Welp, it’s basically Christmas now, but we’ve got one more Halloween ad to share with you. Yeah, it’s November now, but this gem is still as fresh as that stash of Twix bars you stole from your child.
PepsiMAX, no stranger to scaring the crap out of people with ad pranks, delivered what might be the coolest use of tech for nefarious purposes this Halloween. Watch below to see how the brand really freaked out unsuspecting moviegoers at a London cinema.
Volvo Trucks, the surprising brand behind YouTube’s most watched ad of all time, is back with a new video. And this time, instead of Jean-Claude Van Damme, it’s an unsuspecting valet who’s put in an uncomfortable position.
While this clip’s quite unlikely to become a viral juggernaut on the scale of “Epic Split,” it’s a fun bit of hidden-camera prankery focused on the newest employee at a casino’s valet stand.
“All the sports cars that you see pulling up are all rented, and all the paparazzi there are fake,” director Henry-Alex Rubin says in the behind-the-scenes video. “The crowds are fake. Everything’s fake, really, except for the valet, who has no idea all this is for him.”
Setting up the joke takes a bit longer than you’d like, but you have to applaud the rather extreme commitment to the gag. As with all of the brand’s globally awarded videos from agency Forsman & Bodenfors, the clip highlights a specific technical aspect of Volvo Trucks. This time it’s the I-Shift Dual Clutch gearbox, adapted from sports car technology.
Recent years have seen a slew of hidden camera prank ads, and many of them are of dubious authenticity. But this new effort from Bosch in Belgium might take the prize for most laughably fake stunt commercial yet.
(You can watch the clip below before reading further, if you don’t want us to spoil the supposed twist for you.)
The plot line, such as it is, goes like this: Apparent cat burglars turn out to be creepy do-gooders (a.k.a. Bosch representatives) who just want to break into homes so they can vacuum downstairs while the owners are upstairs sleeping. The takeaway here is, of course, that the vacuums are surprisingly quiet.
Come daybreak, the owners are met at the door by strange men with video footage from within their homes while they slept. You know, the stuff of horror movies. But instead of slamming the door and calling the police, each homeowner seems quasi-delighted about the whole thing.
Sure, it’s a cute idea tailored to the merits of the product. But they couldn’t even get one or two of the residents to pretend to be indignant? Instead, the brand and agency BBDO Belgium in Brussels seem to have abdicated any sense that they were trying to make the illusion seem real.
The makers of “Lord of Tears,” a well-reviewed Scottish indie chiller, definitely ruffled some feathers with a pair of pranks that brought the film’s evil “Owlman” into real life.
In the first and less elaborate stunt, Owlman popped up on Chatroulette, where he set some teeth chattering with fear, though most users just seemed amused. (By Chatroulette standards, he’s actually not so bad.)
More recently, though, the beaked beastie nested in an an abandoned children’s hospital that’s reportedly a favorite haunt of sightseers and photographers. “Lord of Tears'” director Lawrie Brewster explains: “Whenever we got a heads up somebody was heading this way … we would get our hidden cameras ready to record what happened when they encountered our Owlman lurking inside. We did not expect the reactions we filmed, and had to cut short the second prank as our victim became too distressed. He was eventually fine in the end and even had a cup of tea with us!”
“Distressed” is putting it mildly. Some hospital explorers seem ready for the psych ward after encountering the Owlman in the hospital’s dilapidated halls.
Some will insist the prank was faked, and indeed a cursory search of Google turns up no mentions of an abandoned St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital, which seems odd if it’s such a popular destination. (There is, however, an abandoned St. Mary’s asylum in Stannington.) And of course the reactions are almost too perfect.
Regardless, the video has proven scary popular, generating almost 1 million views in a few days and lots of buzz for a relatively small film. So I’d call Owlman’s latest flight a wise move indeed.
Prankvertising shifts into high gear for this elaborate X-Files-esque stunt from Crispin Porter + Bogusky promoting Scania's 2014 competition for professional truck and bus drivers.
Daniel Olsson, who has five years of experience behind the wheel, must come through in the clutch after he picks up a mysterious shipment and passenger at a warehouse. Horrifying sounds and visuals suggest that a hostile creature has been loaded aboard his truck as he navigates around crates in the cramped space.
"He did not expect anything strange would happen, and the whole setup was pretty normal," Gustav Martner, ecd at CP+B in Gothenburg, Sweden, tells AdFreak. "Then, he obviously thought it was a bit unusual that his passenger was an old, well-dressed English gentleman who insisted on riding with him down to the harbor to see that the crate was safely delivered."
In fact, Olsson looks fairly freaked out, but he still keeps his cool, as the weirdness intensifies, with his jittery cab-mate "Dr. Sullivan" (a professional actor) gesturing back toward the noisy payload and ominously muttering, "I think actually you've woken him up."
"I became increasingly nervous and stressed, but I had no thoughts of quitting," Olsson says.
The three-minute "Cargo Madness" clip serves as an entertaining invite to the competition, where drivers must "handle more than their trucks" as they test their skills to overcome various obstacles.
"The production was much more complicated than we thought," recalls Martner. Instead of switching Olsson's ordinary side-view mirror with LCD-implanted units as planned, "We had to project the monster onto the ordinary mirror from behind. It was extremely stressful to create this solution in a matter of hours, but we managed to pull it off."
Folks love debating if such stunts are genuine or if the participants were in on the gag. "We did the stunt with three different drivers, all of them being totally unaware," Martner says. "Daniel was the best."
Given prankvertising's continued popularity, Martner doesn't expect agencies or clients to slam on the brakes any time soon. "It seems like people love this kind of advertising, and what people love, they share," he says. "I choose prankvertising over a standard commercial any day … at least if everyone involved can laugh about it in the end."
Here's one baby that no one's expecting. "Devil Baby Attack," a rather mean-spirited if grimly hilarious marketing stunt for the upcoming horror film Devil's Due, shows what happens when well-meaning New Yorkers try to check on an unattended baby carriage.
Here's what happens: They get screamed at by a horrific demon infant. And sometimes chased around by the horrific demon infant's remote-controlled stroller.
Sure, the prank—by Thinkmodo, which also did last year's super-viral Carrie coffee-shop spot—sparks some fun jump-screams from passersby. But watching the results, it's hard not to think of last year's spot-on parody by Canadian agency John St. about the cruel lengths to which advertisers now seem willing to go.
If we must be subjected to more prankvertising stunts, it would be nice to see ones that punish people for making poor moral choices rather than watch normal pedestrians get tormented because they tried to check on a screaming baby left alone in the snow.
What better way to cap off the year in which agencies were obsessed with prankvertising than with an agency pranking its own staff?
Baltimore shop Planit created the amusing video below after luring unsuspecting employees to sing holiday songs on camera. When a Leatherface-masked elf jumps out of the large present next to them, their reactions range from sprinting panic to cool-headed indifference.
There's not much more to it than that, but the wide array of staff responses make it worth a watch. Planit also deserves points for giving the clip a strategic message, ending with the kicker, "We believe the best ideas should scare you."
We've seen all manner of prankvertising over the past few years, but this campaign from LG—if it's real and not staged—could be the most brutal example yet. (It's also questionably timed, given the Syrian crisis.) It's one thing to scare people with a bloody head smashing through a mirror. It's quite another to … well, just watch. Via Unruly Media.
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