Hasta La Creative!

“Let It Go” is so played out at this point, some might consider it a lump of coal in their stockings. But that hasn’t stopped Vodafone U.K. and RKCR/Y&R from thawing out the Frozen anthem for this minute-long holiday ad.

Directed by Pete Riski through Rattling Stick, the spot shows various “local heroes”—folks who have to work on Dec. 25, including medical personnel, airport staffers and restaurant employees—belting out the lyrics as they watch the Disney film, a Sky Movies selection for Christmas, on their handsets. (That’s one festive emergency room! In fact, #PowerToTheFestive is the hashtag.)

“We wanted to bring to life the joy of being able to watch Sky films and TV shows wherever you are this Christmas on Vodafone 4G,” says Rupert Williams, RKCR/Y&R’s managing director. Vodafone marketing exec Daryl Fielding adds that singing along to this particular number “inspires” folks and helps “lifts their spirits.”

The ad feels sincere because it tacitly acknowledges the strong modern connection between holidays and media. Sure, we should probably let the screens go dark and focus on family and friends at this time of year. Still, for many, It’s a Wonderful Life, Rankin-Bass marathons and personal favorites of all kinds are essential seasonal viewing.

As for “Let It Go” lifting spirits, I guess it beats another cerebral-cortex freezing chorus of “Jingle Bells.” Barely. No it doesn’t.

Newcastle has tapped Wil Wheaton as its latest anti-advertising star, enlisting the actor and Internet folk hero for a couple of amusing online videos introducing a new Scotch Ale.

Wheaton does an amusing job of delivering the pitch under duress, as the Droga5 production is self-consciously faux-low-budget. He’s also a well-known home-brew geek, and mixes some knowledge in with the humor.

“Newcastle Scotch Ale is a well-balanced, malt-forward brew with a delightful velvety finish,” he says in the press release. “Basically, Newcastle and Caledonian made a kick-ass beer that does not suck.”

The Scotch Ale is the first in a series of what Newcastle is calling “collaboration edition” beers made in partnership with some of Europe’s finest and oldest breweries. This first partnership is with its Edinburgh-based sister brewery Caledonian.

“One of our dreams is to get rid of the ‘intimidation’ factor that prevents so many people from foregoing boring ‘yellow beer’ and enjoying more interesting brews,” says Brett Steen, brand manager for Newcastle Brown Ale. “Wil is an inviting and knowledgeable guy, and we’re stoked that he’s taking this herculean effort of humor and wisdom onto himself so we don’t have to.”

If you have an animal, you can surely identify with having their dander all over your living space. It can be tricky to clean up after them and make the space presentable for guests. 

Well, what if your apartment was your pants, and your pet hair was—uh, your very own locks of love? I mean, you love yourself and it shouldn’t matter, right? Not so fast there, Sasquatch. Having guests over might be a problem. 

Hirsutes, rejoice! Schick and JWT New York have given us a catchy little jingle in this ad for the Schick Hydro, aimed at getting you to clean up the “Crib in Your Pants” so guests might be able to easily find your tree in the forest. 

Take a look below, and consider trimming Harry and the Hendersons.

It really is the best way to see an agency: the dog’s-eye view.

Toronto animation, design and VFX studio Crush did it last year, attaching a GoPro camera to their dog Sadie and live-streaming her travels around the building. Crush has since merged with Notch, AXYZ and Lollipop to create a new agency called Smith—and what better way to introduce the new place than bringing Sadie back for an encore?

Follow the live stream below until 2 p.m. to see every nook and cranny of Smith’s offices, particularly the ones where delicious unclaimed food may lie.

How do you market round-the-clock customer customer service? If you’re Norwegian bank DNB, you buy all of the ad space on one channel in a 24-hour window, and fill it with advice from your country’s citizens.

The marketer crowdsourced some 3,000 clips from the public. And on Sept. 19 it aired 1,000 of them once each—totaling about two and half hours of content. That included pretty solid gems of wisdom, like it’s a bad idea to stay up all night watching Netflix, and the classic winner, “Always look on the bright side of life” (alas, whistling not included).

brightcove.createExperiences();

In the case study, agency Try/Apt (also onetime matchmaker to George Clooney and shepherd to a singing goat) claims some pretty impressive results, like doubling awareness of the service to more than 70 percent overnight. And if the usual rotation of late night commercials in Norway gets anywhere near as hairy as in the U.S., DNB scored a major victory just by knocking them off the slate for a day.

Then again, anyone who stayed up until 6 a.m. watching Netflix wouldn’t have to worry about that.

The 50th anniversary of England’s first drunk-driving PSA inspires a sobering celebration in this Department for Transport campaign.

Kool & the Gang’s 1980 hit “Celebration” anchors the new spot spot from AMV BBDO. Usually, the iconic dance track suggests parties and good times. Here, however, it’s sung karaoke-style by emergency responders at the scene of a car crash and by ambulance and hospital personnel as they struggle to save victims’ lives. (The song’s joyous “Come on!” exhortation becomes a doctor’s impassioned plea for an injured driver to pull through.)

The final scenes, which I won’t spoil, are immensely sad, their impact heightened by sudden silence as the music unexpectedly cuts out.

The spot stands in stark contract to Britain’s first drunk-driving ad (posted below). Created in 1964 by animation firm Halas & Batchelor, it shows an office party, complete with balloons and silly hats. The voiceover says, “Four whiskeys, and the risk of an accident can be twice as great … Eight, and the risk can be 25 times as great.” (Eight whiskies—that’s some bash!)

The ad concludes, “Don’t ask a man to drink and drive”—a line that is sexist today, but true to its era, when only a small percentage of English women had driver’s licenses.

Of course, we’ve come a long way since then. Thanks in part to aggressive public-service campaigns, drunk driving has been stigmatized, and rightly so. Text at the end of the “Celebration” spot notes that in the past 50 years, annual drunk-driving deaths in the U.K. have fallen from 1,640 to 230, but then cautions: “That’s still 230 too many.”

Overall, the ad, expertly directed by Mark Zibert via Rogue Films, provides a compelling and slightly surreal viewing experience. Though neither gory nor emotionally over the top, its message—propelled by a cruelly ironic soundtrack—might just get stuck in viewers’ heads this holiday season and make them think twice about drinking and driving.

brightcove.createExperiences();

Perfectly coiffed former Full House patriarch Alan Thicke rolling around on a luxurious king­sized bed: dream or nightmare? It’s for a good cause, so be a sport and play along.

Thicke certainly does. The 67­-year-­old actor, talk show host, reality star and Paula Patton ex­father in law is working hard to sell that piece of castoff furniture. He lolls about on his high-thread­count sheets, eating donuts and reading fake books. While mostly horizontal, he even tags the footboard and autographs some head shots. “Nobody asked for these—I just like signing my face,” he says.

You want to own that beautiful mahogany frame (not mattress), you say? You’re in luck. Bidding happens online Nov. 22.

The stunt, found at AlanThickesBed.com, is a fundraiser for Canadian nonprofit resale chain ReStore, and proceeds from the auction will go to Habitat for Humanity. The videos come from JWT Canada, which plans a social media campaign that will follow the bed from Los Angeles to Toronto.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: ReStore/Habitat for Humanity
Agency: JWT Canada
Chief Creative & Integration Officer: Brent Choi
Creative Director: Ryan Spelliscy
Art Director: Dan Bache 
Copywriter: Henry Park
Senior Producer: Shelby Spigelman
Account Team: Lezlie Grossman, Kathleen Dusk, Corrine Luxon, Victoria Radziunas, Melanie Reiffenstein
Client Team: Rob Lee, Lisa Bogart, Joanna Dwyer
Digital Design Team: Patrick Schroen, Bruno Medugno
Director: Only Child (Mike Andrews & Daniel Mabe)
DOP: Roman Jakobi
Production Company: Descendants TV 
Executive Producers: Tasha Litt / Gerard Cantor
Producer: Anton Laines
Post-Production: Alter Ego / AXYZ   
Editing House: Saints Editorial
Editor: Raj Ramnauth
Executive Producer: Michelle Rich
Colorist: Clinton Homuth        
Online: AXYZ?Flame Artist: James Andrews?Producer: Karen Huybers?Music: Silent Joe
Creative Director: Trevor Allan
Producer & Music Supervisor: Jane Heath

Today in amusing Canadian agency videos, we have this one from Cossette—in which marketing people all over the country ask the same bewildered question: “What the fuck is going on at Cossette?”

It’s a good question, as it turns out. And kudos to people from rival agencies who make cameos here, including Carlos Moreno and Peter Ignazi of BBDO and—at the very end—Geoffrey Roche, who founded Lowe Roche. Other folks making appearances include the Trailer Park Boys, Chris Van Dyke of School Editing and Ted Rosnick of RMW Music.

Also, Cossette’s Dave Daga gets points for allowing himself to be hit in the balls.

The video, which was made for Strategy magazine’s Agency of the Year event, is NSFW, mostly due to language, though there a couple of unsightly visuals too.

Agencies have taken many approaches to creating memorable gun-control ads. Grey Toronto’s latest work for Moms Demand Action, opposing an open-carry gun policy in Kroger supermarkets, is thought-provoking—and notably restrained by category standards.

A pair of minute-long radio spots use actual recorded phone calls in which Kroger employees try to explain why people can openly carry firearms in the store, but pets and kids’ scooters are banned. This approach could easily have veered into mean-spiritedness, but the conversations never make the employees sound foolish. These folks are, after all, not the policy makers.

Print ads effectively illustrate the same theme. They use the headline, “One of them isn’t welcome at Kroger. Guess which one.” A schoolgirl with an ice-cream cone, a teen carrying a skateboard and a big shirtless dude are shown beside men and women toting scary-looking firearms. (The print ads are variations on earlier Moms Demand Action efforts.)

“We wanted to pick a campaign that would give us the opportunity, frankly, to do more brand damage by running ads,” says Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action. “They may at first sit back and allow the brand damage to occur, and then realize, ‘Oh, wait, we’re alienating most of our customer base, which is women and mothers.’ “

A spokesman for the chain, which operates more than 2,400 stores in 31 states, told the Huffington Post: “Kroger’s policy has been and continues to be to follow state and local laws and to ask customers to be respectful of others while shopping in our stores.” Kroger has also blasted the Michael Bloomberg-backed Everytown for Gun Safety, which is funding the campaign, as “a national political organization that is attempting to use retailers to further their agenda.”

The ads were timed to coincide with Kroger’s investors meeting last week in Cincinnati. (Moms Demand Action claims Kroger pressured local radio stations to pull the spots. Neither Kroger nor iHeartCommunications, formerly Clear Channel, immediately responded to AdFreak’s requests for comment.) The radio spots continue to run in other markets through November.

For me, this campaign strikes the perfect tone, chastising Kroger without going over the top or employing gory scare tactics. The work is designed to make the audience think, to question the status quo—and I believe it succeeds. Even the employee in the “Scooter” radio spot sounds thoughtful in the end. As she struggles for words, you can almost hear her mind working, perhaps mulling the irony—some would say absurdity—of the store’s position.

CREDITS (radio and print)
Campaign Title: Choose One
Agency: Grey Toronto
Chief Creative Officer: Patrick Scissons
Writers: Patrick Scissons, Graeme Campbell
Art Director: Logan Gabel
Agency Producers: Vikki Kuzmich (print), Erica Metcalfe (radio)
Account Team: Laura Rovinescu, Darlene Remlinger
Production Companies: The Field (print) The Eggplant (radio)
Producer: Cherie Sinclair (print) Adam Damelin, Roc Gagliese (radio)
Photography: Eden Robbins, Hardave Grewal (retoucher)
Sound Engineer: Nathan Handy

Case study videos. I could watch them all day long. They’re my favorite form of media entertainment—apart from sitcoms starring Concord grapes, that is. These days, advertising case studies are so creative and well produced, they’re often more enjoyable than the crappy campaigns they show off. And dammit, they deserve an award show of their own.

Which brings us to this spoof video from Rethink Communications introducing the Caseys, honoring excellence in advertising award-show submissions. “Cannes, One Show, the Clios. These shows celebrate the very best in creativity,” the voiceover begins. “But none of them celebrate what we do best as advertising professionals—the case-study video.”

Rethink’s self-deprecating satire is right on target. Outlandish (but colorful!) infographics flash across the screen, along with footage of earnest, eager agency staffers dying to put some gold on their cold, empty mantlepieces back at home. “The countless hours of nit-picking and favors you’ve asked for will all be worth it,” the narrator says, “because now, you can win an award for that thing that won you an award.”

Some categories include Best Use of Making-Of Footage, Most Innovative Use of a Single Tweet, Most Impressive-Looking Numbers and Best Use of British—because a high-class English accent makes claims like 400 trillion campaign impressions seem plausible.

Hmm … are we sure this is parody?