David&Goliath’s new ad for the California Lottery focuses on a man who’s quirkily obsessed with the number five—including waking up at 5:55 a.m., living at 555 5th Street, and basically designing as many interactions as he can around this number.
There’s no getting around the fact that emojis, whatever their social equity among young people, are quite literally cartoony. And if you’re going to build a whole global ad campaign around them, as Pepsi has done with PepsiMoji, it’s going to feel pretty lightweight. And indeed, the five-second TV ads, which we wrote about earlier, are bubbly but also fleetingly goofy—all the more so because of their short length.
Good thing, then, that Pepsi wisely decided to get some help from photographers for the out-of-home and Instagram elements of the campaign, created by Lloyd&Co.
Taking care of yourself and eating healthy is all well and good when life is going smoothly. But when does life ever go smoothly?
That’s the message of a comical new campaign by Droga5 for Pure Protein, maker of protein bars, powder and shakes. (Pure Protein is owned by NBTY, for whom Droga5 is also working on the MET-Rx brand.)
Three online spots focus humorously on the “Derailers” who totally muck up your plans for the day, making you much more likely to go for an unhealthy snack. Which is why you should always carry a Pure Protein bar with you, the ads say, so you can get your 19-21 grams of pure whey protein with only 3 grams or less of sugar.
Samsung is back to pull at your heartstrings again, this time with a campaign about premature babies.
Infants born too early face a greater risk of language and attention disorders later in life. The tech conglomerate created a new way to mitigate that danger—by helping mothers communicate with infants stuck in neonatal intensive care, as if they were still in the womb.
April Fools’ Day was a month ago, but KFC is only just now announcing that it has made two edible nail polishes that bring the classic tagline, “Finger Lickin’ Good,” grossly to life.
It can be exhausting to travel by subway, especially when you work in advertising. Subways are home to some of the grabbiest, ugliest creative in all of existence, often in multiples.
To wit: Yesterday, while stepping out of the Paris Métro, I saw a billboard for the Chatons d’Or, or The Golden Kitten, a new tongue-in-cheek ad awards show. I was tired, not in the mood, and—worst of all—it put my brain back in work mode again, well after midnight.
Given how many award shows we already have (I mean, did you know we even have one for TV interstitials? Those are literally ads to advertise your upcoming ad break), and how many other lowest-common-denominator inanities we’re subjected to when traveling to and from anywhere, we’re pretty receptive to this Kickstarter campaign to replace all the ads in one London tube station … with pictures of cats.
Nothing else. Just cats. No $9.99 bikinis perched alongside gym memberships. No award shows, ironic or not. No blockbuster movie posters all in a row, punting an aged actor as a hilariously bad grandpa. Cats. Cats.
In January 2014, Boba, a small Colorado company that makes baby carriers and accessories, posted a video online—created by Futuristic Films—that would prove to be one of the most popular ads ever made about motherhood.
Titled “You Made Me a Mother,” it featured a voiceover that was a visual poem of various moms each talking to their child—recounting their journey together from pregnancy through the first few years of their child’s life.
April was Distracted Driving Awareness month, and Sprint saved one of the most eye-catching PSA for last—unveiling the sculpture above in downtown Miami last Friday.
Titled “The Last Emoji,” it was made by ad agency Alma from a junkyard wreck and warns Miami drivers of the dangers of texting and driving.
According to Alma, Florida is one of the only states that doesn’t list texting while driving as a primary offense, so Magnacom Worldwide secured a prime location at 1200 Brickell Avenue in downtown Miami to reach commuters.
Today in Weird Things We’re Glad Aren’t Happening to Us, Procter & Gamble’s Head & Shoulders brand has released “Scalp Brave,” a campaign that goes roughly where you think it’s headed … just not in the way you imagined it would.
Conceived by the twisted minds at Saatchi & Saatchi London, the campaign’s premise is neatly encapsulated by the closing lines in three behind-the-scenes videos: “100% flake free hair. Have the confidence to be #scalpbrave.”
“Brave” is definitely a word for it. But don’t let your mind wander down the road of elaborate mohawks and six-layer Louis XIV hairdos. Yawn—too obvious. Instead, creative barber Rob the Original was enlisted to do one of the things he does best: Approach the soft, magnificent tufts of regular people and shave portraits of other people’s faces—specifically, Head & Shoulders’ own celebrity ambassadors—into them.
What do you get for a mother who is not really your mother, but is still kinda your mother, for Mother’s Day? How about card that will make her feel special, or very uncomfortable?
Humanaut, the agency behind Organic Valley’s recent viral “Real Morning Report” campaign, has whipped up a Mother-in-Law Collection of greeting cards for client Felt (in which Humanaut holds an equity stake) just in time for Mother’s Day. They’re perfect for showing your appreciation for—and/or just being rude to—your spouse’s mom.
Mad Men ended a year ago, but John Slattery, aka Roger Sterling from the AMC agency drama, is keeping a hand in the ad game, providing a voiceover for this Duracell spot tied to National Hearing Month.
Slattery delivers his lines near the end of the two-minute-plus commercial, created by Anomaly to tout Duracell’s hearing-aid batteries.
Hand, dish and laundry liquids get surprisingly sexy in a new campaign from green cleaning brand Method. Call it haute soap.
The brand’s new “Fear No Mess” campaign, which might be less pithily articulated as “Make as Big a Mess as You Possibly Can,” features immaculately dressed heroes finding inventive ways to trash beautifully designed rooms in a series of TV ads.
Wasn’t it fun when we were kids to doodle on restaurants’ paper placements with crayons? Well, McDonald’s has introduced a high-tech, musical version of that sort of play with McTrax—a snazzy placemat that acts like a little music production station.
TBWANeboko in the Netherlands created McTrax. The placemat, developed with This Page Amsterdam, uses conductive ink, a small battery and a thin circuit board with 26 digital touchpoints. You put you phone on it, download an app and make music with in-house produced audio loops, synths and musical effects. You can also record your own voice.
You may recall this 2009 AdFreak story about freelance copywriter Lawson Clarke’s efforts at self-promotion, which involved crafting the uber-masculine persona known as Male Copywriter and exquisitely re-creating the famous April 1972 centerfold of Cosmopolitan magazine starring a naked Burt Reynolds.
Well, after holding down some full-time agency jobs, including one at Hill Holliday, Clarke is jumping back into the freelance life. And so, he’s launching Male Copywriter 2.0—a reskinning (so to speak) of his portfolio site that includes a whole new video of himself in various states of undress.
Imagine if Lego-style blocks were turned into a Braille alphabet that could help visually impaired children learn to read. For a group of kids in Brazil, such toys are a reality. The two-minute video below promotes “Braille Bricks,” a new project from the nonprofit Dorina Nowill Foundation for the Blind and agency Lew’LaraTBWA.
Apple’s new Mother’s Day video might be a week early, but there really isn’t a bad time to tell your mom you love her, right? Right. Also, the way Apple sees it, there isn’t a bad time to show off the clarity of the iPhone’s camera, either.
It’s been almost three years since the infamous racist backlash to the Cheerios commercial with the interracial family, and brands are still getting heat when they broadcast images of diversity. But these days, the brands always seem ready for the haters—and as often as not, they use their vitriol against them.
Virtual reality still has a lot to prove. And today it takes a big step toward demonstrating its potential everyday usefulness with a cool Samsung campaign that simulates one of the most intimate family traditions—the parent-child bedtime story.
With help from BBH London, Samsung Electronics has launched a live VR storytelling app called Bedtime VR Stories, which is designed to have a parent and child read together inside a VR world when they can’t be physically together. They each wear VR headsets and can talk to each other—and see a version of each other—inside the world as they read together. (The app uses a combination of VR and Voice over Internet Protocol—or VoIP—technology.”
Bedtime VR Stories launches with a single tale, titled “The Most Wonderful Place to Be.” Parent and child sit on a magical bed during the five-minute experience and visit three places—the Arctic, where they meet Jen the Penguin; a prehistoric world featuring Dan the Dinosaur; and outer space, where Robot Jo treats them to a musical finale.
First dates can be awkward, but this night-out scenario, created by agency DLV BBDO Milan for a charity in Portugal, might just leave you in tears.
In a darkened restaurant, with a folksy version of “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?” playing softly, a woman tells her male dinner companion all about her life. “My house is just two blocks away,” she says casually. “I live there with my two cats, and Bat, the dog.”
She continues, “He’s called that because he’s all black with pointy ears … Oh, and I’m a good dancer. When I was younger, I used to spend all my time dancing in my room on tiptoes. Shall we dance?”
Watch the minute-long clip below before reading further:
Canada’s climate includes harsh terrain and gnarly winters—which is why its athletes are so hardcore, says a new ad for the nation’s Olympics team.
The Canadian Olympic Committee and agency Cossette created the campaign, titled “Ice in Our Veins,” for this year’s Summer Games in Brazil. The :60 centerpiece commercial immediately draws a distinction between the frozen landscape onscreen, and Rio de Janeiro, the famous beach town where the 2016 competition will be held in August.
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