Hasta La Creative!

Caviar director Ruben Fleischer joined forces with cover girl Emma Stone, who recently starred in his film Gangster Squad, for a new original short for Vogue.

The spot sees Fleischer and Stone playing themselves, discussing Stone’s latest role. Fleischer, who wrote and directed the short, plays the stright man. Stone, meanwhile, has some unusual ideas to prepare for her role as a nun, all of which involve magic. As you may have guessed, things get a little bit silly, but the humor never quite connects and the premise feels a bit forced — even if “Everyone loves magic, even nuns.”

Stick around for credits after the jump.  continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Arnold Worldwide has a new campaign launching the new Brushing Chews for Milk-Bone, which feature “a patented shape that has been developed over the past three years, earning them the trusted Veterinary Oral Health Council’s (VOHC) seal of approval.”

To introduce the new product, Arnold keeps it simple, telling the story of a man and his dog (Ted and Rudy), and explaining how their new Milk-Bone Brushing Biscuit is designed to work as well as a toothbrush to keep dogs’ teeth clean. Because no one wants to brush their dog’s teeth, this is a pretty effective selling point. Ted and Rudy’s story extends beyond the broadcast spot above to a series of online videos, all set against the red backdrop matching Milk-Bone’s packaging, and following roughly the same formula. The campaign strategy is based on the insight that “The more you care for your dog, the happier and healthier he’ll be.” Ted and Rudy’s relationship is intended to to be “funny and adorable” but arrives at something closer to “hokey, but kind of cute.”

“They’re very much a classic comedy duo, with Rudy being the straight man and Ted as the accidental comedian,” explains Arnold creative director Tristan Kincaid. “We put them on a bright red background to give them a simple but visually striking stage for them to tell their stories.”

The campaign also includes social elements, with each of the six online videos (which act as pre-roll video assets on sites including Hulu, AOL, Discovery, TubeMogul and Yahoo) featuring an end card driving traffic to Milk-Bone’s Facebook page. Future social posts will also include Instagram and Twitter. Stick around for credits and a pair of online spots after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In a world with Starbucks at every corner and small, fancy artisinal coffee shops sprouting up everywhere, it would be counterproductive for an instant coffee brand to try to compete. So W+K starts a different conversation for Maxwell House, asking, “Whatever happened to good?”

The new “Say Good Morning to a Good Day” campaign features a series of broadcast and web spots centering around an affable, middle-aged everyman (everydad?) who laments that with all the attention on phrases like “Awesome,” “Amazing,” and “That’s epic, bro!” people have forgotten about “good.” In the 30-second spot, he goes on to explain that good is “Swinging to get on base” or “choosing not to overshoot the moon, but instead to land right on it.” This all makes “good” seem pretty appealing, with the spot ending with the resurrected “Good to the Last Drop” tagline.

While some may question the choice of admitting your product isn’t “amazing,” the strategy makes sense for Maxwell House, whose coffee is, at best, “good enough,” and whose best bet is to convince the older generation that all the fuss over fancy coffee just isn’t worth it. W+K pull off the execution really well, making the “good” approach about as persuasive as it can be. Credits after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

In December, Saatchi & Saatchi Belgrade launched a provocative campaign called “Chronicles of Threats” for Serbian Commission for the Investigation of Murders of Journalists and Office of the OSCE’s Representative on Freedom of the Media.

The campaign featured a threatening letter in one of the country’s most widely circulated newspapers, with an accompanying video on the news outlet’s website, intended to shake public indifference to violence against journalists and rally “media outlets and journalists to document real and threatened acts of violence towards editorial staff, writers and photographers.”

“Chronicles of Threats” succeeded in getting the public’s attention. Thousands called the police in response to the threat, and soon it was featured on the news. When the stunt was revealed, it sparked debate about the kind of threats journalists receive daily. But the campaign also led to the reopening of three cases of murdered journalists, and in one case — Slavko Curuvija, “the most influential independent journalist reporting during the Milosevic regime,” who was murdered 15 years ago — to the arrest of the perpetrators of the crime.

Saatchi & Saatchi Belgrade’s executive creative director Veljko Golubovic commented: “I think the “Chronicles of Threats” campaign is a great example of true power of modern communications. Even one simple idea can move mountains and push the whole society forward. What was impossible yesterday is today’s reality. Our idea was initiation of the chain reaction that led to solving a murder case. And more than that it changed the way people feel and think about journalists.” Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

W+K Amsterdam have a launched a new, global World Cup 2014 campaign for Powerade, “the official sports drink of FIFA.”In addition to television, the campaign also includes print/out of home, digital, and online documentary films (more on that later).

“There’s Power in Every Game” centers around Andrés Iniesta, the Spanish star who scored the winning goal in the 2010 World Cup. He takes center stage in the 60-second spot (featured above), which also features five amateur athletes from around the world. Each of these athletes has “overcome challenges in their lives and in the process have lifted their teammates, rallied supporters and inspired communities through their dedication and achievements in the sport” — which exemplifies the campaign’s #PowerThrough message.

Each of these amateur athletes will be featured in their own documentary, starting with the inspirational story of Nicolai “Nico” Calabria. Debuted at the Kicking + Screaming Football Festival in New York last week and being released as a television spot in addition to its online release, the two minute film tells Nico’s story growing up with one leg and defying expectations to succeed as an athlete. Incorporating an impressively-edited mix of home video footage and live action film, it’s a powerful telling of Nico’s story, and well worth a watch.

“Nico’s story is one of unwavering determination,” said Brynn Bardacke, global group creative director for Powerade. “He truly embodies what we mean when we say there’s power in every player and power in every game.”

Stick around for “Nico & Powerade,” along with credits, after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

360i tapped L.A. celebrity chefs Roy Choi, Michael Voltaggio and Nguyen Tran (of Starry Kitchen) for a new campaign for Oreos.

Created in collaboration with production company Decon and directed by Claire Cottrell, the series features “Oreo hacks,” with the chefs repurposing the sandwich cookies in inventive, delicious ways. Choi, who you may remember was recently featured in a Google Glass spot, crumbles Oreos into a chicken tender crust that seems like a delicious late night snack. Voltaggio, meanwhile, transforms the cookies into dessert tortillas, accompanied by a shandy created with Lemon Oreo creme. Chan comes up with an “impulse hack” based on other items found in a convenience store, combining Oreos with pound cake, cherry soda and salted peanuts to make a kind of bread pudding. Before introducing their recipes, each chef waxes nostalgic on eating Oreos growing up and shares their different methods of consumption (Voltaggio is an Oreo puller, while Choi is more of a traditionalist). It’s a fun campaign, and should help shed a different light on the brand — especially since the videos point viewers to Oreo’s Tumblr, where they can get the recipes for the Oreo hacks. Stick around for Voltaggio and Tran’s Oreo hacks and full credits after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

20something’s new campaign for Go For Zero is gaining a lot of attention, already surpassing the one million view mark on YouTube (it was uploaded on Monday).

To call attention to the dangers of speeding, 20something had people invite their fast-driving friends or relatives to their own funeral. The speeders, of course, were unaware that they were stepping into their won funeral. Tearful friends and relatives lament losing their loved ones lost too soon, while they look on and imagine what it might be like if the funeral was for real. Heavy-handed? Perhaps. But the idea behind the stunt was that most people overlook the danger inherent in casual speeding, so they needed such a wakeup call to bring attention to the devastation their driving habits could cause. Credits after the jump. continued…

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.

RPA teamed up with production company tool for a new campaign celebrating Newport Beach Film Festival’s 15th anniversary entitled “15 Years Under the Influence.”

The centerpiece of the campaign is a short film called “Bedtime Story.” In the two and a half minute video, directed by Tom Routson, a daughter asks her father to read her a story before bed. The father begins a story about “a beautiful princess who lived in a magical castle far, far away,” but soon finds himself bored with the story and strays from the narrative, deciding that the princess is not actually a princess but a “beautiful operating system” (referencing Spike Jonze’s Her). From there his story bounces all over the place, referencing memorable moments in independent film from the last 20 years or so, with a rather gory ending. Somehow, through all this his daughter manages to fall asleep, making the display of truly awful parenting seem almost sweet. In addition to its home online, the film will screen during this year’s festival in Newport Beach, which will take place from April 24th-May 1st. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Online marketing. Content marketing. Inbound marketing. Native advertising. Sponsored content. There’s a lot of buzzwords being tossed about these days when it come to making it easier for people to find your brand online. Most of these buzzwords front for practical and effective strategies any intelligent brand should employ. But let’s not forget about the granddaddy of “getting found” online: SEO.

The approach to SEO has changed quite a bit over the years. It’s no longer about “gaming” Google will silly parlor tricks because, well, Google is on to your tricks. So effective SEO is a lot more than keyword stuffing and other forms of trickery.

While rankings are still an important part of any effective SEO campaign, there is a lot more to it than that. Here are a few other areas you should be paying attention to:

Tip 1

Google provides free tools for website marketers to use to help understand how visitors are finding your site and interacting with it. You should sign up for Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools (Bing also offers a Webmaster Tools product that you should utilize as well). Google Analytics and webmaster tools will help you understand how your traffic is getting to you and what it is doing once it arrives.

These products can help you tailor content, products, and services for your target market. The insights given to you by Google help you create a great user experience which can lead to more and more people talking about your site, sharing your content, and linking to you (all of which help with your search engine rankings).

The Webmaster Tool products give you insight into how a search engine interacts with your site. The data from this piece will help you identify and fix key techincal issues which also helps your SEO

You can learn more about each free product via these links: http://www.google.com/analytics/
https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/home
http://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster

Tip 2

Forget “link building” and start “relationships” with your market and key influencers in your market. Search on Google, Bing, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Google+ to find key influencers in your market and start building relationships with them.

Treat it like a typical networking scenario. Talk about how you can help each other and each other’s customers rather than emailing hundreds of strangers per day and asking them to link to your website. Much like the offline world, networking is one of the biggest keys to success in SEO today.

Good, honest, relevant recommendations of products, services, and information to your potential customers from influencers in your marketplace are better than any “link” you might acquire.

Tip 3

Make it easy for your customers to leave reviews on various business platforms like Google+ for Business (http://www.google.com/+/business/) and Bing Places for Business (https://www.bingplaces.com). As search engines continue to pull in data from multiple sources to present to searchers, you should do the same for major review sites across the web (like Yelp).

This will help you with getting the attention of searchers when you show up in a search result amongst your competition.

Tip 4

Avoid trying to game Google. Google has a tough job to do in policing its search engine. The quality and user experience of Google’s search engine is something they (rightly) take very seriously.

Taking shortcuts will only hurt you in the long term. Stick to doing high quality, ethical marketing practices online and you will be more likely to succeed in the long run than those who are constantly looking for shortcuts.

Tip 5

Fix your mobile experience. Google expects mobile searches to outnumber desktop searches by next year! It is super important to make sure your site functions correctly on mobile devices and does not rely on outdated technology like Flash.

The world is going mobile. In a short period of time desktop searches are going to become the minority. You will need to be sure that all parts of your website function correctly and elegantly on a mobile device to ensure a great user experience. Keeping up with delivering a great user experience across all online devices is perhaps one of the more important tips in this article. Having a “mobile friendly” site is not simply a nice thing to have at this point, it is a requirement.

Good SEO is a sum of many parts. Start incorporating these tips in your SEO campaign and you are likely to earn quality, sustainable traffic from search engines.

This article was written by Eric Covino, President & Founder of Creative Signals.