Walking nine miles to school every day, through hellish heat and merciless monsoons, past poisonous snakes, swatting away mosquitoes that carry malaria, dodging human traffickers along the way. Sadly, this is a daily routine for many kids in Sierra Leone. The West African nation is in dire need of new schools, forcing youngsters, particularly those…
There’s nothing worse than the emotional hangover following a day at a theme park. Well, that’s not true: Holiday comedown is a pretty big bummer, too. In “Time for Each Other” by Winter Efteling, you kinda get a solution to both. Winter Efteling is the biggest theme park in the Netherlands. In typical holiday ad…
We are continuing to post the most creative agency holiday cards of 2017. We posted 28 holiday cards on Monday, which you can see here. Below are some more fun ones. Email yours to holidaycards [at] adweek [dot] com, and we’ll try to post some more on Thursday. On Friday, we’ll pick our five favorites…
The abandoned shopping mall: A hotbed of broken capitalist dreams, blooming graffiti artists, concrete-starved skaters and possibly rats. Short of razing them and turning them into parking lots for driverless cars, what the hell are we supposed to do with them? Try what Samsung did: Convert a dead mall into a winter wonderland for kids…
Ad agencies are great at crafting holiday messages for advertisers. But at this time of year, after the client work is done, they move on to the more important stuff–their own agency holiday cards. And the pressure is on. Freed of client constraints, who can make the year’s coolest, most creative expression of seasonal cheer?…
We’re still collecting agency holiday cards, and will publish our roundup of 2017’s best on Tuesday morning. (We’ll also update it throughout the week.) But first, we thought we would share one of our favorites ahead of time. “A Holiday Wish” was directed by Tim Mason, an actor and writer who’s been part of the…
The breathless social buzz leading up to the launch of the latest Star Wars movie on Friday needed a marketing stunt to match. So, Disney teamed up with Twitter to plaster fan tweets across giant billboards in real time. From 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Dec. 15, the 90-foot digital screens at Toronto Eaton…
A striking new print campaign from Germany seeks to battle addiction this holiday season with fresh spin on a familiar trick–reversible copywriting. Each of three short poems–one for alcohol, one for pills, and one for gambling–spirals into total despair when read from top to bottom. But read backwards, from bottom to top, they offer a…
KFC was thinking small on Saturday, opening a miniature KFC for one day only in Portland, Ore., and actually serving $5 Fill Up Boxes (that probably wouldn’t fill you up, but were free of charge), at one-twelfth their normal size. The chain also released the video below, showing how to make tiny fried chicken–similar to…
If you come down with a bad case of Atrox Rithimus, you don’t need a doctor. This particular affliction isn’t deadly, though it could send club patrons screaming for the exit. Atrox Rithimus, Latin for “bitter rhyme,” is, in fact, a made-up malady. It was injected into the mass-media corpus through a website, videos, billboards…
Social media marketing nerds got an early Christmas present Thursday, as Wendy’s Twitter account sat down for a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” Q&A. The specific marketing execs who took part in the Q&A weren’t identified–Wendy’s answered questions using the wendys_irl Reddit handle–but likely included Meredith Ulmer, the senior social media specialist who leads the fast-food…
There’s been a lot of Star Wars recently. When The Last Jedi hits theaters on Friday, it will be the third Star Wars movie in as many years, twice the rate of theatrical output as either of the previous trilogies. Even accounting for how Rogue One: A Star Wars Story wasn’t a “Saga” entry (meaning…
Escape rooms have become old hat, but once in a while you see a spin on the approach that makes them worth mentioning again. This is one. Inspired by the 20th Century Fox film Murder on the Orient Express, based on Agatha Christie’s classic novel, Finnish Railways tapped TBWA Helsinki to produce the longest escape…
It’s been a banner year for women, in great part because of a system that drove its boot so deep into our necks that we all lost our epic sense of composure. In record numbers, we marched. We ran for office. We called bullshit on sexual harassment (and are still calling bullshit). And those who…
God damn. Will Cards Against Humanity ever stop being this gangster? The card game manufacturer that, just a month ago, asked you for money to stop the Trump administration from building its stupid wall has decided to take some of it and address another social ill–income inequality. The website, Cards Against Humanity Redistributes Your Wealth,…
Netflix is notoriously protective of its viewership data, but it may have learned a lesson from Spotify when it comes to its creative possibilities–how to turn quirky data points into entertaining content. Spotify recently rolled out its second holiday campaign featuring outdoor ads that turn actual listening habits, gleaned from its oceans of data, into…
The gifts in the 12 Days of Christmas song always seemed a little boring. Coco de Mer, the British luxury lingerie and erotica fashion house, fixes that with its own take on the Christmas classic. This time, in place of turtle doves and French hens, we get a sampling of spanking paddles and pearl blossom…
It’s the most wonderful time of the year … for Christmas ads in which products magically bring even our wildest dreams to life. The latest brand to turn your holiday into a literal winter wonderland is Lincoln Motor Company, which uses the theme to promote its Wishlist Sales Event. In the first broadcast spot (extended…
Ikea is one of those global brands that is strong creatively all around the world. And 2017 was no exception. If anything, the famed Swedish retailer raised the bar this year with inspired advertising, real-time marketing and stunts in so many of its global markets. Below are 14 examples of its enviable work from 2017….
It’s the holidays. You’re probably overworked and lonely. There you are, telling some cutie you’ve got a Christmas tree that’s, like, 30 feet tall. Is she biting the bait? She’s biting the bait. She will want a pic of that later. Oh, no! Wherever will you find a Christmas tree that’s 30 feet tall? Even…
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