Brands with real-world appeal have been faux-criticizing social media for years—often in social media—by suggesting that you get off the damn phone already and take stock of your actual surroundings and the actual people in it.
Coca-Cola is the latest to do so with the amusing video below, advertising a (presumably fake) product called the Social Media Guard, which is basically a giant, human-sized, Coke-red dog collar. This gizmo will possibly stop you from checking your phone every eight seconds, though actually it seems like you could still take a selfie if you wanted to. (You can also, not coincidentally, still drink a Coke.)
"Did you know that the world spends 4 million years online every month?" the soda giant asks. "If you're watching this video on your mobile phone, it's time to put it down. Look around you, there is probably someone special you can share a real moment with. Enjoy it with an ice-cold Coke :)"
The Social Media Guard, the brand adds, "takes the 'social' out of media and puts it back into your life."
The video is pretty goofy for Coke, which usually prefers more feel-good stunts that don't liken its target market to animals that can't stop licking their stitches. But there's some honestly there, at least. Just don't share this with your friends. Coke wouldn't want that.
When you use Old Spice hair products, your hair is capable of anything.
First, it leaps off your head—that's a given. Then, as we've seen, it either hits on women at work or skillfully operates claw machines on the boardwalk to retrieve lost children.
Now, though, it reveals its most impressive talent to date—playing all the best-loved Huey Lewis and the News songs on the keyboard. In the interactive video below, also embedded at ThatsThePowerofHair.com, you can request any of 29 Huey Lewis songs, and a mop of hair will play them soulfully for you, supported by props like a disco ball and Hula girl.
"The Power of Love," "The Heart of Rock 'n' Roll," "I Want a New Drug," "Bad Is Bad," "Doing It All for My Baby"? Hear all those and 24 more great hits right now.
The digital experience, on desktop and mobile, is being embedded online in custom banners, news sites and Old Spice's social channels. Agency: Wieden + Kennedy.
Credits below.
CREDITS Client: Old Spice Project: "That's the Power of Hair"
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore. Creative Directors: Craig Allen, Jason Bagley, Matt O'Rourke Copywriter: Jason Kreher Art Director: Max Stinson Executive Interactive Producer: Mike Davidson Director of Broadcast Production: Ben Grylewicz Director of Interactive Production: Pierre Wendling Technology Lead: Ryan Bowers Account Team: Georgina Gooley, Liam Doherty, Nick Pirtle, Michael Dalton, Jessica Monsey Executive Creative Directors: Susan Hoffman, Joe Staples
Production Company: MJZ Director: Tom Kuntz Executive Producer: Scott Howard Producer: Emily Skinner
Editorial Company: Rock Paper Scissors Editor: Carlos Arias Asst. Editor: Christopher Mitchell Producer: Lisa Barnable
VFX Company: Framestore, New York Creative Director: Mike Woods Producer: Christine Cattano Head of Commercial Development: Ming-Pong Liu Lead Developers: Sebastian Buys and Nien Liu Lead Compositor: Mindy Dubin
Music Company: Stimmung Executive Producer: Ceinwyn Clark Post Engineer: Rory Doggett Composer: Greg Chun
If 2014's battle cry for women is "Love who you are" (see all the "real women" campaigns out there), then weight-loss brands need to tread lightly in their marketing. Weight Watchers has done that in a body-positive way with its new spot from McCann New York featuring Jessica Simpson.
The opening lines are a hit. "This body made two amazing little human beings. I love this body and what it's capable of, no matter what size," she says.
Simpson looks stunning (in an LBD, of course), healthy and happy as she goes on to say: "My life, like my body, is a work in progress." Diet plans, of course, aren't really about loving who you are. Still, big ups to Weight Watchers for creating an ad that's relatable and inspiring without putting anyone down or making any claims about how women should or shouldn't look.
BuzzFeed's attempt at an inspiring, empowering video for women falls short, and the target audience is having no problem letting BuzzFeed know it.
"Photoshopping Real Women Into Cover Models" opens with four women lamenting that they'd never look like models in a magazine spread. Each woman then participates in a professional photo shoot—hair, makeup, styling and all—and then a Photoshop expert retouches the images to make them look like typical magazine cover models.
We watch the women's reactions as they see the photos for the first time. And … all of them dislike the retouched photos of themselves.
In light of the wildly popular Dove campaign and the praise Aerie received for promising not to retouch its photos of models, why aren't more people loving this video? Maybe it seems too contrived, and the creators seem too intent on pushing a message to the viewers. The women looked lovely during the photo shoots, and their reactions just don't seem very honest. And while the Photoshop jobs were definitely extreme, the message here is that it's vain for women to even want to look attractive.
"Once someone else has done your makeup, and someone else has done your hair, and someone's directed the way your body looks, and then taken away your imperfections … then there's not much left of who you really are," says one of the four women.
In that one line, women are reduced simply to the way they look.
While some think it's inspirational, others are balking. "Denigrating women for wanting to enhance, improve and better themselves is no better than denigrating women for being fat and ugly," one viewer wrote on Facebook.
If Victoria's Secret's ultra-Photoshopped catalogs are one extreme, and BuzzFeed's "You're vain if you enjoy a blowout" video is the other, maybe most women are looking for a happy medium—at the very least, something that doesn't seem disingenuous.
Last month, Sony rolled out a sweeping celebration of its own contributions to technology and the arts. Now, it's diving deep on the same subject, taking viewers on a tour of Northlandz, a giant model railroad museum in New Jersey, as miniatures photographer Matt Albanese uses a Sony QX100 camera to capture images of the tiny scenery.
Northlandz's creator, Bruce Zaccagnino, co-stars in the documentary-style ad, offering such bits of humble-bragging genius as: "Thousands of people will come out, and they'll say this is a wonder of the world. … I don't think it's a wonder of the world. It's not the Taj Mahal." Fact is, the landscape is quite impressive. The photos that come out of Albanese's work are plenty cool, too, and a nice testament to the potential of the camera.
But the four-minute documentary, created with Wieden + Kennedy, makes the whole thing feel pretty forced and awkward. "For this project I chose a camera that will get me into tight spaces and gives me unique vantage points," says Albanese. That may be the selling point, but the footage and the photographs make the point well well enough without the contrived sales pitch. A little less throat-clearing and philosophizing might serve the spot well, too—but at the end, Zaccagnino's extra talent makes for a perfectly oddball kicker.
The campaign includes a website, www.Separate–Together.com, that goes beyond the film and features an interactive companion piece with three panoramas you can rotate and zoom into.
Credits below.
CREDITS Client: Sony Project: Be Moved – Separate Together
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore. Creative Directors: Mike Giepert, Dan Hon Copywriter: Charlie Gschwend Art Director: Devin Gillespie Information Architect: Jason Sack Creative Technologist: Billy McDermott Head of Interactive Production: Pierre Wendling Head of Production: Ben Grylewicz Content Producer: Katie Reardon Account Team: Trish Adams, Diana Gonzalez, Nick Larkin Associate Director of Technology: Ryan Bowers QA: Robb Hand, Rachel Mason Executive Creative Directors: Joe Staples, Susan Hoffman
—Web Film Partners Production Company: m ss ng p eces Director: Josh Nussbaum Executive Producers: Ari Kuschnir, Kate Oppenheim Head of Production: Dave Saltzman Line Producer: Veronica Balta Director of Photography: Alex Khudokon
Editorial Company: m ss ng p eces Editor: Adam McClelland Post Producer: Amy Crowdis
Colorists: Nat Jencks, Adam Mcclelland
Composer, Original Score: Matt Abeysekera Sound Design & Mix: Eli Cohn
—Interactive Experience Partners Development Partner Company: BOSSA Executive Creative Director: Hans Weiss Creative Technologist: Jeramy Morrill Lead Developers: Jeramy Morrill, Josh Gross, Matt Greene Creative Director: Andrezza Valentin Art Director: Sarah Skapik Producer: Nic Santana
Vans has released an ambitious new documentary project titled "Living Off the Wall" with a gorgeous scrolling website and so much great content that no one in their right mind has time to watch it all.
But of course, I watched it all for you. Check out the documentary on the East Los Angeles punk scene for some of the best-cut stuff. The documentarian Angela Boatwright has a special way of capturing wayward teen anger that capitalizes on every eye roll and seamlessly blends with the alternative perspective of the Vans brand.
While the Vans viewpoint is present with content about skateboards, tattoos, motorbikes and punk and gypsy lifestyles, the shoes are conspicuously silent. No one talks about his or her shoes. There are no shoe glory shots where you just stare at a pair of Vans. Just digestible mini-docs about the brand's consumers and their lifestyles, perfect for those with drug-altered attention spans. It's brilliant.
Vans fans who want to join in can become documentarians themselves. All of the content they submit is available at Vans Off the Wall TV network and app. The whole thing just reeks of authenticity.
The upsides and drawbacks of common work spaces have been debated in the agency world for decades. But no one can deny the cool factor of The Barbarian Group's newly designed offices—and the amazing, undulating "superdesk" that snakes through it.
Benjamin Palmer and Sophie Kelly introduce the new space in the video below. Understandably, they talk mostly about the desk. A marvel of design—created with help from architect Clive Wilkinson—it features gorgeous lines, archways and cubbies, and is topped with a single unbroken surface created by a continuous pour of resin.
The thing is unreal, and of course the perfect metaphor for a place that wants to broadcast a collaborative spirit. TBG proudly calls it "a desk that we could all share, literally—4,400 square feet of undulating, unbroken awesomeness to keep people and ideas flowing."
Check out the video below. And try not to feel too bad about your own pathetic workspace.
Born and raised in Mumbai, Arjava has a Bachelors degree in Mass Media with a specialization in Advertising. His first stints in the advertising field were summer internships at Ogilvy and Euro RSCG. Arjava joined FoxyMoron in 2009 as a junior visualizer when the team comprised of not less than 5 people. Currently, as the Creative Director at FoxyMoron, Arjava’s responsibilities include conceptualizing and executing strategic and integrated campaigns in the digital marketing space. When not busy in front of his Mac, he can be found planning a holiday he seldom takes or in front of the TV watching his beloved Manchester United.
Why are you into Digital? I guess it chose me more than I chose it. I originally joined Foxy as a print designer but as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. One day, our digital designer was backed up so I pitched in and made my first website layout. It was absolutely terrible, but I loved working on it.
Did you attend school for fine art or design or Communications?
I had a course on design in college but that’s about it. I’ve pretty much taught myself everything I know about design, by constantly researching, practicing, screwing up & fixing it. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but it’s the only way I’ve known.
Were there any particular role models for you when you grew up?
That would have to be my elder sister Priya, who is also a designer. I grew up seeing her do all these crazy things on Photoshop and was totally blown away. I wanted to do what she could, and today I’m happy to say I can.
Who was the most influential personality on your career in Digital?
Paritosh Ajmera, one of the 4 Co-founders at FoxyMoron. We have a great working relationship and have always challenged each other. You always need someone who questions you, who makes you think twice about whether the idea you have is the best it could be, because on most occasions it isn’t.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
I honestly don’t know, I’ve often wondered where anyone gets their inspiration from. But the simplest answer would be other people and their work. It could be anyone from packaging designers and architects to street artists and photographers. When you see great work, it always stays with you and pushes you to do better yourself.
Tell us something about the work environment at FoxyMoron…
It’s great. When I joined there were about 5 other people here. It was all about having great fun doing great work and 5 years and 175 people later it’s still about that. We’ve never had someone show us the way, that ‘this’ is the way to run an agency or approach a project so our attitude has always been “fuck it, we’ll figure it out.” We’ve gotten ourselves in some pretty tight situations with that attitude but looks like it’s worked out pretty well for us.
Do you have any kind of a program to nurture and train young talent?
I’ve always had a sink or swim approach with fresh graduates or interns. We have recently started a learning center with a dedicated resource to make the transition in agency life easier. I like to throw them straight into the thick of things because it’s really important for young people to feel like they matter, that they are equals and have clients banking on them, otherwise it’s a pretty terrible feeling doing menial work for 10 hours a day.
What about new and young film makers/photographers? Do you consciously keep looking for newer talent and try someone completely new?
You have a lot of young photographers and film makers who have grown up in the digital age, who approach their work with a focusing on consumable digital content, which adds a great diversity to the kind of work we are now seeing. I’m always looking for great people to work with; age has never been a factor.
What do you think of the state of Digital advertising right now?
While it’s certainly going in the right direction, I think clients still treat it as the less loved step child to mainline. While most are ready to pump in lakhs in online media, a lot of them still need convincing on spending that kind of money on the campaigns themselves. I don’t think too many brand managers have still understood the power Digital could have, I think in 5 years we will see brands do far more extensive and innovative work in India.
Can you give us two examples of outstanding Digital Creative from India? ‘Google Search: Reunion’ and ‘Oreo Dunkathon’. I loved the Google campaign because I think they did a great job of representing their services in our daily lives without being offensively obvious. They took a touching story and managed to weave themselves into it so intrinsically. It could have backfired massively, but they did an inspiring job. Oreo has done a great job with their message of appealing to one’s inner child through their recent ‘Dunkathon’ campaign. Their campaign was fun, witty and very well executed while still maintaining a consistent level of engagement and creativity through the course of it, which for us in digital, is incredibly hard to do.
More and more young people are web savvy and want to work on the internet or on more entrepreneurial ventures. Has that affected the quality of people digital has been getting?
That’s a double-edged sword. On one hand this newfound sense of entrepreneurship means a lot of people are coming up with innovative strategies and identifying gaps in the market. The downside is that everyone thinks they can be the next Mark Zuckerberg, that they all have that million-dollar idea. When they don’t see their job heading in a direction that could help them achieve that, they tend to lose interest, which leads to higher employee turnover.
Can you give us a case study of one of your campaigns? (Find Images Attached)
What advice do you have for aspiring creative professionals?
Never do the same thing twice. Constantly challenge yourself and never settle for ‘good enough’. You’ll be surprised with the results.
What skill set do you look for when hiring digital creative talent?
Purpose. I don’t think creative people should treat their work as a blank canvas for self-expression. Every word, every colour & font chosen should have a purpose. It’s all about finding a method to the madness.
What is your dream project?
Nike. I think the company and its agencies have done a brilliant job of owning their message and exciting their customer. It’s amazing how decade after decade they maintain their place as the coolest brand.
Mac or PC? Seriously ?
Who would you like to take out for dinner?
Jony Ive. Jennifer Lawrence for desert.
What’s on your iPod?
A lot of everything! But while working, mostly EDM stuff. A lot of Madeon, Myon & Shane 54, Hardwell.
If any unexpected flames of love start flickering in Paris for Valentine's Day today, the Cupid-shot lovesick fools will be ready. That's because the Flower Council of Holland (an industry group that helps florists build their businesses) has installed 1,500 cute little red boxes that are modeled after emergency boxes—but contain single red roses. "In case of love at first sight, break glass," the boxes say. It's a cute idea, and not as dangerous as it sounds. The "glass" is actually cellophane. Agency: Kingsday.
CREDITS Agency: Kingsday, Amsterdam Production Company: Chocolat Rouge Films Parijs Client: Flower Council of Holland
You have a weird, ineffable obsession with your cast-iron skillet. You carry it with you everywhere like a safety blanket. You believe like it could make you feel joy, but it does not, because something is missing.
Velveeta appeals to the kitchenware creeper segment with a new pair of spots from Wieden + Kennedy for the brand's Cheesy Skillets dinner kits. It's a new twist on the agency's oddball approach to the product, with some of the dramatic flavor of Old Spice still in the voiceover and epic positioning, "It's liquid gold," but sight gags balancing it out.
In some ways, it's the American cheese of advertising—comfort food that's pleasing at first but ultimately a little too processed to leave you feeling entirely good about having eaten it. If you can get past the slightly overdone copy, though, there's some pretty rich comedy in the dumb facial expressions of the actors.
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore. Creative Directors: Karl Lieberman, Eric Baldwin Digital Director: Pierre Wendling Copywriters: Heather Ryder, Darcie Burrell Art Director: Matthew Carroll Interactive Producer: Ryan Adams Event Producer: Victoria Semarjian Account Team: Ken Smith, Rachel Parker, Danica Jones, Sarah Augustine Media Director: Alex Dobson Head of Broadcast: Ben Grylewicz Broadcast: Shelley Eisner, Nicole Kaptur, Yamaris Leon Art Production: Stacie Balzer, Eugenie Frerichs, Denise Hanggi, Rainier Goubault Project Manager: Megan Nugent Studio Manager: Anna Gatewood Studio Artists: Leslie Warra, Thomas Bradley Executive Creative Directors: Mark Fitzloff, Susan Hoffman Business Affairs: Amber Lavender, Anna Beth Nagel, Pam Atkinson Content Services: Zoe Hoetze, Anders Lund
Production Company: Smith & Jones Films Director: Ulf Johansson Executive Producer: Philippa Smith Executive Assistant: Tori King Line Producer: Justine Madero Postproduction Company (Editorial): Spot Welders Editor: Haines Hall Producers: Carolina Wallace, Lisa English Visual Effects: A52 Executive Producer: Megan Meloth Producer: Meredith Cherniack
L’artiste canadien Michel de Broin fait des installations créatives et loufoques dans différents pays d’Europe et d’Amérique. Des chaises, des tables mises en bloc, une télévision-cheminée ou une Statue de la Liberté retournée sur sa flamme, cet artiste nous surprend à chaque idée. Le tout est à découvrir dans la suite.
Ikea planted lots of LED lamps in the woods for this 60-second commercial for the U.K. and Ireland touting the home-furnishing company's commitment to sustainability.
Created by Mother London and director Martin Krejci, the ad's surreal aura is enhanced by Menomena's pop-etheral "Wet and Rusting" on the soundtrack. (Soundtree Music found the song.) Check out Mr. Squirrel's reaction as the lights blaze. Yeah, he's screwed—every predator can spot him now.
"Forest" is part of Ikea's "Wonderful Everyday" campaign, which focuses on how small things can make a big difference. A voiceover notes that by 2016, Ikea will sell only energy-efficient LED lightbulbs. (Indeed, the European Union has been moving in this direction for some time.)
The work provides "an opportunity to explain a little about who we are and what we stand for as a brand, and sustainability is a big part of this," says Ikea marketing manager Peter Wright.
Some bright lights might point out that the ad displays enough timber to sustain hundreds of impossible-to-assemble dinette sets. (The company reportedly uses 1 percent of the world's wood supply each year.) But in fairness, Ikea has been working to meet ecologically prudent logging standards. So it's not like the company can't see the forest for the trees.
In Cadillac's latest commercial from ad agency Rogue, airing during the Olympics, we take a tour of the souped-up American dream while our host (played by Neal McDonough) waxes poetic about the virtues of working hard and owning stuff—and manages to throw a few digs at other countries for living more leisurely lifestyles and being less industrious.
"Other countries, they work. They stroll home. They stop by the cafe. They take August off. Off. Why aren't you like that? Why aren't we like that? Because we're crazy-driven, hard-working believers, that's why."
He concludes: "As for all the stuff, that's the upside of only taking two weeks off in August. N'est-ce pas?"
Outside of this guy being painfully annoying, here's a question: Does taking two fewer weeks of vacation guarantee upper-middle-class wealth? I bristle when I think about how many people toil all over the world—here and abroad—and don't enjoy the same opportunities as, you know, this guy.
It's also a curious choice for the Olympics, which is supposed to be a celebration of different countries and cultures—not a repudiation of them. I certainly take no issue with owning things, and I think we should be lauding hard work, big dreams and supporting one's family, but even if this ad is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, it's still obnoxious and poorly timed.
Unless it's completely awesome—which is the other view espoused by some YouTube commenters. In fact, the debate over there is pretty black and white. Point: "How insensitive, egocentric, and repulsive.?" Counterpoint: "Hey butthurt foreigners in the comments: instead of crying, take notes. This is why our country is the greatest in the world and yours isn't.?"
I personally think the spot is visually lovely but could be seriously improved if they cut out the speaking parts and had the Space Jam theme song playing instead.
Credits below.
CREDITS Client: Cadillac Agency: Rogue Chief Creative Officer: Lance Jensen Executive Creative Director: David Banta Group Creative Director: Kevin Daley Copywriters: Lance Jensen, David Banta Art Director: Kevin Daley Agency Producer: Paul Shannon (Executive Producer) Account Team: Clifford Stevens, Megan Wiggin, Emily Shahady, Kalyn Barnum Director of Project Management: Paul Pantzer Project Manager: Christy Costello Assistant Agency Producer: Tim Mollen Production Company: Interrogate Executive Producer: Jeff Miller Producer: George Meeker Director: Brennan Stasiewicz Cinematographer: Max Malkin Line Producer: Dave Bernstein Editing House: Bug Editorial Editor: Andre Betz Licensed Music: "You're Gonna Miss Your Candyman" Music Performed by: Terry Callier Sound Engineer: Mike Secher Visual Effects Company: Brickyard VFX
There's a lot going on in this 60-second Valentine's Day commercial, but it would probably spoil things to reveal either the product or the plot. Suffice it to say there are several surprises here, though it all adds up to quite a heartwarming commercial.
"We felt this view of life was a story that was not being told with the authenticity and compassion it deserved," the company's CEO said in a statement. The spot will air on Bravo and E! in seven major U.S. markets.
Cards Against Humanity's promotions are as bitingly sarcastic as the game itself—whether they're charging more for the game on Black Friday, experimenting with a "Pay what you want" model (which outright insulted anyone who chose to pay less than cost) or teaming with Netflix just this week for an already sold out House of Cards pack.
But the card game's recent "12 Days of Holiday Bullshit" promotion was truly something special. In December, 100,000 people paid $12 for 12 gifts from CAH, with no idea what they'd get. They sold out in less than six hours. And then, incredibly, they really did give 100,000 people 12 gifts each (and then some).
AdFreak caught up with Ben Hantoot, one of the founders of CAH and the design force behind Holiday Bullshit, for a postmortem.
AdFreak: Start at the beginning. How did you come up with this bullshit? Ben Hantoot: As you may know, in 2012 we did a pay-what-you-want expansion pack for the holidays. We donated all the profit to Wikimedia—about $70,000—making us a "major benefactor," which made us feel important. We also got a very healthy press response, and the fans loved it. For 2013, we had to one-up ourselves. We'd thought about doing another pay-what-you-want pack, or some other similar gag, but ultimately we decided to do almost exactly the opposite—you pay us $12, and we won't even tell you what you're getting. We came up with the name "12 Days of Holiday Bullshit" very suddenly … no one even remembers how that happened, but it sounded great and we stuck with it.
Did you expect it to sell out as fast as it did? Among the eight of us, everyone had their own opinions about how long it would take to sell out, but most people were predicting more like two to five days. Six hours was much faster than anyone thought. Watching the counter was kind of terrifying. We were amazed the website didn't crash.
Would you have pulled it off without getting 100,000 people on board? Everything was already manufactured by the time we started selling the $12 slots, so if we ended up selling less than 100,000, we just would have lost even more money on this giant thing.
Speaking of money, how much money did you make on Black Friday when you increased the price of your card game by $5? It worked so well! We had about the same jump in sales we had in 2012, normalized versus the previous Friday, but then if you look at Saturday to Monday, we did much, much better than 2012, thanks to silly publications like Adweek who posted all about it.
Back to the Holiday Bullshit. What kind of feedback did you get from fans? Most of the feedback fell into one of two categories: "OMG THIS IS SO AMAZING AND WORTH MORE THAN $12" and "WTF MY ENVELOPES ARE LATE YOU SHOULD DIE."
The "Tell Santa CAH what you want for Christmas" section that appeared after you paid your $12—what function did that serve? We also asked people the nicest and naughtiest things they did in 2013. Then we sorted through the responses and picked out the ones that were either really funny or really sweet, and actually sent people what they asked for.
A very enthusiastic fan for whom you bought a Lord of the Rings card game contacted me personally on a crusade to get you some press in return for her gift. What else did people get? We sent one guy a few trillion Zimbabwe dollars, another some beef jerky, a few others a Roku or fresh socks or Space Jam on VHS. Some people who had good stories but stupid requests got books and DVDs by the artists we worked with on the comics page. It was a lot of fun.
How far in advance did you start planning all the shenanigans? I started working on production in June. Concepting started way back in March and April. We had the 12 days idea nailed down a long time before we decided exactly what each day was going to be. A few discarded ideas for days: an envelope containing 10,000 Vietnamese dong; an essay ripping apart American holiday culture by Slavoj Žižek; a sachet of live crickets; loose, ambiguous white powder.
What you ended up going with was interesting. Days 1, 3, 5, 7 (NSFW), 9 and 11 (NSFW) were additional cards to expand your CAH game, and each one came with a low-budget online video featuring online stars like ukulele nerd Molly Lewis, Song a Day guy Jonathan Mann and even comedy nerd-core band Paul and Storm. How did you get all of those Internet celebrities to buy into your bullshit? And how did you keep them quiet? We've made many friends over the years going to conventions and supporting other indie gaming businesses online and offline. Plus, we've built up a brand for ourselves over the years that is very no-B.S. and generally trustworthy. Basically, we just asked people to be part of this, and almost all of them said yes!
Day 2 was a lump of coal. You mailed us a real, albeit minute, lump of coal, and made a ridiculous trailer for it. A lot of people got Day 2 as their first mailing and thought it was the only thing they were getting. We shipped out the coal as Day 2 basically to mess with people and upset them and make them feel like they wasted their $12. But it turns out USPS gives timing estimates that are so far off base as to be useless. And Canadian customs also didn't like the coal at all.
How did you get all that coal into tiny baggies? We wrote a whole blog post about that, actually. Basically, we shopped around for a coal supplier that already offered tiny broken-up lumps. When we found it, we had a fulfillment center sort it all into 100,000 dime bags each containing three pieces of coal less than a quarter inch thick (any thicker than that and we'd have to mail it as a parcel, which would have cost five or six times as much). This took a whole team of people over a week to do. Sorting the coal was one of the most expensive and time-consuming parts of the whole process.
Which brings us to Day 4, which was an entirely new self-contained card game called ClusterF*ck, where the objective is to give your friends chlamydia. You gave it to everyone in the promotion, but people can also download it for free. We made Clusterf*ck Day 4 to make up for the coal. We think Clusterf*ck was probably the best gift. Throughout the whole process, we had to keep in mind the restrictions of USPS's definition of a "letter"—no larger than 11.5 by 6.125 inches, no thicker than a quarter inch, no heavier than 3.3 ounces, and tightly packed within the envelope. If we messed up anywhere, we'd lose a ton of money on postage. It also directed a lot of the design of Clusterf*ck, which we think turned out super well. To meet the weight restrictions, we used mini cards instead of normal cards.
To meet the thickness restrictions, we packed the cards into three small piles instead of one big one. And to make the whole thing reusable, we put the cards in a closeable plastic pouch within a sturdy card-stock folder that doubles as the instructions. We're super proud of having designed a whole game with over 40 cards that can be manufactured, shipped from China and then mailed to a person's house for less than $1.
Day 6 was mini-posters of popular CAH cards created by The Post Family. Pretty self-explanatory. But each day also had artwork on the envelopes. Who was the artist there? This awesome dude named Mare Odomo. We just gave him the very basic direction to make some jokes based on the 12 Days of Christmas, and he killed it. "Two turtle doves" is probably my favorite.
Day 8 was a zine of comics from some of the most popular and generally awesome Web comics online, including Hyperbole and a Half, Dinosaur Comics and many, many more. How did you pull that one off? The USPS's restrictions were also super important for some of the bigger days, like the posters and the funny pages. It meant the posters had to be smaller and thinner than they originally were, and it meant we had to cut the funny pages down to a totally custom newspaper size.
For Day 10, CAH donated $100,000 to charity funding 299 public school projects on DonorsChoose.org. I thought the charity gift was inspired. Why did you pick DonorsChoose? DonorsChoose is an incredible charity. Your dollar really goes a long way, and you know the money isn't being wasted. We made a fun infographic outlining how many kids we were able to help for just $100,000.
Finally, on Day 12, you gave everyone a CAH card with their name on it. Sorting the name cards was also a crazy process. Remember that each individual card had to be connected to a specific address. The mailing house wanted us to print a number on each card, but there was no way we were going to do that, so instead we came up with a convoluted system where the cards were divided into hundreds of smaller batches and each insertion of a card into an envelope was individually checked.
To be honest, I'm slightly worried about including the card with my name on it when I play the game. Did you put your name card in with your deck? Oh, hell no. Terrifying!
It's flashback week for fans of 1990s hip-hop, with Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs and Snoop Dogg making advertising cameos that would have seemed inconceivable 15 years ago.
Combs, known these days as Diddy, headlines a new 60-second spot from Fiat and ad agency Doner. In the ad, we see two men wandering the desert in a delirious haze, unsure if they're really being saved by a celebrity or just imagining a mirage.
Meanwhile, Snoop, who has gone by Snoop Lion lately, has popped up in, of all places, a British auto insurance ad from agency Mother. He narrates the story of a dorky white guy named Phil who saved money by getting insurance from MoneySuperMarket and now feels "epic." Feeling epic, in this case, means driving an invisible car and hanging out at inner-city street parties.
It's not exactly jarring to see these two iconic rappers in ads, since both have been frequent marketing mouthpieces in recent years. But it's still entertaining to imagine how they would have reacted to the words "Fiat" and "MoneySuperMarket" in 1997.
Hey, professional truth-benders. Here's a sweet mockumentary-style PSA about professional truth-bending. Extra bonus if you also happen to be a tree hugger.
In addition to fairly broad swipes at snake oil salesmen (you must have known the advertising industry was a popular punching bag when you got into it), the spot—funded by organic businesses—is aimed at illustrating how the use of the word "natural" on food labels is pretty much meaningless. It makes its point well, if a bit repetitively—at four-and-a-half minutes long, the script manages to work in enough sharp moments and little twists to keep it interesting. And in case you're wondering, the gist of its argument is true.
"From a food science perspective, it is difficult to define a food product that is 'natural' because the food has probably been processed and is no longer the product of the earth," says the FDA in its explanation of the subject, which goes on to declare what's more or less a nonposition.
The spot includes industry easter eggs like an art director hovering over a designer, telling him to make the natural logo BIGGER. But the real treat is the performance of Josh Childs in the lead, who's something like a cross between Dr. Leo Spaceman and Michael Scott if they ran an ad agency.
Caribou Coffee, whose previous out-of-home ad stunts have included heated bus shelters in Minneapolis, is back with another special campaign—a giant, five-story-tall Pinterest board built (with help from ad agency Colle+McVoy) at the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn.
Caribou used pinned images from fans as inspiration for its new Real Inspiration Blend variety of coffee. That sounds like a stretch, but the giant Pinterest board is pretty impressive. It includes two large screens that feature inspirating photos from fans on Instagram and Twitter that are tagged with the hashtag #CaribouInspires.
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