Here’s a great little campaign for dog adoption by Pedigree and French agency CLM BBDO. Because a dog really will be your best friend, and a loyal one—unlike human best friends, who are constantly letting you down.
Click the ads to enlarge.
CREDITS Client: Pedigree Client Representatives: Philippe Mineur, Yann Aubourg Agency: CLM BBDO Campaign: “Add a Real Friend” Art Director: Anthony Lietart Copywriter: Sébastien Duhaud Creative Director: Matthieu Elkaïm Agency Representatives: Laurent Duvivier, Mélanie Marchand, Romain Bruneau, Alisson Cotret Art Buyers: Marie Bottin, Sacha Pereira Da Silva Photographer: Alex Murphy PR: Lauren Weber
Meet Spot, a 160-pound, four-legged, dog-like robot developed by Google-owned defense contractor Boston Dynamics.
The mechanical mutt stars in the cool, hypnotic, kind of horrifying two-minute video below, which has fetched more than 4 million YouTube views in three days. Spot navigates steps and hilly terrain and, rather amazingly, stays upright and in motion after absorbing some pretty fierce kicks from Boston Dynamics staffers who emerge from their cubicles and attack. (Bad humans—bad!)
In the not-so-distant future, high-tech hounds like Spot will bury bones, all right—the bones of all humankind! Kidding, of course. Boston Dynamics manufactures cutting-edge canines large and small, and I’m sure they’ll make the world a better place. Or something. Their bark is probable worse than their byte.
At the very least, these power-driven pups will be best friends for the automatons like Baxter that will inherit the Earth. Feline fanatics, meanwhile, can check out the same company’s Cheetah bot, which runs 28.3 miles purr hour.
Here’s a UK-based effort from AMV BBDO to promote the Mars bar that’s very different from the agency’s “Brady Bunch” Snickers spot.
The ad, which runs under the “Winning” slogan and coincidentally premieres on Feb. 1, features dueling dogs (though one clearly outwits with the other with some deft pan-fluting that would make Ron Burgundy blush). The fact the pup performs Jan Hammer’s “Crockett’s Theme” from Miami Vice may even prompt some of us 80s kids to wax nostalgic.
The client has £10m invested in a national (U.K.) campaign that runs not just through the telly but across OOH and press. Mars, Snicks and Twix marketing director Lucy Cotterell explains the “Winning” concept:
“[The campaign] will reach 95% of the UK population and put the brand on air three times more than in 2014, in fact it will be on air effectively every other week. The theme of little everyday wins is an exciting new angle for the best-loved brand and the ad is sure to bring a smile to the faces of new and existing MARS fans.”
Where art thou, Charlie Sheen?
CREDITS
Project: Panflutes
Client name & job title: Lucy Cotterell – Mars, Snickers and Twix Marketing Director
Alison Smith – Mars Brand Director
Creative Agency: AMV BBDO Ltd
Creative Directors: Alex Grieve and Adrian Rossi
Copywriter: Dan Warner
Art Director: Andy Vasey
Agency Planner: Will Whalley
Agency Account Man: Lou Woolf, Daniel Wegrzyn
Agency Producer: Adam Walker
Media Agency: Mediacom
Media Planner: Amanda Zafiris
Production Company: Independent
Director: Gary Freedman
Production Co. Producer: Jason Kemp
Post-production Company: Josh Robinson / The Mill
Audio Post-production: Anthony Moore / Factory Studios
Deutsch LA unleashes some potent adorbs for Dr Pepper in this ad starring a super-shaggy “mop dog”—a Hungarian herding pooch known as a Puli with a dreadlock-style corded coat.
Try as it might, our lovable hero just can’t seem to fit in. The stray hitches a ride with a Dr Pepper delivery dude, played by Domingo Molina, who memorably essayed a villain in early episodes of Breaking Bad, and they head for the pound. Will the guy keep the misfit pooch, validating the brand’s new tagline, “Always be one of a kind,” and giving us a three-hanky happy ending? C’mon, Krazy-8, what’s your play?
This stuff is hokey and sentimental, manipulative in the extreme—one more example of a brand taking the easiest route to play on consumers’ emotions. (Why not just drive the beast to the Super Bowl so it can frolic with the cuddly canine commercial stars from Anheuser-Busch and Go Daddy?)
That said, director Simon McQuoid of Imperial Woodpecker unfurls the tale, and the tail, with understated aplomb. And that scrappy scamp is so darn cute … sniff … I can barely see the screen as I type this.
Oh man, that mop dog will wring every last tear from your eyes.
Citroen puts on the dog once again in this commercial with an anthropomorphized mutt who charmingly works out the muscle kinks and stiffness of a long drive when its owner pulls in to a desert gas station.
The spot, from Les Gaulois in Paris, promotes Citroen’s BLUEDi engine, which, according to the title card, allows drivers to “stop less often at the pump.” Some versions of the ad substitute the line, “Next stop is in 1,520 km.” That’s a whole lot of miles in dog years.
Directed by Control’s Joachim Back, the lonely, sun-baked locations succeed at suggesting a winding, hours-long journey where the stops are few and far between. So does the use of “Sixteen Tons” on the soundtrack, which will now be rumbling through my head for the duration of my lifespan.
Your enjoyment of the spot—a companion to Citroen’s canine love story (I mean, woof story) from last year—will probably hinge on your attitude about ads where special effects are used to make animals and babies act like adult human beings. In my view, this puppy’s a winner by any stretch of the imagination.
Stranger dogs tend to get pretty intimate pretty quickly, and so all the hesitancy in the first half the video, I suppose, is the joke here. Before long, though, there are plenty of noses in butts and all is right with the world again.
The original "First Kiss" video, by the way, has topped 40 million views since Monday.
Le site Life on White, recensant des images d’animaux, a eu l’idée de faire sa promotion en anticipant la Coupe du Monde 2014 de Football, en proposant des photo-montages de chiens de différentes races affublés du maillot correspondant à un pays participant à la compétition. Plus de détails dans la suite.
With a cute canine-powered commercial from Budweiser chewing up its competition ahead of the big game, I decided to ask dog expert Brian Hare why a pooch is so often an adman's best friend.
"We share a lot of history with dogs that we do not share with any other animal," says Hare. "We've been evolving together for tens of thousands of years. This creates a special connection that is unique to our two species."
Judging from his pedigree, Hare should know. He serves as the director of the Canine Cognition Center at Duke University and co-founder of Dognition, a service dedicated to helping pet owners understand how their dogs think. (Ad shop McKinney helped create the service and its website.) With his wife, Vanessa Woods, Hare co-wrote The New York Times' best-seller The Genius of Dogs.
Sure, dogs are cute, but Hare believes there are deeper reasons that consumers respond so strongly, and in such positive ways, to ad campaigns that feature these animals.
"When you see a dog," he says, "it's not like looking at a tiger or a shark. It's like looking at someone familiar, someone you know and recognize. This sense of familiarity and comfort is very valuable to advertising."
That's certainly true for Budweiser's "Puppy Love," a 60-second commercial from Anomaly that tells the tale of a 10-week-old puppy who keeps escaping from an adoption center and cozying up to the Clydesdales on a nearby farm. The spot debuted on Wednesday's Today show, and in just over 30 hours online, "Puppy Love" is nearing 20 million YouTube views, making it by far the most-watched 2014 Super Bowl ad released prior to the game. It's also fetching massive feel-good buzz for the brand in social and mainstream media.
"This year's Budweiser commercial with the Clydesdales and puppy creates a very heartwarming story, pulling out all the stops and using our relationship with both of these animals very effectively," Hare says. "Seeing a dog brings up positive feelings that no other animal can to the same extent. Horses convey power and grace."
Overall, he says, the puppy-horse combo creates "incredibly strong positive feelings around the brand."
Hare maintains that no other critters meet advertiser needs quite like dogs (real ones, not CGI-created Doberman-Chihuahua hybrids on a rampage). He says the combination of cuteness and familiarity helps bowsers win every time, even over the cotton-tailed charms of bunnies. (Perhaps a surprising assertion from a guy named Hare.)
Should some animals be barred from ads entirely? "Depending on the ad's intent, snakes are something to be wary of." Hare's also no fan of primates in commercials "because the abuse of chimpanzees is well documented within the entertainment industry."
So what about the Internet's favorite animal, the cat?
The feline fiends inexplicably get a couple of showcases on Sunday They'll hiss and spit, I imagine, across Hallmark Channel's Kitten Bowl, and cough up hairballs on Animal Planet's Kitty Half-Time Show—which is just an intermission during the cable network's Puppy Bowl anyway.
According to Hare: "Even though cats have also been companion animals for thousands of years, our relationship with dogs seems to be particularly extraordinary in comparison. Research shows that dogs can read our gestures, feel our emotions and even sense changes in our health better than most cats."
There, science proves it: When it comes to ads at least, cats aren't up to scratch.
It's the eternal Super Bowl conundrum: Make a funny ad with people, or make a funny ad with puppies? If you're CarMax, you do both.
For its first Super Bowl appearance since 2011's "Kid in a Candy Store," the auto retailer and agency Silver + Partners have created a game-day spot called "Slow Clap," along with a Web version called "Slow Bark" that re-creates the ad shot for shot with puppies.
"The task came down to what we could do to get people engaged with the ad in advance of the game," Laura Donahue, CarMax vp of creative marketing, tells Adweek. "The agency came to us with a strategy of increasing buzz and conversation about the brand: What if CarMax was the first advertiser who remade a game-day commercial with an all-furry cast?"
In "Slow Clap," we see a CarMax customer driving home in his new car, while a wide array of characters line the street to give him solemn applause in the vein of a Hollywood sports drama. He passes cheerleaders, competitive pie eaters, a park ranger with a bear and several more, including a cameo from Sean Astin reprising his 1993 role from Rudy.
In "Slow Bark," we see pretty much all the same stuff, but with dogs. And judging by how many times my children just made me replay the clip for them while writing this up, it's probably going to be a hit.
Harold Einstein at Station Film directed the human version; Ronnie Koff of Imaginary Forces directed the puppy version.
Donahue says she'd be OK with the puppy version of the ad becoming a bigger YouTube success than the actual Super Bowl version. Both online iterations of the ad are 45 seconds, while the edit you'll see during the game is a :30.
"I will feel excited about any of our combined efforts around the Super Bowl that generate enthusiasm around our brand," Donahue says. "Whether it's the puppy version or the extended version of the ad running online, any of those outcomes is great."
Hara Design Institute a imaginé récemment toute une série de niches au design étonnant. Chaque niche a été réalisée et pensée par un architecte différent proposant ainsi des structures adaptées aux différents types de chiens. Une réalisation très réussie « Architecture for Dogs » à découvrir dans la suite.
Inspiré par les clichés de chien se secouant (réalisés par le photographe Carli Davidson), le studio Variable, déjà présenté sur Fubiz grâce à la superbe vidéo Holi, nous montre toute leur maîtrise du slow-motion avec cette vidéo intitule « Shake with Dogs ». A découvrir en images dans la suite de l’article.
Le photographe allemand Ralph Hargarten présente des chiens dont les expressions semblent humaines dans sa série A Dog’s Life. Surpris, sérieux ou encore triste, chaque chien se révèle sur le fond noir du photographe qui nous donne à voir le résultat un peu perturbant de ses photographies. À découvrir dans la suite de l’article.
Criar um vídeo em stop motion já é por si só um grande desafio técnico e de paciência. A agência russa mfive foi além e criou este belo stop motion com dois simpáticos cães. <trocadilho infame>Um trampo do cão!</trocadilho infame>
O vídeo é uma propaganda para a operadora de celular Beeline, que convenhamos, não é nada incrível. Mas o stop motion é bem bacana.
A produção demorou cerca de 3 meses para ficar pronta e 7 diárias de estúdio para fotografar os cães. E mais legal que assistir ao produto final, é ver o making of do projeto:
Dica do meu amigo e mestre do stop motion, Fabio Yamaji 🙂
Le photographe Martin Usborne a une fascination pour les chiens et aiment capturer ceux-ci dans divers décors. Avec la série « Nice to Meet You », l’artiste londonien propose des portraits de chiens à travers différentes matières ou substances afin de refléter la part instinctive de chacun. Plus dans la suite.
La marque de nourriture pour chiens Purina Dog Chow a demandé à Publicis Bogota d’imaginer une campagne print. Le résultat, « Stop treat your dog like a trashcan », nous rappelle que le chien n’est pas une simple poubelle avec humour. Des affiches visuellement réussies et en décalage à découvrir dans la suite.
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