Hasta La Creative!

MRM//McCann actually found a practical use for an emoji in its campaign for Swedish charity Vi Agroforestry, allowing users to make donations to the charity by texting a tree emoji.

For each tree a user texts, up to 25 per message, they donate two dollars to the charity, or about what it takes to plant one tree in eastern Africa. The trees the charity plants are then used to fight poverty and starvation in the region. This method allows for users who speak different languages to easily donate in the fastest way possible (rather than using complicated SRS codes usually associated with such donations). That the emoji is also tied to a measurable effect of the donation (one emoji tree = one real tree) is a nice added bonus. The campaign was launched via social media and promoted with digital billboards in Stockholm. With all the gimmicky use of emojis by brands and agencies, it’s refreshing to see one used to actually solve a problem.

Credits:

Christian Soderholm, Art Director
Fredrik Sundqvist, Copywriter
Fredrik Hildebrand, Creative Director
Sara von Platen, Designer
Elin Hedensjo, Account Director
Sofia Finnman-Larsson, Account Manager

Cellsynt, Technical Provider
The Amazing Society, Media Agency

Team Vi Agroforestry
Ola Richardsson, Communications Manager
Ylva Agrahn, Communications Specialist
Viktoria Frid, Digital Specialist
Anna-Maria Broman Ek, Fundraiser

McCann Amsterdam launched a new spot for Remia with the unfortunate title, “Old sauce in new bottles” (should have gone with “same sauce,” guys) featuring a remix of an old Rod Stewart song, implicitly comparing the aging singer-songwriter to old sauce.

The spot opens on a pool party scene, where one of the guests comments on the “new Remia” bottle. Then, for some reason, Stewart shows up, giving him the idea to remix his “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” with a modern twist in a moment of inspiration (although it sounds more mid-late 90s eurotechno than contemporary). Stewart is pleased, or maybe just drunk, and is soon dancing and clapping along. The spot ends with the tagline, “The Original Remixed,” which is a bit more appetizing than that “old sauce” line.

To promote the return of General Mills’ beloved French Toast Crunch cereal — which returned this January after being discontinued in 2006 — McCann teamed up with Picture Mill, Beacon Street and director Matt Piedmont for a campaign entitled “The Tiny & The Tasty.”

A series of ads parodies daytime soap operas, which were at their peak during French Toast Crunch’s heyday in the mid to late 90s (the brand launched in 1995) with a “mini mini-soap opera.” The 30-second spots cast a family of dolls and take on such soap opera cliches as “Amnesia,” “Murder,” “Inheritance” and pregnancy. In “Amnesia,” a couple’s son suffers from amnesia and forgets, among other things, to wear pants. That’s a pretty good barometer for the rest of the campaign as well, which deals in over-the-top silliness. The goofiness gets so ridiculous that it detracts from the intended nostalgia factor, though we imagine that all most fans of the brand need to run clamoring to the grocery store is a reminder that it’s back.

Bill Wright, global executive creative director at McCann, told Adweek the idea emerged from “the 1990s origin of French Toast Crunch. That was the decade when daytime dramas were at their height of popularity. So when you take soap operas and cross them with tiny dolls, you get a strangely awesome mashup.”

There are plenty of PSAs targeting texting and driving, but the majority (if not all) of them deal with things from the driver’s side. McCann Mexico just launched a campaign for Chevrolet which flips the script, cautioning viewers, “Don’t Text a Driver.”

In a 50-second spot, a man sitting on the toilet and texting is transported into the middle of the road. As he goes along his way, drawing in viewers with the absurdity of the situation, he continues obliviously texting. Finally as he approaches a curve, the driver he’s texting (who is looking at his cell phone, rather than the road) has to brake and swerve to avoid hitting him. The spot concludes with the message, “When you text a driver, you become the hazard. Don’t text a driver.” Three supporting print ads deliver the same message in similar scenarios: one also employing a man texting from the toilet, another from a copy machine and a woman texting at the hair salon. It’s nice to see an agency taking a slightly different approach to the subject, as it’s all too easy to ignore these messages when they all sound the same. We’ve included one of the print ads below.

Credits:

Agency: McCann Mexico City
Client: General Motors
Product: Chevrolet
Campaign name: Don’t Text a Driver
Chief Creative Officer: Javi Carro
VP Creative Director: Jorge Aguilar
Creative Director: Javier Echevarría/Joka Alquicira
Copywriter: Javier Echevarría
Art Director: Pablo Motta/Ricardo Montes de Oca
Production Team: Juan González/Rafael López
Production House: Antídote MP
Director: Edgardo Abon
Executive Production: Juan Aura / Mark Castro / Gabriela Goela
Musician: Héctor Ruiz /MCO Studios

The Cyranos McCann launched a new campaign for Coca-Cola entitled “Let’s take an extra second” which aims to raise awareness of commonly held prejudices and encourage people to take an extra second to overcome them.

At the center of the campaign is the “Experiment” in which the agency showed participants pictures of different individuals and then asked them what they thought about them. They found that in just a few seconds, the participants had built up an idea about the person based on personal prejudice. But the participants had a surprise in store. After shattering their prejudices with a few extra images, the agency introduced participants to the individuals they were judging, who were behind the screen the whole time. Other ads in the campaign take a similar approach, shattering prejudiced notions about certain types of individuals in “Grandma” and “Blonde,” while also tackling “Bullying.”

“Today, all the world’s leaders agree on one thing, inequality is the biggest problem humanity is facing, and the main driver of inequality are prejudices,” said Leandro Raposo, creative president of The Cyranos McCann. “Coca-Cola is probably the brand that talks the most about equality in its communication, and also as product is one of the most democratic in the market. That’s why is only natural for us to be developing this campaign where we speak about prejudices, but not by stigmatizing ourselves as a society, or being politically correct, but by portraying real cases in an almost interactive way; prejudice in first person. To a greater or a smaller degree, we are all biased, what is serious about that is to live without questioning it or going against it. This campaign asks us to take one more second to get rid of generalization as a way of looking at the other.”

McCann New York launched a new campaign for Choice Hotels with a series of broadcast spots built around The Clash’s classic “Should I Stay or Should I Go,” following the agency’s winning of the account last September.

The ads don’t simply use the song, but build lines around its verses. “My school reunion, I don’t know,” says a man at the beginning of the 60-second spot, which gets the rhyme “Who wants to play in Idaho?” from a band member booking gigs. “Stay or Go” continues with the pattern, matching the cadence of the song with the lines while telling the stories of multiple parties facing a decision of whether or not to make a trip, ending with each of them turning to the camera and asking “Should I stay or should I go?” before ultimately deciding on the latter. The idea is that they all should choose “go” since Choice Hotels has “the right room, rewards and saving up to 20 percent when you book direct.” While the approach gets a bit heavy-handed at times (such as when each party mouths the song’s chorus to the camera) and the flow doesn’t work quite as well in the 30-second version, it’s also memorable and can be pretty fun — for whatever reason the transition from “We’ve got to find some more of these” to “They just replaced my uncle’s knees” works particularly well. The approach is also very on-brand and works well with the “You always have a choice tagline.” We’re just not so sure how Joe Strummer would feel about this one.

The new campaign, which also includes digital, mobile, social media, PR and radio efforts, is part of a company-wide brand relaunch which also includes a new website and refreshed brand identity. This new identity, emphasizing personal connections in the technology age, is reflected in an online anthem ad entitled “Introducing the new Choice Hotels” (featured below).

“The refreshed brand positioning is a true reflection building on Choice Hotels’ 75 years,” Robert McDowell, senior vice president of marketing and distribution at Choice Hotels International, told LBBOnline. “Our goal is to bring people together and welcome every guest wherever their journey takes them. We want to stand out and show people that we understand what truly matters to them.”

Credits:

Creative Agency: McCann New York
Strategy Director: Julien Delatte
Integrated Producer: (Exec) Greg Lotus
Group Creative Director: Thomas Sullivan
Executive Creative Director: Larry Platt
Creative Director: Dov Zmood
Chief Creative Officer: Sean Bryan, Thomas Murphy
Account Management: Neil Frauenglass

Production Company: Moxie Pictures
Production Designer: John Reinhart
Producer: Laura Heflin
Executive Producer: Robert Fernandez
DOP: Eric Schmidt
Director: Frank Todaro

Music and Sound
Sound Engineer: Joe O’Connell @ Blast Audio

Offline
Executive Producer: Cheryl Panek
Editor: Chris Franklin
Edit Company: Big Sky Editorial

Post Production/VFX
Motion Graphics: Brand New School

McCann Lima launched a suggestive campaign to raise testicular cancer awareness on Pornhub.

Enlisting the aid of porn actress Charlotte Stokely, the agency created a video and posted it on Pornhub under the title “Charlotte Stokely teaches you to last longer.” The video advises men on how to properly examine their testicles for cancer, without them realizing it, and then reveals that the title alludes to a longer life with early detection of testicular cancer. It’s a clever, attention-grabbing way to broach the subject, which is easy to ignore when delivered in its usual clinical fashion. The video is being shared on social media, in addition to its home on Pornhub, and acts as part of a larger campaign from the agency to raise awareness of the issue.

Credits:

Agency: McCann – Lima
Client: Pornhub
VP of Marketing: Corey Price
Chief Creative Officer: Mauricio Fernandez-Maldonado
Chief Creative Officer: Nicolás Romanó
Copywriter: Mario Anchorena
Copywriter: Victor Luna
Art Direction: Julio Silva
Production Director: Luis Cisneros
Production Company: Patria
Post-Production: Tosta
Audio Producer: La Cueva

In life, as in advertising, the best idea usually wins.

That simple insight informs McCann’s campaign for the 2015 Clio Awards, featuring pairs of famous foes—Nelson Mandela and Hendrik Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid; Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner; Al Capone and J. Edgar Hoover; and angel and devil.

“It’s just this simple idea that, throughout history, the best ideas always go right to the top,” says Noel Cottrell, chief creative officer at Fitzgerald & Co. (part of the McCann group), who helmed the campaign, over on the Clio site. “There are very few times when bad ideas have trumped. If you think about fashion, or politics, or life generally, the best ideas win. We think it’s a great expression of that.”

The campaign is alternately goofy and serious. Cottrell—who is from South Africa, and feels a strong connection to the Mandela/Verwoerd ad—says that flexibility is a strength.

“One image could be Nelson Mandela and Hendrik Verwoerd, another could be Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner, and still the best idea wins,” he says. “I love that the campaign can stretch like that, from being sort of flip and funny to serious and controversial. I’m hoping we can carry on doing this.”

More images below.

(Note: Clio and Adweek are both owned by affiliates of Guggenheim Partners.)

CREDITS
Agency – Fitzco/McCann
Noel Cottrell – Chief Creative Officer
Andrew Whitehouse – Creative Director/Art Director
Ryan Boblett – Group Creative Director/Art Director
Brad Harvey – Group Creative Director/Copywriter
Eric Monnet – Network Creative Manager
Cris Tally – Director, Project Management
Siera Williams – Assistant Account Manager
Deb Archambault – Senior Integrated Producer
Kimberly Kress – SVP, Director of Talent Partnerships
Gordon Corte – Talent Manager

Brands are obsessed with space, getting to space, and anything that’s been to space. This week, it was Jose Cuervo’s chance to boldly go where no tequila brand had gone before—and hopefully make it home safely.

In honor of National Margarita Day last Sunday, Cuervo and its agency, McCann New York—using aerospace technology and GPS tracking—launched a container of margarita ingredients heavenward, hoping to mix a cocktail in space and parachute it back to Earth.

See how that went in this video:

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The agency teamed up with independent space program JP Aerospace, along with scientists who led the Phoenix Mission to Mars, to build and launch the spacecraft. The launch site was Pinal County Park, about an hour north of Tucson, Ariz.

Severe buffeting of winds at high altitude shook the margarita, and the extreme cold froze it. When the capsule reached about 100,000 feet into space, the weather balloons shattered and the capsule parachuted down.

The margarita landed in a ravine 100 miles from the launch site. It reportedly tasted good.

Baffled about what to do with your worst-performing employees? Reward them with a trip to the Cannes Lions festival in the south of France this summer!

That’s the tongue-in-cheek message of the festival’s official ad campaign, which launches Monday. Don’t think of it as a reward. Think of it as an investment in creativity. After all, as the tagline points out, sending underperforming staff to Cannes as delegates is “cheaper than severance.”

Photographer Dan Burn-Forti shot both the print ads and the online videos, created by McCann London.

“Although our campaign is humorous, it makes a very sensible point. Why should being a Cannes Lions delegate be the preserve of the already excellent?” says Rob Doubal, co-president and chief creative officer of McCann London. “If we really want a more creative world, as we all profess, we should also be encouraging the not-so-excellent performers to be inspired by Cannes Lions.”

So, if your boss hasn’t penciled you in for a Cannes trip, now’s the time to evolve your approach from sucking up to just plain sucking.

 
The print ads:

 
The videos: