Hasta La Creative!

From Deutschland with love comes this rather tender spot from three-year-old Leo Burnett hybrid agency Thjnk Tank, which celebrates the fast-food giant’s 60th anniversary in Germany by spotlighting a clown.

That’s not just any clown, mind you, but one Oleg Popov, an 84-year-old Russian known as the “Sunshine Clown” who’s been entertaining audiences since the 1950’s.

As the 90-second ad shows us, though, age is just a state of mind when it comes to Popov, whose arduous yet rewarding day in the life we see unfold from backstage prep to showtime to–who would’ve guessed it–an end-of-day meal at McDonald’s and a seat across Ronald himself. With the aid of the soft-petaled soundtrack, it’s a subtle and poetic ending to a spot that’s a marked change of pace from Mickey D campaigns we’re accustomed to here in the States. Perhaps it’s time we took a cue.

Also of note: unlike every other recent ad in the chain’s rebranding campaign, this one includes images of real people eating its food.

Agency: Leo’s thjnk tank
Chief Creative Officer: Armin Jochum
Chief Creative Officer: Andreas Pauli
Creative Supervision: Georg Baur
Creative Supervision: Torben Otten
Creative Supervision: Florian Weber
Creative Supervision: Armin Jochum
Creative Direction: Torben Otten
Creative Direction: Georg Baur
TV Producer: Thomas Nabbefeld
TV Producer: Marcus Wetschewald

Director: Alex Feil
Film Production: tempomedia filmproduktion gmbh
DOP: Antonio Palladino
Producer: Vera Portz
Producer: Justin Mundhenke
Music: Supreme Music

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.

Ikea would like to remind you that the odds are pretty good your parents produced you by having sex on its furniture.

New print ads from the brand in Germany offer a twist on the family-tree motif, with pictures of Ikea beds—dating back to its first, from the late 1940s—inserted in between generations of ancestors. The tagline is, "Where family starts."

That's based on a fun fact—that 10 percent of Europeans were conceived on one of the brand's beds—unearthed by German agency thjnk, which created the campaign (and also made Ikea's clever space-maximizing RGB billboard earlier this year).

Each ad in the new series also features not just beds but one piece of Ikea furniture designed for another room in the house, because why be boring?

Full ads plus credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Ikea
Agency: Thjnk
Chief Creative Officer: Armin Jochum
Creative Directors: Torben Otten, Georg Baur, Bettina Olf
Art Director: Niko Auf dem Berge
Copywriter: Karl Wolfgang Epple
Account Managers: Björn-Thore Bietz, Constanze Frink, Svenja Gollmer, Meike Freymuth
Art Buyer: Lina Eggers
Freelancer Photographer: Kerstin Lakeberg

La photographe norvégien Oystein Aspelund nous présente cette série de photographies « Forgotten Heroes », réalisée en Allemagne et dédiée aux vestiges de l’empire soviétique en Allemagne de l’Est. L’artiste a veillé à photographier les lieux tels quels : abandonnés et naturels. Les photos présentent les dernières traces de l’homme ayant réalisé un acte de bravoure.

Male chicks are adorable, majestic, tragically doomed waste products in this student-created ad that PETA loved enough to turn into an official spot.

German director Djawid Hakimyar tells AdFreak the story behind this Easter-themed spec ad that he and his fellow film school students created and donated to the anti-cruelty organization:

"We rescued three male chicks from a hatchery in Germany. Usually they would have been killed by a grinder or gas. We shot just half an hour with them on a farm with a Phantom Flex camera and a blue-screen background. The three little male chicks now live free on this small farm.

"After we finished the 'Flying Chicks' ad, we showed it to PETA and they loved our work. We and the Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg donated the ad to PETA and they will spread it in a couple of days on the Internet."

CREDITS

Production Company: Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg
Scriptwriter, Director: Djawid Hakimyar
Producer: Dominko Gudelj
Director of Photography: Simon Drescher
Editor: Henning Nolte
Music: Schnack Music Manufacture
Supported by: Leithaus Filmproduktion, LBBW-Stiftung, Der Sonnenhof, Dedo Weigert Film
Presented by: PETA Deutschland e.V.

Here's some more great out-of-home work.

German home-improvement chain OBI is advertising its renovation products by actually renovating homes. Well, parts of them. Ad agency Jung von Matt/Elbe measured out billboard-size sections of run-down buildings and fixed them up—creating visually delightful billboards that really show the difference between before and after on an improvement project.

Germany has something of a tradition of doing inventive ads for home-improvement stores, as seen in the rich, weird and often epic marketing done by OBI rival Hornbach.

Credits for the OBI work below.

CREDITS
Client: OBI
Advertising Agency: Jung von Matt/Elbe
Chief Creative Officers: Dörte Spengler-Ahrens, Jan Rexhausen
Creative Directors: Felix Fenz, Alexander Norvilas
Art Directors: Michael Wilde, Max Pilwat, Michael Hess
Copywriter: Felix Fenz
Creative Team: Michael Wilde, Max Pilwat

This wonderfully warped three-minute music-video commercial for Germany's Edeka supermarket chain certainly lives up to its title, "Supergeil," which can mean both "super cool" and "super sexy" (or "horny") in German.

Paunchy middle-aged crooner Friedrich Liechtenstein bathes in milk and cereal, boogies in the aisles, fondles sausages, cavorts with a dude dressed like a battery and reels off naughty double entendres to a techno beat. At one point, he rhymes "muschi" (German for "cat," or "pussy") with "sushi," while a woman slurps raw fish nearby. ("Supergeil" does not translate to "super classy," after all.)

His subdued yet insane performance transcends language barriers, though it's a hoot that one line translates to "Organic is also very, very cool/Very cool organic products, excellent," while a suave chorus exhorts viewers to "Check it out, very, very cool fries, super/Very cool cod, by the way, very cool/Oh look here, toilet paper, ooh, now that's soft/Very, very cool, super." You don't learn to write copy like that in portfolio schools.

Some liken the clip, from ad agency Jung von Matt, to a German "Gangnam Style," citing its funky take on local pop culture. Others compare the bearded Liechtenstein to Dos Equis's Most Interesting Man in the World. Frankly, he reminds me of a different ad character: It's easy to imagine Liechtenstein strutting down a sun-soaked European beach, well-fed gut straining against his Speedo. Easy to imagine, though not particularly pleasant.

Coup de cœur pour Stefan Bleihauer, un photographe allemand qui a réalisé une série de photographies intitulée « Amber ». Il s’intéresse aux usines et aux coins reculés d’une Allemagne en construction. L’orange et le bleu saturés, pétants se marient avec l’atmosphère grisâtre pour lui redonner les couleurs de la vie.

Le photographe allemand Lucas Zimmermann a profité de la brume qui tombait dans la région de Weimar en Allemagne pour capturer des feux de signalisation. Des traits de lumières du plus bel effet dans ces clichés appelés « Traffic Lights », à découvrir dans une série d’images dans la suite.

Le créatif Sebastian Strasser a réalisé cette superbe publicité pour l’opérateur Vodafone. Intitulée « Add Power to your life » et pensée par l’agence allemande Jung von Matt/Alste, cette production Stink propose des effets spéciaux de grande qualité signée Time Based Arts sur un titre de Woodkid – Run Boy Run.