Hasta La Creative!

Adult movies have suddenly become the hot place to put cancer PSAs.

M&C Saatchi in Sydney worked with adult film studio Digital Playground and the Nonprofit Blue Ball Foundation to place an unexpected testicular-cancer PSA inside Game of Balls, an X-rated Game of Thrones parody, last month.

During one of the flick’s steamy scenes, actress Eva Lovia—who really should try harder with her porn name—briefly breaks character (such as it is) to demonstrate a cancer check on a male member of the cast. She also tells viewers to visit PlayWithYourself.org for more information. It’s stroke of genius, I’d say! (But I say lots of silly things.)

Check out the case study below, which is not explicit but might be a bit NSFW anyway.

So far, 200,000 people have visited the site, and total video views have passed 1.5 million, according to the video. “We’re overwhelmed with the amount of feedback we’ve been getting, from emails to Facebook messages to phone calls from all over the world,” says Blue Balls founder Jamie Morgan.

This isn’t the first ballsy way of generating exposure for the cause. McCann Lima and PornHub recently dispatched adult performer Charlotte Stokely—now that’s a porn-star name!—to show men how to perform self-examinations, and Cancer Research U.K. went all-in with last year’s selfie-sock campaign. (There was also DDB Bolivia’s breast-check adult clip, though Pornhub has questioned that case study’s claims of success.)

In any case, hopefully some of the messaging will rub off on the intended audience.

M&C Saatchi created a holiday spot called “Christmas at Home” for The Silver Line, “The only free 24 hour confidential for older people that offers friendship and support.”

The ad tells the story of an older man who wakes up on Christmas day and appears to be preparing for his family to arrive. He gets dressed and tidies up, the ad cuts to a family on the phone with relatives saying “We’ll be there soon, put the kettle on” as the man brews some tea. Then the family knocks on a door and the ad reveals that it the man’s next door neighbor receiving the visit, as he looks out the window dejected. It’s a clever way to put viewers in the man’s shoes and give an idea of the devastation he feels rather than just telling them about the cause. The ad ends with the message, “More than a million older people in the UK suffer the pain of loneliness, not just at Christmas but all year round.” While this is true, the message is likely to resonate with people all the more during the holidays.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

M&C Saatchi has released another ad for the San Diego Zoo as part of its ongoing campaign designed to stoke children’s interest in the zoo’s Tiger Trail exhibit.

In the spot, a boy has magically grown a full beard made entirely of bees. When a girl asks him how he grew it, he flashes back to a visit to the San Diego Zoo where he communed with tigers and apparently absorbed some kind of mysterious power. It builds off of M&C Saatchi’s previous work promoting the exhibit, focusing on the way interacting with wildlife helps stokes kids’ imaginations. It may, however, be a little too dependent on previous ads to understand its intention, as it otherwise can seem disjointed and a little nonsensical. Still, it’s hard to argue with a bee beard, especially one as convincing as this. To bring it to life, M&C Saatchi collaborated with production company Epoch Films and visual effects company Timber, combining footage of real swarming bees with CGI.

“?They were really committed to the process from our very first conversations, and delivered impressively on everything we talked about,” director Matthew Swanson told Great-Ads, “…the entire team at Timber made sure there wasn’t a single i undotted or t uncrossed.?” (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

OK, you world-wise travel people. Ever been to Wotifia? Never heard of it? It’s right next to Freedonia, that fake country invented by the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup.

Wotifia is actually the brainchild of ad agency M&C Saatchi in Sydney, which borrowed a page from the Marx Brothers—and early Terry Gilliam’s work for Monty Python—to help rejuvenate the image of Australia’s largest online travel site, Wotif.com.

The agency created a short buddy movie that features two clueless looking dudes literally falling into surreal travel adventures in an animated world called—what else?—Wotifia.

The adventures are set to a ridiculous music track with ridiculous lyrics that sound like a mashup of Barry Manilow and Lionel Richie after you’ve taken a whopping dose of hallucinogens.

The boys encounter dancing llamas in South America, a soil-your-swimshorts experience with sharks, a bone-breaking ski trip to the Alps, a run-in with a 100-foot bikini clad beauty who emerges from the sea like Godzilla, and a lazy Susan full of Chinese food like it’s a merry-go-round.

Michael Betteridge, Wotif’s general manager of marketing, says the campaign, which launched last month, “is designed to reach the ‘next generation’ of travelers and introduce them to our brand, our range of travel products and experiences, and to our irreverent and fun approach to travel.”

Irreverence is certainly the theme. Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Wotif.com
Agency: M&C Saatchi, Sydney
Executive Creative Director: Ben Welsh
Creative Directors/Art Directors/Writers: Gary Dawson, Shane Gibson, Andy Flemming
Digital Art Director: Glenn Christensen
Account Management: Karlee Weatherstone, Emmanuel Spiropoulos, Kristy Schwind, Charlotte Rijkenberg, Marcella Nigro
Planning Director: Mark Vadgama
Agency Producers: Jules Jackson, Sue Hind
Production Company: World Wide Mind
Director: Rocky Morton
Executive Producers: Will Alexander, Ben Nott

Infiniti Motor Co. will meet (or has already met) with seven agencies before selecting finalists to pitch for its global creative account, Adweek reports.

The meetings took place this week, and leave Infiniti “on track to complete its search by August,” according to Adweek. Infiniti’s initial request for proposal reported that the brand spends approximately $450 million annually. Among the agencies in the running are Publicis, FCB, Havas Worldwide (pitching with sister shop Arnold), Bartle Bogle Hegarty, M&C Saatchi and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, according to Adweek‘s sources. Interestingly, also pitching is Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, partnering with incumbent Omnicom agency TBWA. After the initial meetings, Infiniti will narrow the field to three or four agencies, a cut that “could come as soon as next week.” Infiniti’s RFP noted that “alternative approaches are paramount as Infiniti cannot outspend its competitors in broadcast,” and identified the U.S., China and Hong Kong as priority markets.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

M&C Saatchi Stockholm has launched “Stockholm Is Your Canvas,” an initiative for Stockholm Art Week allowing visitors to canvas.stockholmartweek.com to submit their art and have it displayed on a digital billboard in Stureplan, Stockholm (if they’re a Swedish resident).

Visitors to the site simply upload their picture or video, select a 30 second time slot during the festival — which began April 1st and runs until April 6th — and their art will be displayed on the impressive digital billboard passed by over 450,000 people a day. My first impression was that this was open to any online visitors, but it is in fact limited to those with Swedish cell numbers. If you’re interested (and have a Swedish cell number) all you need to do is visit the site, provide your name, title of your art, city and said Swedish cell number, pick a desired time and submit your work in a 16:9 aspect ratio, with a maximum file size of 50 MB. This is a pretty cool way to get people involved with Stockholm Art Week, even if it’s kind of a shame that visitors to the country (or those who would get a thrill from their art being displayed on the billboard even if they can’t see it) can’t submit.

Update: We received the following note from M&C Saatchi: “The campaign is really for all people on the planet. Not only good looking Swedes. We have removed the confusion with phone number now.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Street Store a été fondé par Max Pazak et Kayli Vee Levitan de l’agence M&C Saatchi Abel en Afrique. Il s’agit d’une action caritative qui utilise seulement des affiches comme un espace de magasin, pour permettre aux sans-abris d’avoir de nouveaux vêtements offerts par des passants. Une belle leçon de générosité.

Female empowerment was a major advertising theme in 2013, particularly in the area of self-esteem—led by Dove's "Real Beauty Sketches." But freed of client constraints, can ad agencies alone get women to love their bodies?

Marie Claire Australia asked six shops to try—OgilvyOne, Publicis Mojo, M&C Saatchi Australia, Airborne, Whybin\TBWA and DDB Group Sydney. Each produced a print ad on the topic. You can see all of them here. OgilvyOne's entry, above, is probably the most striking and memorable. Several of the others are interesting, too, although as a whole, it goes to show how the topic is a tough one to tackle in a single print ad.

See the text from the OgilvyOne ad below.

Two very different kinds of out-of-home advertising stunts have been gaining traction lately—first, the sudden appearance of a spectacular, oversized prop designed to delight passersby; and second, an intricately choreographed sequence of fake pandemonium designed to terrify them. Examples of the former: UKTV's giant Mr. Darcy emerging from the British pond, and the giant Games of Thrones dragon skull washed up on the British beach. (The British love this stuff.) Examples of the latter: TNT's dramatic stunt on a quiet town square, as well as its sequel.

Now, M&C Saatchi has combined the two approaches with a larger-than-life stunt in Milan, Italy. As part of a campaign for an insurance company, the agency built a giant prop of a submarine and made it look like it was emerging from the ground. A Smart car nearby appeared to have been damaged by the sub—a potent reminder that it's good to have insurance in case all-but-impossible events occur. Many agencies would have stopped here. But M&C Saatchi then staged an elaborate early-morning event at the scene—having actors dressed as sailors and scuba divers emerge from the submarine in a daze, and the driver of the car exit his car angry and confused. Fake hospital workers and emergency personnel even descended on the scene to treat the wounded.

Check out footage from the event below. Your move, TNT.

Via Design Boom.

Un spot baptisé “Secret training” par Optus, le leader de la téléphonie mobile en Australie. Un entrainement entre des joueurs et des animaux sauvages, çonçu par l’agence M&C Saatchi Sydney, sur une réalisation de Thierry Poiraud et une post-production du studio français BUF.

Previously on Fubiz

• Buf 25th Anniversary
• Empty Los Angeles
• Voxel Show