I never thought Lego would officially recognize how sharp its products are, but this ad for the Star Wars playset series does exactly that—with help from the dark side of the Force.
Little Vaders, of course, have a history of advertising success, though here the Sith Lord is somewhat less charming as he ruins a father's clandestine midnight snack run.
I don't care how cool you think your job is, because you will never be as awesome as the person at GE who gets to push the button that smashes the crap out of things with 100,000 pounds of pressure.
This series of videos from VaynerMedia, part of a new "#SpringBreakIt" campaign, feature ordinary objects like baseballs, rubber duckys, sea shells and pencils getting crushed and wind-blasted. The footage is downright fascinating and all done in the name of science.
As the brand's Tumblr (with perfect little gifs) states: "On April 23rd we opened our laboratory doors to show the world how we test our advanced materials. When we know how materials melt, shatter and bend, we can make machines that don't."
Below are the two-minute teaser and individual videos showing things simply getting destroyed beyond all recognition. There are lots more in this playlist on GE's YouTube channel.
Watching this stuff getting smashed will have fewer consequences than getting plastered yourself on your lunch hour, trust me.
Jose Cuervo literally bottles up its history in this campaign from McCann New York.
The effort, which includes a TV spot and smartphone app, centers on intricate dioramas from animation studio Laika House. Finely detailed models capturing key Cuervo moments are placed inside tequila bottles.
We're treated to the volcanic eruption that led to the growth of agave used in making tequila; Mexico's fiery victory at the Battle of Puebla in 1862 (France lost, no surprise there); the brand keeping Americans hammered during Prohibition; the birth of the margarita; and a beach volleyball tournament, included because Cuervo is a pro-series sponsor.
These miniatures are lovingly crafted and provide a novel respite from the usual high-tech commercial effects. Note the facial expressions—Jose looks forceful and assured—and the rich textures of the sea and soil.
When users of the brand's mobile app hover their phones over a bottle of Cuervo Tradicional, a 3-D diorama of the bar where Cuervo helped invent the margarita appears. And after a few shots, who knows what else you'll start seeing?
Poise, the adult diaper brand, is poised to attack the lady bladder control market with a double entendre-laced spot about pee spotting.
Though the product is supposed to be super discreet, the spot certainly is not. Two moms sitting down for some kind of school event have a conversation about Sam. Sam knows how to treat a woman. He might be small, but he can last for hours and he's in her pants RIGHT NOW. Surprise! It turns out Sam is short for the Super Absorbent Material in Poise liners.
Ogilvy & Mather New York put together this strange appeal in response to what is, honestly, a hard product to sell. I mean, when laughing or sneezing makes you pee your pants, it's not really something you want to chat about over coffee with your girls.
But is the right appeal suggesting there's a man named Sam with a small dick who can help you out? I can see why they'd go
for humor. Make the audience pee in their pants a little and they'll realize how badly they need the product. But this spot is more creepy and weird than funny. At least it's drawing attention to the product while completely avoiding the unsavory reality of the condition. I mean, if the only option is to get all TMI about something, I guess I'd rather have an uncomfortable sex chat than a heart to heart about pissing myself.
Beethoven died 187 years ago next month. So, why were apparently new obituaries for the composer only recently
published?
TBWA\Guate counted on that clever bit of shock value as part of its bid to save Guatemala's only classical music radio station, Radio Faro Cultural, which is at risk of being closed—presumably because nobody under 50 listens to classical music anymore, no matter what country they're in, because they're all too busy listening to Pharrell or Katy Perry.
According to the agency's case study below, the campaign caught the attention of Guatemala's ministry of culture, which swooped in to bail out the station, because government preservation is probably the only thing that can save a waning genre's presence in a waning medium.
While equating the brand with Beethoven could come across as pretentious, the metaphor reads as surprisingly unstrained. But it's hard to imagine the choice going over well with some of the more staunch proponents of Bach and Mozart.
Credits below.
CREDITS
Client: Radio Faro Cultural
Agency: TBWA\Guate, Guatemala
Chief Executive Officer: Raúl Herrera
General Creative Director: Martín Sica
Creative Directors: Luis Guzmán, Francisco Pérez
Art Directors: Levin Méndez, Javier Contreras
Producer: Mateo Gómez
Planning Director: Flora Hasbun
A woman's love for her boyfriend is compared to her love for resort amenities while vacationing without him in Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam's latest ad for Booking.com.
The man doesn't fare so well in the comparison, though to be fair, neither does the woman. She is "Brianless" because Brian apparently doesn't enjoy seafood, the ocean or horseback riding. (How could someone be such a curmudgeon?) And she sure takes advantage of his absence, letting loose with cartoony antics that echo other spots from the high-energy campaign. (Is it just a coincidence that "Brianless" is an anagram of "brainless?")
While the spot is mostly harmless, the kernel of the idea—that a woman could possibly (gasp) enjoy a vacation without her boyfriend—falls solidly in the patronizing camp.
It's a bit surprising that no one's done this until now, but here it is—a parody of the megaviral "Dumb Ways to Die" train-safey video showing various ways in which creative ideas die ignoble deaths in the ad business.
Some of the joke writing feels a little off, or perhaps just lost in translation—the video was made by Young & Rubicam Brazil for Miami Ad School/ESPM in São Paulo.
Still, it's decently produced and comically relatable—every ad creative has a story about a dumb way in which his/her flash of brilliance was ruthlessly extinguished.
The only thing Subservient Chicken got on his 5th birthday in 2009 was a blog post about how the agencies involved in his creation bickered over who really deserved credit. For his 10th birthday, though, the chicken flies again.
Except, actually, he's been grounded. The initial idea behind the new campaign—which promotes the Chicken Big King sandwich—is that the chicken has gone missing. BK placed half-page ads in a handful of Sunday newspapers asking if people had seen him. The photo above was posted to Twitter.
The subservientchicken.com website is live again, too, but brings up a 2004-style error message, which you can see below, and also includes some crudely Photoshopped surveillance images showing the chicken's most recent whereabouts. A short movie about the fleeting fame of Internet celebrities is expected to hit the site on Wednesday morning, followed by more creative executions.
It's not too surprising that BK is going back to the well on this one—many fast-food joints tend to revisit their big successes at some point or other. And Subservient Chicken was the go-to example of innovate digital advertising for years. Also, it's been so long since his heyday that lots of younger people simply have never heard of the chicken. As one fan wrote on Twitter of the missing-person teaser: "You guys buy Chick-fil-a?"
Leica brings its obsessive German craftsmanship into focus with this tongue-in-cheek video that shows one of its technicians hand-polishing a block of aluminum used as the base of its new T System camera—for 45 minutes.
Polish. Polish. Polish. Look at those gloved hands go. A voiceover tells us that it takes "4,700 individual strokes to finish each body." Sounds kinky. It isn't.
Obviously, the video—which is actually somewhat compelling visually in its repetitive way, and certainly provides a stultifyingly tedious glimpse into the brand's commitment to quality—isn't really meant to be watched in its entirety. After a couple of minutes, we're mercifully invited to skip ahead to the end, which, of course, I did.
So, for all I know, the Subservient Chicken shows up at the half-hour mark and plucks himself to death. Really, I have no idea.
A voiceover asks, "Is this the most boring film ever made?"
Well, it's more exciting than Leica's short-form T System testimonials starring the company's supervisory board chairman, Dr. Andreas Kaufmann. He juggles the camera, speaks to his shoes, and at one point shuffles some papers as he reads a quote by Steve Jobs. Nothing engaging develops.
Via Co.Create.
The truth about film is that everyone sees it differently. Inspired by this insight, we created The DIFF Film Personality Test. A series of credible Inkblots designed to build interest for the festival by giving people an idea of what films they may be interested in. By teaming up with acclaimed Clinical Psychologist Dr. Raymond Hamden (who conducted in-depth studies over a two-month period) we gathered film-related psychometric results.
We created a range of interactive versions of the Film Personality Test, tailor made for each medium. After taking the tests, people were directed to a list of movie trailers, based on their interpretations, which were available to watch at this year’s festival.
Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Creative Directors: Peter Bidenko, Nabil Rashid
Art Director / Illustrator: Rafael Augusto
Junior Art Director: Mahdy Elhosseny
Copywriter: Sunny Deo
Additional credits: Lara El Barkouki, Nadia Bedaywi, Farah Nheme, Dr. Raymond Hamden
The post Dubai International Film Festival: by Leo Burnett Dubai appeared first on desicreative.
The ad campaign for the 2014 Cannes Lions festival amusingly celebrates creativity by spoofing the utter lack of it.
In five ads produced by McCann London, well-known ad execs—from Amir Kassaei and Cindy Gallop to Benjamin Palmer and Ted Royer—pose for comically clichéd stock photos. "You'll come back as pumped as a stock photo model," says the headline on each execution.
The ads are even styled like stock photos, with faux watermarks and keyword and credit info. The five executions were "shot in generic office spaces in New York and London with models dressed in bland office attire befitting the stock image style," says McCann.
Max Oppenheim shot the images. "It was a challenge to find just the right visual language to pull off this series," he said. "I was very careful to select neutral locations, styling and wardrobe to capture the generic world of stock. And it helped massively that all the 'models' understood how great the idea was and threw themselves into their performances. They were pumped!"
See all five ads below.
If you've been paying attention to Subaru's ads lately, you know that dogs love driving the brand's cars. But you probably don't know how far they'll go to do so.
This new dash-cam spot from Russia (where dash-cams are reportedly very much worth having) offers a window into canine depravity. The video is hilarious, in the same charmingly dumb way as other recent Subaru spots, but gets bonus points for offering a somewhat less wholesome portrayal than the brand's average American dog family, the Barkleys (though they did have an unhealthy affinity for chugging gas-station toilet water).
And while it won't get your heartrate up quite like Japanese tire brand Autoway's nighttime dash-cam spot from last year, it's got the distinct advantage of being way more adorable.
Via Co.Create.
It's been a good day for at least one clown on this Earth—Ronald McDonald, who received a fashionable makeover. But it's worth remembering that things aren't so great for all the nonfamous clowns out there.
For example: The clown in the ad below could be doing better. It's actually not client work—it's a short film by Cargo Collective director Crobin for the nonexistent British jobs website Jobbuilder.co.uk. (The URL links through to the director's website.) It's a rich minute of gorgeous despair, though not recommended for coulrophobes.
Via Reddit.
CREDITS
Director: Crobin
Producers: Grayson Ross, Joe Labbadia, Pudding Boy Productions
Writer, Editor, Production, Visual Effects: Crobin
Director of Photography: Ed David
Gaffer: Adam Uhl
Makeup: Miriam Robstad
Audio: David Perlick Molinari, YouTooCanWoo
Actor: Thomas Grube
Casting: Tom O'Hare
Ever wonder what your fart strategy should be when trying to hit on someone? Or the best way to fight if you've never been in one? Or how to drink in a bar without annoying the crap out of everyone there? Or perhaps you'd like to know how to survive if you ended up in jail. Or fly the friendly skies without looking and acting like a total asshole?
If any of these situations have been giving you trouble (or even if you think they haven't), Gavin McInnes, creative director at Rooster, baby fighter and the dude who pretty much says whatever he's thinking, has your back—whether you like it or not.
This series of short how-to-video-meets-PSA clips, presented by Vans, aim to equip you for anything life may throw at you. Sprinkled with some sincerely entertaining didactic mansplaining, a healthy bong hit of absurdity and a life coach who might blow a gasket any second, these insane nuggets of wisdom might actually help someone out there.
Not since Clarissa has anyone attempted to truly explain it all.
The trend toward branded out-of-home machines that actively hate humans might have reached its apex with this stunt by PlayStation, which shocked commuters in Antwerp's Central Station by, uh, literally shocking them.
To promote the PS4 game Infamous: Second Son, a mysterious booth was set up in the lobby. People were goaded to stick their fingers in two holes in the front. Those who did got an electric shock. If they could endure it for five seconds (like that one guy at the end, who is eerily nonchalant about it), they were rewarded with a free copy of the game—whose hero apparently has some kind of electricity superpower.
I wonder if the creatives behind this ad were Mr. Show fans, because the execution here isn't unlike a G-rated version of The Joke: The Musical.
Fifteen seconds is short for an ad, never mind a film. But Heineken and Wieden + Kennedy New York premiered just such a movie at the Tribeca Film Festival on Wednesday night—based on a fan's tweet about an evil Abraham Lincoln clone.
"They clone Abe Lincoln's DNA and name the clone president for life…except there's one problem: the clone is evil," Dennis Lazar, aka @awsommovieideas, wrote as his winning submission to the brewer's #15secondpremiere contest, which asked for fans' their wildest movie ideas. Those 115 characters (he had to leave room for the hashtag) were then crafted by a Hollywood film crew into 15 seconds of film—called Linclone.
You can check out the mini-movie below. The credits take way longer than the film itself—luckily there are some outtakes to keep things interesting.
Lazar was flown to New York and given the green carpet treatment by the Tribeca sponsor at the festival. Guests included Robert De Niro himself, who really should have played Lincoln if we're being honest.
Credits and more below.
The movie poster:
Lazar and DeNiro:
A deleted scene from the movie:
An interview with the director:
CREDITS
Client: Heineken
Project: #15SecondPremiere
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, New York
Executive Creative Director: Susan Hoffman
Creative Directors: Eric Steele, Erik Norin
Copywriter: Mike Vitiello
Art Director: Cory Everett
Social Strategist: Jessica Abercrombie
Brand Strategist: Kelly Lynn Wright
Senior Interactive Strategist: Tom Gibby
Community Manager: Rocio Urena
Head of Content Production: Nick Setounski
Producer: Owen Katz
Print Producer: Kristen Althoff
Broadcast Traffic Supervisor: Sonia Bisono
Studio Designer: Chris Kelsch
Account Team: Patrick Cahill, Samantha Wagner, Kristen Herrington
Business Affairs: Lisa Quintela
Project Manager: Rayna Lucier
Production Company: Jefferson Projects
Executive Producer: Chris Totushek
Director: Eric Appel
Director of Photography: Mathew Rudenberg
Production Company: Whitehouse Post
Editor: Alaster Jordan
Assistant Editor: Matt Schaff
Executive Producer: Lauren Hertzberg
Producer: Alejandra Alarcon
Original Music: The Ski Team
Postproduction Company: Carbon VFX
Lead Compositor: Matt Reilly
Smoke Artist: Joe Scaglione
AE Artist: Maxime Benjamin
Executive Producer: Frank Devlin
Colorist: Yohance Brown
Surround Mix: Sound Lounge
Engineer: Justin Kooy
Executive Producer: Harrison Nalevansky
Cast and Crew
Abraham Linclone: Robert Broski
Dr. Satterberg: Eric Satterberg
Chief Justice: Paul Gregory
1st Assistant Director: Scott Metcalfe
2nd Assistant Director: Steve Bagnara
Production Supervisor: Megan Sullivan
DIT: Scott Resnick
Gaffer: Cody Jacobs
Key Grip: Kyle Honnig
Best Boy Electric: Brandon Wilson
Best Boy Grip: Ceaser Martinez
Set Decorator: Mark Wolcott
Prop Master: Eric Berg
Sound: Bo Sundberg
Boom Operator: Danny Carpenter
VTR: Carlos Patzi
Wardrobe Assistant: Beckee Craighead
Make-up Stylist: Kat Bardot
Make-up Assistant: Becca Weber
Production Assistants: Atif Ekulona, Eric Browning, Ewa Pazera, Julio Cordero, Desire Brumfield
Craft Services: Christina Gonzalez
Ladies, are you looking for "the perfect solution to his stinking pollution"? If so, we've got some good news: Poo-Pourri is back with another spritz of its sweet-smelling viral advertising.
The spray, made to be used before (not after) dropping a deuce, tallied a truly impressive 26.5 million views on its "Girls Don't Poop" video back in September.
This time, the brand's eloquent maven of miasma is focused on the feces of the less-fair sex: "What if there was a natural, more effective way to make sure you never have to smell his man-manure again?"
There are even multiple Poo-Pourri options for the discerning defecator: Trap-a-Crap, Royal Flush, Heavy Doody and Poo-Tonium.
It's not quite as hypnotic as the first video's seemingly ceaseless descriptions of explosive expulsions, but it's still one of the better two-minute ads you're likely to come across.
Gloria Gaynor's disco classic "I Will Survive" gets remade as an anti-bullying anthem in this VH1 spot by Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi in Argentina, showing tormented boys and girls singing out their plans for sweet revenge in adulthood.
Expertly staged by music-video veteran Agustin Alberdi and boasting a great cast, the ad feels kind of like a musical number from Glee in its heyday. It opens with a kid enduring the indignity of a dual swirly/pantsing: "First I was afraid, I was petrified/They flushed my head several times, exposing my behind." Other tortured middle-schoolers soon pick up the thread. One looks ahead to the day when, "Oh my power, I will abuse/I'll be the CEO, you'll be the one who shines my shoes." Another promises, "I'm gonna call you night and day/And on weekends I'll send texts/Ask you for all kinds of things, making sure you never rest."
On one level, the video is a marvel of wish-fulfillment that anyone who's ever been picked on or put down during lunch period or study hall can instantly relate to. Believing you can turn the tables feels great, and the spot hits all the right notes in that regard.
Still, the tone and message ultimately fall flat. The revenge motif, though lighthearted, seems to perpetuate the cycle of bullying, with today's victims becoming tomorrow's oppressors. Yes, it's handled with a deft touch and good humor—and the jerks in the boy's bathroom using that kid's head as a toilet scrubber certainly have it coming.
Even so, breaking the cycle and discouraging the behavior should be the goal, shouldn't it? There's really none of that here. (Contrast VH1's approach with Everynone's short film on bullying from a few years back, which really captured the complexity of the issue.)
Also, ultimately, these bullies are free to go about their brutish business. Vague threats of corporate comeuppance 20 years hence seem pretty lame when victims ripe for pantsing are available in the here and now. Meanwhile, the terrorized kids tunefully suffer and bide their time, fated to wait decades for "revenge" which, let's face it, may never come.
Bullies grow up to be bosses sometimes, and nerds aren't always management material, no matter how earnestly kids in PSAs sing to the contrary.
Credits below.
CREDITS
Client: VH1
Spot: "I Will Survive"
Agency: Del Campo Saatchi & Saatchi
Executive Creative Directors: Maxi Itzkoff, Mariano Serkin
Creative Directors: Juan Pablo Lufrano, Ariel Serkin /Dani Minaker, Sebastian Tarazaga
Agency Producers: Andy Gulliman, Felipe Calviño, Adrian Aspani
Account Director: Ana Bogni
Production Company: Landia, Stink
Director: Agustin Alberdi
Executive Producers: Daniel Bergmann, Andy Fogwill, / Diego Robino
Producer: Nell Jordan
Director of Photography: Carlos Ritter
Post house: Electric Theatre Collective
Sound: Pure Sound
Creative: Sushil Kumar Swamy
Photographer: Jitendra Gupta
The post FedEx spec work appeared first on desicreative.
You've probably never wondered whether Ken Block is better at playing soccer in a car than Neymar is at playing soccer not in a car.
Yet, in the run-up to the World Cup in June, Castrol presents Footkhana—a mashup of football (aka, soccer) and gymkhana (aka, course-based stunt driving). In other words, you get to watch the racing star spin donuts around the soccer player while the soccer player juggles the ball. Then you get to see how the two compete against each other in a shootout.
It does feel a bit like it's just riding the coattails of DC Shoes' wild success with the first five Ken Block Gymkhana videos (three of which are among the 20 most-shared ads ever posted online) and a sixth one promoting video game franchise Need for Speed). The soccer tie-in adds enough of a twist, though, to keep it from getting stale. And beyond the obvious excess of motor-revving noises, a couple of unexpected moments make up for the length.
Now all we need is Curlkhana. Ken Block vs. the Canadian curling team.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
