DDB Chicago Brings the Trickshots in ‘McDonald’s GOL!’

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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McGarryBowen Chicago is Back with More From ‘The Denskies’

Last week, we introduced you to McGarryBowen’s new “Denskies” campaign for Sears, and it wasn’t pretty. The spots employed a tired “There’s a better way to…” gimmick and random offensiveness without any real humor attached. Now there’s a new spot in the campaign,”Chupacabra,” and it’s pretty much more of the same.

There aren’t any mouth-raping squirrels in “Chupacabra,” but there is a chupacabra. The Denskie patriarch accidentally beams the chupacabra into the house with a teleportation device he created to get products the family ordered there sooner (that’s the “There’s a better way…” tie in for this spot). What the husband, or any rational viewer, doesn’t expect is that the chupacabra isn’t bent on destruction but rather takes a fancy to Mrs. Denskie. (What is it with McGarryBowen, Sears and bestiality?) This ridiculousness is played up with the wife still deciding between Mr. Denskie and the chupacabra, in a “To be continued…” ending for the 1:10 spot. I’m not sure who decided this (or any of the “Denskie” spots) needed a sequel, as I can’t imagine anyone clambering for more after watching “Chupacabra.” Maybe it was just easier to run with this concept than to come up with a new, random idea incorporating zoophilia. Credits after the jump.  continued…

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McGarryBowen Debuts Three Ridiculous Holiday Spots for Sears

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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Sears’ Diehard Batteries Will Survive the Zombie Apocalypse

Including a narrative is usually a good way for a commercial to hook the audience with creativity, but this Y&R Midwest zombie spot for Sears actually overdoes the narrative focus to the point where the  brand association is almost negligible. We know, zombies are popular, but it seems like the creatives put more time into the character development of the actors than organically integrating the product. Somebody really enjoys The Walking Dead.

The setup: a girl and a guy running from zombies try to escape in separate cars. The guy’s car won’t start, but the girl’s car has a Diehard battery that is still kicking even after the apocalypse, which is conceptually clever. But, the 70-second running time is too long for the two-second insert shot of a Diehard battery at the very end. If the first 35 seconds of the ad were cut, the relevant story points would still be in tact. There’s also a #SurviveZombies for brand engagement, but if you want or need a reliable car battery, you probably don’t care about hashtags or zombies. Credits after jump.

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Geico Adds More ‘Work’ to Their Weird Digital Art Museum

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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