Hasta La Creative!

Crispin Porter + Bogusky didn’t have to look any further than from within to find someone to succeed Chad Hopenwasser, the eight-year agency vet and VP/director of video production who split for the HOP gig at Chiat NY last month. Taking over Hopenwasser’s role now is Kate Hildebrant, who has been with CP+B since 2009 and most recently served served as VP/executive integrated producer. During her time at CP+B, Hildebrant worked on campaigns for clients including  Jell-O, Fruit of the Loom, Microsoft, Kraft, American Express and Bolthouse Farms.

Prior to Crispin, the exec spent four years at DDB, producing efforts for McDonald’s, State Farm, Wrigley and Anheuser-Busch along the way. Early on in her career, Hildebrant spent several years as a producer at Fallon, serving as an assistant producer on BMW Films’ award-winning “The Hire” among other projects.

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Vanilla Ice appears as a grocery store worker stocking shelves and rocking out to his own “Ninja Rap” in a new spot from CP+B promoting Kraft’s ubiquitous macaroni and cheese-like food product, now with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle shaped pasta.

The spot plays on the nostalgic humor surrounding Vanilla Ice when a mom starts singing and dancing along with him. Her son is not pleased by this turn of events, and he angrily puts the box of Kraft Mac+Cheese in the cart and walks away as Ice–aka Rob Van Winkle–utters his trademark “Word to your mother” line. CP+B will run with several #WordToYourMother memes over the course of the new campaign, and also plans to reward the brand’s “most fervent Facebook & Twitter fans with Golden Autographs –limited edition boxes of Kraft TMNT Mac & Cheese that were props featured in the commercial and signed by Vanilla Ice himself.” Because Vanilla Ice autographs are still something people want, apparently.

The new campaign is a fun continuation of Kraft’s “You Know You Love It” and a fond reminder of TMNT days gone by for those of us who grew up with the turtles. Now, before Michael Bay ruins the franchise, let’s all take a moment to remember this wonderfully terrible moment in cinematic history:

If you still haven’t had enough of Vanilla Ice (You’ve had over 20 years to have enough of Vanilla Ice, what’s wrong with you?) stick around for a behind the scenes video, along with credits, after the jump. continued…

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With the Xbox One’s November 22nd launch date looming ever nearer, CP+B’s marketing blitz for Microsoft’s next-gen system continues with two new spots. Coming on the heels of the “Invitation” spot released late last month, the two new short spots highlight the system’s diverse capabilities while otherwise taking different approaches.

The first spot, “Retirement Home,” features recently retired NFL linebackers Ray Lewis and Brian Urlacher. Urlacher asks Lewis if he’s having any trouble adjusting to retirement as both watch football and play Madden 25 at the same time. Lewis claims not to be having any adjustment issues, but his actions say otherwise. It’s a funny little spot that will appeal to the (sizable) segment of the Xbox crowd who have always wished they could play Madden while watching the NFL.

The second spot, “His and Hers” addresses the apparent sexism of the “Invitation” spot (in which the only female featured uses the system only to watch movies, not play games). It highlights the voice recognition system by showing a woman command the Xbox One using her voice after arriving home to find her boyfriend watching soccer. She tells the system “Xbox go to Dead Rising 3″ and begins to play. Then she starts similarly commanding her boyfriend in a similar matter, telling him to get her a beer. It’s a bit over the top, but a welcome reversal of the gender stereotypes displayed in CP+B’s “Invitation” spot.

Credits and “His & Hers” after the jump.  continued…

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I may be something of a Sony loyalist, but I’ve got to admit CP+B’s new spot “Invitation” makes the Xbox One shine. Even some of Sony’s biggest fanboys might concede it looks a lot better than the recent PS4 spot.

Directed by Hungry Man’s Bryan Buckley, the commercial vet who recently helmed the R&B-inflected DirecTV spot starring the Manning bros (and who earned an Emmy nod for Grey Poupon’s “The Chase,” also from CP+B),  “Invitation” features users invited into the world of several different games, and one movie. The spot opens with a giant robot warrior crashing a business meeting and making a “come here” gesture to a man giving a presentation. Then we see soccer player Steven Gerrard inviting a fan down from the stands. Spock invites a girl along for some sci-fi adventures. A sports car parks itself in front of some dude’s car and opens its door for him. (This is the automotive equivalent of “come here” apparently.) A zombie attempts to cajole a student in a library to join him, loses an arm, and then tells him to come along with the other arm.

Emphasizing the immersive nature of the next-gen platform, the spot announces, “This is an invitation to a new generation: where your games and entertainment are no longer separated, but together, in one.” Showing Xbox One users utilizing the system’s voice activation to launch games like Titanfall, Dead Rising 3, and the movie Star Trek: Enter Darkness gives fans an idea of what they can expect on launch day. The spot also shows users making use of the motion sensitive Kinect. You know, the camera that might be spying on you.

Mixing live action with just the right amount of actual gameplay, “Invitation” is slickly produced and should have Xbox fanboys chomping at the bit for the console’s Nov. 22 release date. My biggest problem with the spot is that the one woman featured uses the Xbox One not for gaming, but to watch a movie. Aside from this perpetuation of the gaming industry’s prevailing sexism (which most people won’t even notice), it’s a really solid ad. The whole “invitation” approach works to emphasize both the immersive nature of the system and the all-in-one entertainment value it offers. The $499 starting price, however, is less inviting. Credits after the jump.  continued…

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Men with comb overs look hapless. Little boys with comb overs look creepy. To see the difference, please watch the latest Jell-O television spot, appropriately titled “Comb Over.”

In the forty-five-second ad built by CP+B, a balding father whose depressing life resembles a deflated balloon schools his son on the importance of the little things, like a cup of Jell-O pudding. In turn, we see some surreal daydream where the son, still about six years old, goes through a day in the father’s life, only now he has a giant cone head and a comb over. If you ever wanted to know what the male offspring of Lord Voldemort and Francis Dolarhyde (Manhunter version, not Red Dragon) would look like, here you go. Is that not the definition of creepy, a little boy who somehow resembles two fictional psychopaths all because of a comb over? Still, the commercial’s surrealist twist manages to make it stand out in an otherwise standard concept. It’s almost sweet, if not for the whole hapless/depressing/pitying reaction that comes along with comb overs.

Credits after the jump.

continued…

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