Hasta La Creative!

mcgarrybowen launched a spot for Verzion, entitled “Mr. Amazing,” which celebrates the company’s XLTE service and football season.

In the spot, some rather fantastical football leads into a man screaming “Yeah” at a field day type event, accompanied by the voiceover, “Don’t just dream about being the hero, make it happen.” The man, it is revealed, is streaming a football game at his daughter’s event, much to the relief of another father present. “So be that guy,” Verizon implores at the end of the spot, “with Verizon XLTE.” It’s a bit of an odd sendoff, as the phrasing of “that guy’ the way they use it usually has a negative connotation. It’s almost as if they can’t decide whether they want to make fun of the protagonist (who screams “Yeah!” after the initial fantasy segment) or celebrate him as “Mr. Amazing” and instead the spot attempts to do both. (more…)

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This one’s been making the rounds for awhile now, but we thought we’d give some love anyway. McgarryBowen New York’s new spot for Verizion, “A Lot Can Happen in 48 Hours” features the talents of Ed Norton. It originally aired on December 5th, although it was posted to YouTube about a week before that.

In the spot, directed by Matthijs van Heijningen, Norton is thrown into a variety of dicey situations, with his Droid helping him get through most of them relatively unscathed. “A Lot Can Happen in 48 Hours” opens with Norton waking up to find himself in a strange room, with his Droid still at 3% power. “It’s been an interesting 48 hours,” Norton says, followed by a flashback. We then follow Norton through his series of misadventures, which begins with him finding a lost wallet and using Droid to find the location. This leads Norton to a karaoke bar, where he ogles a taken woman while singing “If I Could Turn Back Time” (the funniest part of the spot).

From here, Norton’s misadventures include attempting to land a plane, being held captive, having a key found in his stomach, playing a high-stakes game of Connect Four, and being held captive once again. Its everything-goes-wrong brand of humor borrows a little bit from The Hangover series, and although the spot seems to employ the kind of random connections Grey NY used in their 2012 DirectTV campaign, the superior execution helps keep it from feeling too easy or derivative. The spot uses a clever setup to promote the Droid’s impressive battery life, and then finds ways to showcase the phone’s other features in the process. This is certainly a far cry better than McgarryBowen Chicago’s disastrous “Denskies” campaign for Sears. Bonus points for the excellent use of a Lykke Li song. Credits after the jump. continued…

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