Hasta La Creative!

Every brand story contains an element of myth.

In the case of Jack Daniel’s, legend has it that the brand’s founder, Jasper Newton “Jack” Daniel, had a mysterious safe that led to his death. 

One day, after forgetting the combination, he kicked it so hard that he gave himself gangrene. An infection passed from his sore toe to his whole foot, then to his leg, which was amputated. This didn’t stop the gangrene from traveling, however, and Daniel ultimately died in 1911, at age 61, of progressive gangrene complications. 

Since then, the safe has never left his office, which is part of a living museum in Lynchburg, Tenn. In terms of brand lore, this is Jack Daniel’s Heart of the Ocean—a weird talisman that’s traveled, untouched, through time. Maybe it’s even cursed. 

But for the first time ever, it’s hitting the road. From now until Saturday, you can see the safe that cost the brand its founder at a pop-up experience called Jack Daniel’s Lynchburg General Store, located at 155 5th Ave. in New York City. 

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Here’s a pretty great out-of-home execution for Oliver Stone’s upcoming film Snowden, about the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden—a billboard that’s been spying on pedestrians in Toronto and streaming footage of their movements on the street.

Snowden’s revelations about the NSA, of course, raised troubling questions about mass surveillance. And the billboard—timed to the Toronto International Film Festival, where Stone’s movie premiered—itself embodies those very issues.

DentsuBos and Elevation Pictures set up surveillance cameras with motion tracking technology around Dundas Square. The cameras tracked pedestrians’ movements and livestreamed them onto a giant video board.

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It isn’t often in advertising that we get a happy ending that isn’t totally fictional and “brought to you by.“ But here one is, in all its furry glory!

In early May, we wrote about Glimpse Collective’s Kickstarter quest to replace all the ads in a London Underground station with images of cats. By the end of that month, U.K. animal rescue center Battersea joined forces with them, offering its cats up as models, in hopes that nice Londoners would experience love at first sight. 

Despite that endorsement, things weren’t looking good. In the last few days of their campaign, Glimpse—which created the Citizens Advertising Takeover Service, or #CatsNotAds—had raised $17,487, just over half of its objective (£23,000, or nearly $30,500). The company appealed to agency heads to provide rescue funds, and we closed our minds and hearts, awaiting the inevitable snuffing-out of a beautiful dream. 

But this week we discovered God exists, and loves us. On Monday morning, commuters passing through London’s Clapham Common Tube station were accosted by feline friends. 

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Summer is better with perks. To take advantage of that, Miller Lite is spending these sun-soaked months offering “kick backs”—a fun series of unexpected rewards—to people across the country. Who says service is dead? 

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All delegates, superdelegates, former college basketball coaches and garden variety political junkies attending next week’s Republican National Convention will be greeted by an unusual and unavoidable sight: Sen. Ted Cruz going in for a passionate kiss with presumptive presidential nominee Donald J. Trump. 

A non-profit advocacy group called Planting Peace placed the ad directly outside the entrance to the convention at Cleveland’s Quicken Loans Arena as a “message to the GOP.”

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Back in February, a weird Oreo door suddenly appeared on 18th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York, promising untold wonders of cryptic cookie goodness. Now, Los Angeles gets its turn.

The cookie brand’s new Wonder Vault installation—created by 360i, Weber Shandwick and Momentum—will be open today only (Monday, July 11) at 1555 W. Sunset Blvd. from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. PDT. It’s an elaborate ad for Oreo’s new Choco Chip cookies, and it features rooms that will make adults feel like kids again, as everything within them is oversized.

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Last November, Xbox celebrated the launch of Rise of the Tomb Raider in the U.K. with quite a sadistic stunt in London. It challenged eight Lara Croft fans stand on a billboard and get pummeled with harsh weather conditions, as voted for by the public watching online.

Last person standing would be the winner.

In the end, the McCann London stunt was a rousing success. And last week at Cannes, the work won 17 Lions, including five golds, becoming one of the most-awarded campaigns of the year.

We wanted to learn a little more about how McCann pulled off the stunt, which of course brought with it myriad logistical and medical concerns. Below, Lolly Thomson, co-president and chief creative officer at McCann London, tells us how it all came together—from the contestant who got hypotheriam to two others who found a love connection. 

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Penguin is running a series of posters in the London Underground featuring quotes from classic literature. But the quote it’s pulled from Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons has led to accusations that the publishing house is provoking “anger and ethnic hatred.” 

There are also questions about the specific translation that was used, which makes this whole thing even more awkward. 

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Social media has not been kind to this Twentieth Century Fox billboard for X-Men: Apocalypse, which shows the titular villain, Apocalypse, choking Mystique, with Rose McGowan urging others to yell at Fox about using imagery of a violent act against a woman to sell the movie. 

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Imagine if you could explore Europe’s greatest cities without having to constantly look down at your phone to make sure you’re on course to your next destination.

U.K.-based regional airline easyJet is trying to solve that problem, at least in theory, with a new pair of internet-connected sneakers that signal to wearers when to turn left or right by vibrating underneath the respective foot. This way, sightseers’ heads can stay up, taking in the surroundings while they walk, without losing their way. 

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