Hasta La Creative!

It’s no secret that scent can be a powerful emotional trigger. Air Wick uses that to memorable effect in this new long-form ad from Droga5—by capturing the scents of home, infusing them into customized candles and sending them to a U.S. serviceman overseas so he can feel closer to his wife and six children at home in North Carolina.

The spot doesn’t skimp on poignant moments, or patriotic themes. Apple pie and a baseball glove are among the scents packaged up and sent to Kearen Feller, who hasn’t seen his family in 11 months while stationed at Qatar Air Force Base.

Air Wick doesn’t actually create customized scented candles. The point of the film is a broader one—simply to show the role scent plays in triggering homey memories.

Droga5 likes building elaborate, full-scale sets for its Motorola spots rather than relying on computer effects and camera tricks. This approach seems especially apt in “The Maker,” a minute-long clip touting a site that lets users customize their Moto X smartphones.

Moto Maker is a site that lets users trick out their handsets in various colors and designs. Options include metal accents, wood tones (like teak and bamboo), laser-etched signatures and, for a limited time, football leather. (Motorola asks that “you resist the urge to spike your phone,” which is probably always good advice.)

The spot shows the same guy in two rooms separated by a wall: on one side, he’s clicking away on a computer to detail his Moto X. On the other, he’s running around a fanciful laboratory, where he employs robotic arms, chemicals and laser beams to tailor his phone. Director Vesa Manninen of Reset Content injects the proceedings with whimsical charm—and the impressive visuals are on par with previous entries in Motorola’s “Choose Choice” campaign.

The overarching strategy of “The Maker” is itself a smart choice, since the term has taken on heightened significance with the emerging Maker Movement. Letting users make creative decisions to suit their interests and personalities, even on a limited basis, is a decidedly cool selling point that Apple can’t claim.

The dude in the commercial was wise to scuttle his “Panda King” imprint in favor of the more practical “Ben’s Phone.” Going with the bamboo finish, however, is so 2013.

Newcastle has tapped Wil Wheaton as its latest anti-advertising star, enlisting the actor and Internet folk hero for a couple of amusing online videos introducing a new Scotch Ale.

Wheaton does an amusing job of delivering the pitch under duress, as the Droga5 production is self-consciously faux-low-budget. He’s also a well-known home-brew geek, and mixes some knowledge in with the humor.

“Newcastle Scotch Ale is a well-balanced, malt-forward brew with a delightful velvety finish,” he says in the press release. “Basically, Newcastle and Caledonian made a kick-ass beer that does not suck.”

The Scotch Ale is the first in a series of what Newcastle is calling “collaboration edition” beers made in partnership with some of Europe’s finest and oldest breweries. This first partnership is with its Edinburgh-based sister brewery Caledonian.

“One of our dreams is to get rid of the ‘intimidation’ factor that prevents so many people from foregoing boring ‘yellow beer’ and enjoying more interesting brews,” says Brett Steen, brand manager for Newcastle Brown Ale. “Wil is an inviting and knowledgeable guy, and we’re stoked that he’s taking this herculean effort of humor and wisdom onto himself so we don’t have to.”

Instead of trying to scare you this Halloween, Droga5 decided to go a different route for Chobani.

“We made a scary video,” reads the text at the video’s opening, set to ominous music, “this is not it.” The remaining 30-seconds are, instead, devoted to dogs in funny costumes eating Chobani. It’s cute stuff, to be sure, but we’re not sure how dogs eating Chobani are supposed to make people want to eat Chobani. But then the point is probably more to raise awareness for the brand with a video Chobani and Droga5 hope people will share on social media. The video will be pushed out on the brand’s social channels throughout the weekend, supported by social media posts and a Chobani sampling (presumably for humans, not dogs) at the Chobani café in SoHo. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Droga5 has a new campaign for Strongbow Cider that takes a tongue-in-cheek approach not unlike the agency’s work for fellow Heineken-owned brand Newcastle.

In a new spot for Strongbow, released in the heart of cider season, the brand pokes fun at a longtime alcohol advertising cliche, the slow-motion horse. As Adweek points out, this trope has been around since a 1982 ad for Budweiser Light (the brand’s first) employing a slow-motion Clydesdale. In the new Strongbow ad, however, the horse moves in slow motion while a couple walks down the beach at normal speed, continually stopping to wait for the horse to re-enter the frame. The spot emphasizes that Strongbow is best over ice, with a line of logic that “Apples are good, Strongbow Hard Cider is better, but Strongbow over ice is the best.” Enjoying it with your own slow-motion horse, however, is “the bestest.” The joke really works best in the 30-second format, as it feels a bit stretched at 60 seconds, but it’s a good dig at category cliches that hopefully means the end of brands attempting to use the slow-motion horse seriously. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Droga5 has a new ad for Diet Coke taking the beverage to a somewhat unusual setting: the car wash.

A girl pops open a bottle of Diet Coke while going through a car wash. Instantly, the car wash is transformed, as a choreographed scene unfolds in front of her eyes. Dancers in yellow outfits similar to car wash scrubbers mingle with others in white bubble dresses, while everyone drinks Diet Coke (obviously) in a lavish, hallucinatory party scene. This enjoyable eye candy is followed by the nonsensical line, “What if life tasted as good as Diet Coke?” as the girl returns to reality, followed by the new “Get a Taste” tagline. The new ad, the latest in the “Get a Taste” campaign, will run tonight during Scandal and Grey’s Anatomy (a 15-second version will debut next week). Another broadcast spot featuring Taylor Swift will launch later this month. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Who needs CGI when you can build your own outlandishly complex ad props by hand?

Clearly Droga5 is up to the challenge, as illustrated by the behind-the-scenes video just released by the agency to recap how it created four new spots for Motorola Mobility. 

The ads—for the Moto X and Moto G smartphones, Moto 360 smartwatch and Moto Hint wireless earbud—slowly reveal their interconnected prop designs, showing the complete set in the closing frames.

Despite sharing one large sound stage and production crew, the ads each feel completely unique, with the unifying factor being a flowing sense of shot planning and craftsmanship. It’s a nice continuation of what we saw in the agency’s earlier spot for the Moto E, which turned a 3-second drop into an epic 60-second journey.

Check out the behind-the-scenes photos and videos below, followed by the finished product and credits.

CREDITS

Agency: Droga5 NY
Creative Chairman: David Droga
Chief Creative Officer: Ted Royer
Executive Creative Director: Neil Heymann
Creative Directors: David Gibson and  Nathan Lennon
Art Director: Andrew Wilcox
Copywriter: Spencer LaVallee
Creative Mutant: Jen Lu
Chief Creation Officer: Sally-Ann Dale
Head of Broadcast Production: Ben Davies
Broadcast Producer: Bill Berg
Group Brand Strategy Director: David Gonzales
Brand Strategy Director: Dan Wilkos
Global Business Director: Bryan Yasko
Account Directors: Ben Myers and  Amanda Chandler
Account Manager: Stephanie Thiel
Associate Account Manager: Jennifer Mott

Client: Motorola
Marketing Director: Barry Smyth
Brand Marketing Managers: Lindsay Dahms and  Magno Herran

Production Company: 1stAveMachine
Director: Asif Mian
Director of Photography: Manuel Ruiz
Partner/Executive Producer: Sam Penfield
Executive Producer: Melinda Nugent
Head of Production: Lisanne McDonald
Line Producer: Jason Taragan
Production Supervisor: Don Coppola
Postproduction Producer: Mike Sullo

Editorial: Rock Paper Scissors
Editors: Dan De Winter and Christopher Mitchell
Assistant Editor: Alex Liu
Head of Production: Justin Kumpata
Executive Producer: Eve Kornblum
Producer: Kristine Polinsky

Postproduction: 1stAveMachine
Head of Production: Lisanne McDonald
Postproduction Producer: Mike Sullo
Postproduction Coordinator: Patricia Burgess
Visual Effects Supervisor: Ed Manning

Color: Ricart & Co.
Colorist: Seth Ricart
Producer: Marcus Lansdell

Music: Search Party Music
Executive Producer: Eric David Johnson aka DJ Bunny Ears
Music Producer: Winslow Bright
Composer, Moto G: Paul Hammer
Composer, Moto X: Luke Adams
Composer, Anthem: Brian Englishman
Music: Moto Hint Egg Music
Songwriter: Erik Appelwick
Producer: Brack Herfurth

Sound: Sonic Union
Mixer: Rob McIver

When Under Armour signed Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bündchen for an advertising contract, she received quite a bit of criticism over social channels.

In the latest from Droga5?s “I Will What I Want” campaign, quotes from these social media critics are shown in the background (along with some support) as Bündchen tunes it all out and proceeds to kick and punch a heavy bag. She looks more like an athlete than a model in the spot, proving she has abilities beyond the runway. Her kung fu and yoga moves are also on display at http://gisele.underarmour.com/ — set to the backdrop of more real social media comments. While Gisele may have seemed like an odd choice for Under Armour, the collaboration works, even if it lacks the same narrative power as the campaign’s previous spot with Misty Copeland.

“We wanted to show a new side of Gisele—the unguarded, raw, real and brave side that shows what its like living in the public eye,” Droga5 Creative Director John McKelvey explained to Adweek. “To the world, most people have only seen her in a context of beauty and polish. But when we came to Gisele with the idea, she embraced the truth of the concept and its potential to be a positive message.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Droga5 takes Under Armour in a different direction with a new campaign called “I Will What I Want” aimed at women, starring Misty Copeland, a soloist with the American Ballet Theatre.

The spot opens with a young girl reading a rejection letter from a ballet academy over a sparse piano track as we see Copeland, poised on her taut ankles in a practice room. “…You lack the right feet, Achilles tendons, turnout, torso length and bust,” reads the girl. “You have the wrong body for ballet. And at 13, you are too old to be considered.” At this point, the soundtrack is set in motion and Copeland springs to life, twirling and gliding across the stage decked out in Under Armour. It is not until the conclusion of the 60-second spot that Copeland’s identity is revealed, her ultimate triumph over adversity implied.

Copeland, who is only the third African American soloist in the history of the American Ballet Theatre, told The New York Times “she never received a rejection letter that so starkly enumerated the reasons she was ill suited to be a ballet dancer,” but that “it accurately encapsulated the resistance she had faced throughout her career,” told from the time she was an adolescent that she had “the wrong body type” for ballet.

We see a lot of ads aim to be inspirational, but seldom do they succeed like “I Will What I Want,” which, unlike most spots with similar ambitions, doesn’t come across as forced or hokey. Coming from Under Armour, it’s an unexpected and refreshing new direction. Along with the broadcast spot, the campaign also includes digital and outdoor components, featuring Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn, tennis player Sloane Stephens and soccer player Kelley O’Hara in addition to Copeland. Stick around for credits after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

There’s no way more American to celebrate the Fourth of July than selling out your country for an English beer, says Newcastle.

The Heineken-owned brand, brewed in Britain, and ad agency Droga5 continue their deft efforts to troll Independence Day, now with videos featuring Pittsburgh-born actor Zachary Quinto, pitching “Newport [sic] Brown Ale, the most American of non-American beers.”

It’s ballsy for any marketer to pay talent to purposefully mangle its name in an ad. But it’s also very much in keeping with the self-deprecating tone of Newcastle’s “If We Won” campaign, introduced by Stephen Merchant, and soon to present Elizabeth Hurley.

Overall, the tongue-in-cheek fantasy about how great America would be if Britain had won the Revolutionary War works pretty well, in large part because the brand is so happy to skewer itself—and the tagline’s totally absurd premise—along with the U.S.

“There’d be crumpets,” says the voiceover in another spot. “Also, we would have imprisoned the Founding Fathers, stripped Patriot supporters of the property and possessions and ruled your nation with an increasingly tyrannical hand. But just think … crumpets.”

The brand also has posted a new ad with Merchant riffing on the perks of a British accent. Additional sans-celebrity spots focus on Mount Rushmore, Prohibition and yellow cabs. As in so much great comedy, though, the funniest bits are the most surprisingly honest ones—try the take on English vs. American muffins.

Plus, there’s always the added entertainment of the most jingoistic YouTube commenters playing right into the brand’s hands by flying off the wall over the perceived diss. Because, you know, in case you didn’t get the memo … Britain didn’t win.