Hasta La Creative!

Last fall, Fox Searchlight gave away limited-edition Birdman action figures as part of its marketing for the movie. Now, the Best Picture Oscar winner is reopening in cinemas—and getting a dose of new marketing, including a commercial for those toys.

It’s a fun little morsel of ’90s nostalgia—a parody of old Saturday morning toy ads. And like the film it’s promoting, it’s a multi-layered gem. It has more cuts than the entire movie, though, and also has young children (certainly not the target demo of the R-rated film itself). This is surely a nod to the original Birdman cartoon from the ’60s and the subsequent Adult Swim reboot.

“Hey kids! You too can now defeat Birdman’s arch-nemesis The Condor with this spiffy Birdman Action Figure! Batteries not included,” says the YouTube page, which goes on to mention that Birdman reopens in theaters this weekend.

Check out the ad, but don’t get too close—it “smells like balls.”

And for more Birdman action figure goodness, check out BirdmanSpeaks.com—and click on the speech bubbles. But make sure you have headphones. This isn’t G-rated stuff.

Fifty Shades of Grey, the movie based on the controversial book about BDSM and heavy breathing, apparently, comes out on Friday. Thankfully, Lego has one-upped the trailer (not that it would have been hard) by creating it scene by scene with Legos.

The attention to detail is perfect, from Christian Grey’s brooding face to the weird Skinemax scenes at the end. And it’s the second fan-made Lego recreation video in as many weeks, following A+C Studios’ Lego versions of Super Bowl ads.

A note from the creator, Antonio Toscano: “Lego Group is not even remotely involved in this video, except for the fact that I have bought a lot of their products during my life. Universal Picture is not involved in this, this video is not at all part of a promotional campaign for the movie, I am not getting any money for it and I don’t care at all for this movie to be an audience success or not.”

So, Lego’s not officially into recreating soft-core porn, I guess.

Meet two characters in search of an exit.

“First Kiss: One Year Later” is Barely Political’s sendup of last year’s mega-viral, Cannes gold Lion-winning video from fashion label Wren that brought strangers together for some smoochy face time.

The original clip has generated nearly 100 million views, and a bazillion parodies—watching Haley Joel Osment take a slap to the kisser never gets old—so you’d think the joke would be played out.

Yet here we are, watching Beth Hoyt (who also wrote the script for the four-minute spot) and Tom Lipinski, captured in glorious black-and-white by director Todd Womack, portraying a “First Kiss” couple who stay on the set for an entire year. (It’s timed to coincide with the real video’s debut last March.)

We observe their various relationship firsts, like sex, parental meetings, fights and giving birth (“I’m just a P.A.!” the P.A. screams, wielding his clapboard like forceps as Lipinski primps for a selfie.)

On one level, this is a pitch-perfect parody of the original, taken to its logical extreme. Using the cutesy-awkward, hyper-stylized “First Kiss” canvas, it deftly skewers the insecurities, foibles and blatant banality of modern relationships, with a knowing wink at its audience to take the humor with a grain of salt.

The clip also makes a deeper, subtler point about the modern media experience. After all, it’s become increasingly common to play out our daily dramas in the 24/7 audio-visual environment. Or else, we spend countless hours watching others broadcast themselves. Most of us do a bit of both.

If one of the real “First Kiss” couples actually had stayed on the set for a year, they might well have produced a video like this one. As the whole world becomes both soundstage and screening room, that’s how the camera rolls.

In its early days, the Internet was sort of the Wild West. Message boards, chatrooms and newsgroups were huge. Browsers, apps and social media were just a twinkle in its eye. 

Well, what if Facebook—which launched in 2004—were around a decade earlier, in the primordial ooze of the Internet? The pretty hilarious fake commercial below imagines just that—and is actually a parody of the cult favorite America Online spot from 1995 (that’s “AOL” to you teens).

The Facebook parody, from comedian Brent Weinbach, features some pretty amazing dialogue which comes off as absurd but gives us some profound perspective on how far we’ve come—and how good we have it 20 years later.

“How about just clicking on your Mom’s profile and saying ‘Happy Birthday’—it’s the same thing as sending her a package,” our hero informs his buddy. He then sounds off on some of its other features: “Simply ship a few photographs to The Facebook, they’ll cover the postage, and an operator will set up your profile.” (It’s referred to as “The Facebook” throughout, which indeed was Mark Zuckerberg’s original name for it.)

Replete with VHS warping, crappy lettering and a terribly cheesy soundtrack, this is a pretty perfect, almost shot-for-shot parody of the AOL original (which you can see below). For an extra treat (and if you’re super bored), sync them up and watch them at the same time.

Next time you’re at the supermarket scanning the shelves for whichever loaf of bread is on sale, because you don’t really care which brand you buy—because bread is bread is bread—imagine if the top shelf had a loaf slapped with a Fendi logo. Would you buy it?

Israel-based artist Peddy Mergui presents a fascinating fantasy world where luxury brand make various food products in his series Wheat is Wheat is Wheat.

“By infusing the packaging of our most basic commodities with values of prestige and luxury, Wheat is Wheat is Wheat explores the dynamic and often blurred ethical boundaries of design within consumer culture,” says his website. “This exhibition is meant to highlight the challenges a designer faces when tasked with promoting economic interests while remaining true to his or her own moral compass.”

It’s been a while since art school, but I think this project’s statement translates to: “There’s an ass for every seat. If you build it, they will come.”

Take a look below at these ludicrous collisions of commercialism. 

 
Tiffany yogurt: Because being regular isn’t good enough. 

 
Prada flour: We’ll just assume it’s white. 

 
Nike fruit: Just eat it.

 
Louis Vuitton sausage: Just don’t ask how it’s made. 

 
Gucci pickles: The silliest dill. 

 
Ferrari pasta: As if you even eat carbs. 

 
Dolce & Gabbana tea biscuits: Are we sure these aren’t real?

 
Chanel baby formula: It’s actually from the teat of Gerard Depardieu.

 
HSBC basmati white rice: This bag is actual size. 

 
Bulgari butter: When it melts, it turns into the Pope’s tears. 

 
Apple iMilk: That extra 1% is for the 1%.

Via Visual News.

The official drink of the Washington Redskins … and Dave & Buster’s?

College Humor created this fake ad a little while back for Diet Racism—the drink that has all the sweet ignorance of regular racism but with none of the guilt or self-awareness. It’s the drink of choice for people who don’t realize that the phrase “I’m not racist, but …” doesn’t magically make whatever comes after it less racist.

It’s actually been quite a year for discussions of racism involving brands. Maybe this fake commercial could be a good hiring tool for potential brand or social media managers. If they laugh, maybe they’ll be a little less likely to go full-on racist in a tweet.

If they tell you the Irish really were persecuted too, well, there’s a red flag.

Given they have a “shit ton” of clients and have “won every award ever,” you might think Risual wouldn’t need to advertise at all. What’s that, you’ve never heard of them? Well you’re about to.

They’re a British IT services organization (real, not fake) specializing in the Microsoft platform. They’re also clearly dedicated to the destruction of hoity-toity corporate culture and sick and tired of boring corporate communications.

If you want a run-of-the-mill corporate video that says nothing at all, you can enjoy the first 10 seconds of the video below, where they prove they can make a beautiful, meaningless pile of tripe. Then they spend the next two minutes gleefully ripping the corporate video genre a new one.

Shots of people you don’t know, answers that simply raise more questions, positivity, trusting faces and no-nonsense honesty, elevator music and an inexplicable drop into dubstep—it’s every corporate video you’ve ever seen. The voiceover pulls you through each stocky-looking shot with hilarious commentary.

But the coup de grace is the final logo run, where they drag their corporate identity through old Windows backgrounds, kitten pictures, the DOS prompt, leaping dolphins, horrendous crimes of Word Art—and even an appearance by Clippy, the most despised paperclip in the world.

In fact, Microsoft should hire them to make their ads. They have a whole room of Microsoft devotees after all. Just look at them. And maybe more important, they have something Microsoft is often missing from it’s advertising: a sense of humor.

Tricked-out vending machines have become the vehicle of choice for brand to push all sorts of zany promotions or social media stunts. We’re almost to the point where if you see one outside of its natural habitat, you assume it’s going to do something out of the ordinary if you just … wait for it.

Well, Canadian agency Taxi noticed that trend, too, and takes an amusing cynical stance on it in this video—yet another hilarious industry spoof from Strategy’s Agency of the Year event. Take a look below as unsuspecting passersby encounter this mysterious machine—which, well, actually does kind of surprise folks.

Last week, we were treated to Jim Carrey’s spot-on parody of Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln ad. This week, in addition to Prince’s epic, face-melting musical performance, we were delighted by a couple of new ad spoofs.

The first one was for “GoProbe,” a GoPro-inspired parody featuring 40-something extreme sports enthusiasts due for their colonoscopies.

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The second was a commercial for “Swiftamine,” a drug for adults who suddenly realize they love Taylor Swift and her undeniably catchy pop tunes. If your unexpected insatiable thirst for her music results in dizziness and vertigo, well, Swiftamine is right for you.

Take two, and call us in the morning.

If you haven’t seen the video of the woman walking down the street getting harassed by gawking dudes in New York City, you should probably check it out. It’s truly a dispicable display of shameful behavior.

And while it might seem insensitive to parody such a sincere project, the folks at Funny or Die found a commendable balance with their satire showing us what it’s like to be a man walking the streets of New York. The results are truly harrowing—but you might not be surprised at all by the way such men are treated. 

As a man who lives and works in the city, I can attest to being treated like this on a daily basis. Take a look.