Hasta La Creative!

Process this: The "Intel Inside" logo has made its way inside the jerseys of Spanish soccer team FC Barcelona in a reported five-year, $25 million deal.

The emblem is visible only when players pull their shirts up over their heads, which they've been known to do when celebrating a goooaaal! Intel vp of sponsorship David Haroldsen says the placement "authentically tells the story of who we are rather than just being another brand that is visible with all the other logos that exist. We believed we would have more value with the symbolic placement with occasional pop-up moments within the game."

Fair enough. Cool concept. Still, I wonder … doesn't this send a tacit message that big corporate bucks are all that's "inside" these players, driving them like robots of commerce? Aren't champions supposed to be motivated by something more, like their fierce love of the game and burning desire to win? Doesn't that competitive heart, beating deep inside, truly make a great team tick?

And when Santa Claus comes to my house next week, will he bring the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy along for the ride?

Starbucks wants you to think it's just like your neighborhood cafe from 100 years ago. The coffee mega-chain has opened a New Orleans location with an interior design inspired by what the coffee giant thinks a Louisiana apothecary's shop at the turn of the 20th century would have looked like. It's part of the company's attempts to create "locally relevant" stores—as opposed to the same old cookie-cutter atmosphere.

Apart from the fact that it's totally absurd for a giant corporation to try to feel like a small business, the design does look nice, and seems to mean some extra work for artists, usually a good thing. The strategy, clever in a mercenary sort of way, stretches from Seattle—where there are apparently some jarring anecdotes about members of Starbucks research team hanging out at the local competition and taking extensive notes—to Tokyo, where one store's design reportedly pays homage to traditional tea houses.

The concept even comes with a cringeworthy oxymoron of a portmanteau (not the sole purview of Starbucks), which really only emphasizes how ridiculous the whole thing is. Plus, no matter how the inside of the store looks, the coffee will remain mediocre.

Via PSFK.

The D.C. Metro's newest ad campaign, dubbed "Metro Forward," took a giant step backward recently with a sexist print ad that suggests women would rather talk about shoes than public transport reliability. The not-so-subtle subtext, according to critics, is that women (specifically the Metro's riders) are too vapid to care about matters of import.

"The point of the ad is to get people talking about Metro's massive rebuilding effort by juxtaposing technical facts with a variety of light responses in conversation between friends," a Metro spokesperson tells DCist.com.

In a version of the campaign featuring two men, when asked whether he'd noticed some new hardware installed on the train, the guy's punch line is, "No, Billy, not so much." What, no mention of beer, power tools or watching some sports last night?

The sexism of the women-oriented ad is particularly egregious and laughable because it's so lazy. "Ladies and their shoes" is a punch line you'd hear on late-night TV 25 years ago, and it wasn't funny then, either. Luckily for us, this is one of those advertising blunders where the parodies will be much better executed because more thought will have been put into them than in the original.

Why can't Bobby just talk about shoes?! Not as funny because he's a dude? #sexistdcmetro @wmata @unsuckdcmetro pic.twitter.com/WtWWH1UrnY— YH (@parkyhee) December 3, 2013

Soliciting testimonials from alumni isn't a new way to advertise a university, but this example definitely takes it to a new and charming extreme.

Canada’s Royal Roads University decided to let alumni speak for themselves by physically embedding them in what passers-by assumed to be digital ad kiosks.

In the case study below, the university and agency Cossette Vancouver show how they constructed a special display box that hid a live alumna inside. When people pressed a "Connect" button on the display, a panel dropped down, revealing the actual woman they thought they'd be hearing from digitally.

Some were so surprised that they thought she was a very realistic video or perhaps a robot.

Nothing screams "I love my university" louder than a woman’s willingness to stand in a claustrophobic box all day and talk to surprised strangers. But the clip would obviously be more effective if we saw high schoolers or even parents praising the approach rather than hearing seniors talk about how nice it was to talk to a "real person." Still, I look forward to other inventive executions in this campaign.

CREDITS
Agency: Cossette Vancouver
Client: Royal Roads University
Creative Director: Michael Milardo
Art Director: George Lin
Copywriter: Pierre Chan
Director of Account Services: Chris Miller
Strategic Planner: Ute Preusse
Account Supervisor: Robyn Smith
Account Team: Philippa Groom, Megan O'Rourke
Producer: April Haffenden

New York is a stressful place, and Times Square isn't the most soothing of its neighborhoods. But thankfully, Draftfcb New York and the Jamaica Tourist Board recently plunked down an enormous stress ball on Broadway between 45th and 46th Streets, giving New Yorkers and visitors a chance to "squeeze their burdens away." The giant ball doesn't work like a regular stress ball—you'd never get your hand around it—but perhaps you were meant to just give it a big hug, mon. In any case, its big smiling face served as a de-stresser by itself. And if all else failed, reggae artist and Jamaica native Gyptian was on hand to perform his mellow tunes for the crowd. More images, and credits, below.

CREDITS
Client: Jamaica Tourist Board
Agency: Draftfcb, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Javier Campopiano
Group Creative Director: Kevin Jordan
Creative Directors: Bruno Acanfora, Ariel Abramovici
Associate Creative Director: Lucas Bongioanni
Group Management Director: Wendy Glass
Account Supervisor: Ashley Hughes
Account Executive: Molly Burns
Producers: Joe De Franco, Susie Rofe, Daunno Jason

Mysterious billboards are a thing now, I guess.

The latest one getting national attention is on Interstate 69 in Flint, Mich. White letters set against a blue background read: "I'm concerned about the blueberries." Well, sure, aren't we all? Michigan is a big blueberry producer, but local groups engaged in that business claim they're not behind the cryptic message, and CBS Outdoor, which owns the billboard, says it was posted anonymously and won't say more.

Theories abound. Some say it's about drugs (Oxycontin's street name is Blueberries, apparently). Others think it has to do with children or education funding, bees dying off or Obamacare. Personally, I'm hoping for a more exciting revelation. Maybe it's from Lena Dunham—she's wacky, right? Or Banksy—that dude's so in everyone's face! Maybe it's from the nation's strawberry growers—a prelude to an epic battle of antioxidants.

Those mystery NSA billboards in New York and San Francisco turned out to be from BitTorrent. That was … exciting. Right? Is anybody else getting a little bored with this trend?

UPDATE: Turns out Flint businessman Phil Shaltz put up the billboard, which is based on a personal and thought-provoking experience he had on a recent vacation. "This is a stunt. It was something I decided to put up to grab people's attention so they could start thinking about blueberries," he tells Mlive.com. "But now you need to make the transition to know what the heck I'm talking about. Blueberries are the concerns and the hurdles and the struggles that all of us deal with in a day."

The goal was essentially to make people see the world from the perspective of others. While vacationing in Alaska, Shaltz met a young tour guide who, when asked how things were going, said, "I'm concerned about the blueberries." Specifically, he was worried there wouldn't be enough rain for the state's blueberry crop.

At first, Shaltz felt like the 21-year-old was naive to be worried about such a specific issue, but he began to respect the young man's perspective and found himself wishing that others could be motivated to think about what's concerning the people around us. "We all go through the day and we see people who have blueberries—their own issues—and we don’t do anything. Even when it's not about rain, when it's something we can impact, we show just how desensitized we've become. We aren't as helpful to the common man in even the small things in life."

Shaltz admits his purpose with the mysterious billboard might prove unstatisfying to many who've been trying to guess its meaning. "There will be people who see this billboard and see this story, that are so disappointed that this is what it's about. Some people want it to be about racism or drugs or the school system, but it's all about something very simple and very human that touches all of us."

If the mere idea of falling 24 miles through Earth's atmosphere weren't scary enough for you, here's some footage that shows how truly terrifying it really is.

Red Bull has released nearly 10 minutes of first-person footage from Felix Baumgartner's record-breaking jump last Oct. 15 from the edge of space to the desert of New Mexico, along with visualized data showing his altitude, speed, heart rate and G-force stress. If you can handle it, it's worth watching just for the first 90 seconds, when Baumgartner struggles through an uncontrolled spin at 800 miles per hour.

Wired explains: "A relatively mild instability beginning about 25 seconds into the jump appeared to stabilize as he accelerated towards his top speed of Mach 1.25 (844 mph). But as Baumgartner continued to fall through the very thin air, the lack of control was apparent and the spin progressed into something that looks much worse from his point of view than it did from the outside."

Using his arms to regain control, he managed to get back on track, and the rest is relatively smooth sailing. For those who want even more, check out Red Bull's full documentary on the Stratos jump.