When New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady needs a break from bickering with the NFL, he goes to the gaudiest hotel on planet Earth to sleep on a specialty mattress that will never deflate.
From smart motorcycle windshields to surfboards that keep you connected, Samsung’s gotten damn good at applying abstract technical features to the real world.
“Sister,” though, is lower-key and closer to home. Made by Leo Burnett to promote the low-light capabilities of its Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge mobile handsets, the ad opens on a familiar (and for us, still quite palpable) scenario: One little girl who can’t get to sleep, because she’s terrified of the dark.
Imagine a plush rooster with a frog’s foot where its comb should be.
Such a creature now exists, thanks to a new campaign in Japan. To raise awareness of a shortage of child organ donors, Dentsu employee Akira Suzuki and a colleague created “Second Life Toys,” which hopes to resurrect worn-out stuffed animals by combining them with parts from other fuzzy beasts.
Millennials will be young forever, so they don’t have to think about stuff like retirement or pension plans.
Just in case that logic proves wrong, the government of Ontario, Canada, teamed up with ad agency Bensimon Byrne—of absurd beer slogans fame—for a series of online spots designed to get 18- to 35-year-olds thinking about their golden years.
Breaking this week, the videos, each more than two minutes long, promote a new offering called the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan. Each sets up a “generational exchange of wisdom” that pairs a retiree with a millennial. The twenty-somethings—all high-profile influencers in Canada—learn what retirement is about, and the seniors get a crash course in popular culture.
British cereal brand Alpen sends up sunny start-your-day-right clichés in two fun 30-second ads by BBH London—because a good breakfast cereal can’t guarantee you’ll have a good day … but at least you’ll enjoy the meal.
In its latest effort to pitch Autotrader to the 18- to 35-year-old crowd, Zambezi casts the online service as a kind of Tinder for millennials looking to hook up with new cars.
Our story takes place in and around a music festival, where a millennial guy and gal, dissatisfied with their respective means of transportation—and in the girl’s case, her current boyfriend—form an instant attraction.
Twinkle, twinkle, little car.
Subaru Canada channels the magical feeling of a night drive beneath celestial lights in a new campaign from Red Urban. Developed with the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, #SubaruDarkSky invites Canadians to venture far from the haze of cities and suburbs to study the heavens.
It’s not enough for Johnnie Ingram to leave his footprint on the ad business.
The new creative director at Team One in Los Angeles had himself rendered in 3-D so his friends and former colleagues “can have a little piece of Johnnie wherever they may go,” according to the agency’s tongue-in-cheek announcement of his arrival on the West Coast.
Two years after making one of the most famous PSAs about the Syrian crisis, Save the Children has unleashed a sequel—which follows the girl from the original as she flees the war zone and becomes a refugee.
Lauded for its brutal, cinematic imagery and its creative path to empathy, the original spot, which has 53 million views and counting, imagined if the war in Syria were to happen in London. It used the structure of popular one-second-a-day videos to show an ordinary middle-class British girl’s world falling apart over a year, from birthday to birthday, as her country plunges into war.
The new video, shot in the same style by the same agency (Don’t Panic London), catches up with the same girl—11-year-old Lily—as she flees the U.K. as a refugee. Two years on, things have deteriorated for Lily, just as they have for kids in Syria and for Syrian child refugees.
Women’s health site HelloFlo has released a new ad about postpartum urinary incontinence.
The women’s health site is known for its fun, disruptive ads, but “Leaks Can’t Stop Me Now” is no “Camp Gyno.” After a few home runs, this one is a swing and a miss. HelloFlo gets gold stars for talking openly and candidly about women’s health issues, but this spot lacks the fun-and-cool factor that permeates its previous spot.
One person’s waste is another’s treasure.
In partnership with Action on Addiction, Leo Burnett London is putting that little chestnut to work with “The Dry/Clean Initiative,” a program that helps recovering addicts dress for job interviews, using clothing that was never picked up from the dry cleaners.
The case study tells us 15 percent of dry cleaning is never claimed (per the Columbus Dispatch). We also learn the story of Debbie, the first Dry/Clean Initiative benefactee.
A couple of months back, Saturday Night Live depicted Hillary Clinton hilariously morphing into Bernie Sanders. Now, the show is ribbing the leading Democratic candidate with a bit about “President Barbie”—the boring new doll nobody wants to play with.
A group of little girls star in the spoof ad, showing off their favorite toys and imagining themselves in space, Paris, and in a magical fantasy world they’ve cooked up.
But to the growing chagrin of the faux Mattel voiceover artist, none are particularly psyched about the blonde-bobbed figurine who comes clad in a blue pantsuit—even if she comes with a mini smartphone pre-loaded with Snapchat.
The Sid Lee Collective, an agency incubator for Sid Lee’s non-commercial creative projects, took a few choice Donald Trump quotes and transformed them into an unofficial Cards Against Humanity expansion pack—Trump Against Humanity: A Party Game About a Horrible Person.
Seriously. You couldn’t make this shit up, and neither did they.
Here’s a sneaky recruitment stunt from 180LA, which is using Snapchat geofilters targeting West Coast ad agencies and tech companies to advertising a social media manager position.
Puppies. They’re like nature’s Xanax.
In “Hearts Aligned,” a sweet new Australian campaign from pet food Pedigree, agency Clemenger BBDO ran an experiment that measured the heart rates of dogs and their owners, both separated and together.
To celebrate the FAA’s loosening of restrictions on who can pilot commercial drones, Intel has put on a flying robot light show—and the results are pretty.
“I had to get my portfolio together and I thought, what better way to spin it than to put the entire thing on Instagram?”
Art director Castro Desroches had been working in digital marketing positions at various agencies for several years, and like most creatives, he needed a concise way to sum up his career to date. After 300 images, seven videos, five separate accounts, five total do-overs and three instances of being banned from Instagram, he finally managed it with a project called “Frame by Frame.”
Nothing says fresh fish quite like the anguished death spasms they exhibit upon being caught, which Y&R Poland recently simulated in amusing fashion for a grocery-store prank.
The agency, working with creative lab Jack the Maker and production company Raymond, created “The Live Fish Pack,” which looks like a fish in a box—but behaves like a fresh catch by jumping around now and then. As an fun added touch, the box was connected by wifi to a proximity sensor, allowing it to know when shoppers were approaching—and start shaking and jumping accordingly.
As completely invented, marketing-driven rituals go, Corona Extra has a fun one on its hands with the #LimeDrop, a campaign the Mexican brewer is running across social media for Cinco de Mayo.
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