Hasta La Creative!

Back in March, we wrote about McCann Erickson Japan’s introduction of AI-CD ?, the agency’s new artificially intelligent creative director. Despite some skepticism surrounding the news’ timing (around April 1), the agency insisted that AI-CD ? is for real and now you can see its first work.

McCann Erickson Japan tasked both AI-CD ? and living, breathing human creative director Mitsuru Kuramoto with creating a spot for Mondelez Japan brand Clorets Mint Tab which communicates the brand’s benefit of “instant, long-lasting refreshment that lasts for 10 minutes.” 

AI-CD ?’s ad is fairly straightforward, drawing inspiration from calligraphy.

Kuramoto, meanwhile, takes a more humorous approach. He also capitalizes on human appreciation of dogs, something an artificially intelligent creative director might not account for.

A nationwide poll asking Japanese audiences which ad they prefer is currently being conducted, so the jury is still out on this man versus machine battle, but feel free to weigh in with your own choice in the comments section.

“As a creative director myself, I have mixed feelings about this,” McCann Japan executive creative director Isamu Nakamura told The Drum. “But I am very excited to see how the public receives a commercial creatively directed by A.I. and how the battle between human and A.I. will turn out.”

In its latest project for Snickers, BBDO New York returns to this year’s Super Bowl spot starring Willem Dafoe as a certain mid-century starlet.

The former Mrs. Joe DiMaggio would have turned 90 this week, so this activation was a tribute of sorts to her all-too-brief and tragic life. Somewhere in midtown Manhattan, Snickers set up an interactive video screen featuring a continuously animated scene from the famous film “The Seven Year Itch” in which Monroe’s dress keeps getting blown up by the breeze from the gates below. You know the one.

There’s a bit of a twist, of course: if passersby stare at the star for too long, she turns into someone else entirely.

As you can see, the digital scanner figures out when someone has been gazing a bit too longingly at that Candle in the Wind before changing her into the Green Goblin. Apparently, the Last Temptation of Christ was simply a chocolate bar packed with peanuts and caramel!

It’s not quite clear why the staring makes Marilyn hungry, though we can see why it might make her angry. And we’re all about suspension of disbelief anyway.

CREDITS

Creative Agency: BBDO New York 

Client: SNICKERS 

David Lubars: Chief Creative Officer, BBDO Worldwide
Greg Hahn: Chief Creative Officer, BBDO New York
Gianfranco Arena: Executive Creative Director
Peter Kain: Executive Creative Director
Scott Mahoney: Creative Director
Dan Oliva: Creative Director
Joey Henson: Copywriter
Jimmy Morrissey: Art Director
David Rolfe: Director of Integrated Production
Amy Wertheimer: Group Executive Producer
Alex Gianni: Executive Broadcast Producer
Neely Lisk: Executive Producer
Koji Yahagi: Director of Photography
Jeff Reagan: Production Assistant 

Kirsten Flanik: Managing Director
Susannah Keller: Global Account Director
Joshua Steinman: Account Director
Tani Corbacho: Account Manager
Jocelyn Choi: Account Executive
Annemarie Norris: Group Planning Director
Alaina Crystal: Planning Director
Sean Stogner: Senior Communications Planner 

Celebrity Talent and IP Rights Acquisition: Brad Sheehan, The Marketing Arm 

Experiential Production Company: Pearl Media
Anthony Petrillo: Executive Producer
Daniel Odham: Producer
Jennifer Ohs: Creative Technologist  

Editorial/Post Production: EG+
Renee Haar: Director of Post Production
Amy Feldman: Post Producer
Tim Jansen: Editor
Harry Nelson: Assistant Editor 

John Cabrera: Audio Engineer

With Father’s Day two weeks from this Sunday, MullenLowe released a timely spot for Century 21, urging viewers to “Give Dad Nothing” this year.

Only the “Nothing” referred to is Nothing, Arizona, where the brand is giving away “A free piece of land.” It’s explained on the bottom of the screen that it’s actually just “A free lease certificate valid for 24 hours on June 19, 2016” (that would be Father’s Day). Hey, that’s better than a sweater or gift card, right?

Obviously the promotion is meant as a punny, tongue-in-cheek play on every day’s answer when asked what they want for Father’s Day. It ties such a response to the brand in sort of a cute way, but we’re not sure the spot promoting the effort had to be more than 30-seconds long. It ends by inviting viewers to givedadnothing.com, where they can claim their land. That the whole thing is, at heart, sort of a dad joke is quite appropriate and while we’re not sure many people will make the trip out to the barren desert landscape it will probably elicit a few chuckles from fathers and garner the brand some attention.

What does Pfizer do? It develops medications, vaccines and other such products promoting general health and wellness.

In a new campaign by HealthWork (a joint venture between BBDO and CDM), the company aims to better demonstrate for viewers how that long and convoluted process works…and why medicine is so heavily regulated.

The larger campaign is called Driven to Discover the Cure, and the first spot is “Before It Became a Medicine.”

Thankfully, professionals who work in medicine have to know very well how to do what they do–unlike those in, say, politics. Or advertising.

As the larger campaign’s homepage tells us, “A lot goes into making a medicine,” and the spot above featured five real Pfizer scientists. Can you spot them??

On that note, the materials produced by HealthWork also include this mini-documentary about stage 4 lung cancer patient Matt Hiznay. As you may have guessed, he is alive today thanks, in large part, to the work of Pfizer’s SVP/group oncology lead Bob Abraham.

Here’s a print ad from the campaign.

Action sports is the dominant theme running through 72andSunny’s Coors Light work.

The agency recently launched a VR campaign for its new client, giving viewers a taste of said athletic events from the comfort of wherever they happen to be sitting.

In “Big Wave Surfing” viewers can pop on their VR headset (or settle for a 360 degree video approximation) and experience the rush of riding a big wave. At the conclusion of the action, the surfer’s POV focuses in on the beach, where friends are waiting with some cold Coors Light.

“White Water Kayaking” and “Downhill Mountain Biking” provide similar experiences for their respective sports. Each of them ends with the viewer being handed a Coors Light and the tagline, “Every climb deserves a refreshing finish. We all have mountains to climb, what’s yours?”

The approach offers viewers a branded VR experience they might actually want to dive into, targeted at the demographic who also might reach for a Coors Light. Brand integration comes at the end of the spots in a way that associates it with action sports and an active lifestyle, with 72andSunny again playing to Coors’ target audience. So while we may lament the rising tide of VR-fueled advertising (we do), we have to admit that this campaign at least makes sense for a brand of light adjunct lager that has long tied itself to such a lifestyle.

Credits:

Client: Coors Light
Chief Executive Officer: Gavin Hattersley
Chief Marketing Officer: David Kroll
Senior Director Marketing: Elina Vives
Director of Marketing: Ryan Marek and Brendan Noonan
Associate Marketing Manager: Jen Naye Herrmann

Agency: 72andSunny
Chief Executive Officer, Founder: John Boiler
Chief Creative Officer, Co-Founder: Glenn Cole
Executive Creative Director, Partner: Bryan Rowles
Executive Creative Director, Partner: Jason Norcross
Creative Director: Jed Cohen
Creative Director: Galen Graham
Lead Designer: Anthony Alvarez
Sr. Writer: Alberto Garcia Orte
Jr. Designer: Chris Ruh
Jr. Writer: Matt Fink
Executive Film Producer: Jim Haight
Sr. Film Producer: Perrin Rausch
Jr. Film Producer: Jamie Glass
Group Brand Director: James Stephens
Brand Director: Andrew Krensky
Brand Coordinator: Anthony Fernandez
Business Affairs Director: Christina Rust
Jr. Business Affairs Manager: Noah Winter
Group Strategy Director: Matt Johnson
Strategist: Eddie Moraga

Production: Unit 9
Executive Producer Unit 9: Luca Delaurentiis

Production/Editorial/Visual Effects: Rapid VR
Director: Dave Klaiber
Executive Producer: Susannah Dilallo
Producer: Rita Gagliardi
VR Technician: Dan White
VR Assistant: Bek Hawkey

Music: South Music
Executive Producer: Ann Haugen
Head of Production, Partner: Dan Pritikin

Last year, Pereira & O’Dell New York launched a campaign for Realtor.com starring Elizabeth Banks entitled “Real Estate in Real Time.” Now Banks is back for a new campaign in which things get a lot more surreal.

Basically, Banks crashes prospective home buyers’ dreams, letting them know that the dream features they desire are in houses on the market at Realtor.com. Because these are dreams, though, the tone is bizarre.

In “Dream Deck,” for example, a man relaxes in a hot tub on his titular deck as a cloud rains ribs, corn on the cob and beer. Banks lets the man know that the deck is available in a home at Realtor.com and he thanks her with a cloud puppy.

A second spot, “Dream Bathroom” takes a similar approach, with a man who finds other things to do while razors shave his face for him. Each spot ends with the tagline “DreamHome, FindHome, OwnHome.”

The ads are a significant departure from the more down-to-earth, slightly awkward humor of “Real Estate in Real Time,” which were far more dialogue-heavy. Banks’ role as such is a little less demanding, with much more of the humor coming courtesy of visual gags helmed by Dummy director Harold Einstein.

“We wanted to have smart but memorable humor that stood out in a category doing the same saccharine kind of messaging,” Pereira & O’Dell executive creative director Dave Arnold told AdAge. “A lot of times you think you need X amount of product shots, but then someone like Harold comes along with a really strong point of view and winds up simplifying things in a way that with the right casting, timing, visuals and taste, the product is now even more memorable and has a bigger role in the creative.”

“Last year was dialogue-heavy, and this year the script got smarter and a lot more visual,” he added. 

In addition to the broadcast spots, running in 30 and 15-second versions, the campaign will roll out social and branded content videos over the next several weeks. These will include branded spots with Bank interviewing different subjects, including her childhood dog, which AdAge claims are “even more out-there than the TV ads.”

With Jonathan Goldsmith’s “The Most Interesting Man in the World” character finally gone, following Havas New York sending him on a “Mission to Mars” and giving away his stuff, the search is on for a replacement to hold the “Most Interesting Man” title. In the interim, Havas and Dos Equis have teamed up with ESPN reporter Erin Andrews and actor Luis Guzmán to promote the swill beer while showcasing where they fall on the “Most Interesting Index.”

“How Interesting is Erin Andrews?” opens with the familiar “Most Interesting Man” music, followed by the familiar over-the-top claim formula, delivered with the line, “Her personality is so infectious she’s unable to enter hospitals.

The spot ends with Andrews claiming she can “drink beer with the best of them” and that she chooses Dos Equis when she does, after the voiceover designates her the “5,008th most interesting person in the world.”

Actor Luis Guzmán gets the spotlight in another 15-second spot. Apparently his “blood is so Latin, vampires find him too spicy,” the spot claims Guzmán is the 8,507th most interesting person in the world.

The approach is a clever placeholder while the brand seeks a replacement for Goldsmith’s character, and the fact that it includes Andrews and designates rank by “The most interesting person” lends itself to an intriguing question: What if “The Most Interesting Man in the World” is replaced by “The Most Interesting Woman?” That would be a good way to wash away the bitter taste left by the self-parody that Goldsmith’s character became.

This effort is a step in that direction, borrowing some of the trappings of the old campaign (which fans might appreciate) while finding a more neutral tone. The campaign also includes the “Dos Equis Interesting Index,” a Facebook proprietary algorithm that lets fans discover where they rank. In anticipation of the brand’s 120th anniversary, it’s also rolling out a new logo and packaging. 

“Dos Equis was born interesting in 1897 when it was first brewed by a German brewmaster in Mexico,” Dos Equis brand manager of marketing Andre Woldt. “With the conclusion of the first chapter of The Most Interesting Man in the World campaign, this is a most interesting time as we continue to evolve the brand. We’re working with Erin and Luis, who both live interesting lives, to inspire consumers to prove they’re interesting and see where they rank in the world amongst their friends.”

We will probably not use the Facebook algorithm because we already know how painfully boring we are IRL.

VML New York launched a new spot in its ongoing “Built For Kids” Legoland campaign, introducing “Tommy Parker, Kid CEO of Legoland Hotel.”

The spot opens on the character waking up to an alarm and folding open a newspaper before opening the window and declaring “Another awesome day at Legoland Hotel.” Parker attributes his success to “hard work and juice boxes” before realizing he’s “double-booked for snack time.” Later in this spot he sits down for a meeting with his team: all Lego characters, of course.

It’s kind of a fun approach, with the character exemplifying the kind of imagination and enthusiasm of the park. The character’s embodiment of a kid in an adult role should appeal to child audiences for whom he has the ideal job, getting them to dream of family trips to the park in the process. “Introducing Tommy Parker, Kid CEO of Legoland Hotel” is running as a regional, 60-second broadcast ad in Florida (where the park is located), with support from digital and social elements. Later this year, the social campaign will get a further boost when Tommy Parker gets his own LinkedIn account.

“I kind of like to think of him as this child of Ferris Bueller and Wes Anderson [with] an imaginative view on the world and he lives in this amazing park—this would be a dream job for any child anywhere,” VML managing director and executive creative director Mike Wente told Adweek. “There’s something that’s aspirational and beautiful about that but also the way that he thinks and that he borrows some adult language but put through a kid’s lens.”

Jackson added that he has hopes that the Tommy Parker effort will be a long-lived campaign, saying, “I view Tommy Parker as a potential multi-year campaign—my hope is that this not a temporary, one-off campaign.”

Most of the recent news out of Cheil Worldwide’s Barbarian Group has concerned departures and restructuring as pretty much everyone who helped build the agency including its founder, owner, CEO and CCO either announced their plans to leave or got cut by the parent company.

But the agency is still here, and they’re still doing work.

Here, for example, is the latest project for Etihad Airways, the Dubai-based travel company whose social/digital business went to Cheil and Barbarian last summer. The “Reimagine” film was created in partnership with prodco MediaMonks.

It’s basically a 4-minute tour of an Etihad interior complete with private rooms and the Very Important conversations happening within them.

In the press release, GCD Adam Lau said: “Storytelling in new mediums always brings out the best in our agency. VR was a natural fit for a brand that prides itself on experience.” The narrative in this case involved Kidman taking a flight somewhere and having a very luxurious time in the process.

Seems the airline aims to differentiate itself by doubling down on VR in the form of 300,000 viewers shipped as part of a partnership with ad-oriented virtual reality company Dodocase.

MediaMonks global director of VR Ola Björling added: “As the most multidisciplinary medium there is, virtual reality relies more heavily on craft and execution than anything before it. We believe the display of artistry in every facet of this production is setting a new benchmark for live-action VR.”

So that wasn’t an ad. It was the world’s first “full immersive virtual reality film” starring an Oscar winner. But where will people watch this, and how will it convince them to fly Etihad?

Good questions, all. Right now we’re just focused on that massive credits list.

VML New York launched a spot for Motorola stoking mid-2000s nostalgia and reminding viewers of the popularity of the brand’s Moto Razr in those pre-iPhone days. (Yes, there was such a time. How quickly we forget!)

The 45-second teaser spot, which doesn’t reveal what product it is promoting, depicts a high school scene in which everyone is using the phone in one way or another.

Set to an emo (mid 2000s, Dashboard Confessional definition; not the original, post-hardcore offshoot, pioneered by Rites of Spring, or the 90s style of Jawbreaker/Sunny Day Real Estate definition) soundtrack, the spot follows a girl telling her friend “she’s totally just jealous” as she walks down the hall. In the process, she gets a dirty look from a teacher, and the focus shifts to a jock taking a selfie and then a disgruntled guy with that emo-style haircut that was everywhere at the time.

Having graduated from high school by then, we can’t say how accurate a portrait the spot paints of the time period. But it doesn’t seem all that far-fetched.

We’re not sure the world is ready for mid-2000s nostalgia already but the theme is presumably tied to the brand’s new release, hinted at with the spot’s concluding “TTYL 06.09.16” message. Adweek points out that the date refers to the Lenovo Tech World conference in Silicon Valley, where Motorolla will presumably have an announcement to make.

Some speculate that the brand will re-release the Moto Razr, while others question whether there’s a demand for the product these days, although flip phones have been making a slight comeback the past couple of years. Let’s just hope mid-2000s emo doesn’t follow suit. 

Credits:
Client: Motorola Mobility
Brand name: Moto
Motorola Mobility Senior Director / Head of North America Marketing: Barbara Liss
Motorola Mobility North America Digital engagement: Jenna Rice
Motorola Mobility Digital Marketing Manager: Elizabeth Phillips
Agency: VML
Global Chief Creative Officer: Debbi Vandeven
Managing Director and Executive Creative Director: Mike Wente
Group Creative Director: Josh McGuire
Creative Director: Harsh Kapadia
Senior Copywriter: Eric Terchila
Senior Art Director: Todd Houlette
Art Director: Edi Loyola
Associate Copywriter: Mike Breighner
Executive Director: Chris Furse
Content Strategy Director: Madeline Nies
Senior Planner: Tarini Shrikhande
Group Account Director: Thayer Joyce
Account Director: Kelli Lane
Senior Account Manager: Kayla Cobourn
Associate Director, Social Media: God-is Rivera
Senior Content Strategist: Kate Wadkins
Group Account Director: Mark Nathanson
Senior Project Manager: Adrienne Fadjo
Production Company: Los York
Managing Director: Dexton Deboree
Executive Producer: Sue Lee
Director: Win Bates
Director: Seth Epstein
Head of Production: Melina Osornio
Senior Producer: Jake Hibler
Line Producer: Scott Ludden