Procter & Gamble today announced that the Denver Broncos linebacker and Super Bowl 50 MVP will be the face of Old Spice for the 2016 season. He will promote the brand’s Hardest Working Collection. The first creative will be here early in the season, the brand tells AdFreak. For now, you’ll just have to enjoy these two photos.
Today in Weird Things We’re Glad Aren’t Happening to Us, Procter & Gamble’s Head & Shoulders brand has released “Scalp Brave,” a campaign that goes roughly where you think it’s headed … just not in the way you imagined it would.
Conceived by the twisted minds at Saatchi & Saatchi London, the campaign’s premise is neatly encapsulated by the closing lines in three behind-the-scenes videos: “100% flake free hair. Have the confidence to be #scalpbrave.”
“Brave” is definitely a word for it. But don’t let your mind wander down the road of elaborate mohawks and six-layer Louis XIV hairdos. Yawn—too obvious. Instead, creative barber Rob the Original was enlisted to do one of the things he does best: Approach the soft, magnificent tufts of regular people and shave portraits of other people’s faces—specifically, Head & Shoulders’ own celebrity ambassadors—into them.
Procter & Gamble has launched a review of its North American media business, Adweek reports.
P&G is the largest advertiser in the U.S., spending an estimated $2.6 billion annually, according to Kantar Media. The account is currently split between Starcom’s MediaVest, which handles most of the business in the U.S. and Dentsu Aegis’s Carat, which handles media buying in Canada. It is unclear if either agency will participate in the review.
The move follows the decision last summer to divest or shed 90-100 of its brands and the appointment of Kristine Decker as brand director, North America brand operations in January. Late last month, P&G also announced its desire to “make deep cuts in the number of advertising agencies it works with, hoping to save up to half-a-billion dollars in fees.”
The original Always “Like a Girl” commercial—which broke last summer and got 56 million views on YouTube before getting a plum Super Bowl ad slot last month—was primarily a challenge. It urged girls to redefine the phrase from one of weakness to one of strength.
Now, with International Women’s Day on Sunday, the Procter & Gamble brand has released a follow-up video showing how the meaning of the phrase is already changing.
P&G also released some new stats around the campaign from its Always Puberty & Confidence Wave II Study, conducted pre-Super Bowl. According to that study, 76 percent of women and 59 percent of men ages 16-24 said the video changed their perception of the phrase “like a girl.” Also, 81 percent of women said the video can change the way people think about the stereotypes surrounding women’s physical abilities.
This spot—created by Leo Burnett, as the original was—won’t go megaviral like the first one, simply because the first one had that magical insight. But it’s a good way to keep the campaign going.
“The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is ‘Make It Happen,’ and that’s exactly what girls are doing by rewriting the meaning of #LikeAGirl,” said Always global vp Fama Francisco. The new video celebrates amazing young girls around the globe and encourages everyone to continue the movement every day and everywhere, because together, we’re making #LikeAGirl mean amazing things.”
In a memorable scene from The Sandlot—which you must watch if you were somehow nowhere near VHS tapes and a VCR in the early ’90s—baseball players hurl a slew of insults hurl back and forth. One player blurts out the unthinkable. “You play ball like a girl!”
What does that mean, anyway? In a social experiment led by documentarian Lauren Greenmarker, the Procter & Gamble feminine products brand Always asks that question, and declares its mission to redefine the phrase “like a girl” as an expression of strength.
The video—inspired by a study from Research Now, sponsored by Always, that found more than half of the girls surveyed claimed to experience a drop in confidence at puberty—starts off by asking a variety of people to act out phrases like “Run like a girl” and “Fight like a girl.” As you might guess, there’s a lot of exaggerated limp arm movements and goofy facial expressions. Then they ask the same question to a group of young girls. I felt a swell of pride—as if I were their parent, maybe—as I watched them dart across the screen with purpose and power.
There’s great discussion (“Why can’t ‘run like a girl’ also mean ‘win the race’?”), and I like this shift from social experiments about beauty (how many times am I going to mention the Dove campaign? At least once more) to one about empowerment.
Procter & Gamble's "Tough Love" ad, which celebrates the pride and determination of athletes and their moms ahead of next month's Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, manages to play on the heartstrings without hitting a saccharin note.
Not long ago, images of kids without limbs struggling to excel in sports would have been viewed as appropriate for fund-raising PSAs but too downbeat for other types of advertising. It's a mark of how far we've come that such visuals are now seen as inspiring and triumphant. And the found footage in this minute-long clip from Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore., showing determined youngsters swimming, racing and skating (with their supportive moms nearby), is especially soul stirring.
Paralympic snowboarder Amy Purdy narrates: "You could have protected me. You could have taken every hit. You could have turned the world upside down so that I would never feel pain. But you didn't. You gave me my freedom because you were strong. And now, so am I."
The ad, running both online and on TV, debuted on Feb. 19 and has racked up 2.2 million YouTube views so far. Part of P&G's "Thank you, Mom" campaign, the spot serves as a companion piece to W+K's similarly themed viral hit "Pick Them Back Up," which follows four athletes from their baby steps to Olympic glory.
Taken together, the two spots make the point that all athletes, regardless of ability or skill level, similarly strive toward their goals. They fight to overcome long odds, personal travails and self-doubt—often relying on the dedication and perseverance of their moms to help them succeed. Such equality communicates a simple, universal truth: You have to let them fall a few times before they can soar.
Now that women are the primary breadwinners in 40 percent of American households, it's a great time for Swiffer to co-opt the iconic image of Rosie the Riveter—who urged women to roll up their sleeves and join the workforce during World War II—and use her to get women back in the kitchen where they belong! Funny thing, though, a lot of women objected to that, and now Procter & Gamble, in one of those smart moves where companies actually listen to their consumers, is working to remove the image everywhere it's being used. Satisfied consumers are chanting Rosie's slogan of "We can do it!" relatively pleased that Swiffer heard them.
Our core value is to make cleaning easier, no matter who's behind the handle. We apologize and are working hard to remove the image.
If you didn't know the history, the ad would seem boring at best. It has a woman in Rosie's trademark red polkadot hairkerchief and rugged denim button-down holding a Swiffer steam mop with an arched eyebrow and a no-nonsense look on her face. She's about to get her deep clean on with steam clean. If wardrobe had put that woman in nearly any other outfit, we wouldn't have thought twice about it. But now bloggers are not only upset over the soon-to-be-destroyed Swiffer ad, they're scrutinizing the entire cleaning category, which has been overpopulated for far too long with the sort of sexist bullshit that demeans both sexes, reducing men to bumbling children and elevating women to powerful princesses of cleanliness. Which is ridiculous.
I recommend they take some tips from Tide. Look, gender doesn't matter in cleaning. Women, men, even children and probably a few intelligent dogs can mop a floor. And that will be true until we ditch our Swiffers and start mopping the floor with our genitalia.
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Advertising Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi, Dubai
Executive Creative Director: Marc Lineveldt
Creative Director: Sion Scott Wilson
Copywriter: Bianca De Silva
Advertiser’s Supervisor: Mohammed Jifri
Account Manager: Heidi Afifi
Account Supervisor: Hamid Naqvi
Art Buyer: Leah Gacal
Art Director: Chris Jones, Masa Al Kutoubi
Photographer: Jihad Hamza
Other Credits: Hema Patel
Via [Dubai Lynx]
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Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, Dubai
Executive Creative Director: Malek Ghorayeb
Creative Director: Yayati Godbole
Copywriter: Abraham Varughese
Account Supervisor: Marwan Farraj
Art Buyer: Sylvia Trinidad
Art Director: Mahesh Salgaonkar
Other Credits: Clockworks – Retouching
Via [DubaiLynx]
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