Hasta La Creative!

The Hamburglar got the Internet’s attention last week—the jury is still out on whether he’s hot or creepy—but he won’t be pitching the Sirloin Burger on TV, at least not this month. That job has been taken by New Girl’s Max Greenfield, whose cute—dare we say, adorkable—ads debuted Monday. 

The actor shot 25 spots in a single day, says McDonald’s vp of marketing Joel Yashinsky, telling Burger Business that the campaign is part of the brand’s mission to be transparent.

“That’s what really led to our doing 25 different TV commercials,” Yashinsky says. “They talk about different attributes and the flavors, about it being sirloin and North American sourced. That’s what the overall campaign is designed to get across to the customer. From everything we’ve seen, we think it will connect with customers.” 

Check out some of the new work, by Leo Burnett, below.

CREDITS
Client: McDonald’s
Agency: Leo Burnett Chicago
Campaign: “Sirloin Third Pound Burger Lovin’ Reminders”
Chief Creative Officer: Susan Credle
Executive Creative Director: John Hansa
Senior Creative Director: Tony Katalinic
Creative Directors: Michael Porritt, Frank Oles
Associate Creative Director: Gloria Dusenberry
Art Director: Scott Fleming
Copywriters: Brandon Crockett, Chris Davis, Leigh Kunkel
Head of Production: Vincent Geraghty
Executive Producer: Denis Giroux
Senior Producer: Scott Gould
Business Manager: Shirley Costa
Senior Talent Manager: Linda Yuen
Music Supervisor: Chris Clark
Managing Account Director: Jennifer Cacioppo
Account Directors: Josh Raper, Jennifer Klopf
Account Supervisor: Dave Theibert
Account Manager: Sue Rickey
Planning Directors: Claudia Steer
Legal: Carla Michelotti, Laura Cooney
Clearance: Michelle Overby
Editorial Production: Cutters Studio
Post Production: Flavor Chicago
Audio: Another Country

DDB has uploaded what it claims is the first fake erotic video on Pornhub. The video starts off porny and then morphs into a (still NSFW) PSA from the Alcázar Gynecology Institute, showing men how to perform a breast exam on their wives or girlfriends.

Traditional ads targeting women simply aren’t working, DDB says. And the agency points out that the potential reach of this approach is impressive—given Pornhub’s sizable audience and the fast that 94.73 percent of men watch porn online, according to research. (What portion of those don’t mind being tricked into watching else is another matter.)

And of course, there’s the further problem that this campaign blatantly sexualizes breast cancer, which is an approach many cancer activists despise.

Check out the case study below, which is NSFW. What do you think of the strategy here?

Via Adeevee.

CREDITS
Client: Alcázar Gynecology Institute
Agency: DDB, La Paz, Bolivia
Co-founder & CCO: Henry Medina
Co-founder & CEO: Emanuelle Medina
Head of Art: Christian Morales
Copywriter: Henry Medina
Producer Company: Rebeca
Director: Miqy de la Barra
Executive Producer: Alejandro Noriega
Music & Sound Company: Vinylo Sound
Music & Sound Designer: Ricardo Núñez

Here’s a nifty invention for people brave enough to eat McDonald’s—the new “BagTray” from DDB Budapest.

It is, as it sounds, a bag that’s also a tray. Just tear off a tab at the bottom of the brown paper bag, pull off the top and watch the whole thing turn into a cardboard tray that will reduce the odds of spilling your oversized soda all over the back seat of your car, or your laptop, or the lawn where you’re having a picnic (though surely the ants would love that).

Hopefully, you also won’t have to worry about the grease from your fries soaking through a flimsier vessel and dumping its golden payload on the floor, ruining your day and staining your property (though odds are there’s enough oil packed in there to eat through foamcore).

The product name is more or less perfect, clear and direct but also just the right amount of silly. It helps that the graphics in the demo video are charmingly twee, in a corporate sort of way—even if the willfully quirky ukelele-and-whistling-and-handclaps soundtrack wants so badly for you to be happy that it might make you claw your ears off instead.

Regardless, whether you’re a mom feeding her kids while shuttling them around (though she’s still pretty blasé about tilting the whole thing) or a cool kid just hanging out with your friends on your skateboard (are teenagers really that polite these days?) or a busy business executive cramming in lunch at your desk (that guy totally looks like he works at the ad agency), it’s clear the BagTray is the bag/tray for you.

Whether the tool actually works is probably a different question. And it’s also not clear whether you can use one without going to Hungary, which sort of undermines the whole convenience factor.

CREDITS
Client: McDonald’s
Agency: DDB Budapest
Chief Creative Officer: Péter Tordai
Head of Art/Art director: Guilherme Somensato
Copywriter: Vera Länger, Giovanni Pintaude
Illustrator: Adrián Bajusz
Product Designer: Márk Dávid, András Bálint
Animation: Réka Horányi, Anita Kolop
Business Director: Judit Majosi
Account/Producer: Rozália Szigeti
Promo film: Somnium Studio

DDB New York launched a new spot for Cotton, Incorporated entitled “It’s Time to Talk Favorites.”

The ad follows several individuals as they discuss their favorite clothing item (spoiler: each of them is cotton). They place value and importance on the item ranging from the practical to the nostalgic to the superstitious. “We all have one,” text reads at the beginning of the ad, as each individual introduces their favorite. The “favorites” approach is relatable and makes a lot of sense for the brand, highlighting the material as a favorite for many and establishing an emotional connection beyond mere product benefits. Some of the choices are far more believable than others, such as the woman whose significant other was wowed when he saw her in her favorite pants or the girl who loves her favorite pair of jeans so much she said she was going to get married in them. Less believable is the young writer who puts on her grandmother’s shirt for inspiration or the woman who thinks her “lucky shirt” clears up her lane in traffic. The ad ends with the tagline, “Cotton. It’s Your Favorite For a Reason.” That line has a double meaning, highlighting cotton as the reason your favorite is your favorite while also touting cotton as a favorite material.

Credits:

Brand: Cotton Incorporated
Title: It’s Time to Talk Favorites

Agency: DDB, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Icaro Doria
Creative Director: Cassandra Anderson
Associate Creative Director: Marilyn Kam
Additional Credits: Head of Broadcast Production: Ed Zazzera
Executive Producer: Teri Altman
Manager, Art Buying Group: Jane Piampiano
Account Director: Debbie Broda
Management Supervisor: Lauren Solomon
Assistant Account Executive: Kaine Cahill
Brand Planning Director: Jennifer Fox

Production Company: Serial Pictures Los Angeles
Director: Chiara Clemente
Executive Producer: Violaine Etienne
Head of Production: Peter Fitzgerald
Producer: Terri Shafirov
Production Supervisor: Matthew Ayriss

Editorial: Arcade NY
Editor: Jen Dean
Assistant Editor: Laurel Smoliar
Post Producer: Cecilia Melton
Executive Producer: Sila Soyer
Still Photography: Hello Artists
Photographer: Brigitte Sire
Producer: William Carducci

DDB Stockholm followed up Samsung’s “Is This the Next” campaign with a series of spots featuring those who deal in predicting the future promoting the new Samsung Galaxy S6.

Among these is Orange, a harbor seal at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, Connecticut, who has a penchant for predicting events like the Oscars and the Super Bowl. In a 2:30 online spot, viewers are introduced to Orange, who then makes some predictions about Samsung’s new device via selecting random technical specs scattered throughout her environment. Her predictions include “Fast charging,” “Flat on both sides,” and “Camera with 10MP front, 1 MP back.” Following the predictions, the text “Prediction time is over” appears onscreen, followed by the “Next Is Now” tagline. Two other spots in the “Predicting the Next” campaign feature human psychic Barbara Mackey and astrologer Michael Lutin. All of the spots were shot on location without actors.

The effort is just part of the Samsung’s huge “Next Is Now” global campaign pushing the new Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, which also includes the 60-second “Anticipation” spot from 72andSunny.

Attention, Swedish shoppers: More Rag Bags are on the way!

For now, check out DDB Stockholm’s case study video for the sustainability campaign, which generated significant media coverage last year, along with a win at the Epica Awards and three nominations at Cannes.

The initiative, for Swedish fashion brand Uniforms for the Dedicated, features biodegradable shopping bags that can be used to ship unwanted garments to charitable organizations. One thousand bags were produced in a pilot program, and consumers could order them free of charge. The bags are twin-sided. When turned inside out, they become slick mailers, labeled with the addresses of individuals’ chosen charities, as well as proper postage.

“I don’t have the exact number of returns [in terms of clothing donations], but we have sold out of the bags,” DDB Stockholm CEO David Sandstrom tells AdFreak, though more will be in production for spring. “We also have a Rag Bag site, where you as a business can sign up for bags. We got interest for 600,000 bags from different companies.”

Unlike some preachy sustainability ventures, Rag Bag scores by embracing consumerism. It creates a realistic framework to nudge folks into making donations, and provides them with a rewarding experience. And a bag. (Until they mail it off with old shirts inside, that is.)

“Our hope is that this will stretch beyond what can be called a campaign,” says Sandstrom. “Wouldn’t it be great if this became a retail standard?”

DDB San Francisco released one of the funnier ads we’ve seen in a while, for a brand you might not associate with humor: Clorox Bleach.

In the 15-second spot, a mother walks in on her sons putting downs lines of tape in the bathroom. When she asks what they’re doing and one of them answers “A distance contest,” the spot cuts to an arm slamming down a container of Clorox and a voiceover delivers the line “For life’s blecahable moments.” The ad invites viewers to share their own “bleachable moments” with the hashtag #BleachItAway.

While you might not expect a humorous approach to work for a brand like Clorox, it does so very well here. That’s thanks in part to the insight that, hey, the source of messes can sometimes be pretty funny, but also because the acting and comedic timing are really spot on. To top it off, the social initiative might unearth some funny stories of its own and the “bleachable moments” framework leaves a lot of room for future ideas.

Coca-Cola hasn’t had much luck making the Internet a happier place lately, but maybe this will help—a fun campaign from Coca-Cola Puerto Rico that puts smiley-face emojis right in the brand’s web addresses.

The brand registered URLs for every emoji that conveys happiness. Entering any of these happy icons into a mobile web browser, along with the .ws suffix, leads users to Coca-­Cola Puerto Rico’s website.

Why .ws, which is actually the domain suffix for Samoa?

“Emojis are not accepted on domains such as .com, .net, and .org,” DDB Puerto Rico says. “After doing some research on domains that do accept emojis, we opted to go with the .ws because the letters could stand for ‘We smile’ and hence seemed most relevant to the brand.”

For now, all the emoji URLs lead to a special landing page, Emoticoke.com, where consumers can sign up for a chance to get emoji web addresses of their very own. The campaign is being supported by traditional media, including outdoor.

“The vast majority of our audience now visits our website via a mobile device. And since emojis have become a kind of second language for Coke’s younger consumers, we felt this was a great opportunity to connect on a deeper level with our most important demographic,” says Alejandro Gómez, president of Coca-Cola Puerto Rico.

DDB Tribal Worldwide, Toronto launched one of the most Canadian campaigns you’ll see for Candian Tire, a call on viewers to “Shovel It Forward” — that is, shovel a neighbor’s driveway and leave a shovel carrying a message for them to do the same.

“This program is rooted in the age-old practice of shoveling a neighbour’s driveway or sidewalk, simply because it’s the Canadian thing to do,” explains Joshua Stein, executive creative director at Tribal Worldwide, Toronto. “No brand understands life in Canada better than Canadian Tire. Shovel It Forward is a great way for us to demonstrate this.”

In the campaign video, a father wakes a sleeping daughter to help him shovel. Eventually it is revealed that she is shoveling not their driveway, but the neighbor’s, an older woman who looks very appreciative. “Shoveling a neighbor’s driveway is as Canadian as winter itself,” says a voiceover at the conclusion of the spot, followed online by asking viewers to visit the ShovelItForward.ca, where they can see which locations have been shoveled and share their own stories. A social campaign on Facebook and Twitter will also support the effort for the next four weeks, featuring promoted photos and videos.

Common is a busy man these days, winning a Golden Globe (for the song “Glory” from Selma), getting nominated for two Grammys and an Oscar (also for “Glory”), and providing the voiceover for two stirring Microsoft ads on the Super Bowl.

As if that weren’t enough, he also found time to voice this new ad promoting the 2015 NBA All-Star Game in New York.

Created by the New York office of DDB, the spot mixes live action and animation, with flashes of NYC landmarks like the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. The ad goes up online today and will appear soon on those TV screens in New York City cabs and on your living room screen as well.

In an Adweek exclusive, here’s a first look:

Oh, and if you think Common is perpetually holed up in some recording studio, think again: He’ll also play in a celebrity basketball game in the runup to the All-Star Game, which takes place Feb. 15 at Madison Square Garden.

CREDITS
Client: NBA
Agency: DDB, New York
Executive Creative Director: Joseph Cianciotto
Creative Director: Rich Sharp
Creative Director: Mike Sullivan
Art Director: Mina Mikhael
Copywriter: Turan Tuluy
Producer: Tiffany Campbell
Account Executive: Jackie Schultz
Design and Animation: Transistor Studios