Hasta La Creative!

DDB Chicago teamed up with Smuggler and Whitehouse Post to create “McDonald’s GOL!,” an online and broadcast spot for the World Cup sponsors.

The 1:50 video (above) celebrates amateur trickshots, including a few from unexpected sources, as players around the world show off their skills in anticipation of the 2014 World Cup, now less than 10 days away. It’s a fun approach, and many of the trickshots are quite impressive. At the conclusion of the video, viewers are prompted to visit gol.mcd.com, home of the campaign’s augmented reality trick shot game. The app utilizes Qualcomm Vuforia AR technology to allow players to bounce a digital soccer ball off real world items, but only after it is triggered from any of the 12 limited-edition FIFA World Cup™ fry boxes — which have supplanted the iconic red boxes for the World Cup promotion. Over the course of the campaign, the game will “be available to play from 1.5 billion fry boxes in almost 120 countries,” making it the largest AR experience ever created. Stick around after the jump for credits and a look at some of the fry boxes. continued…

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It seems that the fight for the craziest, most absurd holiday ad is in full force, with McGarryBowen Chicago being the latest agency to throw their hat in the ring with three new spots for Sears that introduce us to “The Denskies.”

While Draftcb’s currently causing controversy with its Joe Boxer jingle for Kmart (and let’s not forget the earlier Satan/Genghis Khan layaway spot), McGarryBowen makes that holiday effort seem tame in comparison to its “Squirrel Revolt” ad. It wouldn’t stand out from the other two “Denskies” installments, in its “let’s be as crazy as possible” humor, were it not for the line (assuming I’m hearing this correctly), “Oh god, it’s mating with my mouth.”

The aforementioned spot (which you can watch above, though you probably shouldn’t) begins with Papa Denskie explaining to his wife that he’s trained “those pesky squirrels” to cut coupons. Everything, though, soon goes haywire, the squirrels attack the man and elicit the crazy, over-the-top response from the above paragraph. (You know, the one where the guy gets orally raped by a squirrel with a rage boner.) If people were pissed off about Kmart’s “Show Your Joe,” I can’t imagine how they’ll respond to this one.

The other two “Denskies” spots for Sears have plenty of crazy to spare as well. In “Robo Granny,” the same man builds a robotic grandmother so that the family won’t have to go visit their real, living grandmother. Predictably, chaos ensues, dragging on for way too long, with the spot clocking in at 1:23 but seeming more like a 5-minute endurance test. Meanwhile, “Medium” sees agency and client portraying their subject as some kind of crazy, possessed witch lady. I’d almost feel bad for real mediums if it weren’t for the fact that they make their living by pretending to talk to dead people (sorry, Sylvia Browne, RIP). The message from Sears this holiday season seems to be the tired “Don’t do something crazy to save time and money, shop here” approach–just with the crazy pushed well beyond the point of reason. You can check out the other two after the jump, along with credits.

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The Geico Museum of Modern Insurance may not be the Louvre, but you can find the Mona Lisa in both places. In August, the Martin Agency teamed with Geico to launch a digital art museum, which is really another way of saying 15- and 30-second ads that run before videos on Hulu, Netflix, etc. Six weeks later, the museum’s collection has been updated with new videos that continue to embrace the quirky side of art. In most of the clips, people and animals in paintings talk to each other about insurance. The original press release even comes with a cutesy G-MOMI abbreviation, which sounds more like a bad rapper name than a neighbor to the Modern Museum of Art. However, MOMA does not have Napoleon Bonaparte singing a duet of “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain.” G-MOMI does.

Other clips, a few of which you can watch after the jump, include George Washington talking to a cat and Mona Lisa talking to a baby. They’re short, strange, and potentially funny if you like the absurd. Credits below.

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