Hasta La Creative!

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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Digital agency Blast Radius Amsterdam commissioned highly-acclaimed fashion photographer Lawrence Ellis (Vogue, ID Magazine, Wonderland) to capture the “tracks” of aspiring artist Que and actress/barista Asami as they traversed their everyday routes through their Tokyo neighborhoods for sports lifestyle brand Onitsuka Tiger’s new AW13 campaign. Since the AW13 is presumably a running shoe, you have to wonder why they didn’t select athletes for these spots. But I guess Que and Asami were just more photogenic. The campaign extends beyond the television spots, featuring over 1,000 Instagram images telling the stories of this campaign as well. UK and Germany-based agency Renegade Media is responsible for the campaign’s seeding and PR activity.

The aesthetically pleasing spots (and Instagram images) succeed in making me really want to visit Tokyo (or would if I didn’t already really want to visit Tokyo) but don’t really make me want to shell out money for the sneakers. In fact, during the course of the spots, which both last just over one minute, the sneakers become almost an after-thought. But since I only ever run if I’m trying to catch a train or fleeing a swarm of angry bees, I suppose I’m not the target demographic.

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hhgregg is a rapidly growing, publicly owned and operated consumer electronics and home appliances retailer headquartered in Indiana specializing in high end TVs and appliances.

For their latest TV spot, Leo Burnett came up with a nightmarish date scenario in which a TV-obsessed tech geek (possibly an hhgregg employee), who bears a slight resemblance to a young Mario Batali, can’t stop talking about “light and illuminating pixels” and “variable refresh rates” while on a paddle boat ride with his date. The extremely bored date sits, paddling with her feet while holding a rose from TV-Obsessed Tech Geek. The poor woman stares off, bored out of her mind, as her date drivels on, “Of course, you wouldn’t know that unless you read the blogs I read.” Then we cut to an hh gregg salesman who says, “Talking about TVs doesn’t make you sound smart, it makes you sound lonely,” perfectly followed by the tagline, “hhgregg knows TVs, so you don’t have to.”

The ad is effective not just because it dovetails so well with the tagline, but because it presents such a humorous real-life situation that everyone can relate to. Ladies, I’m sure you’ve been there: stuck with some dude yammering on about some techie drivel without letting you sneak in a word of conversation, completely oblivious to your boredom. And I’m sure that tech-obsessed guys have felt at times a bit too much like the guy in this spot. Maybe this spot will raise some self-awareness. An advertisement that may open up some eyes and improve first date behavior? I’d say that’s a pubic service.

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RPA’s new campaign for the Honda Odyssey launches next week, featuring the voice-acting talents of Neil Patrick Harris and Rainn Wilson. The spots all revolve around the Odyssey’s new built-in vacuum cleaner, the kind of car feature that seems so obvious you have to wonder why it hasn’t been done before.

The spots feature various talking debris — discarded toys and snacks– talking about how great the Odyssey is, only to be swept up by the built-in vacuum cleaner. This begs the question: are these anthropomorphized bits of detritus harmed or killed by the Honda Odyssey’s vacuum cleaner? The moral implications of vacuuming up sentient garbage are not broached by the two 30 second and one 15 second spots.

Honda’s campaign doesn’t end with the morally ambiguous commercials, however. The campaign will be spread through online video, homepage takeovers, gaming, mobile, location-based targeting and print, in addition to the network and cable TV spots. Honda has also aligned with Fox to feature the Odyssey, along with other Honda models, on “The X Factor,” starting with the season premiere on Septemer 9th. So basically Honda and RPA are going all out with their campaign to promote the Odyssey. Prepare for the barrage of Odyssey marketing everywhere, complete with the new tagline “Start Something Special.”

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Well you’ve gotta love a great creative idea. And this Buzzman France-created work for French chocolate bar brand Milka is certainly creative. The agency put together a program based on the assumption the last square of a chocolate bar is the best.

Milka bars where then manufactured with one square missing. Those purchasing the bars were asked to decide whether they wanted that last square sent to them or to a loved one.
Great promotion. Although we’re guessing the manufacturing folks weren’t too happy with having to retool their production line to manufacture bars with one square missing.

American Standard and Carmichael Lynch celebrate the indoors with their latest campaign. The TV spot “Movie Marathons,” directed by Albert Kodagolian, opens with a young woman dressing up as a vintage scream queen, seemingly in preparation for a night out. But it’s soon revealed that she’s “attending” a sci-fi movie marathon with her boyfriend and cat. The spot tries perhaps a little too hard to be cool, but one thing it definitely does well is cash in on people’s love of cats dressed up as stuff. I won’t give it away, but it’s particularly adorable.  continued…

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From Mayo Draftcb Peru, the agency behind the amazing water generating billboard for UTEC, comes a truly awe-inspiring campaign for the Peruvian Cancer Foundation.

The Peruvian Cancer Foundation was truly in need of help, having failed to reach its fundraising goal for the past three years. This year, they launched their campaign among the prisoners of Castro Castro Penitenciary, the most dangerous prison in Peru. They gathered the representatives of each pavilion in the prison, showed them video of children struggling with cancer, and asked them to raise as much funds among the other prisoners as they could. The results exceeded expectations, and news of the prisoner’s compassion spread throughout Peru, helping the Peruvian Cancer Foundation break previous fundraising records. Perhaps most inspiring is the positive effect the campaign had on the inmates of the prison. But words can’t really do it justice, check out the video for yourself. There really aren’t enough stories like this one out there.  continued…

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When the Doritos Locos Taco came to America, envious fans north of the border had to content themselves with the knowledge that while Americans had a taco with a Doritos shell, they still had universal healthcare and a lack of violent crime. Still, many Canadian Taco Bell fans grew bitter and disheartened as they waited, now for nearly two years, for Doritos Locos to make the trip north. Many lost hope. Some tweeted or posted on Facebook angrily. (Yes, apparently people  in Canada do occasionally get angry over something other than hockey.)

So Taco Bell and agency Grip Limited chose to target those Canadians who tweeted or posted angrily to be the first to try the Doritos Locos Tacos in Canada. But they took things a step further, actually etching the angry tweets and posts (in at least one case containing an expletive) into the coveted taco shell with a laser. The disgruntled fans were then invited to a “special fan event,” presented with the tacos and asked to “eat their words.” Those who thought that Taco Bell would never roll out Doritos Locos north of the border were more than happy to be proven wrong. One fan even said, “This is one of the greatest moments of my life,” which is kind of depressing, really.

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Climate Name Change has started a petition to the World Meteorological Organization to name extreme storms after policy makers who deny climate change.

Barton F. Graf 9000 has put together a clever video supporting the petition, and it’s pretty hilarious. It starts by asking what ordinary people, with names like Andrew and Katrina, did to deserve having catastrophic storms named after them. Following this setup comes the proposal to name extreme storms caused by climate change after politicians who deny the existence of climate change.

To illustrate how this would work, they’ve put together some fake news stories about these storms. Some of these are really funny, leading to such gems as “Senator Marco Rubio is expected to pound the eastern seaboard sometime tonight,” “If you value your life, please seek shelter from Michele Bachman,” “David Vitter is literally lifting boats out of the water and tossing them on to the land”  and “…thousands of animals have been displaced or killed by Governor Rick Perry.” My personal favorite: “We’ve been here two days because of Congressman Paul Ryan. I have friends who are still out there. It’s scary, because I have no idea what Paul Ryan could be doing to them right now.”

While it would be amazing if the WMO actually enacted this policy, it’s clear that this is more a way to raise awareness about the dangers of politicians who deny climate change and their short-sighted policies. It’s a really clever and effective way to link climate change denial with the devastation that climate change causes, suggesting a clear link between climate change denial and the destruction of these catastrophic storms, while calling out many of these climate change deniers by name. “Climate Name Change” even provides a more complete list of “deniers and obstructionists” on their site, since there’s not nearly enough time to list them all in a two-and-a-half minute video.

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Even though the Toyota Tacoma is a truck, it can beat the Grim Reaper at chess. I’m not sure if this is a clouded reference to the 1957 movie “The Seventh Seal,” but regardless, it’s a strange spot from Saatchi & Saatchi LA, and part of a new Toyota Tacoma VS campaign that shows the truck taking on, in addition to Mr. Reaper, a mime, a magician, and a girlfriend with a tear duct issue. The four spots are hit-or-miss and embrace a brand of awkward humor that might not mesh with the truck-buying sector of America.

All four commercials do, however, promote a Tacoma feature, and during a time when randomness seems to be a common weapon of choice for creatives, specificity counts for something. You can watch the remaining three ads after the jump.

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