Hasta La Creative!

If you can't wait for Mad Men to return for part one of its seventh and final season this Sunday, and you're itching to declare your intention to watch it to all your social media friends, AMC would like to offer you a special opportunity to advertise on its behalf by customizing a picture of Don Draper so your name appears next to his face.

You can choose one of seven other characters, too. It's a fun tool for die-hards, and a smart way to drive the natural symbiosis between TV and social media. Dubbing it "Mad Men Out of Office" seems a bit of a misnomer (as much as posting to Facebook may feel like clocking in to some). If you were going to be in the office on a Sunday night, you should obviously quit and watch Mad Men.

Unless you work in advertising, in which case, of course, you probably are in the office on a Sunday night, and you won't be watching Mad Men, or having much use for AMC's widget. You can still drown your woes in Canadian Club, though—and catch up on the first six seasons in two minutes, to remember what you'll be missing.

Sheb Wooley comes screaming out of the mists of pop culture into the commercial mainstream in FCB's new campaign for pay-TV channel Canal+ in Spain.

Wooley is the voice actor who performed the "Wilhelm scream," a ubiquitous sound effect that debuted in the 1951 adventure Distant Drum and has since been dubbed into more than 200 movies, including Toy Story and the Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones series. It takes its name from Private Wilhelm, a character in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River. (Modern auteurs like George Lucas, Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg apparently use the scream in their productions whenever possible.)

The ad below, by FCB Spain and FCB Los Angeles, stars Wooley's widow, Linda Dotson Wooley, as "The Woman Who Can't Watch Movies"—because she's afraid she'll hear her husband's famous scream. The mockumentary points to a website that encourage folks to "donate" their screams and overdub Wooley so Linda can enjoy Hollywood films again. The site lets you record screams for up to three movie clips and share the results with friends. They'll really appreciate that.

Even though it's all a goof, I kept thinking that Linda could just watch something outside Wooley's filmography—like the Scream movies or Home Alone, in which, it seems, Macaulay Culkin handled the screamy honors himself.

CREDITS
Client: Canal+
Agency: FCB Spain; FCB Los Angeles
Campaign: "Leave Wilhelm Alone"
Client Contacts: Iñaki Martikorena, Bernardo Melero, Purification González
Executive Creative Directors: Pedro Soler, Eric Springer
Creative Team: Beatriz Pedrosa, Peio Azkoaga, Joao Freitas
Producers: Brendan Kiernan, Steve Devore, Thomas Anderson, Kate Borkowski, Kepa Vizcay
Production Company: Helo
Director: Alex Grossman
Lighting: Seamus Tierney
Sound: Sam Tornero Pulido
Web Developers: Carlos Lainez, Miguel Iglesias
App Developers: Joan Arbó, Jorge Cubillo
Social Media Strategy: Mauro Rodriguez, Jose Olivares
Poster: Beatriz Pedrosa, Marian de la Fuente
Planner: Manuel López

Yes, you read that correctly: Adult Swim is making the rounds with a gigantic black-and-pink blow-up castle filled with (sponsored) attractions like a KFC-branded rotating mirror-tunnel, an Ice Breakers cage in which participants are required to sing for their freedom and sundry other extremely weird attractions.

We saw this nonsense last summer at San Diego Comic Con, and it's a good time. I don't remember the Tippy Tunnel, but then again, I don't remember much about the experience generally, and have only a T-shirt to prove I was there. Yes, the T-shirts will be a feature of the revitalized Fun House, too.

From February to May, the castle will tour colleges around the U.S., notably U.C. Riverside, Texas A&M, Auburn and some others—10 schools over 12 weeks, in all.

It's an unorthodox ad buy, to put it mildly, but KFC and Hershey's (which makes Ice Breakers) are getting spots on the network as part of their sponsorship of the various dizzy-making attractions. Those spots will also promote awareness of the Fun House on air, beginning Feb. 24 on Adult Swim.

2013 was a great year for the network—it came in second among 18-34-year-old viewers in prime time (to sister net TBS), despite not actually airing between 8 and 9 p.m. That's set to change in March, and with new airtime coming up, it's important to make sure Adult Swim's core audience is aware of the new time schedule.

Not that they have to take advice from me, but they're going to want to get something really big to promote that. Something that catches the eye.

IFC just released the key art for Season 4 of Portlandia, and the photos are fantastic. Not only did the network get the great young photographer Alex Prager on board—she decided to shoot the ads in the style of her "Face in the Crowd" photos (many of which are on display through March 9 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and at Lehmann Maupin in New York through Feb. 22). It's almost like getting a couple of non-advertising Prager originals as gift.

AdFreak spoke on Thursday with Blake Callaway, IFC's svp of marketing, about how Prager got involved, and how the two photos will be used differently in the media buy.

How did Alex get involved with this?
We always collaborate early on in the creative process for each new season with Fred [Armisen] and Carrie [Brownstein]. In the ads for past seasons, we've always focused solely on them. And so much of the show is about the community of Portlandia and their observations about the bigger world. So we thought, Let's put them in the bigger world. And then it became a fun conversation about who could do that in a unique way. We at IFC had always been a fan of Alex, Fred and Carrie had been a fan of Alex, and we just reached out. She's a hot artist right now, and she was a fan of the show and said she'd love to do it.

The ads are just like her "Face in the Crowd" photos. That's pretty special.
So much of it is directly from the work she's putting out there right now. We just said, Alex, what do you want to do? It was Fred and Carrie and Alex working through some ideas, and it's just pure Prager. Some of her same extras are in these photos. Her sister's in there; her mother's in there. And we have nine Portlandia extras that she actually cast into this world as well. And so they're sprinkled throughout. Portlandia fans will be able to pick out, Oh that's the girl from the thrift shop. Or that's someone I've seen in the feminist bookstore. So it works on a couple of different levels.

I suppose if any TV show is going to reference high art in its advertising, it would be Portlandia.
I always kind of get excited when we get coverage off of the TV page, when we're in the arts and culture section. And I agree, I think we sort of have permission to play in that space. And the reason it works is because so many people in that world are also fans of the show. Portlandia gently sends up that world as well, and Fred and Carrie's projects beyond Portlandia cross-pollinate with that world.

Creatively, we like to look not just at what's going on at other networks but what's going on in pop culture, or art references, or other things we can be inspired by. And for this project, all the stars aligned. And the more time you spend with it, you see different little elements in each picture. There's just a lot to take in.

Was it always the idea to have two photos? One seems a bit more dressed-up than the other.
Alex wanted to get two different shots. And we thought maybe at one point we'd pick a favorite. But we think they're both pretty interesting. What you'll probably see is the one we're calling "Going to Work" (below); you may see that on midtown subway platforms. And then we may put the other one in a different environment that's maybe a little less office focused. We've also tried to pick media placements that are bigger, like Interview magazine, The Hollywood Reporter—things that are bigger scale, so you can see the art.

I see—because it reads better at a bigger size.
Yeah. We decided this isn't the thing you put on the side of a bus as it zooms past you.

At this year's Super Bowl, Wonderful Pistachios will take a break from its usual "what's hot this minute" approach and feature a star with a bit more lasting power: Stephen Colbert. The host of Comedy Central's Colbert Report will appear in two game-day ads for the brand, kicking off a campaign themed "Get crackin', America." Ads will continue to roll out throughout 2014 as part of a yearlong contract with Colbert.

The spots will be directed by Tom Kuntz, who helmed Old Spice's "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like," the unforgettably odd Skittles "Beard" spot and Volkswagen's 2013 Super Bowl ad, "Get Happy."

In a statement, the marketing chief for Wonderful Pistachios parent Paramount Farms praised his brand's 2013 Super Bowl ad. "Last year's Super Bowl spot featuring Psy drove significant brand awareness and incredible buzz among consumers," said Marc Seguin. "This year, we wanted to extend and deepen that enthusiasm beyond the Super Bowl with talent that excites and resonates with our core consumer target over the full year. Mr. Colbert is the perfect fit for our brand and for this campaign."

All right, it's been done before, but not for a while: Nickelodeon is partnering with the ever-embattled U.S. Postal Service to promote its long-running children's series SpongeBob SquarePants, in which a member of the order dictyoceratida opts for business casual dress to spend time with a slow-witted echinoderm and a squirrel of incredibly advanced brain function with a penchant for scuba diving.

The show's hero will appear in mailbox form on street corners around the country, and postage-paid SpongeBob postcards will be available gratis at about 25,000 post offices. If you want to see a MailPants yourself, you'll need to travel to Atlanta; Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Dallas; Hollywood and Orlando, Fla.; Kirkwood, Mo.; Los Angeles; Miami; New York; Philadelphia; or Washington. So really, you have no excuse.

Nick has a series of videos on the letter-writing process that ties into the campaign as well as printable stationery; the whole shebang is in effect through the month of SpongeBob-related Lego and stuffed-animal buying, formerly known as December. So, by the time the last MailPants disappears on Jan. 5, you may actually have convinced your kid to write that thank you note to Nana.

IFC's upcoming The Spoils of Bablyon, a comedy miniseries that spoofs serious miniseries, is based on a book that seems to be sold out in Hudson News stores around the country. The problem with keeping the book in stock, though, is that there were never any printed copies.

Eric Jonrosh (and the jig will be up when he shows up on TV and looks a lot like Will Ferrell, who produces the series along with the rest of the Funny or Die crew) is the megalomaniacal author of the book, and his persona has become the avatar of IFC's marketing for the show. "[Andrew Steele and Matt Piedmont, who wrote the series] created a character—well, we don't even like to call him a character," head of marketing Blake Callaway tells AdFreak. "We like to pretend he's real. We've written the fake book reviews. He's committed to literacy, because if you can't read, you can't read Jonrosh."

The writer's megalomaniacal streak is borne out in the ambitions of the miniseries, which appears to span a period from the 1930s to the 1980s, if the trailer (see below) is any indication. So IFC has an appropriately grandiose ad campaign, with the book-focused executions littering bookstores and branded Little Free Libraries installed in cities like Dallas and Minneapolis in partnership with that organization.

Callaway says he hopes to entice writers from the blockbuster-ier end of the literary spectrum to turn out for the show's Los Angeles premiere in January. "[James Patterson] is on our wish list," Callaway said. "Our fantasy list is to have Jackie Collins, Patterson, Grisham—we think they should turn out to celebrate their colleague."

Jonrosh has also been hard at work "reviewing" current best-sellers (especially those with movie versions) like Ender's Game—there's a certain amount of subtext to that one—in wildly inappropriate ways. The Wolf of Wall Street and Fifty Shades of Grey have also suffered his attentions.

As for the miniseries itself, Callaway said, "We're going back to the ABC marketing division of the '80s," à la Roots (which is getting a non-hilarious remake, as well). Makes sense: The show has an ensemble cast that includes unlikely names like Tobey Maguire, Val Kilmer and Haley Joel Osment, who's had something of a comeback this year between Spoils and Amazon's Alpha House.

The show, Callaway told AdFreak, will be an anthology series, like another popular cable offering. "This will kind of be our American Horror Story," he said. "Every year, we'll put another Eric Jonrosh novel on the screen." Sounds like a candidate for renewal.

The new ad in Hyundai's ongoing tie-in with AMC megahit series The Walking Dead features a scruffy bunch of zombiepocalyse survivors who could pass for Woodbury refugees taking shelter with Sheriff Rick and crew. That means they'll probably be dead soon. Sharp sticks will get them only so far against angry hordes of walkers and that pesky black cloud that hangs over our heroes.

The latest commercial, from Innocean USA, helped kick off the drama's fourth season this week and launch the next round of Hyundai's Chop Shop initiative. Fans can win a custom-designed, tricked-out, zombie-proof 2014 Hyundai Tucson in the "Survive and Drive" sweepstakes. If it's anything like the inaugural prize, unveiled at the recent New York Comic-Con, there will be razor wire and machine guns.

Hyundai, an early sponsor of The Walking Dead, has to love this killer alliance. The show's Season 4 premiere pulled in a record-busting 16.1 million viewers, up 30 percent from its previous high-water mark. More Chop Shop-centric ads will debut on Hyundai's social media networks within the next few weeks. See the previews below.

CREDITS
Client: Hyundai Motor America
Spot: "Speech"

Agency: Innocean USA
Executive Creative Director: Greg Braun
Creative Directors: Barney Goldberg, Scott Muckenthaler, Tom Pettus
Art Director: Arnie Presiado
Copywriter: Jeb Quaid
VP, Director of Integrated Production: Jamil Bardowell
Executive Producer, Content: Brandon Boerner
Product Specialist: Lawrence Chow
VP, Account Director: Juli Swingle
Account Supervisor: Darcy Tokita
Account Coordinator: Kohl Samuels
VP, Digital Engagement and Strategy: Uwe Gutschow
VP, Media Planning: Ben Gogley
Media Director: James Zayti
Senior Business Affairs Manager: Lisa Nichols
Project Manager: Dawn Cochran

Production Company: Biscuit Filmworks
Director: Mike Maguire
DP: Neil Shapiro
Executive Producer: Colleen O'Donnell
Producer: Tracy Broaddus
Production Supervisor: Mitch Livingston
Casting Agent: Mary Ruth

Editorial Company: Union Editorial
Editor: Jim Haygood
VP Executive Producer: Megan Dahlman

Music Company: Human
Producer: Jonathan Stanford

Telecine Place: Company 3
Online Place: Union Editorial
Record Mix Place: Eleven Sound

[Mild Breaking Bad spoiler ahead.]

In "Granite State," the penultimate episode of Breaking Bad's final season, Saul Goodman, contemplating his future with a new identity away from New Mexico, makes an offhand reference to a certain cinnamon-roll chain. "If I'm lucky," he says, "in a month from now, best-case scenario, I'm managing a Cinnabon in Omaha."

It took a little while, but naturally, a manager at a Cinnabon in Omaha couldn't let that go without a response.

A spokesperson for Cinnabon confirmed to Consumerist that the sign above, outside an Omaha location, is real and was approved by corporate. It might not be the most stunning creative execution, but kudos to the manager for making the most of what, in the end, wasn't the most flattering reference. (Perhaps he took his cues from the Belize Tourism Board, which earlier in the season embraced a very unflattering mention on Breaking Bad—the use of the phrase "taking a trip to Belize" as a euphemism for getting murdered.)

Cinnabon corporate was quicker to respond to Saul's quip. Check out the tweet below, linking to Cinnabon's careers page, made on the very night "Granite State" aired.

. @mrbobodenkirk When you're ready http://t.co/fynwXF6W9c #BreakingBad

— Cinnabon (@Cinnabon) September 23, 2013

Fresh from his U.S. Open triumph, Rafael Nadal comes on like the candy man in ESPN's latest tongue-in-cheek SportsCenter spot from Wieden + Kennedy in New York. Network personalities John Anderson and Bram Weinstein just can't figure out why Rafa is such a chick magnet around the ESPN offices. Could it be his tan? His dimples? Keep your shirts on, gentlemen, because the answer comes at the end, when we learn that it's the sweet, sweet stuff in Nadal's big, shiny cup that keeps them coming back for more. Roger Federer's commercial performances, even when he's pimping Lindt chocolates, are never as tasty.