dog that has just suffered a heart attack while on a run with its owner being given CPR.

After the ad appeared in Canadian Running magazine, Pearl Izumi was blasted on social media by outraged dog lovers.

Reacting to the ad, Omaha bed and breakfast owner Julie Mierau said, “When I saw the ad, I believed they were trying to say the dog was dead. That was horrifying to me. It’s offensive to me as a dog lover…that the message is these shoes will make you run so hard you’ll kill your dog.”

Pearl Izumi has since pulled the ad and posted an apology on its Facebook page.

“For some people, fantasy football feels real. For others it is real.” So claims Tough Season, The Onion’s new fantasy football series, developed in cooperation with DigitasLBI and Lenovo. Most of us, I think, know someone for whom this is true. Someone who loses sleep over the draft, and talks about NFL players as “my guys.” Someone like Tough Season’s Brad Blevins. Brad takes fantasy football way too seriously, despite the fact that his team, Brad’s Awesome Team, never wins his league. But he’s convinced, of course, that this season will be different.

Brad’s creepy rival Harris is focused on humiliating him, but Brad is intent on avoiding “The Watermelon Dance” (You really have to watch to see this one, I won’t give it away) at all costs. As the owner of three consecutive championships, Huge Giant Robots is the team to beat, with their mysterious owner Mr. Z. keeping his identity a secret. Episode one of the show flashed back to last season, with Brad’s tearful goodbye to Matt Forte and end-of-season humiliation. Episode two focuses on the draft.

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Following Google’s announcement Tuesday that the upcoming 4.4 version of Android will be named after its new partner Kit Kat, Nestle and JWT have launched a new advertisement on YouTube for the Kit Kat 4.4, with tongue planted firmly in cheek.

The ad pokes fun at Apple’s self-serious style of advertisement, with “Chief Breaks Officer” Chris Catlin doing a pretty spot-on imitation of Apple designer Jony Ive’s accent and dramatic speaking style, while bragging of the Kit Kat 4.4’s features. These include “adjustable orientation,” “global coverage,” and compatibility “with all liquid accessories.” The tagline? A rhyming riff on Apple: “There’s a Kit Kat for that.”

Kit Kat’s website and social media sites have also been revamped to make the Kit Kat appear like a smartphone. The site is broken into categories including, “Hardware,” “Features,” “Accessories” and “Tech Spec” where you can read about Kit Kat’s “praline software, crisp waferware, and …unique chocolate unibody.”

Mmm…unique chocolate unibody. Confectionary perfectionary indeed.

JWT also designed the packaging on over 50 million specially branded Kit Kat bars in 19 international markets, including the UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany and Japan. The packs will lead consumers to android.com/kitkat, where they have the chance to win Google Nexus 7 tablets, credits to spend in Google Play, and other prizes. JWT has also created local campaigns across TV, outdoor, ambient, retail activation and experiential to run in these 19 international markets. The Kit Kat branding marks the first time Android’s operating system has launched under a brand name.  continued…

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There’s a very fine line between stupid funny and annoying, a line that Old Spice is willing to tightrope for miles and miles. Their “Unnecessary Freshness” campaign, created by W+K Portland, will hit screens starting Thursday night for the season opener. As you might expect, there will be plenty of shenanigans that don’t make sense. But, at least that’s the point.

Three new spots starring Denver Broncos wide receiver Wes Welker might make you shake your head, laugh, or both (there’s also a fourth spot featuring New England Patriots linebacker Jerod Mayo, possibly a pity commercial since Welker darted for Denver). However, since each ad is less than 20 seconds, it’s easy to stomach the goofy jokes and images of lizards eating Welker’s legs. If commenters take to the site to rip W+K, Welker, football, me, AgencySpy itself, or a number of other things that exist, and therefore, should be ridiculed incessantly, they can hopefully agree that the running time is a plus. And, if you believe that a majority of people in America are stupid and these spots are stupid funny, then maybe W+K is onto something brilliant. Maybe.

Credits and some more unnecessary freshness after the jump.

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I don’t have to describe the stereotypical girl who wears UGG boots, because you’re already familiar with the trope. You can practically hear the rubber soles scraping against the ground as she walks by, and most likely, you are judging her because of her fluffy boots.

Patriots star quarterback and perennial life-winner Tom Brady is very different from that girl. As far as brand spokespeople go, Brady is a safe bet with the ability draw males and females to a product. For whatever reason or however much money, Brady has been the UGG For Men spokesman for quite some time now, and the company has launched a fat campaign with plenty of close-ups on his face and feet, titled: “For Gamechangers.” I’m not sure if men are rushing to order their UGG shoes, but the 60-second spot is a quality effort from M&C Saatchi LA. The ad has the moody beat of a more athletic brand, and although it runs a bit long, the shoes on display don’t look half bad. It almost makes you forget about that trope-y girl walking by, until of course, the brand name flashes at the end of the spot. 

You can watch a behind the scenes video after the jump. continued…

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