Hasta La Creative!

With the Xbox One’s November 22nd launch date looming ever nearer, CP+B’s marketing blitz for Microsoft’s next-gen system continues with two new spots. Coming on the heels of the “Invitation” spot released late last month, the two new short spots highlight the system’s diverse capabilities while otherwise taking different approaches.

The first spot, “Retirement Home,” features recently retired NFL linebackers Ray Lewis and Brian Urlacher. Urlacher asks Lewis if he’s having any trouble adjusting to retirement as both watch football and play Madden 25 at the same time. Lewis claims not to be having any adjustment issues, but his actions say otherwise. It’s a funny little spot that will appeal to the (sizable) segment of the Xbox crowd who have always wished they could play Madden while watching the NFL.

The second spot, “His and Hers” addresses the apparent sexism of the “Invitation” spot (in which the only female featured uses the system only to watch movies, not play games). It highlights the voice recognition system by showing a woman command the Xbox One using her voice after arriving home to find her boyfriend watching soccer. She tells the system “Xbox go to Dead Rising 3″ and begins to play. Then she starts similarly commanding her boyfriend in a similar matter, telling him to get her a beer. It’s a bit over the top, but a welcome reversal of the gender stereotypes displayed in CP+B’s “Invitation” spot.

Credits and “His & Hers” after the jump.  continued…

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Men with comb overs look hapless. Little boys with comb overs look creepy. To see the difference, please watch the latest Jell-O television spot, appropriately titled “Comb Over.”

In the forty-five-second ad built by CP+B, a balding father whose depressing life resembles a deflated balloon schools his son on the importance of the little things, like a cup of Jell-O pudding. In turn, we see some surreal daydream where the son, still about six years old, goes through a day in the father’s life, only now he has a giant cone head and a comb over. If you ever wanted to know what the male offspring of Lord Voldemort and Francis Dolarhyde (Manhunter version, not Red Dragon) would look like, here you go. Is that not the definition of creepy, a little boy who somehow resembles two fictional psychopaths all because of a comb over? Still, the commercial’s surrealist twist manages to make it stand out in an otherwise standard concept. It’s almost sweet, if not for the whole hapless/depressing/pitying reaction that comes along with comb overs.

Credits after the jump.

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Son of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now director, Francis-Ford Coppola, Roman Coppola was on a bit of a winning streak after co-writing Wes Anderson films The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom. However, after directing the near-universally panned Charlie Sheen vehicle, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, Roman lost a healthy portion of the goodwill he had racked up. As The A.V. Club put it, the film “it isn’t a movie so much as a feature-length perfume commercial for a Charlie Sheen signature cologne with gorgeous packaging and absolutely nothing inside.” So, yeah. It was pretty bad.

Seeking solace from tomato-throwing critics, Roman did what all directors attempting to recover from a stinker do: Join forces with CP+B for a Microsoft TV spot. Here, we see Roman channeling his own life experiences to sell Windows Phones. Sure, says Roman metaphorically through this spot, there are haters are either side of the aisle. But you can’t have the naysayers keep you down, you know? Yes, some people like Apple phones and some people like Samsung phones, just like some people like good movies and some people like other good movies. But, just because your movie isn’t “good” or your phone isn’t “good” either, doesn’t mean to have to be part of the fighting. As Jay-Z once said, “Get that dirt off your shoulder.” Most assuredly, Roman was playing this track on set throughout the production of this ad.

Embrace Roman Coppola, and embrace Nokia Windows phones. Credits after the jump.

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