Hasta La Creative!

In advance of its planned September 4 rebrand, Yahoo! will release 30 versions of a new logo over the course of the next month. Called “30 Days of Change,” the brand will release one new logo each day. Of the move, Yahoo! CMO Kathy Savitt said, ” It’s our way of having some fun while honoring the legacy of our present logo.”

On the brand’s Tumblr blog, Savvitt wrote, “We’ve partnered with great artists including Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, John Legend, and Imagine Dragons to take Yahoo! On The Road. And of course, we are excited to come together with tumblr, and by extension, its incredible community of creators.”

Each day beginning today, the brand will share a new logo on the blog, on their Twitter account and on their Facebook page.

Below, you can view a video that teases some of the upcoming designs along with a graphic representing today’s design.

While there are certainly many comments on today’s logo, the brand does not appear to be soliciting commentary, Rather, it’s more of a stunt leading up to the grand reveal on September 4 at 9PM PST. Hey, it’s one way to give rejected ideas a slice of the limelight.

It’s gonna be a day. After the usual “competitive pitch process,” wine staple Kendall-Jackson has awarded agency of record duties to Heat, the San Francisco-based shop perhaps best known for their various EA Sports efforts (or, yeah, this). Regarding the appointment of Heat, Caroline Shaw, chief communications & marketing officer for K-J, offers the textbook explanation, saying, “We’re so pleased to engage Heat for Kendall-Jackson. Their strong mix of strategy, creative thinking and clever writing demonstrated they would bring big ideas and solid execution to our business.” Heat will handle all new ad initiatives for the including digital, experiential installations. print and POP for the wine brand, which the parties involved say is trying to reach a younger audience.

Kendall-Jackson’s previous AOR was GlobalWorks Group, which handled the account for approximately a year.

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On the football field, Peyton Manning runs the Denver Broncos with a robotic efficiency fitting of a man with a giant, shiny forehead. His younger brother Eli roams the sidelines for the New York Giants with the mopey glare of a six-year-old who wants to pick his nose but can’t because cameras are watching. Usually, the funniest thing about the Manning brothers is that they’re so unfunny. They’re stiff and white. But every once in a while – don’t forget the acclaimed “Football Cops” – they unleash some comedy genius for a football-related commercial.

The newest addition to the Manning oeuvre is a fake R&B music video created by Grey for DirecTV and NFL Sunday Ticket. #footballonyourphone. Remember that hashtag. It’s going viral, because a company that deals with an incredibly popular sport got two huge stars to subvert their normal personalities and completely buy-in to a goofy campaign that could’ve been an abandoned Lonely Island digital short. In the first 12 hours or so after it hit Youtube, the clip reared in 100k views.

Everything about the spot is smart, right down to the tiny Archie Manning cameo and the best/worst hair design you’ll see this year until American Hustle, starring Bradley Cooper’s curled terribleness, hits theaters. Peyton may be known as the more gregarious of the two brothers, but Eli is a vastly underrated comedian in his commercials. He ends up stealing this show with some odd riffs on milk, blouses, and Alexander Graham Bell. Pay attention, brands: This is how you go viral.

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If you live in either Chicago or Boston, you may have watched (or wanted to watch) the Stanley Cup Finals, in which case you realized that you don’t have access to NBC Sports. After some McGyver-ing and hooking you iPad to your TV, you got thousands about thousands of commercials advertising that NBC Sports would be broadcasting every game of England’s prestigious Barclays Premier League. After digesting this fact, you immediately stopped caring because 1.) You’re an American who likes ‘merican sports and 2.) Again, you don’t have access to NBC Sports.

But who better to make you, an American without access to NBC, care about this development than Jason Sudeikis, a former Saturday Night Live cast member who has appeared basically fucking everywhere in the last month? First, dude quits SNL. Then, he starts going on a press tour for his terrible-looking new movie, Meet The Millers, where he stars opposite Jennifer Aniston, who plays a middle-aged stripper. Then, he joined ESPN to count down the top 50 “This Is SportsCenter” ads last week. Then, he made cameo appearance in Drinking Buddies, a new film playing on Apple TV before it hits theaters at the end of the month and stars Sudeikis’ real-life fiance, Olivia Wilde. Then, Kiran shows me this and asks me to write about it, compelling me to start complaining about how Jason Sudeikis is fucking everywhere these days. Then, wouldn’t you know it, he releases a viral video YESTERDAY where he leads a parody version of Mumford & Sons, with Ed Helms, Jason Bateman and Will Forte starring as his bearded indie-folk backing band.

Seriously, it’s absolutely impossible to get rid of this guy. Watch him play a dumb American coach who doesn’t get soccer above in a new campaign from the Brooklyn Brothers (who you may remember from those kick-ass John Krasinski/Alec Baldwin New Era spots), and then don’t talk to me about Jason Sudeikis until you’ve developed some sort of Sudeikis repellant.

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After their global campaign in which people could buy personalized Coke bottles and cans, Coca-Cola Israel and Tel Aviv-based Gefen Team built a campaign around personalized billboards. Users downloaded a special app, then entered their name. Using geofence technology, the billboard would sense the user’s nearness and display their name. Each user would receive a message notifying them their name was splashed for the street to see.

Coca Cola used Israel’s “main billboards,” meaning users would see their names in lights more than once. And no matter how finite, people love fame: during the campaign period, the app reached 100k downloads and ranked #1 in Israel’s app store.

It seems like an elementary gimmick, but it’s got new-technology legs and exciting potential. Maybe the next brand to use these billboards will display a full message, making commuters’ life that much more fun.

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Ford “C-Max” 30sec from Musikvergnuegen on Vimeo.

To promote Ford’s 2013 fleet of car models, Team Detroit created a set of trailer-style spots, each paying homage to a major Hollywood genre. When a girl wants to get away from her clingy vampire boyfriend, she drives through the night in a Ford Focus. A city is under attack by a freak robot, and the man who saves the day drives Ford’s F150. Hollywood-based music house/mouthful Musikvergnuegen created original music and sound design for all of the 15 spots, giving them a more authentic blockbuster feel. Each ad feels spot on, showing how the majority of our current movie landscape is completely cookie cutter. My heart swells when two long distance lovers meet up for lunch because of their Ford Edges; I would watch the mysterious film about a “legendary” Mustang driver. It’s easy to get swept up in the sound.

Hopefully these trailers will show before movies in theatres; it’d be funny if viewers get excited. In the meantime, check out the spots via Musikvergnuegen.

Credits after the jump

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Studiosus, a German “culture lover’s travel guide,” wanted to pay homage to extinct cultures of the world while publicizing their unique approach to travel. So they partnered with Clément Briend, a French artist who creates large scale projections, sometimes on the Arc de Triomphe, other times on anonymous city walls. For this project, he made 3D representations of ancient faces and projected them onto trees in Dusseldorf’s Hofgarten Park. Next to each shining work, an old-looking stone slab read, “Discover the World’s Faces – Studiosus.”

“The works of Clément Briend and the travels of Studiosus have a lot in common,” said Bill Biancoli, COO of MacCann Germany. “Both send the viewer on a journey. When looking at Clément’s projections, the viewer goes on an internal journey. With Studiosus, the outside journey with its varied impressions influences our inside, thus creating a fascinating and unique view of our world.“

Briend agreed on the multifaceted nature of his work (something that inevitably coincides with a travel brand like Studiosus): “Everyone can find his own point of view in my works,” he said. “Because reality presents itself in different perspectives. Some like my art, some are frightened by it. My photo-projections are a mirror of the viewer’s mind. They project the images they bear inside.” Are YOU afraid of the dark?

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Steak ‘n Shakes still exist apparently (ed. This was our college late-night sanctuary), and Minneapolis-based Carmichael Lynch, which took over for KBS+ on the diner chain’s biz in late March, is here for a brand new campaign “Hunger Wisely.” What “Hunger Wisely” means is a bit vague, but, you know, kung-fu masters are wise and hungry people eat food, so why not?

While these ads, which were directed by Harold Einstein of Station Films, are a little nonsensical, they do bring up some important topics. For example, Steak ‘n Shake seems to be pretty cheap. The “shake” in Steak ‘n Shake stands for “milkshake,” as opposed to dancing while eating steak. Finally, Steak ‘n Shake offers hotdogs, one of the few fast food places (other than like Sonic or something) that does so maybe. In other words, you take away that weird kung-fu master stuff, and you’re left with a pretty effective brand awareness campaign. (Checks Google Maps). Too bad I’ll never go to one as there aren’t any in Chicago. Watch a one-minute long video of more kung-fu stuff, and another I embedded of some guy getting his head kicked off, after the jump.

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And now, for something, er, lighter. These back-to-school posts almost make me wistful for the days when a new pencil case was the joy of my September. But as I have grown, so has the sophistication of academic shopping. To keep with the times, Best Buy is branding themselves America’s go-to “Techfitter” of the season.

To show that they’ll equip students with not only the best technology, but the right technology for their pursuits, CP+B and Best Buy found real students and surprised them with personalized Best Buys, “tech-fitted” to their academic interests in a pair of new Paul Hunter-directed spots. Greg, Aerospace Engineering Major, gets a semi truck parked in front of his house. It opens, and he’s presented with the planetary system, plus a launchable rocket (sadly not available at a Best Buy near you). Lidia, a Marine Biology major, gets an underwater tech experience complete with dolphins and jellyfish. Both personalized surprise scenarios are scattered with Windows 8 laptops and tablets.

Additional spots will air later this month, and my guess is the lucky students will not include an English or PoliSci major, because those experiences would involve sheafs of paper and alcohol. Let’s expect an aspiring architect and an ambitious pre-med; they provide ideal landscapes for Best Buy’s eager urban tech-fitter to make a difference. Credits after the jump.

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Reacting quickly to recent revelations the daily consumption of six Anacin tablets and one banana by 112-year-old Grand Island, New York native Salustiano Sanchez-Blazquez are the secret to his longevity, Anacin maker Insight Pharmaceuticals wasted no time newsjacking the report to introduce Bananacin. Sanchez-Blazquez was recently crowned the oldest living man by Guiness World Records following the recent death of 116-year-old Japanese native Jiroemon Kimara.

In a witty press release, Insight Pharmaceuticals VP of Marketing Jennifer Moyer said, “Historically, apples are the fruit most associated with staying healthy and avoiding doctors. Our scientists had never looked into the banana before. But now that the certified oldest man in the world credits bananas and Anacin as his life-extending combo, we’re certainly going to explore whether a new Bananacin product makes sense.”

It’s a pretty smart move considering the brand is one of the oldest pain relievers around and not exactly one that’s top of mind. It will be interesting to see just how many people switch to Anacin and how that affects sales for the brand.