Hasta La Creative!

Earlier this year, Organic Valley launched a brilliantly idiotic campaign to save bros from synthetic protein. Now, the dairy marketer wants you to know the work isn’t done.

A new video from Alex Bogusky-backed agency Humanaut introduces an anonymous bro-themed hotline, where would-be good samaritans can try to help without risking juvenile retaliation (recounted in the ad as 60 Minutes style confessionals).

The hotline promotes an online component that asks users to name the Twitter handle of a bro in need of saving, and select up to seven of his bro qualities, like whether he has a tribal tattoo. Each quality comes with its own special video appeal.

Overall, the new work’s best part might be the spokeswoman’s crazy eyes—clocking in at a higher degree of intensity than in February’s more deadpan launch spot. The basic concept here is, at its heart, the exact same joke as the original, just stretched further, at moments to the point of feeling thin.

But it does benefit from new gems, like suggesting that if bros weren’t propping up the market for gold chains, the value of precious metals (and ultimately the world economy) might collapse. Other excellent little touches include an edit halfway through the clip on tanning, when the spokeswoman suddenly turns orange, or the video on puerile innuendo, when she addresses the viewer as “a real Edgar Allen Bro.”

And anyway, the whole thing wouldn’t really capture the essence of bro if it didn’t harp on the same gag over and over again.

CREDITS
Client: Organic Valley
Product: Organic Fuel
Campaign: The Brononymous Hotline

Agency: Humanaut
Creative Advisor: Alex Bogusky
Creative Director: David Littlejohn
Strategy: Andrew Clark
Account Director: Elizabeth Cates
Copywriter: Andrew Ure / David Littlejohn
Art Director: Matt Denyer / Daniel Edelman
Senior Designer: Stephanie Gelabert
Creative Intern: Sam Hazelfeldt

Production Company: Fancy Rhino, Chattanooga, Tenn.
Director: Daniel Jacobs
Producer: Katie Nelson / Ivannah Flores
Director Of Photography: Phil Dillon
Photographer: Jaime Smialek / John Goodridge / Cooper Winterson
Editor: Colin Loughlin / Tyler Beasley
Colorist: Andrew Aldridge
Production Designer: Chad Harris
Music Company: Skypunch Studios, Chattanooga, Tenn.
Composer: Carl Cadwell
Media Partner: Redwood, Inc.

Kudos to Procter & Gamble brand Lenor (known in the U.S. as Downy) for managing to eroticize fabric softener in surprisingly poetic fashion.

Each of these four long-form ads from Grey Dusseldorf delivers a cheeky ode to a different type of garment—skirts, trousers, shirts and scarves.

The first may be the wittiest, but overall they feature some of the richest copy in recent years, full of little twists and turns perfectly juxtaposed with a wildly varied montage that splices contemporary footage with older live clips, stills and cartoons spanning the better part of a century—not to mention a few much older works of art. (Modern highlights include a nod to the No Pants Subway Ride, and a sideswipe at Americans for misusing the word “pants” altogether.)

Even when the prose does get a bit purple, it stays oddly delightful. That’s in large part because, despite reveling in its own wordplay, it hews pretty closely to a truth-telling tone—not in a myopic, product-peddling kind of way but in a broader, clever and observational sense. 

“So let’s not skirt around the subject,” explains the voiceover in a quirky Icelandic accent that doesn’t hurt the work’s charm any, either. “You turn heads, drop jaws and make grown men speechless. You help us in our search for Mr. Right, but locate so many Mr. Wrongs.”

In other words, it doesn’t always take the most progressive tack, but the whole thing is credible and entertaining enough to make you feel like Lenor doesn’t just want to reach into your pocket and pull out the cash (along with whatever blue lint it can find).

Rather, it wants to share the secrets to a life well lived. Because what is doing laundry about, if not the meaning of existence?

What are we all but a bunch of emoji with arms and legs and a hankering for McDonald’s?

An insane new French ad for fast-food chain shows a city full of people going about their daily lives—driving around with friends, getting a shave at the barber, break dancing in the streets. But instead of human heads, they all have giant, 3-D, cartoon faces.

The soundtrack—a bubbly electro pop cover of the Buggles’ 1978 classic “Video Killed the Radio Star”—almost makes the ad feel like a music video. But the song, a rendition apparently created specifically for the ad, when coupled with the visual concept, which feels fresh in and of itself, seems to imply a critique of technology that’s more contemporary than the one baked into the lyrical hook, and a bit out of place for a major fast-food marketer.

McDonald’s and agency BETC Paris have explicitly created a world where digital communication reduces facial expression—a wildly subtle and complex phenomenon—to a series of shiny yellow orbs representing monolithic and equally monochromatic feelings. That’s a pretty excellent premise for a video, but the brand presents it here without any of the real anxiety about change that defines the text of the original synth pop song—or the deadpan theatricality with which the Buggles promoted and performed it; or, say, the more explicitly ironic bitterness and dissatisfaction of the 1996 alt-rock cover by the Presidents of the United States of America.

Instead, McD’s presents everyone being a stiff caricature of their own ids as a good thing. And that only really makes sense if you’re a faceless corporation that deals in cardboard platitudes like Happy Meals peddled by a brightly colored clown mascot, and other overly processed hamburgers that can save the doomed love lives of awkward young adults.

It probably doesn’t help the brand’s case that the tagline, “Venez comme vous êtes,” which translates to “Come as you are,” inadvertently bastardizes the spirit of another classic song about the tension between individuality, conformity and perception. (To be fair, that tagline has been around for years—and McDonald’s France has used it to, among other things, promote gay rights.)

Within the emoji ad’s own construct, it includes clever little tidbits—some of them perhaps more deliberate than others, like the kid who turns from angel to devil, as opposed to the weatherman with the smarmy, oafish look on his face. The spot also deserves credit for doing a distinctly better job of getting its message across than some other emoji-driven attempts at marketing. (In fact, it’s way simpler and more accessible—if less delightful—than some of the brands that decided to try to invent their own emoticons.)

It’s also worth noting that BETC Paris is experienced in creating absurd viral sensations, having graced the world with Evian’s classic roller-dancing babies, and the agency appears to be swinging for the fences again here. But the idea, for all its potential, suffers as a result of its attempt to be broadly appealing to what’s seen as the perpetual sunshine ethos of millennials. In that, it turns into a nauseatingly saccharine panacea—without near enough sarcasm or skepticism about what it’s actually saying.

In fact, the insistence on framing a fundamentally disturbing set of images as lighthearted and upbeat can’t keep the dark subtext and implicit social critique at bay. So, the whole thing ends up seeming unintentionally dystopian, like the Kia hamsters tossed into a meat grinder with a deadmau5 helmet and Katy Perry fever dream, with the resulting slime squeezed out into a bunch of circular, cookie-cutter nuggets, baked golden and plopped onto a bunch of necks.

Ultimately, it mostly adds credence to Taco Bell’s case that Ronald McDonald is actually a Stalinist looking to control all aspects of your life—only he’s way more insidious than you thought, mostly interested in brainwashing us into grinning idiots by defining happiness in terms of Big Macs and faces made of pixels.

Plus, you know the spot can’t be trusted because it doesn’t show anyone who just gobbled a McDonald’s burger and turned into the emoji for “I have a stomach ache and I wish I hadn’t eaten that”—which isn’t available yet, but is slated for release in 2016.

The popular knock against the lottery is that you can play it, but you’re an idiot if you do, cause nobody ever wins. But a new campaign for the New York Lottery is about a different kind of problem—someone who actually won, but who’s yet to claim the $7 million prize, and almost a year later, is about to run out of time.

McCann New York has posted street fliers in Canarsie, the Brooklyn neighborhood that’s home to Milky Way Deli, where the winning ticket in a Cash4Life game last summer was bought. A sketch of the ticket and the headline “Have You Seen Me?” adorns one flier. A stick figure smiles dumbly on a second with the headline “Is This You?” The subtext of both is: Are you the fool who’s about to let seven figures slip through your fingers?

In other words, the whole thing is devious and hilarious because it’s playful and it also reinforces the perception that people actually win—and invites everyone who sees it to imagine how much smarter they would be if they did.

Of course, it doesn’t really seem like the New York Lottery’s heart is really in the mission of finding the lucky lost soul. The winner, whoever he or she is, bought the ticket last July 24 (and needs to come forward by the same date this year, or the money goes back into the pool). But the lottery only started its canvassing campaign yesterday (July 22)—and the super high production values of its posters pretty much say it all.

Maybe the whole thing is a grand hoax—and the organization has the really winner stashed away somewhere, to roll out at the last minute—or there’s no winner at all. Then again, none of that really matters in the end, because whatever $4 million lump sum pittance would be left after taxes still isn’t enough to live in New York anyway.

Back in April, Nike Women launched its popular “Better for It” motivational campaign in the U.S. Now, the sportswear giant is expanding the tagline in Russia.

A half-dozen new spots from Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam feature the same playful attitude and general message—that the benefits of exercise outweigh the challenge—but take a slightly different tone, as you might expect from ads that feature professional athletes instead of the average exercisers represented in the U.S. work.

The camera work, from director Carlos Serrao, is a little more dramatic in its attention to detail, with scenes like yogi Olga Markes holding a particularly brutal pose while dripping sweat and boxer Kate Izotova getting punched in the face while sparring (a moment featured, naturally, in slow motion).

The copy, meanwhile, comes across as less overtly vulnerable than in the U.S. ads, where women explicitly tolerated their own misery (largely manifest as insecurity) for the promise of self-improvement in the end. Instead, the Russian athletes seem to be a bit more defiant in their vanity—embracing pain in pursuit of perfection or glory.

“What are you doing here?” says Izotova’s voiceover. “You could have stayed at home, been someone’s trophy…. Screw that. I’ll earn my own trophy.”

In other words, the ads hew more closely to traditional endorser-driven sports marketing (even if they’re not celebrities with wide global name recognition)—a strategy that speaks more of a “Be like this” inspirational strategy than a “We know it’s hard but we’re with you” motivational one.

In addition to the pro athlete ads, Nike also turned Instagram posts of real girls working out into street posters around Moscow. Indeed, the campaign’s title is “Real Girls of Moscow,” and it aims to capture the spirit of what Nike describes as a growing sports movement in Russia, featuring women who are “free-thinking and free-spirited,” and “are more comfortable in sneakers than heels, preferring exercise to fad diets.”

Whether drawing that kind of line—or calling a bunch of accomplished women, at least four of whom are in their 20s and 30s, “girls”—is a smart or deliberately provocative move isn’t clear. But it is at least understandable, given the brand sells selling running shoes that also tend to double as fashion statements—and not stilettos.

Regardless, Nike is also touting a 25,000-person turnout for a 10-day sporting event at Gorky Park in Moscow. And the new campaign features top athletes in a broad range of disciplines (ballet, choreography, long-jumping, skateboarding and sprinting) showing up variously on giant outdoor murals, and in nifty GIFs for online distribution—probably because if you really want to do that sweet kickflip, you’re going to have to get used to doing it over and over again, stuck on infinite loop, for the rest of time.

CREDITS
Client: Nike

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam
Executive Creative Director: Mark Bernath, Eric Quennoy
Creative Director: David Smith, Alvaro Sotomayor, Craig Williams
Art Director: Ignasi Tudela
Copywriter: Zoe Hawkins
Head of Content : Joe Togneri
Planner: Danny Feeney, Michelle Arrazcaeta
Communications Planner: Josh Chang
Group Account Director: Kirk Johnsen
Account Director: Kathryn Addo
Senior Account Manager: Jorge Fesser
Broadcast production / Head of Art Buying : Maud Klarenbeek
Art buying / broadcast production: Javier Perroud
Head of Studio: Jackie Barbour
Retoucher: Dario Fusnecher
Project Manager: Janna Harrington
Business Affairs: Michael Graves

Production Company: Terrie Tanaka Management
Director/Photographer: Carlos Serrao
Director of Photography: Monica May
Producer: Amy Lynne
Executive Producer: Terrie Tanaka
Vogue Shoot Make-up: Mark Williamson at artist-management using Mac
Vogue Shoot hair: Hanjee at Jed Root for Hanjee Hair Gallery

Editing Company: Whitehouse Post
Editor: Sam Gunn

Audio Post: Wave Amsterdam
Sound Designer/Mixer: Alex Nicholls-Lee

Music: Glintshake / MassiveMusic
Katya Izotova: Glintshake
Olga Markes: Glintshake
Adelina Sotnikova: MassiveMusic
Diana Vishneva: MassiveMusic
Darya Klishina: MassiveMusic

Postproduction: Glassworks
Flame: Morten Vinther
Telecine: Scott Harris
Producer: Jane Bakx

Media Buy: Mindshare Russia

Digital Production + Social Activation: Instinct BBDO Moscow

Attention, germaphobes. Here are your worst nightmares realized.

Unilver cleaning brand Domestos is out with three new print and poster ads in the U.K. that vividly imagine microorganisms as gross cartoons on vacations—swimming, snapping selfless, sipping cocktails on the beach (yes, that’s duck face).

The “Holiday’s over” tagline is a little long on bravado, but the illustrations—created by Bangkok CGI studio Illusion, via agency British agency DLKW Lowe—might be the most gorgeously disgusting visuals ever (even if Harvey Keitel’s credits apparently include voicing one of their millions of impressively hideous dead ancestors).

Now enjoy your righteous sense of horror, and go and wash your hands.

Full ads below. Click to enlarge.

CREDITS
Client Name: Domestos
Campaign Name: Holiday’s Over
Agency: DLKW Lowe
ECD: Richard Denney, Dave Henderson
Global Creative Director: Tony Hardcastle
Creative Team: Katrina Encanto,  Edgar Galang 
Planner: Richard Kelly
Account Team: James Pool, Ross Marshall
Agency Producers: Gary Wallis
Media Agency: Initiative 
Design Company: Illusion Co. Ltd  
Illustrators: Surachai Puthikuangkura, Supachai U-Rairat
Producers: Somsak Pairew, Kitidej Rattanasuvansri

Finlandia is gunning hard for the title of most inspirational vodka commercial ever.

A new two-and-half-minute ad, “1,000 years of less ordinary wisdom,” features offbeat heroes like a drag wrestler and reindeer racer offering tips on how to make it in the world, like “Be nobody’s bitch but your own” and “You’re only as fast as your reindeer.” In other words, a lot of the advice is, in spirit, not really that different from standard motivational fare, even if it comes from unusual sources and their unconventional contexts (though fashion icon Iris Apfel is not exactly out of the spotlight these days).

As for the title, the 1,000 years refers to the sum of the ages of the people in the commercial. A number of them are long in the tooth, which is cool, because listening to one’s elders is generally a good thing—they’re often less boring and clueless than young people. But the spot also makes sure to feature more sprightly accomplished types, too, like a prima ballerina and volcanic scientist (because it can’t really exclude representing the money demo, too).

Created by Wieden + Kennedy London, the spot relies heavily on a driving (mostly) instrumental version of the song “Undeniable,” by Donnie Daydream featuring Richie Sosa. That strings together the disparate footage from director Siri Bunford (though it might be worth mentioning that Adidas also just used the record as a soundtrack for its own sports-themed montage-qua-anthem).

Game of Thrones fans might enjoy that, as Fast Company notes, the strong man—Hafthór Júlíus Björnsson—is also a actor on the show. (He’s the latest in a string to play “The Mountain” Gregor Clegane, largely absent this season but for the occasional twitch from under a blanket on a laboratory table, the pseudo-zombie experiment of some sinister wizard. P.S.: If that’s where drinking Finlandia leads, no thanks.)

In all seriousness, though, the concept is pretty moving—a nice snapshot of various walks of life, with some clever and charming moments. Overall, it might even be convincing, except what drinking vodka really makes people want to do is drink more vodka and then pass out hard and sleep in the next day—not a great way to tear through that bucket list.

CREDITS
Client: Finlandia
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy London
Creative directors: Scott Dungate, Graeme Douglas
Copywriter: Paddy Treacy
Art director: Mark Shanley
Executive creative directors: Tony Davidson, Iain Tait
Executive producer: Danielle Stewart
Group account director: Paulo Salomao
Account director: Matt Owen
Account manager: Sophie Lake
Head of planning: Beth Bentley
Planning director: Martin Beverley
TV producer: Michelle Brough
Production company: Knucklehead
Director: Siri Bunford
Executive producer: Matthew Brown
Director of photography: Ben Smithard
Editorial companies: Lucky Cat, Whitehouse Post
Editors: Xavier Perkins, Lucky Cat; Adam Marshall, Whitehouse Post
Post producer: Anandi Peiris
VFX company: MPC
VFX supervisor: Bill McNamara
Flame artist: Bill McNamara
VFX producer: Anandi Peiris
Grade: MPC
Colorist: Matthieu Toullet
Titles/graphics: Ryan Teixeira
Music/sound company: Factory
Sound designers: Anthony Moore, Phil Bollard
Song: Undeniable, Richie Sosa
Interactive producer: Dom Felton
Director of relations: Marta Bobic
PR manager: Charlotte Corbett

How easy would it be to parallel park if you always had a friend to help you—even when you were driving alone?

A new Fiat billboard created by Leo Burnett Germany invites viewers to imagine just that. The agency hooked up a digital screen with special software and a sensors to measure how far a driver’s rear bumper was from the car behind it, and then projected synchronized images of human helpers guiding the driver’s parking job—just like a passenger might get out and do.

It’s a simple, clever concept, appropriate to promote Fiat’s Parking Assist technology, an alarm system that warns drivers in reverse of objects behind them. The billboard even offers a range of different playful avatars for the computerized assistant—a biker, a child, a wise old-man. And the brand’s marketing team couldn’t resist designing one of them—a woman in a skimpy bunny outfit—to appeal to the leering set.

Unfortunately, that seems like the kind of thing that might make some drivers more likely to hit the car behind them.

Via The Inspiration Room.

What better way to sell foot-care products than with an entire magazine for and about feet?

Hansaplast, a Beiersdorf-owned band-aid brand, is launching a line of creams, deodorant and antiperspirant called FootExpert. To promote the products, agency Being created Feet Mag, a luxury publication designed with heavy paper that can be easily turned by one’s feet, and large print that you can enjoy from an eye-to-foot distance (for those unable to lift the book close to their faces using only their toes).

The magazine is packed with foot-themed stories about art (by the likes of Renoir, Gauguin, Delacroix and Manet) and fashion, with sassy pictures of women playing cards and blowing kisses with their own feet. There are even foot horoscopes (with advice like putting on rubber boots to prepare for the coming storm).

Check out a copy of the magazine here. (PDF link)

It’s a fun way to draw attention to a decidedly dull subject, certainly more noteworthy than buying ads in a well-established beauty magazine. But it doesn’t seem right to make your feet do all that extra work—even in the name of leisure.

Via PSFK.

A new Japanese campaign aims to combat domestic violence in the country with inventive coasters that hope to tame excessive drinking, which can contribute to the problem.

Yaocho, a bar chain, and agency Ogilvy & Mather Tokyo created the coasters, each of which features a portrait of a woman’s face printed in thermal ink. When a cold drink rests on the coaster, the portrait changes to include cuts and bruises.

The visuals are—no pun intended—chilling, and it’s a clever use of media, though perhaps a touch too much so for its own good, with mechanics that may undermine the spirit and gravity of the message.

“This drink will turn the woman on this coaster into a beat-up woman—just like you might do to a real woman, if you drink too much,” is essentially the subtext of the ads. “Can you have another round without wanting to hit your significant other?”

But as Lucia Peters points out over at Bustle, while alcohol can be a factor in domestic violence, “placing the blame for domestic violence on alcohol excuses the people who commit the crimes in the first place—which is classic abuser behavior.”

Yaocho deserves credit for openly addressing domestic violence, and trying to raise awareness, theoretically at the expense of its own business. But while a drinking establishment is, on its face, the right place to reach viewers with a message about alcohol and domestic abuse, there’s also a bit of cognitive dissonance in an anti-drinking ad that requires the viewer to be drinking to deliver its full effect.

The tagline, at least in its translated version, isn’t even “Don’t drink too much.” Rather, it is “Don’t let excessive drinking end in domestic violence.” In other words, “It’s OK to spend your money on a bender, so long as you don’t beat your wife or girlfriend afterward.”

And if you are the type of person who gets violent when you drink, you probably shouldn’t be drinking at all. 

More info below. Via Design Taxi.