Hasta La Creative!

Advertising Agency: Eleven Brandworks, Gurgaon, India
Chief Creative Officer: Prateek Bhardwaj
Creative Directors: Aneesh Jaisinghani, Kapil Batra
Copywriter: Vaibhava Bhatnagar
Art Director: Smit Agrawal
Account Director: Vishal Sharma
Photographer: Dinesh Gaur

The post Hallmark with Eleven Brandworks appeared first on desicreative.

I'm not sure I'd swipe my passport through a vending machine, regardless of the reward, but perhaps I would if I were Canadian and needed a beer badly enough. Molson Canadian recently visited several European cities and placed fully stocked beer fridges in public places there. The catch? The fridges could be opened only by scanning a Canadian passport. Footage from the sites was then cut into the 90-second online ad below, from ad agency Rethink and director Jonty Toosey of Partners Film. A :30 broke on TV during the Stanley Cup Finals. The campaign also brings back the classic tagline, "I am Canadian."

It's a fun idea, and continues the trend toward more installation-based public branding and entertainment stunts. Coca-Cola has always done that very well, of course, but these days everyone's trying it—from Hot Wheels to those crazy Fantastic Delites stunts. Beer fridges that won't open are particularly galling, of course, and wondrous when they finally relent—as we learned last year with the JWT office fridge that only opens when everyone has done their time sheets.

Making-of video and credits for the Molson effort below.

CREDITS
Title: "The Beer Fridge"
Client: Molson Canadian

Agency: Rethink
Creative Directors: Aaron Starkman, Chris Staples, Dré Labre, Ian Grais 
Associate Creative Director: Mike Dubrick
Art Directors: Joel Holtby, Vince Tassone, Christian Buer
Writers: Mike Dubrick, Aaron Starkman, Matt Antonello, Dave Thornhill
Account Director: Ashley Eaton
Broadcast Producer: Clair Galea 

Production Company: Partners Film
Director: Jonty Toosey
Executive Producer: Aerin Barnes
Line Producer: Neil Bartley
Director of Photography: Bruce Jackson

Postproduction: Rooster Post
Executive Producer: Melissa Kahn
Editor: Marc Langley
Assistant Editor: Nick Greaves

Postroduction: Fort York VFX
Music, Sound Design: RMW Music
Producer, Composer: Steven MacKinnon

Colorist: Eric Whipp, Alter Ego

The Discovery Channel is already promoting Shark Week, which doesn't happen until August, but the first ad is a doozy. It features a fake local news broadcast about an injured seal being returned to the ocean. Remember when they fed the lamb to the T-Rex in Jurassic Park? It's kinda like that. "It's a bad week to be a seal," begins the on-screen copy. "For the rest of us it's pretty awesome." (PETA might argue with that.) I don't know how they're going to top this spot, but if they can keep this kind of momentum going, there's a chance I won't be totally sick of hearing about Shark Week by the time it starts.

High school would've been so much more bearable if we'd had a tipsy teacher spouting U.S. history, pausing during key Watergate moments not for dramatic effect but just long enough to puke. Who wouldn't ace that part of the test? Comedy Central is doing its part to make up for those slept-through second periods. The cable channel has nabbed a popular Web series, as it's done successfully in the past, for one of its new summer offerings called Drunk History, which is combination re-enactment, cult celebrity fest and kegger. Stars like Adam Scott, Aubrey Plaza, Bob Odenkirk, Fred Willard, Stephen Merchant and Jack Black will take part in loopy re-enactments of the Scopes monkey trial, the Battle of the Alamo, the Haymarket riot and other seminal historical events. They aren't really shitfaced, but the show's narrators are (for the sake of argument, that is). Advertising for the series, launching July 9, is appropriately booze-soaked. Suds float up to cover dynamic online banner ads, like cold draft being drawn from a tap, and famous politicians flash bottles of hooch instead of peace signs. Lingering question: How in the world did George Washington ever make it across the Delaware with all that beer? Our 11th-grade class left out all the good stuff.

AMC on Tuesday released the official key art for the final eight episodes of Breaking Bad, premiering Aug. 11. "Remember my name," warns an intimidating, clenched-fisted Walter White, echoing the famous "Say my name" scene from the first half of Breaking Bad's fifth season. Beyond that, who knows what will happen as this great series comes to an end?

In more playful Breaking Bad news, AMC has also launched the Breaking Bad Name Lab, which allows you to see your name transformed with element symbols like the iconic Breaking Bad logo. You can then share the image on social media or download it as an animated GIF.

Ad agency Jung von Matt/Neue Elbe and directing duo Alex & Steffen stage an orgy of CGI insanity, referencing various effects-driven fantasy blockbusters from the past 20 years, in this lighthearted yet heart-pounding German spot branding Fanta as "The official sponsor of FANTAsy." When a giant Transformers-type cyber-terror lays siege to a desert castle, a pro wrestler gets catapulted into the fray, bouncing harmlessly off the bot's metal hide, and a plucky princess slides down a saurian's back to save the day. Turns out the action—superbly staged and worth several viewings—is taking place in the imagination of a little girl at a family picnic. The intricate sandcastle they've built sits nearby, its parapets manned by action figures. Some might say it's a sad commentary that a kid's imagination is fueled by soda-pop-culture/Hollywood hype, though in our media-saturated age, this seems about right, and the melee she envisions provides more thrills than most mega-budget flicks can manage. Good thing they didn't probe her brother's imagination. That little devil would've used the robot to conquer the world and hogged all the Fanta for himself!

Publicis's poignant print ads for suicide-prevention group Samaritans of Singapore use ambigrams to give upbeat messages negative meanings when viewed upside down. "I'm fine" becomes "Save me," "Life is great" morphs into "I hate myself" and "I feel fantastic" reads "I'm falling apart." The tagline, "The signs are there if you read them. Help us save a life before it's too late," is also printed upside down. The campaign does a fine job of depicting the subtle, often hidden nature of depression and anxiety disorders. It's novel for the category, taking an approach that's clever enough to generate broad coverage, extending the message far beyond its original market. Perhaps those reading about this work will question declarations of happiness from friends and family members that don't quite ring true. The writing may be on the wall, but sometimes you've got to look at things in a different way to avert disaster.

"Everyone wants to control video game characters by chewing. Right? Right?!" Working off a brief that apparently read something like that, Stride Gum, Wieden + Kennedy London and Johnny Two Shoes have launched Gumulon, which uses the front-facing cameras of iOS devices to detect your mouth movements. By chewing, you can make a helmeted alien named Ace jump around to avoid the clutches of a prehistoric cave beast. Once Ace gets eaten, the camera take a shot of your crazily chewing face, which you can share on social media. (That's an improvement on the barf faces some party hearties like to send around.) Gumulon is available for free in the App Store because, really, who would pay for such a thing? It can also be played by tapping iPhone, iPad and iPod touch screens, so those with lockjaw won't miss out. Where will it end? Silicon Valley investors may soon be lining up to back Belchulon, SpitScreen! and Musical Toots—at all of which, by the way, I'd be unbeatable.

This seven-minute Red Bull video cements Scottish cyclist Danny MacAskill's standing as a badass brand spokes-man.

It took 68 weeks over a two-year period to shoot this mix of fantasy, memory and dazzling bicycle stunts. A former museum in Glasgow was transformed into a Land of the Giants-style version of MacAskill's childhood bedroom, cluttered with outsized rubber balls, playing cards, colored pencils, comic books, a Rubik's Cube, a Twister game, alphabet blocks, a race-car loop-de-loop track and even a toy-train-and-station set.

As arena-rock ("Runaway" by Houston) blares on the soundtrack, the YouTube star, who's notched 60 million views across his video catalog, performs a crazy array of jumps, turns, spins and landings among the kids' stuff scattered across the floor. In the best bit, he lands on a tank turret and rides down the cannon, only to have green plastic army men spring to life and make off with his bike.

All this fanciful action is taking place inside the mind of a pre-pubescent Danny MacAskill as the boy sits on the floor, surrounded by toys and games, devising wild stunts for an action-figure cyclist to perform. Playtime abruptly ends when his mother threatens to "shoot the boots off ye" if young Danny doesn't hurry down to tea. (The daredevil's real mom, Anne, makes a cute cameo.)

MacAskill wears a Red Bull helmet, but the brand's presence is never intrusive. Instead of just peddling image or product, the film scores as entertainment, and this pumps up its value as branded content. Of course, it doesn't scale the heights of Red Bull's Felix Baumgartner viral. It's similar to the marketer's Rube Goldberg clip, which also featured MacAskill, but I prefer this new video, part of his "Imaginate" series. It unabashedly celebrates creative play and suggests you just might be able to ride the dreams of youth and make them come true.

My colleague Tim Nudd recently wondered if Apple, at a crucial time of transition in the company's history, had lost its voice in the new "Our Signature" manifesto commercial. The company speaks clearly and with great confidence, however, in "Making a Difference One App at a Time," a 10-minute film by TBWA\Media Arts Lab that focuses on how third-party iOS apps can profoundly change people's lives.

Now, I initially assumed that such aspirational advertising, especially in a long-form outing, would veer into mawkish, tear-jerk territory. I was mistaken. The muted, documentary-style approach strikes the perfect tone, and "Making a Difference" says a whole lot without ever getting overly sentimental or offering pie-in-the-sky promises about making the world a better place.

"Making a Difference" both tells us why Apple's products are great and shows us that they are, introducing viewers to a range of people who use or develop vastly different apps that run on iPhones and iPads. We meet a nurse who uses the technology to make diagnoses in remote, rural areas of Kenya; an Olympic medal-winning amputee rower who programs her prosthetic legs; a Native American woman striving to keep the Cherokee language alive; and, most poignantly, a non-verbal youngster who finds his virtual voice and now talks to his family and friends via iPad every day.

In a way, these are small, intimate stories that gain considerable power (and a truly universal vibe) when woven together. Yet, the piece as a whole never feels forced or overblown. There's a cool, almost detached aspect to "Making a Difference"—achieved with lingering Steadicam shots, fluid editing and an elusive ambient soundtrack—that's analogous to Jonathan Ive's Apple product designs. His vision, at its best, is gorgeous yet restrained, evocative and efficient with all elements in harmony, and the same can be said for this film. It has great form but also function, with viewers learning quite a bit about iOS apps and feeling like we're part of the conversation.

Intriguingly, all four stories are ultimately about enabling and facilitating various types of communications. The apps—and, by extension, the Apple products they run on—are convincingly cast as high-tech translators. Working together, humans and machines create a new language of hope, change and deeper understanding.