Hasta La Creative!

When Jack Black was a kid in Hermosa Beach, Calif., he left a special message for the Tooth Fairy: Rather than money, he wanted Farrah Fawcett’s phone number.

That’s just one of the funny anecdotes packed into this Google Play ad from BBH Los Angeles. In the three-and-a-half-minute animated clip, Black dishes on growing up in the Southern California beach town in the 1970s and 1980s.

It’s part of a series called “California Inspires Me,” created with California Sunday magazine (the regional print offshoot of non-fiction event series Pop-Up Magazine), which Google is using to promote Black’s catalog of movies on Google Play (as well as the availability of the entertainment he cites as inspiration—the Steve Miller Band, Journey, Styx and, naturally, Fawcett’s Charlie’s Angels).

There’s even a nod to Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And for those of you looking to geek out on more details, there’s a second website with more quotes.

Overall, Black’s profile takes a theme that could feel a little parochial and gives it broad appeal. And the clip itself is well-paced and beautifully illustrated—graphic artist Nicholas Menard puts a new spin on the actor’s colorful storytelling, like a description of Hollywood as a “throbbing dream” that can’t but influence nearby communities.

Also, keep your eyes peeled for an excellent flow-chart on the relationship between getting laughs and feeling loved. But mostly just sit back and enjoy a neat bit of entertainment, even if it is technically advertising, too.

CREDITS
Client: Google Play
Global Director of Marketing: Brian Irving
Marketing Manager: Zena Arnold
Product Marketing Manager: Robin Gonterman
Director: Nicholas Menard
Animator: Anne-Lou Erambert
Music: Shannon Ferguson
Sound Production: Mooj Zadie

Agency: BBH LA
ECD: Pelle Sjoenell
CD: Josh Webman
Design Director: Florencio Zavala
Art Director: James Beke
Copywriter: Tyree Harris
Business Director: Derek McCarty
Account lead: Raquel Castro

California Sunday
Chas Edwards, Publisher and President
Derek Fagerstrom, Producer / California Inspires Me
Whitney Lynn, Project Manager
Noelle Kaplan, Account Executive

Android wants to be with you. Everywhere. All the time. Is that so wrong?

The Google-developed platform doubles down on the “togetherness” theme in work touting its new Android 5.0 Lollipop OS. That system runs across mobile, wearables, TVs and a range of other devices, including the Nexus 6 smartphone (built by Motorola) and Nexus 9 tablet (from HTC), both of which dropped this week amid much fanfare.

“Be together. Not the same” is Android’s new tagline, introduced in a trio of 30-second animated spots on Sunday during the season premiere of AMC’s The Walking Dead. The South Park-y visuals are strictly G-rated and give the ads, which teased the Nexus 6 and 9 handsets a few days before their Wednesday release, a distinctive flair.

Those clips were followed by a pair of minute-long spots that expand the campaign’s message by emphasizing the “And” in Android. One mixes animation with live-action shots of diverse folks enjoying life and interacting in positive ways with technology (backed by the inspired musical choice of Andrew W.K.’s anthemic “Party Hard”).

The second spot ditches the animation but really lays out Google’s vision. A voiceover begins: “Remember back in school, when you either invited the new kid over to your table, or you didn’t? If you did, that was a cool move. That was an AND move. ‘And moves’ take guts, but they can mean everything.”

Footage of the Wright Brothers and Martin Luther King Jr. follows, stressing how inclusiveness combined with independent thought drives innovation and change. “Everyone doing the same thing won’t move us forward. Everyone doing their own thing, together, can.”

“As you switch from one screen to another, the experience should feel the same. So Lollipop has a consistent design across devices,” writes Sundar Pichai, svp of Android, Chrome and Apps, on Google’s blog. “Now, content responds to your touch, or even your voice, in more intuitive ways, and transitions between tasks are more fluid.”

Overall, the campaign, devised by Google Creative Lab, presents an appealing tech-topian notion that’s on point for our hyper-connected times. Still, there’s a nagging Big Brother vibe just beneath the surface. Isn’t Google ubiquitous enough already? When we’re “being together” with others, must a piece of software participate in every interaction?

Google has been running a lovely ad campaign promoting its rebranded mobile app. But some of the best executions have been pretty hard to find—because they’ve been woven into the fabric of New York City.

72andSunny created the wonderfully site-specific ads below, working with a variety of organizations and proprietors to bring little mini-installations to life. While the reach is probably fairly low, the playful factor is high—and it’s great to see a giant company doing such joyfully detailed work on the ground.

“Google search has always been about inspiring curiosity and enabling discovery,” a Google rep tells AdFreak. “This is the inspiration behind encouraging New Yorkers to re-look at familiar landmarks—both big and small—in a new light. By pairing interesting questions with visually intriguing placements we hoped to cut through all the sights and sounds of the city that compete for attention.”

She adds: “Our outdoor campaign aims to spark curiosity about the breadth and depth of New York, and the types of information you can ask of the Google app. Where possible we tried to make the work feels as natural to the environment as much as possible—from custom bowling balls in Brooklyn Bowl to cappuccino cups in Cafe Reggio.”

Columbia Sportswear has been “trying stuff since 1938.” Now, with the help of CMD in Portland the recreational clothing maker is trying on the content producer’s role with the release of a new brand-sponsored documentary, I Am #OMNITEN. Each year Columbia selects ten more people to join its #omniten program. The #omniten are not full […]

The post Columbia Sportswear Films Brand Advocates On Field Trip In Jordan appeared first on AdPulp.

Life is like a Rubik’s Cube, says Google.

A new ad pays homage to the classic puzzle game by featuring its Hungarian inventor, Ern? Rubik, and by leveraging the toy as an ambitious metaphor for the importance of cultivating problem-solving skills among the species’s next generation of potential geniuses.

The commercial’s rah-rah voiceover, including use of non-words like “awesomest,” occasionally turn an otherwise smart message into the potentially off-putting sort of smarm that is often a hallmark of contemporary techno-enthusiasm. But it’s hard to argue the substance of the spot. Rubik’s own commentary speaks well for itself, and even the editing style offers a charming nod to the cube’s iconic three-by-three matrices.

It is too bad, though, that the creators couldn’t come up with some more clever ideas for the next great invention. Nobody’s every going to actually build a time machine. And anyone who’s convinced that the world really needs an easier way to make grilled cheese probably isn’t a visionary.

You didn’t notice it, but the design geeks on Reddit did.

Google moved the “g” right one pixel and the “l” down and right one pixel, one eagle-eyed Redditor noticed on Sunday. Apparently, this was done to fix a very slight problem with the kerning of the letters. As another Redditor pointed out: “The bottom of the ‘l’ and ‘e’ did not line up horizontally and that, my friend, must have driven some design employee crazy.”

Gizmodo wrote about the change yesterday, and got this statement from Google: “Great to see people notice and appreciate even single-pixel changes—we tweaked the logo a little while ago to make sure it looks its sharpest regardless of your screen resolution.”

Compare the two versions of the logo below, also via Gizmodo:

Manter a sua caixa de entrada organizada (e principalmente o mais vazia possível) é um dos grandes desafios da produtividade hoje em dia. É uma habilidade que se desenvolve com o tempo, mas que pode ganhar uma mãozinha do Google em breve.

Algumas supostas telas de um novo design do Gmail mostram que o serviço poderá dar mais um passo rumo à uma interface ainda mais clean e organizada.

Segundo as imagens vazadas, os emails apareceriam centralizados na tela, e ícones ajudariam a compreender quem é o remetente (ao mostrar a imagem do perfil do G+) ou qual o assunto daquele email, usando a mesma classificação das atuais abas do Gmail, mas com mais categorias – além de atualizações, notificações sociais e promoções, aparecem também opções como compras e viagens.

Tanto o menu lateral esquerdo, que lista tags e abas, quanto a lista de contatos do Hangout que aparece do lado direito, poderiam ser minimizadas, ‘destralhando’ a tela e minimizando a chance de dispersão.

Outra possível novidade seria a opção de adicionar um lembrete a um email, ou receber itens de uma lista de tarefas diretamente na sua inbox. Em alguns casos, seria possível até mesmo responder à um questionamento sem nem mesmo abrir o email – as opções de feedback apareceriam logo na tela principal, juntamente com o assunto da mensagem.

A suposta nova interface do Gmail também substituiria o atual sistema de estrelas por opções que fixam os emails selecionados no topo da caixa de entrada, facilitando o destaque de mensagens importantes ou que precisam ser respondidas com urgência.

Não há, contudo, nenhuma informação que confirme esse novo design ou que dê uma previsão de quando ele vá ser implementado. Ainda assim, dá esperanças de que quem sabe um dia organizar a caixa de emails possa ser algo mais simples do que fazemos hoje em dia.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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Está cada vez mais difícil não ser uma pessoa consumista. Depois do carrinho de compras da Amazon que pode ser acessado através de tuitadas com hashtags, agora o Google Now promete piscar na tela do seu smartphone um aviso que te lembra de comprar algo que você pesquisou.

Segundo um exemplo do próprio Google, se você andou ‘googlando’ sobre uma determinada bota e, de repente, estiver passando por uma loja que vende esse tipo de calçado, o Google vai notifica-lo, para lembra-lo de que você estava mesmo de olho em algo do tipo.

Apesar da conveniência, isso me parece o mesmo problema do retarget – se você passou do lado da loja e não ‘lembrou’ de comprar o item, será que não é uma forçação de barra do Google usar o seu histórico de pesquisa contra as suas economias?

Essa nova funcionalidade já está disponível na última atualização do Google Now para Android, mas o Google não esclareceu detalhes, como se será possível desligar essa opção, ou qual é a distância mínima necessária para que o app te ‘lembre’ de fazer aquela gastança compra.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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Lembra do projeto Connectivity Lab do Facebook, que propunha o uso de drones para distribuir internet para todo o planeta? A principal fabricante do modelo de drone que Mark Zuckerberg estava de olho, a Titan Aerospace, acaba de ser adquirida pelo Google.

Os termos da negociação ou o valor da compra ainda não foram divulgados, mas o Wall Street Journal informa que os drones seriam usados para complementar os balões do Projeto Loon, do Google, que tem uma premissa bem semelhante ao Connectivity Lab do Facebook.

Especula-se que a aquisição da Titan tenha ocorrido para evitar que o Facebook a comprasse

Especula-se que a aquisição da Titan tenha acontecido com o principal propósito de evitar que a empresa fosse incorporada ao Facebook. Ao invés de integrar o império de Zuck, agora a Titan é parte do conglomerado de Larry Page e Sergey Brin.

O BusinessInsider também sugere que os drones poderiam ser utilizados para coletar fotos de todo o planeta e ajudar na melhoria de serviços como o Google Earth e o Google Maps.

Se eu fosse o Zuck, ia retaliar comprando uma empresa de balões.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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How’s your Google experience? You know, the immersive multimedia one.

If you’ve ever had an uncontrollable urge to wander the streets of Marseille after dark without leaving the comfort of your own couch/balance ball/bean bag chair, then you’re in luck: 72andSunny Amsterdam collaborated with the “don’t be evil” guys for this “making of” promo for new Stories/Maps feature “Night Walk.”

Now turn your subtitles on…

The walk itself is nothing if not extensive, leading Francophiles on a tour of 34 area hotspots in the company of a diverse cast including stray cats, street musicians, and enough graffiti tags to fill a portfolio.

Credits after the jump are in English.

continued…

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