Hasta La Creative!

While shy-bladder sufferers debate the offensiveness of Painfully Awkward Rob Lowe, DirecTV is plowing ahead with all sorts of other less-than-ideal Rob Lowes—you know, the ones with cable and not DirecTV.

The latest disturbing specimen is Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe. And thanks to some CGI, he certainly looks like a pathetic weakling. Hopefully Grey New York at some point will have time to do a digital composite of all the subpar Rob Lowes, and we’ll get to have a look at Creepy Less Attractive Painfully Awkward Crazy Hairy Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe.

CREDITS
Client: DirecTV
Spot: “Scrawny Arms”
Agency: Grey, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Tor Myhren
Executive Creative Director: Dan Kelleher
Group Creative Director: Doug Fallon
Group Creative Director: Steven Fogel
Agency Executive Producer: Andrew Chinich
Agency Producer: Lindsay Myers
Agency Music Producer: Zachary Pollakoff, Amy Rosen
Account: Chris Ross, Beth Culley, Anna Pogosova, Aaron Schwartz, Meredith Savatsky, Eddie Mele
Strategy: Michelle Leo
Production Company: MJZ
Director: Tom Kuntz
Producer: Emily Skinner
Production Supervisor: Daniel Gonzalez
Director of Photography: Hoyte Van Hoytema
Editorial Executive Producer: Sasha Hirschfeld, Mackenzie Cutler
Editor: Gavin Cutler, Mackenzie Cutler
Assistant Editor: Ryan Steele & Mike Rizzo, Mackenzie Cutler
Mixer + Sound Designer: Sam Shaffer, Mackenzie Cutler
VFX: Method Studios, NY
VFX Supervisor: Jay Hawkins, Method Studios
VFX Producer: Carlos Herrera & Christa Cox, Method Studios
Casting (OCP): Francine Selkirk, Shooting From the Hip
Casting (VO): Nina Pratt and Jerry Saviola, Avenue 3 Casting

While shy-bladder sufferers debate the offensiveness of Painfully Awkward Rob Lowe, DirecTV is plowing ahead with all sorts of other less-than-ideal Rob Lowes—you know, the ones with cable and not DirecTV.

The latest disturbing specimen is Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe. And thanks to some CGI, he certainly looks like a pathetic weakling. Hopefully Grey New York at some point will have time to do a digital composite of all the subpar Rob Lowes, and we’ll get to have a look at Creepy Less Attractive Painfully Awkward Crazy Hairy Scrawny Arms Rob Lowe.

CREDITS
Client: DirecTV
Spot: “Scrawny Arms”
Agency: Grey, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Tor Myhren
Executive Creative Director: Dan Kelleher
Group Creative Director: Doug Fallon
Group Creative Director: Steven Fogel
Agency Executive Producer: Andrew Chinich
Agency Producer: Lindsay Myers
Agency Music Producer: Zachary Pollakoff, Amy Rosen
Account: Chris Ross, Beth Culley, Anna Pogosova, Aaron Schwartz, Meredith Savatsky, Eddie Mele
Strategy: Michelle Leo
Production Company: MJZ
Director: Tom Kuntz
Producer: Emily Skinner
Production Supervisor: Daniel Gonzalez
Director of Photography: Hoyte Van Hoytema
Editorial Executive Producer: Sasha Hirschfeld, Mackenzie Cutler
Editor: Gavin Cutler, Mackenzie Cutler
Assistant Editor: Ryan Steele & Mike Rizzo, Mackenzie Cutler
Mixer + Sound Designer: Sam Shaffer, Mackenzie Cutler
VFX: Method Studios, NY
VFX Supervisor: Jay Hawkins, Method Studios
VFX Producer: Carlos Herrera & Christa Cox, Method Studios
Casting (OCP): Francine Selkirk, Shooting From the Hip
Casting (VO): Nina Pratt and Jerry Saviola, Avenue 3 Casting

The new Droid Turbo is so fast that when James Franco falls off the roof at a party, he can use the Motorola phone to find the nearest safe landing, calculate the best route there and text his date to meet him at the bottom—all before he crashes through an awning into a dumpster and dusts himself off.

So says this Verizon ad from mcgarrybowen, which features James Franco because James Franco is a cool guy everybody knows. He’s great with the ladies, too. The whole reason he goes over the edge in the first place is to rescue the red scarf of a damsel, because that’s the kind of guy James Franco is. He succeeds, obviously. If you get a Droid Turbo like James Franco, you’ll be great with the ladies, too.

That is unless maybe you’re the James Franco who’s married to novelist Gary Shteyngart. Or the James Franco who’s lobbying for a movie starring James Franco to get an Oscar. Or the James Franco who’s getting punched in the face, or directing a jeans commercial, or talking about how great it is be James Franco in an ad for Motorola rival Samsung’s Galaxy tablet.

Or, if you’re the kind of James Franco who’s not into selling out, you could be the James Franco who posts an Instagram of yourself holding an iPhone 6 the same day your Motorola campaign launches. Oops.

There are moments in cinema when a collective wetting of panties results in an advertising ripple heard through the decades, as marketers struggle to give the people what they want.

One such moment was when Colin Firth exited a lake in a dripping-wet white shirt during the BBC’s 1995 remake of Pride and Prejudice. The moment so captured the minds and eyes of the viewing public that just last year, a 12-foot-tall statue of Firth’s wet torso was erected in a British lake and summarily moistened.

Now, in a genius move, Benedict Cumberbatch, today’s No. 1 British heartthrob, has been talked into recreating the Mr. Darcy scene and is about to win a bazillion pounds of awareness for his chosen charity, the anti-cancer initative Give Up Clothes for Good.

The photographer was Jason Bell. He’s a guy whose photos you’ve seen even if you’ve never heard of him. He was the official photographer for Prince George’s christening, and you might also know him as the guy who took that picture of Kate Winslet that GQ Photoshopped into controversy back in 2003.

Boy, did he do a most excellent job capturing a grumpy wet Cumberbatch. You almost get the impression that you’ve dumped him in the lake and when he gets out he’s going to be very PUT OUT. You might also imagine that inspiration for the execution came from Cumberbatch’s recent viral Ice Bucket Challenge video, in which he got soaked in not one, not two, but three various states of undress. Or the cut shower scene from Star Trek Into Darkness, which also went viral.

It’s like a Russian nesting doll of surly wet Cumberbatches—a batch of ‘Batches, if you will. Also, we may have found something to rival cats in Internet ad stardom. Shirtless torsos of hot dudes. Also known as Cold. Hard. Abs.

The Give Up Clothes for Good campaign of getting celebrities to take off some clothes, all PETA style, is going on its 10th anniversary, and there are a bunch of other celebrities lined up to remove their clothes to celebrate this year. But who cares?

Matthew McConaughey takes his time in his first Lincoln ad through Team Detroit.

There are almost more pauses than words of dialogue in the 60-second spot, as the Oscar-winning actor and new brand endorser sits nearly motionless in his MKC on a country road, transfixed by a giant bull who won’t let him pass.

There’s plenty of Rust Cohle here, but this is also just pure McConaughey—quietly audacious. That could also describe the approach of the whole spot, in fact, which barely shows the vehicle in action. (Indeed, it’s vanquished in the end by a creature clearly more powerful than itself.)

Two other spots rolled out Thursday—a :60 that’s more conventional, with McConaughey driving around and philosophizing on whether you can or can’t “go back,” and a meta :30 in which he says straight out that he drove Lincolns long before he was paid to do so.

The spots were directed by feature filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, who was last seen crafting this 90-second Grey Goose ad.

This fun clip of glam rocker and reality TV star Bret Michaels performing a high-octane take on the ’80s ballad “Endless Love” as a  paean to Nissan’s commercial vans is approaching 1.6 million YouTube views in its first week.

Putting an aging star in a wacky B2B truck ad recalls Jean-Claude Van Damme’s mega-viral Volvo outing from late last year. Here, however, Michaels doesn’t attempt to do a split between two Nissans (and, conversely, we’re probably lucky that Jean-Claude didn’t sing).

Most reviewers applaud Nissan and its agency, TBWAChiatDay, for their tongue-in-cheek approach and canny casting of Michaels as frontman. After all, the campaign, shot at the automaker’s rugged Arizona desert testing facility, focuses on the van line’s toughness and resilience, traits that Michaels has come to embody in recent years following his comebacks from thorny health issues.

Legendary anchorman Bill Kurtis is a man’s man. Just ask Ron Burgundy … or the Illinois Office of Tourism.

A new campaign from JWT Chicago features Kurtis, a veteran Chicago journalist best known today for hosting cable crime shows like Investigative Reports, Cold Case Files and American Justice. This time we see a new side of Kurtis, pitching his home state as an ideal destination for “mancations”—getaways that focus on stock car driving, gambling and—wait, wait… don’t tell me—golf.

These trips are cast as reciprocation for womanly leisure activities like book clubs, because, the argument goes, if a guy suffers in the name of love through a sentimental novel, he should be rewarded.

Kurtis oozes charisma, and the message is certainly more down to earth than the zany miniature replica of Abraham Lincoln the state has been using to appeal to potential visitors. The world didn’t really need another advertising portmanteau, but the real risk for the brand is that Kurtis’s outsized personality eclipses a concept that, at its core, doesn’t add much new to the resurgent trend of testosterone-drenched advertising. 

Then again, if a person in a bear suit playing a bugle comes standard with vacations to Illinois, sign me up.

CREDITS:

Advertising Agency: JWT, Chicago
Executive Creative Director: Dan Bruce
Creative Director/AD: Terra Hambly
Copywriter: Mike Beamer
Group Managing Director: Erin Clark
Account Director: Sarah Brick
Account Executive: Kyle Piazza

Production and Postproduction:
Director: Dan Bruce
Production Company: One
Executive Producer: Lisa Masseur
Senior Producer: Sarah Slevin
Line Producer: Alison Ginsburg
Director of Photography: Kyle Bainter
Editorial: Optimus
Producer: Tracy Spera
Editor: Craig Lewandowski
Assistant Editor: Ben Winter
Audio/Sound Design: Marina Bacci
Logo Animation: Tyler Nelson
Explosion animation: BlinkFarm

When Kevin Spacey appears on screen these days, you expect him to speak to camera in a South Carolina drawl, assess his chances at screwing over a rival, and perhaps even (spoiler alert) kill a person or two.

He does none of those things in E*Trade's new campaign from Ogilvy & Mather, but does aim for an air of mystery in his role as a "talent scout" who can tell by looking at someone whether he or she is "Type E*"—the company's term for sophisticated, savvy, self-directed investors.

This Spacey spot is the first in what will be a series, Ogilvy tells us.

An earlier spot that launched the campaign was titled "Epic Musical" and featured everyday people singing and dancing because they are Type E*. The new campaign follows the demise of the E*Trade baby, the star of Grey's longtime campaign, who was put out to pasture after six years of never growing up.

"If you think about it, our target has grown to become more sophisticated, so the baby needed to grow up as well," said Russell Messner, global managing director at Ogilvy. "That being said, we did not want to alienate the smart wit and irreverence that are inextricably linked to the E*Trade brand. We believe Kevin Spacey, our 'Type E* Talent Scout,' is a great embodiment of this new phase in the brand's history."

CREDITS
Client: E*Trade
Spot: "Talent Scout"
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, New York
Executive Creative Director: Steve Howard
Group Creative Director: Chris Van Oosterhout
Chief Creative Officer: Alfonso Marian
Copywriters: Gage Clegg, Ian Going, Chad Johnson, Allison Lackey
Art Directors: Lauren Van Aswegen, Kevin Riley, Becca Morton
Executive Producer: Maureen Phillips
Global Managing Director: Russ Messner
Executive Group Director: Adam Puchalsky
Account Director: Melissa Bartolini Kearney
Head Planner: Margaret Rimsky
Senior Planner: Ned Sonnenschein
Director: Stacy Wall
Senior Content Producer: Karen Rossiter
Production Company: Imperial Woodpecker
Editing: Chris Franklin, BigSky Edit
Music: Tonal Sound
Color Correction: Chris Ryan, Nice Shoes
Mix: Tom Jucarone, Sound Lounge

Hiring celebrities to model for fashion ads and then rendering them unrecognizable is all the rage.

Not long ago, we saw a very ambiguous Jennifer Lawrence pose for Dior. Now, Nicole Kidman stuns in her latest campaign for pricey shoe brand Jimmy Choo. But she could easily be mistaken for somebody who is not Nicole Kidman, what with her looking like a platinum blonde teen model rather the perfectly beautiful natural blonde 46-year-old she was last week.

The video, meanwhile, is your run-of-the-mill, dripping-with-atmosphere fashion spot.

Even setting aside the debate over whether and/or to what degree this was Photoshopping, it still seems pretty self-defeating to pay for an A-lister and then hide them. Or maybe it's a brilliantly subtle way to sell the you-could-look-like-this-too fantasy while also trolling the indignant Internet hordes for extra attention.

Or maybe it really just is shallow.

Activia managed to drag Shakira out of wherever she's been hiding and put her in the brand's new "Dare to Feel Good" ad, which gives us an interesting and cartoonishly idealized peek into the pop singer's digestive tract.

No wonder she's so perky all the time. It looks like Fern Gully in there. And here I thought Shakira felt good because she's beautiful and rich.

In any case, Activia's ads bother me in the sense that I can't take adults seriously when they say the word "tummy" and aren't talking to or about a child. Considering where a well-regulated digestive system inevitably leads, I get why they'd want to soften the language a bit, but it still weirds me out.