Hasta La Creative!

Live from New York … it’s Jason Sudeikis!

The former Saturday Night Live cast member appears in “The Tourists,” a 45-second video from BBDO promoting AT&T’s sponsorship of the Tribeca Film Festival, which runs through April 26 (and features three movies starring Sudeikis). In the clip, the actor encounters two out-of-towners who start “directing” him, Hollywood style, as one of them captures the moment with a smartphone.

The tagline: “There’s a film lover in all of us.”

Sudeikis “prepped” for his role a few years back when he and his fiancee, Olivia Wilde, made news—and I use the term loosely and with extreme irony—by giving directions to some real tourists in NYC. (They directed them to someplace in Manhattan. Nobody yelled “Action!” as far we know.)I suppose the festival promo says something about our celebrity-crazed, media-mad culture. Mobile technology turns us all into would-be auteurs, roving the streets in search of a scene that just might go viral. Celebs, of course, make great subjects, and they’re always glad to do a few takes when fans whip out recording devices.

Oddly, the spot tacitly acknowledges that much of today’s compelling content isn’t made by professional filmmakers or entered in festivals. Increasingly, it’s being created by average folks when opportunities arise—and distributed online, with a few clicks as the price of admission.

The ad is running on YouTube, in theaters prior to every feature screening at the festival, on Taxi TV, mobile pre-rolls and elevator screens.

CREDITS
Client: AT&T
Agency: BBDO New York
Chief Creative Officers: David Lubars (worldwide), Greg Hahn (N.Y.)
Executive Creative Director: Matt MacDonald
Senior Creative Director: John LaMacchia
Senior Creative Director:  Simon Foster
Associate Creative Director: Geoff Proud
Senior Art Director: Will Holmes
Group Executive Producer: Julie Collins
Executive Producer: Alex Gianni
Producer: Gillian Burkley
Managing Director: Mark Cadman
Senior Director: Brian Nienhaus
Account Director: Gail Curtis
Account Executive: Sigourney Hudson-Clemons
Production Company: O-Positive
Director: Brian Billow
DP: Joe Zizzo
Executive Producer: Ralph Laucella
Executive Producer: Marc Grill
Producer: J.D. Davison
Edit House: Mackenzie Cutler
Producer: Sasha Hirshfeld
Editor: Ryan Steele
Assistant Editor: Jean Taylor
Color Correction: Company 3
Colorist: Tim Masick
VFX: Schmigital
Flame Artist: Jim Hayhow
Flame Asst: Joseph Miller

It was at this time last year that we first met Ted Lasso, an American football coach (played by Jason Sudeikis) hired to manage London’s Tottenham Hotspur Football Club—and manage very, very poorly—in a hilarious short film promoting NBC Sports’ English Premier League coverage.

Well, Coach Lasso is back. And he’s better—or rather, worse—than ever.

In this sequel from New York agency The Brooklyn Brothers, Lasso has lost his Tottenham job (he lasted just six and a half hours) and has given soccer sportscasting a try. That goes wretchedly too, though, as Lasso can’t get a grasp on the concepts of relegation, the offside rule or really anything requiring a modicum of basic intelligence.

So, he returns to America, where he creates a Little England in his own home, gets drunk with friends in the morning while watching the EPL (games kick off at 10 a.m. ET, or even earlier, on Saturdays) and finds his next great coaching gig. He even catches up with Adweek cover boy (and sometime professional goalkeeper) Tim Howard.

The original film was great, but this one might be even better. It’s even more packed with jokes, most of which hit the mark, and Sudeikis has settled even more comfortably into the role of clueless buffoon.

This is one wanker you don’t mind spending a little more time with.

NBC Sports’s EPL coverage returns for another season on Aug. 16.

If you live in either Chicago or Boston, you may have watched (or wanted to watch) the Stanley Cup Finals, in which case you realized that you don’t have access to NBC Sports. After some McGyver-ing and hooking you iPad to your TV, you got thousands about thousands of commercials advertising that NBC Sports would be broadcasting every game of England’s prestigious Barclays Premier League. After digesting this fact, you immediately stopped caring because 1.) You’re an American who likes ‘merican sports and 2.) Again, you don’t have access to NBC Sports.

But who better to make you, an American without access to NBC, care about this development than Jason Sudeikis, a former Saturday Night Live cast member who has appeared basically fucking everywhere in the last month? First, dude quits SNL. Then, he starts going on a press tour for his terrible-looking new movie, Meet The Millers, where he stars opposite Jennifer Aniston, who plays a middle-aged stripper. Then, he joined ESPN to count down the top 50 “This Is SportsCenter” ads last week. Then, he made cameo appearance in Drinking Buddies, a new film playing on Apple TV before it hits theaters at the end of the month and stars Sudeikis’ real-life fiance, Olivia Wilde. Then, Kiran shows me this and asks me to write about it, compelling me to start complaining about how Jason Sudeikis is fucking everywhere these days. Then, wouldn’t you know it, he releases a viral video YESTERDAY where he leads a parody version of Mumford & Sons, with Ed Helms, Jason Bateman and Will Forte starring as his bearded indie-folk backing band.

Seriously, it’s absolutely impossible to get rid of this guy. Watch him play a dumb American coach who doesn’t get soccer above in a new campaign from the Brooklyn Brothers (who you may remember from those kick-ass John Krasinski/Alec Baldwin New Era spots), and then don’t talk to me about Jason Sudeikis until you’ve developed some sort of Sudeikis repellant.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.