Hasta La Creative!

Leo Burnett gets emotional for Ronald McDonald House Charities with their new spot, “Dad’s Voice.”

The 60-second ad highlights the emotional impact of the charity providing home-to-home accommodation for families with a child in the hospital. “It’s only a voice, everyone has one,” a narrator intones at the opening of the spot. “But this, this is dad’s voice. Dad’s voice is, well, dad’s.” Going on to list some of the voice’s idiosyncrasies, the spot concludes, “Dad’s voice is the sound of home, even when they’re not at home.”

It’s a pretty straightforward approach, but it makes a real emotional impact, delivering on a relevant insight for the charity. It helps that the approach is tender without being cloying, choosing not to oversell the drama of the situation but rather sticking to what viewers can relate to. Stick around for credits after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In the latest sign that the digital ad lengths are getting out of control, Anomaly tapped Jude Law for a six minute “short film” long ad promoting Johnnie Walker Blue Label.

When Law admires a wealthy friend’s boat, with the friend going on about the ship’s unique aspects and building circumstances, he makes a gentleman’s wager to win the seafaring vessel with a dance. Unsure why he would do this, when he can’t really dance, Law nevertheless prepares a choreographed effort to impress the friend and win the boat. It’s an entertaining enough set up, but the dance scene itself leaves a lot to be desired and drags on far too long. While not without its charm, “The Gentleman’s Wager” really could have been told in half its running time. Stay with us for credits after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Wongdoody has launched a new campaign for The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, their first for the beverage retailer, and the brand’s largest campaign to date.

A 30-second online spot entitled “Cool Kew” (featured above), debuted late last month. It consists almost entirely of an argument between two guys on whether their drinks are “cool” or “kew” (a pronunciation they clearly stole from Eric Cartman). You think their argument is finally over around the 20 second mark, but it just starts up again, in an attempt to find humor in audience expectations that really doesn’t work. There’s also a 15-second version of the spot (which makes sense) and an extended 90-second version (which does not).

More interesting is the campaign’s Instagram component, called #PurpleStrawCam, which encourages consumers to cut off a piece of their purple Coffee Bean straw to use as a makeshift camera filter and submit the results to The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’s Instagram page. The purple straw creates an unusual effect and contributes to some interesting photos. The campaign also includes Pinterest, Vine and other social components, as well as outdoor and radio.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

It’s here! Amazon has released the first ad for its Fire Phone, continuing its in-house creative team’s partnership with El Segundo agency Siltanen & Partners.

The premise behind the spot–which doubles as a laundry list of trinkets that come with the phone–concerns casting nine-year-olds as hipsters in training who compare notes on the latest, hottest tech toys/pop culture properties while making the adults around them ever more aware of their own age and irrelevance.

For context: in 2013, S&P’s advertising campaign for Amazon’s Kindle Fire HDX was ranked #1 in effectiveness by Ace Metrix. The campaign beat out Apple, Samsung and every other noted brand as the best advertising in the tablet, laptop and mobile phone device category.

For 2014, Amazon and S&P are betting on said cute kids to tout the content people will be able to access on the phone when it comes out: Twitter, Pinterest, Minecraft, and a free one-year subscription to Amazon Prime.

Credits when we receive them.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Cheil Worldwide and R/GA teamed up with production company Psyop for the six minute conclusion to Samsung’s ambitious sci-fi soccer epic, “The Match.” The first episode in the series launched all the way back in November.

“The Match Part 2? picks up with Earth’s Galaxy 11 team trailing 3-1 at the half, and in need of some serious rallying to defeat the alien team. Of course, it’s hardly a spoiler to give away that the team is up to the task. Samsung wasn’t about to end its month long campaign with an alien apocalypse, as that would hardly help them move product. For those who have been following all along, it’s the ending they were waiting for. While Samsung’s timing is a little questionable — “The Match Part 2? was released just two days ago as a coda to the World Cup, while “The Match Part 1? made its debut with the opening of the tournament — it has still seemed to find its audience, with over four million views in two days. We’ve included “The Match Part 1? as a refresher after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Michael Jordan is back (this time, thankfully, sans Hitler mustache) for Hanes in a new spot by The Martin Agency.

The 30-second spot is Jordan’s first appearance in a Hanes television commercial since 2010, and also marks his 25th year as Hanes spokesperson. In the spot, entitled, “Golf Test,” Jordan mocks his partner’s truly awful golf game. “Golf Test” promotes Hanes’ X-Temp t-shirts and briefs, which “speeds evaporation to help keep you cool and dry,” preventing such conditions as swamp ass, marsh balls, raw taint and pit stains. The spot handles the “bad golf” approach well enough, although by now it’s become a routine schtick in ads and feels a bit tired. Still, all anyone will talk about is the return of Jordan, and it’s good to see him back.

The campaign also features a digital video series with Vine-sensation Logan Paul traveling around the country attempting dares (supposedly) proposed by fans. We’ve included the teaser for that initiative, along with credits, after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If someone asked you what sort of business would spark the next social media trend, odds are that the word pharmaceuticals would not come to mind.

Pfizer hopes to defy convention by capitalizing on its “Get Old” campaign–launched back in 2012–and introducing “FOGO“: fear of getting old.

The company thought that the initiative, intended to stimulate conversations on subjects like the challenges of aging, needed a boost. As reported in The New York Times, they traded original AOR SS&K in an effort to go HUGE.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The latest spot for Levi’s, created by FCB West/The House Worldwide and MJZ, imagines a personal relationship between each pair of denim pants and its owner.

Every pair tells a story, see…and all the jeans ask of you, consumer, is that you keep things interesting.

The pants-as-lifestyle-accessory theme marks a shift from the Wieden+Kennedy “Go Forth” campaign, which turned existential with the help of one Charles Bukowski.

You may recall that Levi’s announced an agency change back in February, and we can expect more in the vein of this spot to come. Yesterday Fast Company called the effort “more inclusive, and more mainstream”, and FCB CCO Eric Springer emphasized the break from the W+K aesthetic, saying:

“The first step was to get the brand voice back and make everyone know it’s their brand once again…It’s not a comeback tour. It’s a forever tour.”

The company’s own CMO emphasized the social components that will (hopefully) involve lots of people documenting the shared journey of themselves and their jeans.

Three words, then: User. Generated. Content.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Taco Bell fans north of the border have been waiting patiently for Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos to arrive in Canada. So to mark their arrival, Grip Limited designed an arcade game that made them wait a little bit longer.

They created a custom 8-bit “arcade game, called “The Waiting Game,” that “simulated all the excitement and high-octane action of patiently waiting in line.” Players could string together moves like “yawn,” “tap foot,” “check watch” or “chew gum.” The game was placed outside a Taco Bell location in downtown Toronto, and, soon enough, a line formed. To play a game about waiting in line. Since they aren’t complete sadists, Taco Bell rewarded players who made it through “The Waiting Game” by letting them be some of the first people in Canada to try the Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Taco, free of charge. You can see the promotion in action in the video above, and play on online version of the game here. Stick around for credits after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

goodness Mfg. takes on Silicon Valley in a new spot for Toshiba, presenting their Encore 2 as “the one device that quiets the hype.”

In the animated, 30-second “Sillycon Valley,” goodness Mfg. presents a cartoonish tech world gone overboard, complete with coffee drones, 5D printing and “smart scissors.” While disparaging tech to sell a tablet may be a questionable strategy, and “Sillycon Valley” may go a bit too far into the ridiculous at times to seem like an effective satire of Silicon Valley tech hype, the tagline at least wraps things up nicely. Still, it’s hard to imagine “Sillycon Valley” persuading anyone to go buy the Encore 2.

The agency takes a different approach with “Unleash Yourself,” this time showing the tablet’s versatility at a wide range of tasks while highlighting its portability. It’s a more effective approach than “Sillycon Valley,” selling the product for what it can do, rather than what it doesn’t claim to be. Stick around for “Unleash Yourself,” along with credits, after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.