Hasta La Creative!

Adam&eveDDB and Glue Society director Gary Freedman made this British spot for Australia’s Foster’s beer about, of all things, a male rugby cheerleader. The ad is part of a growing trend of faux-documentary ads about people with quirky jobs, though it’s also a throwback to ’80s- and ’90s-style beer ads. (The beer commercial may be the last safe-ish haven for gender jokes like this.)

The male cheerleader here isn’t all that weird, even though he looks like Jack Black’s trash-eating hobo cousin, but he has to put up with ridicule from his parents and unceasing awkwardness at work as the only dude on a cheerleading team full of women. His uniform chafes, too. Still, he has found success on his own terms, and is functional enough to drink in a bar with other normal humans. The “He’s one of us” tone is essential to ads like these.

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The most noteworthy thing here, aside from the cheerleader’s Zoolander-esque uniform, is Foster’s new slogan, “Why the hell not?”, which seems a trifle fatalistic for a consumer product. They might as well snipe from Hot Shots and go with “Foster’s: No one lives forever.”

Everyone knows babies make hilarious faces when they poop. For that matter, so do most adults. Whether or not knowing this universal truth entices you to watch a medley of babies’ faces as they poop is a gamble that Saatchi & Saatchi London decided to take. Its “Pooface” video for Pampers baby wipes is literally 75 seconds of what I just described.

Oh, and it was filmed in slow motion (400fps!) and set to Strauss’ “Thus Spake Zarathustra,” which we all recognize from every other film project that either aspires to or mocks maturity. It’s also “Nature Boy” Ric Flair’s theme music. I honestly can’t decide which of these is the less dignified use of that song.

In any case, the spot won a bronze Lion in Film at Cannes, and a silver and a bronze in Film Craft, so clearly Cannes judges are into this kind of potty humor. Not bad for a glorified YouTube Vine compilation with better production values. (The concept has also been floating around for years, mostly in scam ads.)

Also, is it me or does the baby at 0:44 look like a young Nathan Lane?

This Trebor Mints ad from Wieden & Kennedy London has a bit of that 1990s Gushers weirdness to it, either as a tribute to nostalgic thirtysomethings or just for shiggles.

It opens with a teen admitting to his father that he prefers soft mints to their harder contemporaries, which makes his dad go all Malory Archer and crush his whiskey glass out of anger. Weird how that never cuts anyone’s hand on TV.

And it only gets stranger from there.

Though the concept is hardly revolutionary, they kept the weirdness to one element of the ad that mostly delivers, so it works. For my own sanity, I won’t get into the Punnett square logistics that resulted in minty dad’s human son. No sense asking questions I don’t want answered.

CREDITS
Client: Trebor
Marketing Manager, Gum & Candy, Mondelez: Elena Germani
Senior Brand Manager, Mondelez: Elena Mallo
Project Name: “Choose Your Trebor”
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy London
Creative Directors: Kim Papworth
Creative team: Max Batten & Ben Shaffrey
Executive Creative Directors: Tony Davidson / Iain Tait
Agency Executive Producer: Danielle Stewart
Group Account Director: Andrew Kay
Account Director: Hanne Haugen
Head of Planning: Beth Bentley
Planning Director: Georgia Challis
TV Producer: Lou Hake
Creative Producer: Danny Wallace
Designer: Michael Bow
Production Company: Hungryman
Director: Taika Waititi
Executive Producer: Matt Buels
Producer: Camilla Cullen
Director of Photography: Bob Pendar-Hughes
Editorial Company: Work Post
Editor: Rachel Spann
Post Producer: Josh Robinson, The Mill
VFX Supervisor: Dan Adams, The Mill
Music+Sound Company: Wave
Sound Designer: Dugal Macdiarmid
Producer: Rebecca Boswell
Mix Company: Wave
Mixer: Dugal Macdiarmid
Producer: Rebecca Boswell

This lunatic British ad admits dealing with life insurance can be “a bit of a nightmare.” How much of a nightmare? It feels like having your nice bubble bath interrupted by a screaming pig-faced beast who sprays you with tap water and beans you with you own rubber ducky.

Frankly, the anti-bubble-bath sentiment expressed by that thing is offensive to me. Don’t bath-shame, ugly.

Fortunately, the beast has some kind of heart attack or asthmatic seizure, and—well, just watch for yourself. I haven’t exactly worked out the details, which is OK, because I don’t think the agency who made this hurt themselves thinking about them, either.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Beagle Street
Managing Director: Matthew Gledhill
Agency: The Corner London                              
Creative Director: Tom Ewart                    
Copywriter: Robert Amstell                       
Art Director: Matthew Lancod                                  
Planning Director: Neil Hourston
Planner: Ollie Gilmore                                                  
Business Director: Fleur Andrews                           
Account Director: Tenzin Pooch               
Agency Producer: Daisy Mellors
Assistant Producer: Lauren Gray                             
Media Company: MEC                                  
Production Company: Colonel Blimp                     
Director: David Wilson
Production Company Producer: Sam Levene                                                     
Editor: Max Windows at Stitch                                                 
Post prod Producer: Fi Kilroe                    
Post-production House: Finish                 
Audio post-production: Sam Ashwell at 750mph

Global design firm AKQA and ubiquitous shoe manufacturer Nike have collaborated on a full-size LED basketball court for Nike Rise, a program designed to train Chinese youth based on the techniques and practice drills of Kobe Bryant.

Called House of Mamba (a reference to Kobe’s Black Mamba nickname), the LED court guides and reacts to the players’ movements with an impressive range of visual displays, to the point where you wonder how the athletes aren’t distracted by it. 

Nike Rise centered on a reality show where 30 Chinese teens trained with Kobe and LeBron James, and three of them will go on to the Nike World Basketball Festival next month.

Via DesignBoom.

Dockers prepares men for fatherhood, among other things, in these two videos from Red Tettemer O’Connell + Partners, timed to Father’s Day. Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Jon Gruden gives a speech that is loaded to the gunwales with quotables (“You’re just hired help paid in groin kicks!”) to a room full of soon-to-be dads, while Sarah Harbaugh—wife of San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh—tearfully warns men about the dangers of “dad pants.”

Didn’t Dockers make those popular in the first place? Just asking questions. It’s nice to see gendered advertising that doesn’t go out of its way to insult anyone for a change, but did I hear Gruden take a swipe at dad jokes? Like hell those are going away.

Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority is once again stepping in to save us all, this time from a saucy ad for Rihanna’s perfume, Rogue.

The ad, which is basically a nude Rihanna sandwiched between a wall and a giant perfume bottle, is too “sexually suggestive” to be seen in areas heavily trafficked by children, the U.K. watchdog group has decided. The specific complaints addressed the ad’s placement on elevator doors in a shopping mall.

The ASA had received complaints saying the ad was demeaning to women and inappropriate to children.

Parlux Ltd. (the company that makes Rogue) is protesting the restriction by arguing that the ad doesn’t feature “improper nudity or offensive, suggestive or demeaning imagery,” and that Rihanna’s posture is powerful rather than demeaning.

The ASA agreed the ad isn’t demeaning, but that’s not to say the image conveys power either. I mean, the poor woman is jammed into a really awkward position and scowling like she just caught the bad end of a slow-moving fart.

The compressed hydrogen-powered Honda FCX runs so clean, its exhaust contains only water—and it's so clean, it's drinkable. To celebrate this, Honda Australia and Leo Burnett Melbourne came up with a memorable stunt—creating a new bottled-water brand, H2O.

As seen in the case study below, the automaker gave the water away in movie theaters around Australia (as free samples, no less) as a way of showing people what they're doing for the environment. There are also plans to make the water available at Honda service stations and dealerships.

Copy on the bottle reads: "Delicious, fresh H2O from a pristine mineral spring, cool mountain glacier or … the exhaust pipe of the Honda FCX. The world's first hydrogen-powered car that emits only water. Water so clean and pure, you could put it in a bottle and drink it. Now isn't that refreshing?"

Note the use of "could." It doesn't appear that this water is actually the by-product of FCX. Still, a neat idea. The product is nicely designed, too, with an effective minimalist aesthetic. I really like how well the Honda logo works as the hydrogen symbol in H20.

Via Popsop.

In a world of crowded ad spaces and precious few parking spaces, Mercedes and Madrid agency Contrapunto BBDO are hoping to make the most of both shortcomings with these cleverly placed Smart car ads.

Printed on the narrow side of an outdoor ad display, the small image of a Smart is joined by the phrase "Siempre hay un hueco," Spanish for "There's always a space." 

As commenters on Ads of the World were quick to point out, this idea isn't exactly a first of its kind. The line and basic premise were even used in a student project in Argentina last year.

Duplication aside, there's also a more pertinent issue: I doubt I would have even noticed it if someone else hadn't pointed it out as an ad.

Durham, N.C., resident Keil Jansen may have quit his job as a teacher to start a nanobrewery, but judging by its name, Ponysaurus Brewery, his old profession clearly rubbed off on him.

Raleigh ad agency Baldwin& designed the brewer's unique logo—half pony, half dinosaur—which looks like a McSweeney's parody of a medical illustration.

"There is a certain tension within the entire Ponysaurus design, where we are trying to balance a sense of the absurd and fantastical with the fact that we are dead serious about making the best beer," Jansen tells Cool Hunting. "The combination of 'old-timey' details, for example the style of the Ponysaurus drawing that invokes old medical or biology textbooks, with the fact that the drawing itself is of a half-pony, half-dinosaur is an excellent shorthand for what we wanted to achieve."

I don't know how well "The beer beer would drink if beer could drink beer" stacks up against every other goofy-named microbrew on the market right now, but I'd like to see Ponysaurus take on Kegasus in a drinking contest.