Hasta La Creative!

Leo Burnett Change, a specialist arm of Leo Burnett dedicated to social change, designed an attention-grabbing cover for Cosmopolitan as part of an awareness campaign for Karma Nirvana, a UK charity aiding victims of so-called “honour-based violence.”

The cover (pictured above) was inspired by the death of of Shafilea Ahmed, a 17-year-old British-Pakistani woman who was suffocated to death by her parents in front of her siblings after refusing to honor an arranged marriage. It depicts a woman who appears to be suffocating, and is encased in a plastic wraparound. A 7-second online video, also created by Leo Burnett, depicts the cover being ripped open as a symbolic representation of the release of women from such violence. The harrowing cover will run on limited editions of the February issue of Cosmopolitan in the UK, and the video will run on the magazine’s social channels, including Facebook, Twitter, Vine and Instagram.

Credits:

Creative Agency: Leo Burnett Change

Executive Creative Director: Justin Tindall

Creatives: Darren Keff and Phillip Meyler

Account Director: Chris Jackson, Sofia Sarkar

Photographer: Erin Mulvehill

Design: Tim Fletcher

Producer: Mickey Voaks

Production Co.: Messrs Group

Digitas LBi thanked passengers on behalf of Delta for “An Amazing Year” in a spot which debuted late last month.

“165 million people,” the spot begins with voiceover delivered from Donald Sutherland, “that’s how many of you chose to fly with us this year. That’s how many of you we want to thank.” Delta crew then goes on to craft paper airplanes out of boarding passes, which in turn create a larger model of an airplane, completed by a “backdrop of airy light.” It’s a visually interesting homage to passengers, and Sutherland’s instantly recognizable voice is voiceover gold, as usual, adding to the warm tone of the spot.

“Our goal was to shoot an elegant, tasteful and restrained visual narrative while creating a sophisticated art installation — something that might actually belong in a museum setting,” said director Sam Ciaramitaro. “Handheld, close-up shots that focus on the sincere and honest performances of the real-life Delta employees, combined with the strength of Donald Sutherland’s narration resulted in a very warm piece.” (more…)

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In a campaign scheduled to culminate with tonight’s first-ever College Football Championship, BBDO New York focuses on a single fact for client AT&T: the provider offers customers “the nation’s strongest LTE signal.”

This is not a new claim from AT&T, which began promoting the superiority of its LTE systems over a year ago and now states that its LTE “footprint” is larger than all of its competitors’.

But the “strength” concept did allow the agency to riff on a theme with the help of four retired football legends. In the first spot, “Mental Strength,” Herschel Walker pulls a Jedi mind trick on Doug Flutie:

The second spot rearranges the group to put another veteran in the hot seat.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

On August 18, 2014, TBWA Toronto and Gatorade surprised members of the Cruisers sledge hockey team by inviting NHL stars to join them on the ice. TBWA Toronto then used footage from the event to create the above online spot, released just a few days ago.

In the 2:15 video, we see the surprised look on the faces of Cruisers players as a Gatorade spokesperson invites NHL stars such as Sidney Crosby, Claude Giroux and Scott Hartnell onto the ice. But the ad isn’t just about how excited the Cruisers were to meet their hockey idols. The sledge hockey team proved the naysayers (who say sledge hockey isn’t as hard as the stand up version) wrong, and actually schooled the pros. “A couple of those guys did circles around us,” admits Giroux.

“At the end of the day, hockey is hockey,” the spot concludes,” followed by the message, “Proud supporter of hockey everywhere. No matter how it’s played.”

It’s an inspiring message, delivered well over the course of the ad — which actually does a good job of developing its story of the course of its run time, not feeling too stretched at out, even at over two minutes. “Sledge Hockey” is a pretty perfect encapsulation of Gatorade’s “#WinFromWithin” campaign message, and seems to have struck a chord with hockey fans, as it has already tallied almost 700,000 views on YouTube. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here’s one we missed from earlier in the week: an animated spot from Nike’s digital agency AKQA based on…data drawn from the client’s wearable tech device.

As the agency explained to Mike Shields of The Wall Street Journal’s CMO Today blog, Nike collected data from the “most active users” of its Nike Fuelband product throughout 2014. Agency and client then “visualized” the data in order to create customized animated films depicting each customer’s “year in exercise.”

Each of those individualized videos also includes geographic personalization based on the cities in which users exercised during 2014; Nike emailed the clips to Fuelband’s top 100,000 users.

Here’s the “national” version of the video:

As AKQA Creative Director Whitney Jenkins told WSJ, the hope is that these users will share their videos so as to lightly brag about 2014 accomplishments, thereby inspiring more workout fanatics to buy the Fuelband.

If you actually exercise and use the app, here’s the page to visit for that personalized clip.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

adam&eveDDB London has a fun new campaign for Temptations, in which they unleashed hungry cats on packs of the treats.

The results were, of course, completely predictable: the cats destroyed the bags in an attempt to get at the goodies inside. adam&eveDDB London not only captured their shenanigans for an online video (above), but used the wrecked bags for print and OOH ads. The video, which was just uploaded today, is all but guaranteed to go viral, since cats+destruction is a pretty winning formula. At the beginning of the spot, the hashtag “#PackAttack” appears onscreen, and the brand is calling on cat-loving viewers to submit their own photos of Temptations bags destroyed by hungry felines. It’s a nice way to bring in social engagement and get everyone excited about the “#PackAttack” effort — especially the cats.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

BBDO New York is launching two new platform-based campaigns for Lowe’s utilizing time-lapse video on Vine and Instagram. In the Vine campaign, “Tap Thru How-To” viewers can watch a time-lapse, step-by-step video of a home improvement project, such as in the above “Fire Pit.”

This allows viewers to watch the entire project to get an idea of what they’re doing then click to pause step-by-step to follow along for what BBDO New York is calling “a new kind of home improvement how-to video.” It’s a clever idea, even if in practice it’s sometimes tricky to pause at the right moment. Aside from “Fire Pit” there are also instructional videos for a backsplash and pipe shelf. There’s also “Hypermade,” which takes a similar approach using Instagram’s Hyperlapse feature. So far there are two such Hyperlapse videos: “Lattice” and “Under Bed Drawers.”

Both campaigns were timed to coincide with the holiday season, with a third “Hypermade” video, entitled “Pipe Bench Square” going live tomorrow at 9 AM. Stick around after the jump for a preview of that video, along with “Backsplash,” after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Pereira & O’Dell continues to produce intriguing work for Skype, with their latest, “Turning the tide” marking a shift in approach.

Last year, the agency focused on the emotion of the personal connections it helped foster, through its “Stay Together” campaign and its highlight, “The Born Friends Family Portrait.” With “Turning the tide,” Pereira & O’Dell focuses instead on how the service helps a pair of journalists tell the story of Kiribati, the island nation that is in danger of being wiped off the map by 2040, thanks to rising oceans caused by climate change. Indeed, the people of Kiribati are already becoming the “world’s first climate change refugees” as the rising ocean levels have contaminated their food and water.

The “modern mobile news team” of Anna Therese Day and Gianluca Panella are telling the island’s story, and utilize Skype as an important. “…Skype is second nature to us,” Anna says, “Being able to instantly share information, images, files…it means you can get to the heart of the story quickly.”While this inserts Skype into the conversation, it doesn’t do a whole lot to differentiate the brand from its competitors. Still, Pereira & O’Dell crafted an affecting spot, allowing Skype to tell an important story that many viewers might be unfamiliar with (although the story has been covered by a few major news outlets, including CNN). The agency seems to have made a choice to value storytelling and allying Skype with an important cause over overt branding. How effective you view the spot as will largely depend on which of these factors you place the most value on. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

BBDO Toronto continues the absurdist tendencies of Skittle’s advertising with one of the brand’s strangest ads in recent memory.

Entitled “Struck By A Rainbow,” the ad is a mockumentary about a man named David who is hit by a rainbow, changing his skin to Skittles. Directed by Conor Byrne, the video, while never laugh out loud funny, convincingly mirrors and parodies the tropes of documentaries about people combating adversity, getting the feel just right. The long running time (“Struck By A Rainbow” clock in at well over three minutes) is used to show most of the implications of David’s condition and show David’s journey from struggle to acceptance. In case you’re wondering, a doctor points out that “From a medical perspective, there’s nothing wrong with David. His skin is just now Skittles.” The spot saves one of its more obvious jokes for the end, as David’s wife leans in to kiss him on the cheek and bites off a Skittle. While over three minutes is a very long time to spend watching an ad, and the premise is stretched a bit thin by the long running time, this should still appeal to fans of the brand’s distinctly oddball humor, and anyone creeped out too much by the idea would stop watching immediately anyway.

“Struck By A Rainbow” debuted on YouTube and the brand’s Facebook page on December 8th, but the campaign also includes a digital buy featuring 30-second teasers to drive additional views. Media support for the spot will continue around four weeks.

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Here’s an interesting example of the cinematic aspirations of car promos via Bullitt, a “branded entertainment studio” founded earlier this year by the directors who brought you Captain America 2 and the Fast and Furious franchise.

For what is legitimately a “short film” promoting Lincoln, the studio tapped Diego Contreras, a freelancer and former art director who spent several years at CP+B Boulder and Anomaly before a stint at BBDO New York.

Here’s the spot, which is far more atmospheric than your average car ad:

The plot summary fills in a few of those empty spaces after the jump.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.