Hasta La Creative!

Every region had its own odd selection of local ads during last night's Super Bowl, but Utah surely takes the prize for most uncomfortable viewing-party moment.

In an eerily quiet and hypnotically rotating road-safety PSA, the Utah Department of Transportation depicted a dead child lying in an overturned car. A dead kid. During the Super Bowl.

"Sam looks like he's sleeping, but he's not," the narrator explains. "He's not thinking. He's not breathing. He's dead."

Unlike many of the evening's ads, this one makes a very clear point: Unbuckled adults can pose a huge risk to other passengers, including children, in the event of a crash. According to a statistic in the ad, unbuckled motorists increase the risk of injury or death to other passengers by 40 percent.

The state's Zero Fatalities microsite seems strangely pessimistic (or maybe just realistic) about the ad's impact: "If this doesn't inspire you to buckle up, we hope it at least shows you how your actions can threaten the lives of your friends and family members who are in the car with you. Seat belt use isn't just a personal decision; it affects everyone in the vehicle and others on the road."

A state spokesman admitted to the Salt Lake Tribune that the ad may be a bit dark for a festive event like the Super Bowl, but that safety officials "hope this commercial will spark a conversation and maybe inspire someone who doesn't typically buckle up to do so."

Given the rough few years he's had lately, it's not surprising Arnold Schwarzenegger might want to be someone else for a while. He's making a habit of it, anyway.

The Governator, who looked hilarious in a Bjorn Borg getup for Bud Light's Super Bowl teaser, dons another disguise in a different video, going undercover as an employee at Gold's Gym in Venice, Calif., to draw attention to his After-School All-Stars program.

Schwarzenegger famously worked out at the same Gold's Gym in his bodybuilding glory days of the '70s. In the new video, Arnold, aka "Howard," is comically awkward as he strolls around the gym, bothering the patrons, many of whom clearly do a double-take.

It's pretty funny stuff, and has gotten well over a million views in its first day on YouTube. It seems a little odd that there's no big reveal at the end, à la Jeff Gordon's Pepsi MAX spot, where Schwarzenegger could take off the disguise and delight everybody. Instead, it just ends. On the upside, Gold's might have a new tagline thanks to Arnold's ad-libbing.

Say it with me, in Arnold-speak: "This is Gold's Gym. It's not a baby gym."

Hat tip to @arrrzzz.

Horrified by this depiction of a real-life emoji? Well good, that's the idea.

French child advocacy group Innocence en Danger created this ad campaign, bringing Internet chat icons into creeptastic human form, to warn parents and young people about the adult predators who might be behind online conversations. Headlines ask, "Who's really talking with your child on the Internet?"

The results are definitely unnerving, which is exactly what Parisian agency Rosapark was going for. Via Gizmodo. 

Here's one for the file on unexpected PSAs: Exploding chipmunks that warn you against purchasing bootleg electrical goods. U.K. charity Electric Safety Council is using a gruesome, two-minute mock documentary to push Christmas shoppers to buy "genuine goods" that are less likely to cause violent electrical fires. It's fun, if a bit of a head-scratcher—begging for attention by striking the right mix of stupidity and shock value (yes, we're taking the bait) but also trivializing the cause it's meant to spotlight by making the punch line so absurd. Yes, the group needs people not to ignore an easily overlooked problem, but it also needs them to take it seriously. Then again, maybe it'll get lucky and draw fire from PETA—the kind of charity troll that's able to make an exploding-rodent tactic look sane by comparison. Agency: Code Computerlove. Via The Drum.

Late last week, a creative twist on print advertising became a global phenomenon, as the "Auto-Complete Truth" campaign for UN Women exploded across social media and generated worldwide discussion.

AdFreak's writeup of the campaign by Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai has been shared more than 116,000 times on Facebook alone, making it the most-shared item of the year on Adweek.com. The campaign has since been featured by hundreds of blogs, news sites and social media feeds around the world. 

"We have been overwhelmed by the instant enthusiasm and support that our campaign has received," says Ronald Howes, managing director of Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai. "This has encouraged us to develop it even further, after the global acclaim that is has received.” 

The client, of course, was ecstatic to see a relatively modest ad campaign spark the exact kind of international debate it was intended for. "UN Women is very heartened by the discussion the campaign has sparked," says Nanette Braun, communications and advocacy chief for UN Women. "Very obviously there is a demand for a global conversation on women’s rights, empowerment and gender equality, which is exactly what the ads were intended to generate.”

To learn more about the campaign and the vocal response it has received, check out our Q&A with the team that created the ads, after the jump:

AdFreak: How did this project come about? Was it intended to be a print campaign from the start, and will these ads actually be running in print?

Memac Ogilvy & Mather Dubai: This creative idea for UN Women began, as many searches naturally do, on a Google search bar. What we came across was simply shocking. The appalling global results to an auto-correct search of terms such as "women should" was something we felt needed to be shared.

The campaign was published earlier in 2013 in the UAE and became a viral success this week. UN Women plans to publish internationally in the future.

Many of the commenters and people sharing the campaign have been posting screenshots of their own autocompleted searches, with different results around the world. Was this something you hoped the campaign would spark people to try?

We have been pleasantly surprised by the viral success of this campaign. We wanted to start a conversation on the major barriers which are in place of women's economic, political and social empowerment across the globe—issues that UN Women is working to address. We hope that our work will go some way to help raise awareness of the sexist global attitudes toward women and will enable a dialogue to begin on the topic. We encourage people to join in the debate on Twitter with #womenshould, or on the UN Women website.

We are so pleased to see others are inspired by our work and witness the creation of their own versions of our campaign, which tackle other social issues.

Did you selectively edit the results of the Google searches you did for this campaign? Were some irrelevant suggestions tossed out to focus on the most egregious examples of sexism?

What makes our campaign so powerful is its truth and simplicity. None of the searches were engineered to produce these results; that's why we were so shocked to discover them. In order to raise awareness of the inequality women face, we did choose to highlight the most compelling answers, to deliver the most impact, however the search results from Google autocorrect were not falsified in any way.

Some have criticized the campaign by saying that Google autocomplete suggestions have been used in several marketing campaigns in recent years. Were you concerned about this approach seeming derivative or over-used?

Our campaign is not focused on Google autocomplete suggestions. The medium of Google search was merely a base upon which we were able to successfully illustrate our point. Google search is an iconic symbol in our digital world and therefore recognizable for millions of people, so we used this as a vehicle to express our ideas. The truth behind the search about people’s global perceptions is what our campaign focused on, not the technology of Google autocomplete.

Lots of people are debating whether you can actually change these kinds of search results. Do you think it's possible, or is it something that will have to change slowly over time as a barometer of equality?

We are aware that change of this magnitude will not happen overnight! However we hope that our work will go some way to alter perceptions by raising awareness of the issues which women face. 

Remember the "Chimpanzee Riding on a Segway" song from way back in 2010? How about the theme song from Buffy the Vampire Slayer from the 1990s? Parry Gripp was the songwriter behind the simian parody, and the frontman of onetime geek-rock band Nerf Herder, which created the intro music for the supernatural TV show. Now, he's expanding his offbeat oeuvre into anti-asthma PSAs with a series of songs performed by a group of puppets named The Breathe Easies.

Created with agency The Barbarian Group for the Ad Council, the spots, running on radio and online in English and Spanish, feature titles like "Clean Up the Mold" and "Don't Smoke in the House." The lyrics include gems like, "Don't break my heart with your second-hand smoke"—an Auto-Tuned solo, of course. The bright pastels and tongue-in-cheek presentation—Pee-wee's Playhouse meets Sesame Street—succeed at making sad and gross subject matter less off-putting. And it's hard to blame them for playing the unapologetically cheesy jingle angle, given that the cause would be all but invisible otherwise.

And who doesn't want to spend the rest of the day humming to themselves about vacuuming the floor—especially if the alternative is singing about a cookie or a pickup truck?

In May, we saw a billboard use lenticular printing to illustrate how violence against children can easily go unseen. Now, a new PSA from the United Nations Children's Fund is taking a different approach to making invisible abuses visible. "Just because you can't see violence against children doesn't mean it isn't there," says Liam Neeson, star of the Hollywood child-trafficking drama Taken, and a Unicef celebrity ambassador, in the voiceover. Titled "End Violence," the spot offers a gritty and blunt perspective on the dangers and traumas that children across the globe face on a regular basis, from gang rape to cyber bullying. But while the camera pans across a series of scenes where such crimes take place, it doesn't show any of the perpetrators or victims. Instead, Neeson's voiceover fills in, describing the violence that occurred in each. It's a deft and gripping way to deliver a hard-hitting message—shocking the audience into paying attention, without shutting it down by making the violence more overt. A longtime Unicef supporter, Neeson explains why he supported this particular campaign: "It was a topic that became increasingly real to me as a child growing up in Ireland and during the filming of Taken, which focuses on one aspect of violence and abuse against children in the form of trafficking and sexual exploitation." A number of other stars, including Jamie Foxx and Alyssa Milano, have tweeted their support for the campaign.

Pereira & O'Dell tells stories from the point of view of trash in its new "I Want to Be Recycled" pro-bono campaign for the Ad Council and Keep America Beautiful. (No Honey Boo Boo jokes, please.) In one spot, we follow a plastic bottle's long journey from an alleyway garbage can over highways, through forests and down urban thoroughfares until it winds up as part of a bench made from recycled materials that overlooks the sea. Another ad presents a discarded aluminum can that dreams of one day being part of a shiny sports stadium. The bottle and can narrate, and the ads close with the tagline, "Give your garbage another life," ultimately pointing viewers toward IWantToBeRecycled.org.

These well-made PSAs are certainly affecting and will probably resonate with many viewers. Still, I wonder if powerful copy like, "They said I couldn't dream. Called me a piece of trash and swore that's all I'd ever be," isn't at least somewhat muted when only bottles and cans are shown on screen. This approach is quirky and memorable and does, in fact, work just fine in the context of the campaign. That said, I don't find it especially compelling, nor does it do much to convince me to recycle. (Can't say I care if your dreams come true, Mr. Can. Frankly, benches and ballparks will be built regardless of whether I recycle. That's not much of an inducement for me to change my behavior.)

The campaign's stories seem human, yet they lack a personal touch. It's tough to empathize with plastic containers and soda cans, no matter how sharp the writing and evocative the visual storytelling. Close-ups of actors looking straight into the camera and reading the lines—"People think I'm trash, but they're wrong"—might have better captured my attention and perhaps taken the premise to the next level. Sure, that set-up would be a bit goofy, but no more so than having the trash itself provide the voiceovers. Shots of narrators intercut with the bottles-and-cans footage might also be more distinctive and riveting. (Check out "I Want to Be a Bench," a 90-second video in which Keep Iowa Beautiful executive director Gerry Schnepf explains the genesis of the campaign and discusses the importance of recycling. This guy's low-key, folksy, matter-of-fact style made me want to start recycling more than the actual commercials did.)

Keep America Beautiful's iconic Iron Eyes Cody anti-pollution spots from the early 1970s were enduring because of their intense humanity and one-to-one connection with viewers. It was never a stretch to see ourselves reflected in those weeping eyes and understand that we all share responsibility for the planet's well-being. "I Want to Be Recycled" appeals to our desire for second chances and rebirth—redemption, if you will, given the items involved—but for me, the can imagery falls flat and the bottle's half empty.

CREDITS
Client: The Ad Council
Vice President, Campaign Director: Rowena Patrick
Campaign Director: Amanda Bagwill
Assistant Campaign Manager: Dana Vielmetti

Client: Keep America Beautiful
Senior Vice President: Lynn Markley

Agency: Pereira & O'Dell
Chief Creative Officer: P.J. Pereira
Executive Creative Director: Jaime Robinson
Associate Creative Director, Copywriter: Eduardo Marques
Associate Creative Director, Art Director: Rafael Rizuto
Copywriters: Ross Cavin, Earl Lee
Art Directors: Chris Adams, Arnau Bosch
Project Manager: Katie Shesgreen
Account Director: Ashley Brown
Account Executive: Jennifer Wantuch
Vice President, Director of Strategy: Nick Chapman
Strategy Director: Justin Cox
Strategist: Alina Shabashevich
Executive Producer: Jeff Ferro
Broadcast Producers: Judy Kreiter, Elisa Moore
Print Producer: James Sablan
Senior Interactive Producer: Erin Davis
Business Affairs Director: Xandra Ess

Production Company: MJZ
Director: Victor Garcia
President: David Zander
Executive Producer: Kate Leahy
Producer: Greg Ferguson

Editing: Arcade Edit
Editor: Greg Scruton
Assistant Editors: Laura Sanford, Hilary Ruggiano
Managing Partner, Executive Producer: Damian Stevens
Executive Producer: Nicole Visram
Producer: Denice Hutton

Visual Effects: MPC
Telecine Producer: Claudia Guevara
Lead Nuke Artist: Alex Harding
Lead Smoke Artist: Marcus Wood
Compositor: Jonathan McKee
Computer Graphics Lead Artist: Liam Griffin
Colorist: Adrian Seery
Audio: POP Sound
Mixers: Zac Fisher, Stephen Dickson
Music: Stimmung

British light artist Bruce Munro has turned a piece of the Wiltshire countryside in England into a giant Lite Brite breast. Dubbed the "Beacon on the Hill," the installation is actually a dome made of thousands of plastic bottles that Munro illuminated with pink and blue fiber optics. Munro's intentions were good—the installation supports the Cancerkin charity and has gotten a lot of sponsors—but he's still being criticized for insensitivity, and his beacon has been called "poorly thought out [and] unresearched." I wouldn't go that far, but I will say that I'm not sure how much more awareness-raising breast cancer needs. But for Munro, it was also a personal project. "This hill and surrounding countryside has long been my 'canvas,' " he said last year. "I lost a dear friend very young to breast cancer. By illuminating the night sky for a brief moment, I hope to send the message 'You are not alone.' "

We've written here and there about prankvertising and the joy marketers seem to derive from scaring the crap out of people in public places. This video eclipses them all, though, for the sheer bluntness of its fear factor. Perhaps not surprisingly, the #PubLooShocker campaign is a drunk-driving PSA—which means all bets are off when it comes to any kind of restraint. Hope Leo Burnett had a plan for cardiac arrests.

We've written about the advertiser, British road-safety campaign Think!, many times before. It's almost always horror-movie stuff. Have a look back at the notorious Damien spot, as well as this famous bartender ad, which actually features some stunning acting.

Via Unruly Media.