Hasta La Creative!

Carnival announced today that it is “the national cruise line advertiser of NBC’s telecast of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games,” with their new Olympic campaign from Arnold Worldwide.

Arnold’s campaign for Carnival launches today with the 30 second television spot, “Bobslide Champs,” which “will air on NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, NBC Sports Network and USA Network throughout the duration of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games,” and also in select cinemas across the country. The spot features a sports announcer narrating while a group of four children race down a Carnival waterslide as if they are a bobsled team. “That was a run for the ages!” he exclaims as the crew crosses the finish line. “Bobslide Champs” is expected to increase the need for Carnival employees to shout “One at a time on the slide, please!” by at least 500 percent.

The campaign is timed to coincide with “what is known as ‘wave season’ – a key window for generating cruise reservations,” which, luckily for Carnival, also comes during the Olympics this year. In addition to the television campaign, the campaign also includes “a series of contests, videos and posts on the line’s highly trafficked social channels.” Stick around for credits and the extended, 60 second version of “Bobslide Champs” after the jump. continued…

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The biting of the medal has become a tradition at the Olympic games that symbolizes victory. DDB Chicago draws the connection between this iconic symbol and the biting of McNuggets and other McDonald’s products “sometimes used to celebrate life’s smaller victories” for the juggernaut Olympic sponsor.

The spot “takes viewers on a ride through Olympic history [which] cleverly juxtaposes medal-biting images with shots of fans across the world biting into McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets.” The first 45 seconds or so of the 60 second spot are given to a well-produced homage to Olympic history. When athletes start biting their medals, the text “The greatest victories are celebrated with a bite” appears on screen, followed by shots of people digging into their McNuggets. It’s well executed, even if the idea of likening winning a gold medal to biting into a meal made of molded leftover chicken parts is quite the stretch. Credits after the jump. continued…

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BBDO New York is on a roll with Guinness. Following last year's "Basketball" spot, truly one of the best of 2013, here's a great new commercial starring U.S. biathletes Tracy and Lanny Barnes. If you don't know their story, just watch the commercial—it's remarkably affecting, given that it's mostly just a static image and some text coming and going.

The spot is on YouTube for now, but will be pulled off the site at midnight Wednesday (Jan. 29), Guinness confirmed. That's because Guinness is not an Olympic sponsor and cannot air advertising featuring Olympic athletes between Jan. 30 and Feb. 26.

Credits below.

UPDATE: The ad was made private on YouTube last night, but you can still see it, for now, at the non-YouTube embed below.

CREDITS
Client: Guinness
Spot: "Barnes Sisters"

Agency: BBDO, New York
Chief Creative Officer, Worldwide: David Lubars
Chief Creative Officer, New York: Greg Hahn
Executive Creative Director: Tom Darbyshire
Associate Creative Director, Copywriter: Jon Yasgur
Associate Creative Director, Art Director: Jim Cancelliere

Director of Integrated Production: Dave Rolfe
Producer: Whitney Collins

Editorial, Animation: My Active Driveway
Creative Director: Steve Choo

Music: Andrew Knox Music
Music Producer: Loren Parkins

The BBC's official trailer for its coverage of next month's Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, has its champions and detractors, with some applauding the 90-second clip's epic sweep and others lamenting its dark tone and dearth of emotional appeal.

Created by RKCR/Y&R and director Tomek Baginski, the film focuses on hyper-realistic winter desolation, its frames filled with frozen peaks, dagger-like ice formations and majestic pines toppling in plumes of snow. A booming narration by actor Charles Dance, as the voice of nature, begins: "I am the dreadful menace. The one whose will is done. The haunting chill upon your neck. I am the conundrum." And he gets even more intense, warning: "The ones that came before you. Stood strong and tall and brave. But I stole their dreams away. Those dreams could not be saved."

Athletes appear around the one-minute mark, trekking across a lonely mountain pass, like some lost party of explorers inexplicably hauling skis, skates and hockey sticks in a haze of hypothermic delirium.

Response has been decidedly mixed. Mostly I applaud the BBC for trying something a bit unexpected. If nothing else, the approach is sparking conversation and debate, fueling the promotional fires, while a more aspirational/feel-good spot, no matter how marvelously executed, would've been predictable and perhaps left some viewers (and reviewers) feeling a bit numb.

Yes, a focus on individual athletes or specific events might have been compelling, but the clip does well in positioning the Winter Games as an outsized, soul-stirring challenge, a war waged against almost mythic forces poised to smite us at every turn. The voiceover, from Tywin Lannister himself, drives home the point that the Olympics can be the ultimate game of thrones.

Want a free subway ride in Moscow? Get ready to do 30 squats. And make sure you drop it low, because the specially designed ticket vending machine can tell if you're cheating.

The health-conscious stunt was created to promote the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The number isn't arbitrary, either. A metro ride costs 30 rubles, so each squat is worth one.

The vending machine piece is just one element of a larger campaign to get Russians more involved in the sporting lifestyle. Moscow officials and the Russian Olympic Committee have installed a bunch of exercise-related, reward-based activities around the city. From turning bus handles into resistance bands to providing stationary bikes that also charge your cell phone, they're working hard to, in their words, "add elements of sport into daily life."

Hopefully, some of them will catch on in the long term. Olympics or not, we could all use a couple more squats in our daily commute.

La marque de bonbons Cadbury a confié à Shane Griffin et au studio Piranha Bar la réalisation de sa campagne TV « Enjoy The Moment » pour les Jeux Olympiques. Visuellement très réussie, ces animations 3D reprenant des efforts de sportifs est à découvrir en vidéo dans la suite de l’article.

Recently there’s been plenty of hype around the London Olympics and some have even declared the XXX Olympiad as being the first official ‘Social Games’.  This statement alone has raised much debate around how the athletes will be managed in and around the village and how brands will take advantage of any opportunities that arise […]

Une très belle campagne réalisé pour les prochains Jeux Paralympiques (prévue pour fin août) par la chaîne anglaise Channel 4, mettant en avant ces catégories et profil d’athlètes exceptionnels. Un spot intitulé « Meet The Superhuman » sur une bande son de Public Enemy – Harder Than You Think.

Un trailer d’une durée de 40 secondes pour la couverture de la chaîne BBC autour des prochains jeux-olympiques d’Hiver 2010 à Vancouver. Un travail et une production du studio AKA, sur une réalisation de Marc Craste et de Jon Klassen. Un conte stylisé autour d’un héros inuit.

Previously on Fubiz

• Vancouver 2010 Campaign
• BBC Radio Campaign
• Het Klokhuis Titles