Hasta La Creative!

In anticipation of tonight’s matchup between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors, ESPN is airing a new “This is SportsCenter” spot from W+K New York featuring Warriors star Steph Curry.

Curry joins SportsCenter anchors Stan Verrett and Neil Everett in the ESPN cafeteria, where he thanks two cooks for (accidentally) celebrating his recent performance on the court by serving chicken curry. The anchors try to convince Curry it’s a coincidence, but he’s not buying it, even after the cooks’ confused glances. It’s one of the more fun SportsCenter spots in a while, as, even if the premise is a little obvious, Curry plays his part well enough to make it work.

There’s also a “Kitchen Warriors” installment in which Steph squares off against his wife, Ayesha Curry, to see who can make the better chicken curry. With their daughter Riley as the judge, it soon becomes clear Steph’s skills are on the court, not in the kitchen.

Note: credits only apply to the first spot; “Kitchen Warriors” was created by the client.

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Last week we met Wieden+Kennedy’s new work for Gap in the form of family-centric spots directed by Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter Sofia (we were partial to the super-awkward mistletoe scene).

The ads were very different than the darker, more abstract work by David Fincher — and the agency’s latest additions to the brand’s holiday campaign are even more unusual. The theme of the “Play Your Stripes” series is clothing items recast as musical instruments.

As W+K explains it, the agency “re-imagined” the client’s holiday catalog and made a short film for each of ten individual products, tying it to sound in some way. Here’s the first one, “Hi-5 Machine,” with the tagline “These girls mittens hi-5 each other whether they want to or not.”

While these ads won’t air on TV, Gap is promoting them on its social channels and sending them to various music pubs.

Nine more gallery-ready shorts after the jump.

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Here’s some new work from Wieden+Kennedy New York for a client listed as “Jordan” (note the lack of “Air” there).

The story: Blake Griffin and Chris Paul, both of whom happen to play for the LA Clippers and both of whom happen to be launching new shoes around the same time, have scored a couple of sketch comedy shorts on Adult Swim. Developed with the co-creator of the much-missed Chappelle Show, the project “BGCP3TV in HD” is a promotion for Jordans and “a shout out to the city of Los Angeles.”

The first episode aired several hours before our dog rudely woke us up this morning:

So they can’t even operate without their shoes. Since these episodes aren’t technically ads, do we call them “branded content” or “sponsored content?”

Promos and credits below.

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The hottest story in the ad world today concerns the newly-released TV components of a campaign that had a few scratching their heads last week: W+K’s “Dress Normal” for new client Gap.

These ads, directed by David Fincher, add a bit of narrative heft to a campaign previously consisting of celebrities in everyday poses. The first one, “Golf”, elaborates on the “it’s OK if your clothes are a little boring” theme with a bit of spontaneously unconventional romance:

Three more and credits below.

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Wieden+Kennedy New York has rolled out two timely social campaigns for Heineken: “#BrazilianNoShow” and “Like for Love.”

“#BrazilianNoShow,” as you might have guessed, is a World Cup-related campaign. W+K New York and Heineken are “challenging CMOs, bosses, and people across America to give their employees time off to watch a game, with their new challenge #BrazilianNoShow!” The idea followed Team USA’s unexpected win against Ghana in their opening game, but is as relevant as ever following the team’s advancement past the group stage. Since game times coincide with the work day here in the U.S., Heineken CMO Nuno Teles appears (video above) to implore American workers and bosses to play hooky and support their team — after all, this opportunity only comes along once every four years.

“Like for Love” sees Heineken supporting Gay Pride Month by “encouraging consumers to ‘spread love’ through the ubiquitous double tap on Instagram, using six photos of real couples to create an interactive virtual Pride flag right in users’ feeds.” The real couple photos all have a single color background, but create an interactive, virtual Pride flag users’ feeds after they are liked. Stick around for credits after the jump. (more…)

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W+K and Heineken’s initial “social experiment” (sorry guys, no, this is a marketing campaign) “Departure Roulette” set about to send travelers at JFK Airport on a free trip to a new destination — one that they didn’t know of in advance.

Operating under the assumption that “Heineken consumers are especially open to adventure and the unknown” (and pissy-tasting beer), Heineken and W+K chose to follow-up by finding enthusiastic fans of the initial campaign in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York and bring the Departure Roulette board to them with “Departure Roulette En Route.” These were fans who tweeted that they would love to be given the opportunity to play Departure Roulette, so it was a fair assumption that they would accept the challenge.

Surprised but delighted to be given the opportunity to press the red button and set off for destinations unknown, most seemed excited at their travel prospects. One dude didn’t know where Reykjavik is, which is kind of lame, since I would club baby seals to be given the opportunity to travel to Iceland. Someone else appears to not have been home. (They must be kicking themselves for that one.) Another guy seemed less than elated to be going to Romania, with a reaction something along the lines of “Romania? Okay, I guess I’m going to Romania.” I guess he would have preferred Disney World or something. Maybe that “open to adventure and the unknown” assumption wasn’t so accurate.

This is a really interesting campaign from W+K. The original premise was a cool idea, and the follow-up engaging fans who claimed they’d love to participate makes a lot of sense; and taking things outside of the airport really raises the bar on the spontaneity factor. Wasting a perfectly good chicken parm, though? Not so cool. Credits after the jump.

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