Burger King in Puerto Rico celebrated its 50th anniversary by giving away "Hands-Free Whopper" holders to 50 lucky customers. DLC/Ogilvy & Mather helped develop the gag gift, which is still the most brandtastic invention since, I dunno, that Nivea print ad that charges your cell phone. The clip below shows folks feeding their faces while the holders free up their hands for other important stuff, like boxing, working in a tattoo parlor and taking dogs for a walk. (After about 30 seconds, I wished the dude strumming his guitar and belting out the "Hands-Free Whopper" song would take a big beefy bite and give my tortured ears a rest.) Actually, I'm not so impressed. Looks like there's plenty of room on that thing for a French fry dispenser and sippy-cup holder. I don't want to live in a world where I have to burn a single calorie reaching for my big gulp at lunchtime.
Ogilvy France and Ogilvy Asia-Pacific joined forces to make a can that splits in half for Coca-Cola, the most literal extension of the brand's global "Share Happiness" concept. The split-can design is admittedly pretty cool, although sharing a Coke with anyone who isn't a germaphobe is already pretty easy, so this is a solution to a problem that doesn't really exist. It does make Twix look even worse for their infamous "Two for me, none for you" campaign back in the day, though.
It's another one of those things that shouldn't be a story but is—an ad from a major U.S. brand featuring an interracial couple and their daughter. You'd think this new Cheerios ad from Saatchi & Saatchi in New York might go largely unnoticed, given the plethora of interracial couples on TV shows these days. (NBC's Parenthood is a notable example, though far from the only one.) But it's not going unnoticed—it hit Reddit's front page, a place largely reserved for life's great oddities, and the YouTube view count is rising fast. The problem is that TV ads have always lagged TV programming in this regard, as so many brands are clearly scared of being perceived as making a political statement with the casting of their commercials. Thus, the Cheerios ad, despite its characters being representative of tens of thousands of actual couples in America, sticks out like a sore thumb. And then you have the YouTube comments section, which predictably has devolved into an endless flame war, with references to Nazis, "troglodytes" and "racial genocide." At what point will an ad like this just seem normal?
UPDATE: Camille Gibson, the brand's vice president of marketing, said in a statement: "Consumers have responded positively to our new Cheerios ad. At Cheerios, we know there are many kinds of families, and we celebrate them all." On Monday's Today show, she added: "The [YouTube] comments that were made were, in our view, not family friendly. And that was really the trigger for us to pull them off. … Ultimately we were trying to portray an American family. And there are lots of multicultural families in America today."
That hunky Bradley Cooper can do anything he wants, you understand, including strolling into an elegant cocktail party eating ice cream straight out of the container. Lapses in etiquette be damned—just look at those baby blues! And he even brought his own spoon. It helps that he's visiting The House of Häagen-Dazs, which isn't a real place but more of a sugar-fueled fever dream, in this new spot from Team One in El Segundo, Calif. There's a raven-haired supermodel (Jana Perez) who latches onto the smokin' hot Oscar nominee and onetime Sexiest Man Alive for canoodling purposes. Oh but wait, she just wants his dessert. Sure, she does. The General Mills brand, which shot this all-slow-mo, no-dialogue commercial in an 18th-century Baroque chateau in Prague, has never used a celebrity before. (European brand Magnum used a car-hopping Rachel Bilson in a campaign directed by Karl Lagerfeld for its decadent ice-cream bars a few years ago. Could this be a trend?). The Häagen-Dazs ad, meant to luxe up the brand, comes from director Allen Hughes of the famous filmmaking Hughes brothers. It fairly sizzles, and it's hot outside. Eat up!
When longtime Richards Group copywriter Matt Bull finished his first highly visible solo gig in Dallas this week, it felt like a pretty big deal to him. And apparently Redditors agreed, giving his billboard for the local Chicken Scratch restaurant a massive boost in publicity by voting it to the site's front page on Wednesday. Part of the appeal was the creepy, counterintuitive tone of the board, which highlights Chicken Scratch's location "between some trailers and a condemned motel." But another key to Bull's success was his clear excitement at creating something on his own after a lengthy stint in agency life. "After 16 years, I quit my ad agency job to work for myself and spend more time with my family," he wrote in his Reddit post. "Thought I'd share my first solo ad with you guys—for a great local restaurant. I've worked with much bigger budgets in every media imaginable, but I've never been more proud of the outcome than this." Created with illustrator Elliott Park, the R. Crumb-esque billboard has quickly launched Bull and his one-man shop, The Department of Persuasion, into the public eye. We caught up with him for a quick Q&A about the story behind this odd bit of outdoor.
How did you get connected with this gig? Chicken Scratch is in Oak Cliff, which is a pretty tight-knit neighborhood in Dallas. The owners traded a party for an outdoor placement with CBS and needed something to put up. They wanted to work with someone locally, and another neighbor I'd done some work for recommended me. That was all there was to it.
How much direction did they give you? The initial direction was only, "We're thinking we want something kind of Church of the SubGenius." Which I can honestly say I've never ever heard from a client. In retrospect that was probably them vetting me, to see if I was on the same wavelength. Then later the co-owner, Christopher, was talking about the challenging sell the restaurant has and said, "I mean, we're between a trailer park and a condemned motel!" And I thought, "That would make a pretty great ad, actually."
Were they (or you) concerned about the general creepiness of it? Not in the slightest. In fact, the only feedback they made when looking at pencils was, "Can we make the guy creepier?"
How about the fact that you don't show the address? Nah, no concerns. They didn't even ask for it. I've done a lot of outdoor and had given them the basic ad agency party line on what to expect from outdoor. This one was already on the crowded side, and everyone has a smartphone anyway.
What's your take on the Reddit response? Did you ever expect it would blow up the way it has? I'm genuinely shocked. I only did it on a whim. I expected, like most of my posts there, that it would get swiftly downvoted into oblivion. How much time have you spent there? They hate ads more than they hate organized religion. I imagine there are entire nu-marketing shops packed with interns leading deeply frustrated lives chasing the front page of Reddit for global brands. That we did it for a fried chicken biscuit sandwich place is gratifying.
The best part of the comments is all the ad-strategy criticism. I think because everyone's grown up assaulted by ads from day one on the planet, they end up a) feeling like they're experts by virtue of passive experience and b) carrying a lot of low level resentment around over having no say in being forced into becoming an audience for thousands of pitches a day. Which they then work out on a billboard for a one-off chicken place. But overall, they really seemed to love it.
Taco Bell's Dollar Cravings Menu is a low-budget option, so naturally it needs low-budget advertising. Enter Deutsch/LA, which claims to have produced radio ads for a dollar promoting the menu. The agency decided not to hire a voiceover actor, choosing instead to have a low-quality text-to-speech voice—i.e., a bad robot voice—read the scripts. The result is pretty amusing. The robot pronounces radio as "rah-dio," but more shameful is that he can't say "tortilla" properly either. He makes up for it with some humorous musings on his personal life, and the refreshing sign-off "Live Más. Bell sound."
Cruzan Rum welcomes you to "The Don't Hurry," an island paradise where no one is busy, people enjoy zero-kilometer runs and sleep yoga, and every minute lasts 64 seconds. (The brand hails from the U.S. Virgin Islands and is now owned by Beam Inc.) Even the animals are slow, from a rum toting turtle to the national bird—a parrot that talks like Barry White. Well written, interestingly edited and expertly cast, the nearly two-minute anthem below is a lovely little gem. And Cruzan has clearly been watching other alcohol ads closely. The spokesman with the exotic, sometimes Spanish-sounding accent is a cross between Dos Equis's Most Interesting Man in the World and a drunken bum. You can also look to the left of the screen, where a man who looks suspiciously like Southern Comfort's comfortable guy saunters in his shoes and undies. It's backed up by some lovely print and digital work. (Sample headline: "Your only handheld device should be the one with ice cubes in it.") And it's clearly inspired by consumer insights. Well done, Cruzan. Hold my massage monkey, I'll be right there. See some shorter companion spots below.
The ubiquitous Twitter hashtag #FML (there have been 37,000 #FML-tagged tweets in the past seven days alone) is generally understood to be short for an obscene phrase uttered when things are at their bleakest. But now, Jell-O is here to help. The Kraft Foods brand and agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky are trying to hijack #FML and make it stand for "Fun My Life" (rather than doing something else to your life). Between now and June 14, everyone who tweets the #FML hashtag is entered into a pool, from which a certain number will win "Fun My Life" prize packs "specially created to get their life back on track." You can follow along at jelloFML.com, which also shows how the brand is tweeting at #FML-ers.
Here's a clever little gimmick. Australia's Cascade Brewery recently made a limited-edition batch of beer with special "experimental" hops from a secret garden in Tasmania's Derwent Valley. There was only enough for 5,000 cases, and so the brewer—with help from Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne—made an ad for it that can only be watched 5,000 times. Check it out below. The special embed code (which can take some time to load) includes a ticker that's counting down to zero. "Whether you caught the film in time or not, make sure you don't miss the beer," the brewer says on its website. Come on, people, we can make this thing obsolete within the hour if we put our minds to it. Via The Denver Egotist.
UPDATE: Video has been having trouble loading—either that or it hit 5,000 and ran.
Most brand marketers can only dream of having a superfan who organizes a global holiday dedicated to their product. And then there's Nutella. The chocolate-hazelnut spread's parent company, Italy-based Ferrero has sent a cease-and-desist letter to World Nutella Day founder and organizer Sara Rosso. This Saturday, she plans to deactivate NutellaDay.com and the 7-year-old event's social-media channels in response to the legal notice from the company. "I've seen the event grow from a few hundred food bloggers posting recipes to thousands of people tweeting about it, pinning recipes on Pinterest, and posting their own contributions on Facebook," Rosso writes in a blog post about the cease and desist. "There have been songs sung about it, short films created for it, poems written for it, recipes tested for it, and photos taken for it. The cease-and-desist letter was a bit of a surprise and a disappointment, as over the years I've had contact and positive experiences with several employees of Ferrero, SpA, and with their public relations and brand strategy consultants." So far, the parent company has not responded to several media requests for comment and clarification. Via Consumerist and Neatorama. Photo via chaojikazu.
UPDATE: Rosso emailed AdFreak to tell us there's been a resolution in the matter. As reported this afternoon in Italy, Ferrero has stopped legal action against her, saying it was "a routine procedure in defense of trademarks." The company furthermore "would like to express its sincere gratitude to Sara Rosso for her passion for Nutella, which extends gratitude to all the fans of the World Nutella Day" and considers itself "lucky to have a fan of Nutella so devoted and loyal as Sara Rosso."
Just when you thought you ran out of ways to mess with Sasquatch, someone comes along with lipstick and press-on nails. And as you'd guess, Sasquatch does not care for his glam makeover. In the ongoing saga for Jack Link's beef jerky, the hirsute man-beast gets punked yet again—three times, in fact, in new TV spots from longtime agency Carmichael Lynch. He's just come out of hibernation, so his back story goes, and roams too close to civilization, where he's an easy target for public humiliation. He gets "beautified," doused with slop and hosed. Who could resist? Retaliation, which has become a hallmark and creative flourish of these ads, ensues. Those folks will never learn. More spots and credits below.
CREDITS Client: Jack Link's Agency: Carmichael Lynch Chief Creative Officer: Dave Damman Associate Creative Director, Art Director: Brad Harrison Senior Copywriters: Tim Blevins, William Bloomfield Director of Integrated Production: Joe Grundhoefer Senior Content Producer: Freddie Richards Content Producer: Tara Mulholland Director of Business Affairs: Vicki Oachs Director of Account Management: Andrew Dauska Account Director: Holly Wheeler Account Manager: Sofya Guterman Account Leader: Andrew Pautz Senior Project Manager: Elizabeth Charron
Production Company: MJZ Director: Rocky Morton Senior Executive Producer: Scott Howard Producer: Donald Taylor Director of Photography: Mattias Rudh
Editing House: HutchCo Technologies Editor: Jim Hutchins Assistant Editor: Joaquin Machado Executive Producer: Jane Hutchins
Postproduction, Special Effects: Rabbit Content Creative Director: Nick Losq Executive Producer: Joby Barnhart Producer: Lloyd Dsouza Music House: Black Iris
Damn you, hot hunks of advertising! Damn you to hot, hunky hell! Your Grecian glutes mock me as I polish off another nacho platter, and your six-pack abs shame me as I knock back my six-pack of beer! Shirtless Josh Button is the latest addition to the ad-hunk trend, rising seductively from the sea in Deutsch L.A.'s new tongue-in-cheek commercial for Diet Dr Pepper. (They make diet soda now?) "Millions of guys are born good looking," Button's voiceover begins, as the number 70,611,600 flashes on screen. "But not many are really good looking." The number 64,891 appears. "Even fewer are really, really, really, really, really good looking. At least, that's what I'm told." The number 45 zips by. "I'm Josh Button, and I'm one of a kind." We then get a full-on view of his chiseled torso as the red number 1 appears, thrust like a dagger into my cholesterol-clogged heart. (Hey, I'm at least one of the 70 million fairly OK-looking dudes, right?!) "We're poking fun at ourselves and the trend of hot guys in advertising," Dr Pepper svp of marketing Jaxie Alt tells USA Today, alluding to hunk sightings in spots for brands like Kraft Zesty Italian dressing and Diet Coke. After decades of impossibly trim bikini babes making women feel insecure, I guess it's men's turn to suffer. At least one advertiser out there is providing a more realistic depiction of the male form. But when you consider the state of that beach bum's liver, and his life expectancy, it's cold comfort indeed. Credits below.
CREDITS Client: Dr Pepper Snapple Group Brand: Diet Dr Pepper
Agency: Deutsch, Los Angeles Chief Creative Officer: Mark Hunter Group Creative Director: Brett Craig Creative Director: Xavier Teo ACD, Art Director: Erick Mangali ACD, Copywriter: Chris DiNinno, Lehr E. Ryan Director of Integrated Production: Vic Palumbo Executive Producer: Lisa K. Johnson Director of Content Production: Victoria Guenier Ken Rongey: Senior Business Affairs Manager Directors: Craig Brett/Mangali Erick Director of Photography: Greig Fraser 1st A.D.: Anthony Dimino
Editorial Company: Spot Welders, Santa Monica, CA Editor: Patrick Murphree Executive Producer: David Glean Senior Producer: Carolina Wallace Producer: J. Patrick McElroy
Post Facility – Color Only: Company 3, Santa Monica, CA Colorist: Dave Hussey
Visual Effects: Arsenal FX, Santa Monica, CA Post Production Company: Arsenal F/X Executive Producer: Ashley Hydrick VFX Supervisor/Design: Lauren Mayer-Beug Flame: Mark Leiss and Terry Silberman Designers/Animators: Andrew Schreiber Post Producer: Pravina Sippy Production Coordinators:
Music/Composer: Elias Arts, Santa Monica, CA Creative Director-Dave Gold Executive Producer-Ann Haugen Composer-David Wittman Producer-Kiki Martinez
Audio Post Company/City/State: Play Studios, Los Angeles, CA
Others: Mnemonic and End Tag Wood Shop, Culver City, CA CD/Product Director: Trevor Shephard DP: Tom Lazarevich Live Action Producer: Christy Lindgren Post Producer: Sabrina Elizondo Nuke Compositors: John Weckworth, Forbes Hill, Jon Lorenz, Ned Wilson, Thomas Horne 3D Artist: Forbes Hill, Cody Smith CD
Client Credits Director of Creative: Shaun Nichols Brand Manager – Diet Dr Pepper: Angela Snellings Director of Marketing: Leslie Vesper SVP, Director of Brand Marketing and Sponsorships: Jaxie Alt SVP, Marketing: Andrew Springate EVP, Marketing: Jim Trebilcock Advertising Manager: Sharon Leath
Additional Deutsch Credits: Mike Sheldon, CEO Account Management Credits: David Dreyer, Group Account Director Helen Murray, VP Account Director Andrew DuBois, Account Supervisor Kate DeMallie, Assistant Account Executive Account Planners: Jeffrey Blish, Chief Strategic Officer Aileen Russell, Group Planning Director Business Affairs Abilino Guillermo: Director of Integrated Business Affairs
Stand-up comedian, actor, songwriter and noted YouTube personality Toby "Tobuscus" Turner made this fourth-wall-shattering musical ad for Hot Pockets in which he is bullied by an unseen voiceover into singing about the new Cuban Style and Spicy Beef Nacho flavors. God help us all, Spicy Beef Nacho? I can already hear my toilet crying. Anyway, the concept might not thrill you, but the execution is top notch, mostly due to Turner's facial expressions. Now I want to see him in some sort of comedy duel with Jim Gaffigan, who once compared Hot Pockets to filling a Pop Tart with nasty meat. Making this ad is like slapping Gaffigan in the face with a dueling glove.
Michael Ian Black is not the most interesting man in the world, but he might be the most interesting beer endorser. Last Friday, the comedian, who has 2 million Twitter followers, posted a tweet to a Dos Equis app—which seemed somewhat out of character for him. And indeed, when called on it, he freely admitted that he's been paid for the tweet. Black took a fair amount of heat for being a shill, but responded to the haters frankly, and often humorously. He also got support from some fans, including model Chrissy Tiegen. The best part? He got his revenge on the haters in the best way possible—for Dos Equis, at least. "Because the blowback on it has been so unexpectedly harsh, I'm going to tweet it again for free," he wrote, and then did just that. See below for some highlights from the saga. Via Business Insider.
I just turned myself into a Most Interesting Person with the new @dosequis Legend of You app. Check it out on.fb.me/166xmC6
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 10, 2013
@planetoffinks No, they wrote it and paid me thousands of dollars to run it.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) May 11, 2013
What could be better than an Auto-Tune leprechaun singing about his magically delicious cereal? Nothing! This 15-second Lucky Charms ad, which mixes current commercial footage, vintage images and goofy-great vocal manipulation, will air during high-profile TV shows this week like the Billboard Music Awards and the season finales of American Idol and The Voice. Its inspiration came from major doses of hallucinogenic drugs and/or a St. Patrick's Day promotion for the General Mills brand that included a mashup music video that went viral with nearly 1 million views. There were many hot-shot creative hands on deck here (see the credits below), but all you really need to know is that the result is super groovy. Watch the full video for a trippy walk down memory lane.
CREDITS —Ad Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi Production: Pat-Man Studios Composer: Jeff Elmassian —Video YouTube's Machinima channel and Melodysheep, mashup maker
Intemperance comes in many flavors, and SLO Down Wines has pairings for all of them. The California winemaker has rolled out three irreverent ads (from Harvest Films director Baker Smith and Arcade Edit's Paul Martinez and Dean Miyahira) about how well its Sexual Chocolate wine goes with group sex, horse role playing and bong rips, respectively. There's some light parody of insufferable wine-chat ("It's the deep red of a … really red thing"), but they don't spend too much time dwelling on it, and I'm glad they committed to the weird direction these ads went in. Well, except for the part where I saw Brandon Allen in a thong. I may need a glass of wine to throw in my eyes after that. Credits below.
CREDITS Client: SLO Down Wines Campaign: Goes Great With ? Spots: "Threesomes," "Equestrianism," "Horticulture"
Production Company: Harvest Films Director: Baker Smith Executive Producer: Bonnie Goldfarb Head of Production: Niko Whelan Producer: Leslie Owen
Editorial Company: Arcade Edit Editors: Paul Martinez and Dean Miyahira Managing Partner/EP: Damian Stevens Executive Producer: Nicole Visram
Online: Airship Post
Music: Critical Mass Composer: H. Scott Salinas Sound Design/Mix: Tobias Enhus
Closing the books on a yearlong anniversary celebration double-stuffed with buzzworthy work, Oreo is now launching "Wonderfilled," a colorful new campaign celebrating sharing. The TV spots, Oreo's first from The Martin Agency since signing with the agency late last year, are infectiously catchy thanks to the custom soundtrack featuring Adam Young of Owl City fame. The premise is that passing along an Oreo could probably turn all manner of murderous beasts into kind-hearted souls. Who knew? "The ability to wonder is something we all share, but too often forget or ignore," the agency writes in its description of the campaign strategy. "Wonderfilled captures the universal human feeling that kids are naturally so good at, yet adults need to be reminded of: a sense of wonder in the world." Check out the anthem spot below, along with a shorter version and a print piece after the jump.
If the crowds seem larger than usual at a certain McDonald's in Warsaw, Poland, chalk it up to the menu. We're talking about a billboard-sized menu, hand-drawn in multicolored chalk twice daily by graffiti artist Stefan Szwed-Stronzynski as part of a campaign cooked up by the local office of DDB, art studio Good Looking and Krewcy Krawcy Productions. The goal, per the creative team, is to capture "the freshness of McDonald's food" and the breadth of its offerings in a highly flexible way. I'd say they've succeeded, but no matter what this McD's is serving, the menu itself is the special of the day.
When Coca-Cola discovered that part of its classic logo looks like the Danish flag, the brand (or at least agency McCann Copenhagen) decided to make an interactive airport ad that dispenses flags. Why? Apparently it's a Danish tradition to greet arriving travelers by waving flags, and Coke wanted to help make a bigger show of the fact that passengers were arriving in Denmark, ranked as "the happiest country in the world." You can watch the results in the case study below. I personally doubt this hidden flag was a real "discovery" on Coke's part so much as a forced connection, but it's a nice gesture.
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.
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How did you get connected with this gig?
