Sure, the old “they’re not really talking about sex” gag is an ancient red herring, but we still enjoyed this bit of low-budget advertising from Cork, Ireland.
Obviously we won’t spoil it by telling you what they’re really discussing. My first hunch was a restaurant, and after hearing it all out, part of me wishes I’d been right. Because that would be one interesting restaurant.
What will happen when gay marriage is legal? Will the resulting Armagayddon destroy civilization as we know it? Luckily, an Irish gay rights advocacy group is here to help you visualize the consequences.
Ireland is set to consider a referendum on marriage equality in Spring 2015. To get people fired up for the vote, LGBT Noise is holding a march in Dublin, and they’ve partnered with Like:Minded productions to create this humorous short that laughs at our collective fear of the unknown.
Social change can be hard, particularly in a conservative nation, but what this spot is trying to suggest is that there really won’t be any change—unless opponents ruin their own lives with self-enforced isolation and a creepy prison box for their children.
With more than 200,000 views since being posted two weeks ago, it’s sparking interest for the cause around the world. After all, sometimes the only thing you can do in the face of uninformed fear is laugh.
CREDITS
Client: LGBT Noise
Production House: Like:Minded Production
Writters: Tara Flynn and Kevin McGahern
Director: Martin Gaughan
Producer: Lisa Gallagher
Director of Photography: Andrew Cummins
Sound: Stephen McDowell
Assistant Director: Diarmuid O’Brien
Assistant Camera: Anna O’Carroll
Make Up Artist: Olivia Fitzsimons
Sound Mixer: Bounce Sound
Graphics: Richard Merrigan & Eric Dolan
Postproduction Producer: Carly Butler
Online Editor: Robbie O’Farrel
Editor: Tom O’Neill & Ultan Murphy
Cast:
Adam: Shane O’Reilly
John: Kevin McGahern
Mary: Tara Flynn
A video game set amid the resistance to Adolf Hitler’s war machine and played globally 24/7 will pause for 60 seconds today to commemorate the 70th anniversary of World War II’s Warsaw Uprising.
Enemy Front, created by Polish game studio CI Games, will halt at 1 p.m. Eastern, coinciding with an annual minute of silent remembrance held in Polish cities.
The Warsaw Uprising was a two-month effort by Polish freedom fighters to evict Nazi invaders, but the hard-fought rebellion suffered from a lack of support by the Soviet Union’s nearby Red Army. Thousands of Polish fighters were killed, as were more than 150,000 civilians, many of which were slaughtered in mass executions such as the Wola massacre.
The action in Enemy Front, a first-person shooter released a month ago, takes place among WWII resistance groups, with the Warsaw Uprising providing a major focus.
During the game’s freeze today, players will be directed to ItWasntAGame.com to learn more about the uprising. They will also be encouraged to share that knowledge on social media. The site will stream a two-minute film that shows footage of modern Warsaw’s automobile and pedestrian traffic coming to a standstill as sirens wail and the residents remember the sacrifices of the past. McCann Worldgroup in Poland devised the campaign.
“We hope that though this event, we can help the world understand the importance of that fateful day in Warsaw and why it is important to honor the memory of all those who fell in combat, helping us to achieve freedom,” explains CI Games CEO Marek Tyminski.
Some might criticize the maker of a violent video game for tying a promotion to an event with such deep significance. I find it refreshing, even brave, to give players historical context, reminding them of the title’s basis in history, when there was no reset button, and the stakes of the “game” were life and death.
Is Special Agent Mulder looking to defect? In a decidedly unexpected career move, David Duchovny appears in this two-and-a-half minute rah-rah-Russia commercial for Siberian Crown beer.
The spot’s schmaltzy patriotism and odd humor combine with Duchovny’s earnest-yet-goofy acting style to create an entertaining viewing experience for the A-B InBev brand. Will you be hitting replay? Da! (It’s topped 2 million YouTube views since posting late last week.)
We open on a stateside rooftop party among the beautiful people where the X-Files and Californication actor gets distracted by deeper thoughts: “There is another country where I got my family name from. And sometimes I wonder: What if things turned out differently? What if I were Russian?” (He’s actually of Ukrainian/Polish/Scottish extraction … but close enough, and those probably fall under Putin’s mental map of Russia, anyway.)
What follows is an extended montage that plays out like a Saturday Night Live spoof of a Central Committee propaganda reel. Our hero takes on a host of stereotypically Russian personae, including a cosmonaut, a hockey star (missing a tooth, naturally), a ballet choreographer and, most unsettlingly, the bass player in a Russian rock band, having a bad hair day on both his head and upper lip.
The intended tone seems to have been muddled in translation, or maybe the spot just feels awkward when viewed with American sensibilities. At times, the concept’s clearly played for laughs, strictly tongue-in-cheek. Then, suddenly, it gets all heartfelt and serious. (“I found out that being Russian, I’d have many things to be proud of.”)
Duchovny’s performance heightens this schizophrenic effect. His approach is best described as Shatner-light: hammy, but on the lean side. He manages to be wink-wink self-conscious and intensely self-important at the same time.
It’s also, of course, an awkward time for a Western icon to be aligning himself with Russia, whose government is perennially one of the world’s least admired and is currently facing increased sanctions over its support of rebels in eastern Ukraine. But clearly this is not an ad aimed at foreigners, and Russians seem to be feeling just fine about how their government’s being run.
All told, it’s the kind of dubious escapade Dana Scully would’ve debunked (“Mulder, this commercial—Nyet!”), so it’s a good thing she’s not around to spoil the fun.
Recent years have seen a slew of hidden camera prank ads, and many of them are of dubious authenticity. But this new effort from Bosch in Belgium might take the prize for most laughably fake stunt commercial yet.
(You can watch the clip below before reading further, if you don’t want us to spoil the supposed twist for you.)
The plot line, such as it is, goes like this: Apparent cat burglars turn out to be creepy do-gooders (a.k.a. Bosch representatives) who just want to break into homes so they can vacuum downstairs while the owners are upstairs sleeping. The takeaway here is, of course, that the vacuums are surprisingly quiet.
Come daybreak, the owners are met at the door by strange men with video footage from within their homes while they slept. You know, the stuff of horror movies. But instead of slamming the door and calling the police, each homeowner seems quasi-delighted about the whole thing.
Sure, it’s a cute idea tailored to the merits of the product. But they couldn’t even get one or two of the residents to pretend to be indignant? Instead, the brand and agency BBDO Belgium in Brussels seem to have abdicated any sense that they were trying to make the illusion seem real.
In the end, ads like this need to go one way or the other: Either go for vaguely realistic (if largely questionable) reactions or just take a hard turn and let audiences enjoy the ride.
The Empire might not be running the galaxy anymore, but it seems to be doing a stellar job running an airport in Germany.
With more than 1 million views already (likely thanks to its red-herring title, “Leaked Star Wars Episode VII Filmset Footage!”), the video below shows Imperial Walkers and shuttles making good use of the Frankfurt Airport, where an orderly and rather uneventful invasion of Earth seems to be under way.
While not an official promo for the Star Wars: Episode VII, currently in development, the fan-made clip is still getting people pumped for the series’ return.
“Ok, I know it’s fake, but damn … I’m so looking forward to seeing new Star Wars material,” noted one YouTube viewer. “It got me straight back there, as a kid seeing this kind of stuff for the first time. It might as well have been real.”
It’s unclear how many Bothans died to bring us this footage.
Via Laughing Squid.
Here’s your dose of mind-boggling data for the day: a stylish and hypnotic video depicting every daily flight across the North Atlantic.
Created as a promotional video for NATS, the U.K.’s largest air traffic control service, the video turns the isolated, insulated experience of international travel on its head and shows that the skies are far more crowded than you could ever imagine.
“Each year we handle 2.2 million flights and 220 million passengers in U.K. airspace,” the company says. “In addition to providing services to 15 U.K. airports, we work in more than 30 countries around the world spanning Europe, the Middle East, Asia and America.”
It’s not the first piece of slick marketing the air traffic company has released. Check out a similar video about European flight data below, along with a rather cheesy but laudably ambitious ad about the service’s role in the future of air travel.
Via Gizmodo.
Here’s a spot-on, if disturbing, visual for how kids stumble across disturbing images and video while browsing online.
The online and print campaign, for child-safety nonprofit Innocence in Danger, features images of kids, each with three mouths open in horror—one mouth in the normal spot, and one where each eye should be.
Created by Publicis Frankfurt, the effort is aimed at jolting parents into recognizing and addressing the potential dangers of letting their kids surf the Web too freely.
According to Innocence in Danger—creator of the equally disturbing real-life emoji campaign—many children search for terms like “sex” and “porn,” while others accidentally stumble upon graphic scenes, but few discuss what they’ve seen.
While it’s a good use of the visual, this definitely isn’t the first time we’ve seen mouths for eyes. One of our favorites was 2012’s Irish eyes ad for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in Atlanta, but you can find the “mouth eyes” meme all over, even ruining the lovely Stop Girl.
Via ABCNews.com.
Mannequins usually symbolize the consumer ideal of the “good life,” draped in couture and jewelry in department-store window displays. But now they’ve fallen on hard times in a JWT stunt meant to raise money for Amsterdam’s growing homeless population.
Agency staffers rounded up unused mannequins, dressed them in ragged clothes and placed them around the city with cardboard signs asking for money. Each mannequin also had a piggy-bank-style donation slot cut into its head, and donations went to advocacy group BADT.
Critics might suggest that using “dummies” somehow demeans or trivializes the homeless, but I think it powerfully underscores just how dehumanizing it can be to live on the streets.
Produced in a week on a budget of less than 100 Euros, the effort seems to have yielded a good number of donations and, more importantly, attention for the issue.
Still, I wonder how many passed the mannequins by with barely a glance? And how often do we ignore flesh-and-blood human beings, shivering beneath rags and huddled in doorways? Sadly, such sights are so common, they can fail to move us, or else they simply don’t register anymore.
Homelessness dehumanizes us all. Even those of us who have homes.
Via Ads of the World.
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.
Tell the art history majors to leave the room, because here’s a campaign that will make creative types jealous and will make purists’ eyes bleed.
In a campaign that’s new to us but appears to have been running for a while now, Y&R Paris has created a series of ads for eyewear retailer KelOptic showing Impressionist paintings brought into focus.
The tagline is “turning impressionism into hyperrealism.” Another case of advertising sullying some of mankind’s greatest artistry? Sure. But also pretty awesome.
The work received a merit award in this year’s One Show.
Via Ads of the World.
Every marketer in the world dreams of creating something useful, accomplishing a noble goal and scoring huge results. Here’s a project that nailed all three.
Y&R Moscow recently partnered with Azerbaijani cellular network Nar Mobile to create a wearable device called Donor Cable, which lets one smartphone owner easily donate power to another. Worn as a bracelet, the charging device is clever enough, but it’s also inscribed with the message, “Donate energy to save a phone, and donate blood to save a life.”
Why encourage blood donation specifically? As you can see in the case study below, Azerbaijan has the world’s highest number of children born with the blood disorder thalassemia, a hereditary disease primarily found among Mediterranean cultures. The illness requires extensive blood transfusions for babies, and hospitals often lack the needed amount of donated blood.
The Donor Cable bracelets were given away with Android smartphone purchases at Nar stores around the country, and mobile blood donation centers were parked nearby to catch phone buyers while the issue was on their mind.
The campaign increased the nation’s blood donation rate an astounding 335 percent, earning widespread attention and goodwill along the way.
When most great spec projects make the rounds among the Internet’s creative community, it’s assumed the work will never see the light of day. Here’s a notable, wonderful exception.
Late last year, Italian designer Marco Sodano received global praise for his creative pixelation of famous paintings remade with Legos. At the time, he said he wanted to convey “the belief that every child with Lego can become a great artist like Da Vinci and Vermeer.”
This month, he posted a new gallery, this time empowered to call it simply a “campaign for Lego.” The official versions (largely similar but for the word “Imagine” embedded at the top left) were produced by agency Geometry Global in Hong Kong, with Sodano as art director.
Check out the four official executions below:
Via The Inspiration.
Artist and barista Gabriel Nkweti Lafitte, who works at the Starbucks across from the British Museum in London, has been taking some pretty awesome liberties with the chain’s “name on a cup” policy for dispensing coffee to customers.
Lafitte incorporates lucky customers’ names into hand-drawn line art on their cups, and some of the designs—which are as inventive and detailed as anything I’ve seen out of a proper design shop—take him up to 40 hours to complete.
I don’t know what his original system was for deciding who got special art cups, but right now he only takes requests (and he’s swamped). Starbucks, which tells Metro U.K. “it’s fantastic how he takes our iconic cup design and makes it his own,” should just commission Lafitte to do a line of ceramic mugs before another company figures out that he’s way too talented to be slinging iced coffees all day.
Check out some of our favorites below and a full gallery on his Facebook page.
Already growing in Britain, the American digital video distributor will face entrenched local competitors on the Continent — not to mention Amazon.
Artist and barista Gabriel Nkweti Lafitte, who works at the Starbucks across from the British Museum in London, has been taking some pretty awesome liberties with the chain's "name on a cup" policy for dispensing coffee to customers.
Lafitte incorporates lucky customers' names into hand-drawn line art on their cups, and some of the designs—which are as inventive and detailed as anything I've seen out of a proper design shop—take him up to 40 hours to complete.
I don't know what his original system was for deciding who got special art cups, but right now he only takes requests (and he's swamped). Starbucks, which tells Metro U.K. "it's fantastic how he takes our iconic cup design and makes it his own," should just commission Lafitte to do a line of ceramic mugs before another company figures out that he's way too talented to be slinging iced coffees all day.
Check out some of our favorites below and a full gallery on his Facebook page.
All those nerds who hot-glue gears onto stuff and call it steampunk have been outdone by a retiree in Bosnia.
Momir Bojic has put his free time to good use by detailing his Volkswagen Beetle in tiny wood shingles. (Would that make his Bug a Volkswagen Termite?) Anyway, the entire frame of the car and most of the interior are sheathed in 50,000 hand-cut wood pieces, a process that took Bojic more than two years to complete.
Check out a photo gallery of the finished product here.
Given the attention to detail on a project of this (literal) scale, I'm surprised it didn't take him longer than that. The lattice work over the headlights alone is incredible, not to mention the hubcaps. The car's still roadworthy, too, but that's not as surprising as some might think. I mean, if the Baltimore Rock Opera Society's art car is highway-safe, then Bojic's got nothing to worry about.
Ever met someone with a disability and felt unsure what to say or how to even shake hands? If so, you're not alone, and British advocacy group Scope is here to help end the awkwardness.
Grey London worked with Scope to create a campaign "based on the insight that most people don’t know how to act around disabled people—which usually doesn't come from deep-seated prejudice but is due, primarily, to 'innocent ignorance.'"
The ads below show situations that almost anyone will recognize: How to shake a hand that isn't there, how to get the attention of someone you've realized is deaf and how to talk to someone in a wheelchair without looking like you're trying to comfort a child.
Offering play-by-play commentary on the situations is Channel 4 presenter Alex Brooker, who was born with multiple disabilities and wears a prosthetic leg.
The "End the Awkwardness" campaign strikes a great balance of tackling a real barrier between people while also avoiding the implication that you should feel like a monster for making the occasional social blunder.
"We're extending the hand of friendship to those who feel awkward around disability," says Vicki Maguire, deputy ecd at Grey London. "This is not a blame game. There's often no malice involved—many people just don't know how to act. We've had great success with education through comedy, and our aim here is to remove the stigma that often exists around disability. It's time to break the ice."
The campaign has a quiz to help determine your awkwardness level. Despite having friends with a wide range of disabilities, I tried to be honest with my answers and learned that I'm "a big dollop of cringe." The site's advice? "Next time you feel a nervous laugh or 'what the heck do I do now' coming on, stay calm and just remember, you can do this."
CREDITS:
Project: "End the Awkward"
Client: Scope
Executive Creative Director: Nils Leonard
Creative Director: Vicki Maguire
Creatives: Lex Down, Jamie Starbuck
Agency Producer: Holly Blackwell
Account Management: Bill Scott, Katharine Easteal, Sophie Fredheim, Rosalie Jones
Planners: Matt Tanter, Mike Alhadeff
Media Agency: Mediacom
Production Company: Biscuit
Director: Jeff Low
Editor: Anne Perri, Workpost
Producer: Kwok Yau
Director of Photography: Daniel Bronks
Postproduction: The Mill
Audio Postproduction: Scramble
Royal London has been around since 1861, but the insurer decided to go even further back to explain its old-school values, like loyalty, care and "helping people hide their cheese from the Vikings."
In two new 60-second spots from agency VCCP, Royal London employs dark humor and a charmingly unfazed narrator to show how workplace hazards and priorities have changed over the centuries.
Both ads are filled with quirky moments, details and delivery, so you're bound to find at least one scene that will make you chuckle. I even laughed at the call to action: "Ask your financial adviser about it. … Or the Internet."
Via The Drum.
Euroleague ballers Shawn James, Kyle Hines, Robin Benzing and Sergio Rodriguez hoop it up poolside and make a big splash in Crispin Porter + Bogusky London's new Turkish Airlines spot that builds up to an amazing aqua-dunk.
In the making-of clip, executive producer Rob Steiner sums up the challenge: "It's a one-shot ad—30 seconds. We've got two cranes, 12 players—four pros—all of whom have to be synchronized and choreographed perfectly. We've got one day to shoot this, but in reality we've got four hours, because the professionals are only here for that time."
After 22 takes, it all came together, with the guys making improbable passes across, around and into a fancy outdoor pool in Madrid. Ultimately, the shot gets made thanks to an epic assist from a guy hovering on some sort of jet-sneaks. Boy, they sure play by different rules overseas!
The ad was inspired by the explosion of epic pool dunks on Vine and YouTube last summer, such as this diving-sliding-balcony-tossing classic.
Sigh. I can barely dunk chips in a bowl of salsa while watching a game on TV.
RELATED: Kobe and Messi Trade Epic Selfies for Turkish Airlines.
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