Hasta La Creative!

Tiger Woods's latest chapter in his blood oath to Nike is this ad from Wieden + Kennedy in which the golfer is compared to a track-and-field competitor, a boxer, a basketball player and a baseball player (referencing Babe Ruth, no less). The idea is to stress golf's athleticism, but all it did for me was reinforce how lethargic golf is compared to sports where people aren't driven around in carts with other people who carry all their stuff. I would like to see how Tiger trains for big tournaments, though, so maybe next time Nike could be less roundabout in its approach. Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Nike Golf
Spot "The Sport of Golf"

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
Creative Directors: Don Shelford + Rob Thompson
Copywriter: Tom Sebanc
Art Director: Derrick Ho
Producer: Felicia Glover
Account Team: Scott Sullivan + Karrelle Dixon
Executive Creative Directors: Joe Staples / Susan Hoffman
Agency Executive Producer: Ben Grylewicz

Production Company: Bob Industries
Director: Brad Parker
Executive Producer: TK Knowles
Line Producer: Melissa Murphy
Director of Photography: Morgan Susser

Editorial Company: Joint Editorial
Editor: Kyle Valenta
Post Producer: Lauren Pullano
Post Executive Producer: Patty Brebner

VFX Company: The Mission
Executive Producer: Michael Pardee
VFX Supervisor: Mark Kolpack
VFX Producer: Ryan Meredith
CG Lead: Pitor Karwas
VFX: Rob Trent

Music Composer: Philip Glass
Sound Designer: Jeff Payne
Song (if applicable): "67 Cities"

Mix Company: Eleven Sound
Mixer: Jeff Payne
Producer: Caroline O’Sullivan

IBM's technology is helping cities get smarter in innumerable ways. Now, its outdoor advertising is doing the same—by making simple little improvements to the landscape. A triad of outdoor ads from Ogilvy France function as a bench, a shelter and a ramp over stairs. Sure, they're small gestures mostly intended to have a wow factor online. But they nicely embody the brand promise, and represent just a starting point—urging passersby and the online audience both to visit people4smartercities.com and submit their own, presumably larger ideas for civic upgrades. More ads, a video and credits below.

CREDITS
Client: IBM
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather France
Chief Creative Officer: Chris Garbutt
Executive Creative Director: Susan Westre
Art Director: Daniel Diego Lincoln
Copywriters: Lauren Elkins, Andrew Mellen
Concept: Daniel Diego Lincoln, Stephane Santana
Photographer: Bruno Bicalho Carvalhaes
Agency Supervisors: Muriel Benitah, Mary McFarland

Holland's new tourism campaign proposes that the country everyone knows for canals and wooden shoes is actually the coolest place on earth. In fact, the video below claims that Holland is the Original Cool, since all the bourgie lifestyle liberalism that Americans enjoy (bicycle culture, organic food, locally owned shops, Bas Rutten) has been a part of the Dutch lifestyle for way longer, and it's more accessible to boot. It's a fair point, to be sure, and they can't rely on legal weed and prostitution to drive tourism forever, so it's good that they're drawing attention to other things. I bet their Pleasure-Island-for-repressed-Westerners reputation got old a long time ago. The campaign, by Mustache Agency in New York, is a collaboration among the Netherlands Board of Tourism & Conventions, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Amsterdam Marketing and Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.

This new billboard in Milan for an insect spray also serves as a huge pest strip, thanks to a few layers of aerosol glue. The glue was applied in the shape of an Orphea can's spray arc, which filled in as bugs got stuck in it. The visual effect of that little mosaic of suffering is quite unique, and now all of Milan's summer tourists will see and understand the potency of aerosol glue. And maybe Orphea, too. Agency: Publicis Italy. Via The Denver Egotist.

The Prague office of Lowe & Partners heads into some dangerous airspace with its ad for the "relaxing drink" Zenonade, which apparently motivates a flight attendant to fantasize about all her passengers dying. Admittedly, I too find myself thinking we're all going to die whenever I get on an airplane, but I doubt this ad was delving into my paranoid subconscious so much as intentionally courting controversy. As a provocative ad for a new product, however, the spot seems to fail on two fronts: It doesn't do much to explain the product, and it hasn't even drummed up the outrage its creators had intended. (Agency CEO Martin Lochmann seemed disappointed when he told the Huffington Post that he “expected it to be worse.”) A related spot for the drink, which you can watch after the jump, avoids threats of imminent death—unless you happen to be a piece of Ikea furniture.

Of all the images to take from British TV series Black Mirror, the one that made a billboard for Australian TV network Studio was of a man doing the underpants Charleston with a pig. Cable provider Foxtel issued an apology in response to the immediate blowback, and it's as spineless as the offending image was tasteless and bewildering. "[The billboard] was intended to provoke," it said in a statement, "but it is clearly in appalling taste and demonstrates a lapse of judgment by Studio, and a failure in the approvals process at Foxtel." Well, no kidding. Why even move forward with an idea like that when you know you'll just have to apologize and take it right down? Part of me wants to see what would have happened if they'd stood their ground.

The latest Tui beer billboard from New Zealand's DB Breweries is a homophobic eyesore, according to feedback on the brand's Facebook page. Or else it's funny and people should get over it, also according to feedback on the brand's Facebook page. Tui's marketing manager claims the ad's headline—"Dad's new husband seems nice." "Yeah right"—is an innocent combination of the brand's iconic catchphrase with current events: New Zealand's parliament passing a Marriage Equality Act earlier this month. The ad was meant "to highlight the common situation or uncertainty experienced when someone's parent remarries," he says. In other words, the "Yeah right" refers to the awkwardness of a parent remarrying another, not just someone of the same sex. I don't think Tui meant any actual harm here, but the delivery was crap. If you have to explain a joke, that's proof that it bombed. That's not something you can blame on the audience.

Mr. T guest-stars as a living pun in this Crispin Porter + Boguksy ad for Old Navy Best Tees, which are more stylish and durable than their previous ones. That's not a huge accomplishment, but whatever, it's their ad. (T also appeared in a two-minute Old Navy infomercial last year with Anna Faris.) I enjoyed the quiet irony of putting Mr. T on a plane, when B.A. Baracus was scared to death of them, but it's a little hard for the audience to accept that he can just kick the bathroom door down in a post-9/11 world. No T-shirt in the world can get you out of that kind of trouble.

CREDITS
Client: Old Navy
Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky
Partner/Worldwide Chief Creative Officer: Rob Reilly
Executive Creative Director: Jason Gaboriau
Creative Director: Robin Fitzgerald
Creative Director: Cameron Harris
Associate Creative Directors: Alexandra Sann, Mike Kohlbecker
Sr. Copywriter: Dafna Garber
Copywriter: Chelsea O'Brien
Art Director: Mary Dauterman
Director of Video Production: Chad Hopenwasser
Executive Integrated Producer (Music): Bill Meadows
Executive Integrated Producer: Deb Drumm
Junior Integrated Producer: Jackie Maloney
Executive Business Affairs Manager: Amy Jacobsen
Business Affairs Manager: Michelle McKinney
Production Company & City: Smuggler, Hollywood, CA
Director: Randy Krallman
Assistant Directors: Jey Wada, Erin Stern
Executive Producers/Partners: Patrick Milling Smith, Brian Carmody
Executive Producer/COO: Lisa Rich
Executive Producers: Allison Kunzman, Laura Thoel
Head of Production: Andrew Colón
Producer: Paula Cohen
Director of Photography: Bryan Newman
Editorial Company & City: Cut + Run, Santa Monica, CA
Head of Production/Senior Producer: Christie Price
Executive Producer: Carr Schilling
Editor: Frank Effron
Assistant Editors: Heather Bartholomae, Brooke Rupe
Visual Effects Company & City: Method Studios, Santa Monica, CA
Executive Producer: Robert Owens
Producer: Colin Clarry
Set Supervisor: Rob Hodgson
VFX Supervisors: Jason Schugardt, Michael Sean Foley
Lead Composer: Kelly Bumbarger
Graphics & Animation Company & City: Buck, Los Angeles, CA
Executive Creative Director: Ryan Honey
Executive Producer: Maurie Enochson
Sr. Producer: Nick Terzich
Associate Producer: Ashley Hsieh
Art Director: Jenny Ko
Designer: Sean Dekkers
Animator: TJ Socho
Music Company & City: Search Party, Portland, OR
Executive Producer: Sara Matarazzo
Producer: Chris Funk
Composer: Terence Bernardo
Sound Design & City: Machine Head, Santa Monica, CA
Sound Designer: Stephen Dewey
Producer: Patty Chow Dewey
Telecine & City: Company 3, Santa Monica, CA
President/Colorist: Stefan Sonnenfeld
Executive Producer: Rhubie Jovanov
Partner/Managing Director: Steve Erich
EGroup Account Director: Danielle Whalen
Account Director: Kate Higgins
Content Management Supervisor: Laura Likos
Content Supervisors: Jessica Francis, Kendra Schaaf
Content Manager: Alex Kirk, Michelle Forbush
Group Director, Planning: Lindsey Allison
Cognitive Anthropologists: Jennifer Hruska, Tiffany Ahern

This Brazilian ad by Ogilvy & Mather for Dove's Men + Care shampoo line puts the tropes of women's shampoo commercials in a new, and weird, context. Apparently, using women's shampoo makes your hair move in slow motion all the time, and also makes it grow about a foot in the time between showering and getting to work. You'd think the afflicted man would have noticed this before his co-worker pointed it out. All that neck strain would have killed me. Directed by Hungry Man's Carlão Busato.

Not content with the traditional advertising methods of TV spots and simple product placement in movies, Canada's Labatt Brewing is financing a feature-length film through its Kokanee brand. The film is called The Movie Out Here, and it's a buddy comedy written by Kokanee's ad agency, Grip Limited. Check out the red-band trailer below (NSFW). The movie hits theaters in western Canada on Friday—30 of them, in fact. It's essentially a 90-minute content marketing experiment, so don't expect it to be any good—although judging by the trailer, it is plenty crass. Also, if you've been wondering what happened to the guy who sang "Informer," he's apparently one of the stars. (Oddly, there's no sign of Kokanee in the trailer—would that absence constitute false advertising?) Before this, Grip Limited was best known for letting 10-year-olds run the agency. That may partly explain the movie's juvenile humor.

Red-band trailer below has nudity and profanity and is NSFW.