Hasta La Creative!

Process this: The "Intel Inside" logo has made its way inside the jerseys of Spanish soccer team FC Barcelona in a reported five-year, $25 million deal.

The emblem is visible only when players pull their shirts up over their heads, which they've been known to do when celebrating a goooaaal! Intel vp of sponsorship David Haroldsen says the placement "authentically tells the story of who we are rather than just being another brand that is visible with all the other logos that exist. We believed we would have more value with the symbolic placement with occasional pop-up moments within the game."

Fair enough. Cool concept. Still, I wonder … doesn't this send a tacit message that big corporate bucks are all that's "inside" these players, driving them like robots of commerce? Aren't champions supposed to be motivated by something more, like their fierce love of the game and burning desire to win? Doesn't that competitive heart, beating deep inside, truly make a great team tick?

And when Santa Claus comes to my house next week, will he bring the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy along for the ride?

Anyone who has lived next door to a motorcycle owner knows that "Harley-Davidson" and "sleep in heavenly peace" rarely go together. But this special holiday video for the brand creates a clever exception.

In a clip called "The Sound of the Festive Season," U.K. agency Big Communications uses a Harley to play the notes of "Silent Night." The agency tells AdFreak that the entire idea was created, sold and executed in just 72 hours.

Credits below. Via Best Ads on TV.

CREDITS
Agency: Big Communications, London
Creative Team: Katie Bradshaw, Ryan Griffiths, Stuart Perry
Director: Paul Griffin
Producer: Blue Gecko Studios

Visual effects studio Cinesite produced this crazy-good mock commercial as a way to show off its creature animation skills. And one hell of a creature it is—a marauding beast who takes umbrage at being awoken from its cave by some astronauts, who take a serious beating for their transgressions. Except one guy gets away … or does he?

The spot was written and directed by animator Alvise Avati. Read more about it here. Credits are below. Via Disco Chicken.

CREDITS
Client: Cinesite
Written and Directed: Alvise Avati
Producer: Eamonn Butler
VFX Supervisor: Richard Clarke
Art Direction: Jean-David Solon
Concept Art: Andrea de Martis
Modelling and Rigging: Grahame Curtis, Royston Willcocks, Richard Boyle
Animation: Alvise Avati, Eamonn Butler, Peter Clayton, Tom O'Flaherty, Adam Bailey
Texture Artists: Nicolette Newman, Gary Newman
FX Animation: Andreas Vrhovsek, Luke Wilde
Lighting and Compositing: Zave Jackson, Nikos Gatos, Jonathan Vuillemin, Dan Harrod, Joel Bodin
Editorial: William Marshall-Wilkinson
Christopher Learmonth

You have to hand it to Kmart and Draftfcb. They've shown this whole year that they know how to whip up a good viral commercial. We had "Ship My Pants" in April and then "Show Your Joe" (aka, "Jingle Balls") in November. Now, they head back to the well with this humorously Dickensian reimagining of "Ship My Pants" just in time for Christmas. You can hear all the other retailers grumbling "Bah, humbug." Well played. Via Disco Chicken.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Kmart
Vice President, Creative: Mark Andeer
Director of Kmart Marketing Strategy: Brandi Ply
Director of Advertising: Beverly Mason
Agency: Draftfcb, Chicago
Chief Creative Officer: Todd Tilford
Executive Vice President, Executive Creative Director: Jon Flannery
Senior Vice President, Creative Director: Howie Ronay
Vice President, Creative Director: Sean Burns
Creative Director, Copywriter: Tim Mason
Associate Creative Director, Art Director: Myra Mazzei
Executive Producer: Chris Bing
Director: Zach Math
Editorial: Casey Cobler

Scott Hoy is mad, and he wants you to stop. Will you please stop? The whole thing with the accidents, and the video games, and the backseats? It's not fair. And do not say they deserved it. He does not want to console the parents, but he will. Until you stop. Will you please stop? Wait, what?!

Scott Hoy is a personal injury trial lawyer in Sioux Falls, S.D., and your guess is as good as ours. Via Katie Levitt on AdFreak's Facebook page.

Leave it to a couple of ad agencies to upend the holiday season with the year's most radical toy. Independent shops Barton F. Graf 9000 in New York and TDA_Boulder in Boulder, Colo., partnered on a new business that sells a single item—a big, plain, heavy-duty, 2-foot-cubed, 100-percent-recycled, made-in-the-U.S.A., empty cardboard box. It's described on the website as "the perfect holiday gift for the 2-6½-year-old who would rather play with the box than what's inside."

It's a legitimate site, all proceeds from sales will go to two children's charities:  Blue Sky Bridge in Boulder (focused on child abuse) and the Charley Davidson Leukemia Fund in Boston. It is also, of course, a political statement of sorts. The idea for Bawx came out of a late-night conversation after an ad event between TDA_Boulder and Barton F. Graf 9000 principals Jonathan Schoenberg and Gerry Graf, who have some shared beliefs where consumerism is concerned.

"Consumerism is a bit out of control these days," says the website. "Kids would much rather spend time with their friends and parents and a Bawx, than the latest technology. Ok, that is a complete lie, but maybe if they did have a Bawx they would spend more time with people, and a bit less time with pixels."

The marketing copy on the site is intentionally goofy. It says the Bawx is available in four "models," though they are actually identical. (They do range in price, though, from $24.99 to $499.99—since you're really just donating to two charities at whatever level you're comfortable with.) Each model's listed features are "Horizontal," "Open end (closeable)," "Natural light" and "Spacious entrance."

Graf has done similar anti-pixel things before, including the memorable 2011 video "The Log Off," in which children pleaded with their mothers—in song—to get off Facebook already and play with them.

CREDITS
AD: Barrett Brynestad
CWs: Gerry Graf, Jonathan Schoenberg
Production: Tim Kelly       
Digital lead: Gene Paek
Developer: Relentless Technology, Vancouver, Canada

If you've been unable to sleep since the Old Spice guy faded from the spotlight, or suffered from nightmares that he was permanently relegated to playing a lesser version of himself in Israeli beer commercials, you can finally rest easy. Isaiah Mustafa is back.

You'll find him over at Old Spice's U.K. Facebook page with his junk wrapped in a Union Jack. The images there are just teasers of what's still to come: videos (from Leo Burnett, not Wieden + Kennedy) of Mustafa exploring the virtues of what he describes in one promo as "the manliest man to ever grace this planet, the great British gentleman."

It's a certain kind of flattery, but it's not without charm—and a kernel of truth, insofar as anyone can really measure manliness. (Old Spice tried, finding in a 2,000-person survey that less than 20 percent of people think it's manly to wear a Speedo.) Mustafa has already begun traipsing around London on a white horse, and snapped an Instagram photo outside St. Paul's Cathedral.

Given his equity as a pop culture icon, it's not really a surprise to see Old Spice return him to the role. It might not smell as fresh as it once was, but it's pleasing nonetheless.

Special K believes positivity is key to weight management success. So, it's taking aim at its opposite—"fat talk," or the negative things some women say about their bodies and others. The Kellogg's brand says 93 percent of women fat talk, "and it's weighing women down." Now, ahead of the New Year slim-down season, Special K and Leo Burnett have launched a whole "Fight Fat Talk" campaign, with social, video and other efforts aimed at getting women to talk more positively about themselves.

The two-minute spot below, directed by O Positive's Peyton Wilson, has a pretty aggressive strategy for dealing with fat talk: It ambushes women with it while they're shopping for clothes (a prime occasion for fat talk). Actual fat talk, taken from Twitter and elsewhere, is printed on signs and labels in the store—and is meant to make women realize how terribly self-defeating it is.

The spot is clearly going for an empowering vibe, à la Dove or Pantene. And the women do get emotional upon seeing the signs, realizing they're being too hard on themselves. But in some ways, it doesn't feel as natural. Without any positivity at all, the signs just don't seem very inspiring—unlike the Dove and Pantene ads, which had the stranger-described sketches and the "Don't let labels hold you back" elements as springboards for positivity. Plus, there's also the inconvenient fact that Special K is expressly meant to make you thinner—rather than making you more accepting of yourself.

What do you think of the video? Does it work for you?

The post Dettol Healthy Kitchen Dish & Slab Gel by Havas appeared first on desicreative.

How do you get people around the world talking about a Dutch subscription service for disposable cat litter? Why, you create a music video featuring glamorous costumed kitties parodying the Pussycat Dolls, of course.

The Poopy Cat Dolls and their song, "If You Want My Purr Purr," are worth checking out, even if you don't live in the Netherlands, don't need to order monthly deliveries of biodegradable cat litter containers and don't actually remember what the Pussycat Dolls sounded like.

Despite its limited geographical footprint so far, the video has already gotten the attention of Laughing Squid, Huffington Post and Mashable, so don't be too surprised if Poopy Cat ends up scratching its way to American doorsteps sometime soon.