Hasta La Creative!

In America, we use football to sell beer. In the UK, they use football (which we call soccer).

This summer Budweiser UK, an official Premier League sponsor, launched an initiative, backed by The League Managers Association, called ‘Budweiser Coach the Coaches.’ The initiative features leading professional managers spending the summer holding training sessions with non-league football clubs across England with the aim of helping non-league coaches enhance their training techniques and strategy, leading to a confidence boost heading into the season,

UK agency Octagon, prodco Spicer and Moore and Budweiser assembled footage from the campaign to share their results. At the beginning of the video, I’m informed I should be 18 years or older to watch it. This left me waiting for a boob to pop out, some gritty injury, or at least some good old-fashioned British cursing, but I was left thoroughly disappointed. Instead, Stuart Pearce talks tactics and strategy, without so much as a “bloody hell” or a “wanker.” Presumably, it’s the association with an alcoholic beverage that prompts the warning, which is quite different from here in the states, where we serve up hyper-sexualized beer ads with SportsCenter every morning. It’s interesting to note the similarities (sports!) and differences (lack of overt sexuality) in Budweiser’s UK strategy, which seems to appeal to the serious side of a game many take very, very seriously.

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If you live in Quebec and happen to see giant pieces of women’s clothing and accessories, do not be alarmed. Rather, be intrigued. Toronto shop john st. – creators of the Lake Huron “Save the Drop” campaign, among many others – has teamed with Winners, the Canadian version of Marshall’s, for an immense scavenger hunt across Quebec called “Find Big, Score Big.” Shoppers who find seven-foot-tall high heels will be happy to know they are not involved in a bad post-modern art show. And more importantly, the first three shoppers to come across each installment will win designer items worth up to $1,000. The next 25 shoppers will receive $25 gift cards. I’m tempted to say we’re all winners, but we’re not.

For those interested scavengers who don’t want to drive around Quebec aimlessly, you can find clues on the Winners Facebook page, which from a brand marketing standpoint, is a savvy way to drive up social media engagement in both the short- and long-term. Users will be more inclined to periodically check the pages to see if similar giveaways are taking place, and the costs to serve a local audience like this are relatively minimal. The contest lasts until September 24, and you can look at additional photos from the campaign after the jump.

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In the UK, true bar magic may be when some big bald guv’nah throws down way too many pints and then walks off like he was sipping shirley temples. But for those who prefer a more traditional type of magic, Space and Heineken premium lager brand Desperados have teamed for a new “Bar-Illusions” campaign that consists of street magicians performing bar tricks around the country. The goal is to generate some buzz for Desperado’s line of tequila-flavored lager.

In the above promo video, “Cap in Bottle,” you can see popular street magician Gerry Sims working a small staged crowd with one of his deft tricks. Watching the magic: fun. Dealing with the aftermath of a tequila-infused beer hangover the next morning: not as much fun. While you mull that over, you can watch another quick Sims trick after the jump.

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Origin “The Unknown” from Psyop on Vimeo.

Psyop and Clemenger BBDO Melbourne bring us this whimsical spot, offering up a childlike take on how electricity is made.

As Psyop Director Fletcher Moules puts it, they wanted to express “that feeling that something magical is hidden around every corner,”…or behind every socket. The spot uses whimsical imagery such as a monkey riding a bicycle that spins a turbine and fighting magnets to effectively communicate that most people really don’t know all that much more about energy use now than they did when they were children imagining such fantastical scenarios. Timing is key here: Just when you might be wondering “Okay, where exactly is this going?” comes the “It’s time to take the mystery out of energy” tag. The spot then ends by directing you to discover five ways to control your energy at originenergy.com.au. It’s refreshing to see an ad utilizing seeming randomness to deliver its message, as opposed to the myriad of ads whose message is obscured by attempts at random humor.  continued…

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Leo Burnett’s “Design Your Life” campaign for the new Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear, which the agency hopes to present as “vehicles of inspiration,” kicks off with the 2:51 length “Sweet Dreams.”

“Sweet Dreams” tells the story of a young woman who wants to save her grandfather’s failing toy shop. The ad follows the woman around as she utilizes six of the phone’s distinct features, all leading to a puppet performance that presumably will help revive the shop (somehow). While “Sweet Dreams,” directed by music video veteran Paul Hunter, sets the bar very high in terms of production, direction and cinematography — Samsung and Leo Burnett go as far as to call it a “digital short film” (a bit self-congratulatory if you ask me) — the writing and overall concept are a bit of a head-scratcher. Why isn’t anyone going to the toy store, it looks awesome? Is the puppet show really going to help? The store is closed at the time of performance and the stage seems to be blocking any view of the store itself.

If you can put aside the strange and poorly realized premise, the stylization works well, and Leo Burnett does a good job of showing the phone’s features in action. Plus, what’s not to love about dancing puppets? (Although the “puppets” in question were actually real dancers converted to CGI, rather than actual marionettes.) Whether or not it works as a story (or “digital short film”), “Sweet Dreams” does a good job of showcasing Samsung’s Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear. A promising start to the campaign, hopefully next time Leo Burnett can pull off a better realized concept to fulfill the potential of their impressive production.  continued…

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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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Love it or hate it, Sportscenter has always been good at maintaining a certain tone across its ad campaigns. They’ve been running with the “star athletes in the ESPN office” schtick for what seems like forever, and it seems to be an infinitely adaptable formula. The latest in this long line of ads is the new 30-second spot “Candy Dish,” from Wieden + Kennedy New York, featuring U.S. Open champion Rafael Nadal, fresh off his defeat of Novak Djokovic last night.

In the spot, Sportscenter host John Anderson and ESPNNews anchor Bram Weinstein wonder what makes Nadal so popular in the ESPN office (especially with the ladies). Is it his good looks? His tan? His accent? Or could it be that U.S. Open trophy he’s using as a candy dish? If you ask me, I think it’s the sweatband. Who doesn’t love a good sweatband?

This is the second This is Sportscenter spot to be released in both English and Spanish, following the clever Robinson Cano “Handshakes” spot. The Spanish-language version swaps out Anderson and Weinstein for ESPN Deportes anchors Alvaro Morales, Jorge Eduardo Sánchez and Carolina Padrón. Personally, I prefer the Spanish version (featured below). Because, well, everything sounds better in Spanish.

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On the field, Calvin Johnson earns his “Megatron” nickname by dominating defenses with a robotic efficiency. He’s bigger, faster, stronger, and at times, it looks like a Transformer is playing against humans. However, off the field, and more specifically, in the ESPN offices, Johnson uses his transforming powers to trick a different kind of opponent (for anyone who cares and watches too much ESPN, it’s Kevin Negandhi).

The latest “This is Sportscenter” ad is par for the course: short, funny, and off-beat. The work comes once again from W+K New York (which has been handling SportsCenter work for nearly two decades), an agency that has no problem taking sports material and making it accessible to audiences. And for Megatron, he may want to think about outsourcing his Transformer duties over to Diddy, or Johnson, or whatever Nike wants to call him.

Credits 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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In a series of five new Red Urban-created ads for Volkswagen Canada, we are shown just how awesome the Golf GTD’s acceleration is and how that acceleration can have sometimes good and sometimes bad effects on its passengers.

So, you have been warned. Be very, very careful the next time you get into your Golf GTD.