Vancouver, Washington-based Papa Murphy’s is not Papa John’s. That’s one key point-of-difference to establish in the pizza-eater’s mind. The other thing to make clear is that Papa Murphy’s is take-n-bake pizza, which is why I like Wong Doody’s tagline for the brand, “Love at 425 degrees.”
Wong Doody has served as the Papa Murphy’s agency of record since October of 2012.
Now, according to The Oregonian, the chain of 1,418 mostly franchised stores plans to make an initial public offering and raise $70 mil.
Company executives believe the United States can accommodate up to 4,500 Papa Murphy’s outlets—more than three times the current number of locations.
The concept of “take-n-bake” pizza was invented by Papa Murphy’s in 1981. The leading chains offering take-n-bake pizza are Papa Murphy’s, Figaro’s, and Nick-N-Willy’s.
PizzaToday ranks Papa Murphy’s as the nation’s sixth largest pizza chain, behind Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Papa John’s, Little Caesars and California Pizza Kitchen.
Kobe Bryant doesn't just play pianos. He makes them.
Or so it would appear from the opening scenes of this new ad from Wieden + Kennedy pitching "The Kobe Piano," from which "every note [is] a comedy and tragedy that would make Shakespeare laugh and weep. It will turn piano boys into piano men. It will make Lionel Richie's tears cry tears."
Turns out it's an elaborate metaphor for a line of shoes designed by Bryant for Foot Locker and Nike. The collection, the ad informs us, is the "grandest grand collection of grand collections." And yes, Richie himself makes a cameo—adding to his own commercial lore in the process.
While the voiceover copy is a bit Old Spicey, the ad blends the winking melodrama of "The Man Your Man Could Smell Like" with a healthy heaping of mock pretension, à la Bryan Cranston selling an iPad, and a dash of good old-fashioned Ron Swanson style woodworking.
It has the obligatory sports-stats reference. It's beautifully shot and well paced, and entertaining enough. It makes its point, however circuitously, that the product is like a finely crafted instrument.
A second spot, meanwhile, likens the collection to the invention of a better, stronger lightbulb—complete with a shattering sledgehammer and the ability to make even Judah Friedlander look dapper. Sorry, ladies. It's just another metaphor for sneakers.
Credits below.
CREDITS Clients: Nike and Foot Locker Campaign: "Made by Kobe"
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore. Creative Directors: Don Shelford, Rob Thompson Copywriter: Adam Noel Art Director: Jon Kubik Producer: Shannon Worley Executive Agency Producer: Matt Hunnicutt Account Team: Jordan Muse, Heather Morba Executive Creative Directors: Mark Fitzloff, Susan Hoffman, Joe Staples
Production Company: Traktor Towers Director: Traktor Executive Producer: Rani Melendez Line Producer: Rani Melendez Director of Photography: Bojan Bozelli
Editing Company: Stitch Editorial Editor: Andy McGraw Assistant Editor: Alex Tedesco Post Producer: Chris Girard Post Executive Producer: Juliet Batter
Visual Effects Company: The Mill Visual Effects Executive Producer: LaRue Anderson Flame Artists: James Allen, Glyn Tebbutt Visual Effects Producers: Dan Roberts, Antonio Hardy Titles, Graphics: Justin Morris
Music, Sound Company: Beacon Street Studios Composers: John Nau, Andrew Feltenstein Sound Designer: Mike Franklin Songs: "Out of the Woods" ("Piano"), "The Wunder r3" ("Lightbulb") Executive Producer: Leslie Dillullo
Mix Company: Beacon Street Studios Mixer: Mike Franklin Assistant Engineer: Dewey Thomas Producer: Caitlin Rocklin
This wonderfully warped three-minute music-video commercial for Germany's Edeka supermarket chain certainly lives up to its title, "Supergeil," which can mean both "super cool" and "super sexy" (or "horny") in German.
Paunchy middle-aged crooner Friedrich Liechtenstein bathes in milk and cereal, boogies in the aisles, fondles sausages, cavorts with a dude dressed like a battery and reels off naughty double entendres to a techno beat. At one point, he rhymes "muschi" (German for "cat," or "pussy") with "sushi," while a woman slurps raw fish nearby. ("Supergeil" does not translate to "super classy," after all.)
His subdued yet insane performance transcends language barriers, though it's a hoot that one line translates to "Organic is also very, very cool/Very cool organic products, excellent," while a suave chorus exhorts viewers to "Check it out, very, very cool fries, super/Very cool cod, by the way, very cool/Oh look here, toilet paper, ooh, now that's soft/Very, very cool, super." You don't learn to write copy like that in portfolio schools.
Some liken the clip, from ad agency Jung von Matt, to a German "Gangnam Style," citing its funky take on local pop culture. Others compare the bearded Liechtenstein to Dos Equis's Most Interesting Man in the World. Frankly, he reminds me of a different ad character: It's easy to imagine Liechtenstein strutting down a sun-soaked European beach, well-fed gut straining against his Speedo. Easy to imagine, though not particularly pleasant.
It was Junot Diaz who said, "If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves." So Pro Infirmis, a European advocacy organization for the disabled, has created a series of mannequins to provide those reflections in the image-obsessed world of retail.
The project's call to action is: "Because who is perfect? Get closer." And indeed, who is? The redesigned mannequins depict people with scoliosis, brittle bone disease and missing limbs. The models are radio host and film critic Alex Oberholzer, Miss Handicap 2010 Jasmine Rechsteiner, athlete Urs Kolly, actor Erwin Aljuki? and blogger Nadja Schmid.
The short film below, which documents the process, is deeply moving, particularly when the models encounter their mannequins for the first time. The works were displayed for the International Day of Persons With Disabilities in Swiss shop windows on Zurich's main street, Bahnhofstrasse. And once they had been polished to the perfected shine of a mannequin and posed in the windows, the disabilities almost disappear. Rechsteiner’s curved spine, in particular, creates a stunning silhouette that would be envied by high-end fashion models, and a young girl is shown trying to achieve the same pose after seeing the mannequin.
It's an important lesson, not only that people come in all shapes and sizes, but that all those shapes and sizes can be beautiful. If only more businesses had the bravery to show them.
I like Barkley. The Kansas City agency is one of the best in the nation.
Sadly, I can’t support the agency’s current work for DQ. “At Dairy Queen, we don’t make fast food. This is fan food,” the commercials announce. Boom! Wink!
Fan food? What is that? Is that the stuff commonly called food that is readily available at concerts and baseball games?
No. According to this faux testimonial, fan food is the good stuff — particularly DQ’s crispy chicken strips basket.
“They call it whole tenderloin. I call it hashtag delicious.” Language of this sort can make grown men cry or cringe.
In related news, Burger King in Norway shed 30,000 fair-weather fans in an interesting social media promotion.
BK Norway recognized that many of its 38,000 Facebook fans weren’t real fans at all. So, the brand offered free Big Macs to identify the fast food drifters and get rid of them.
Burger King lost 30,000 followers as a result, but says its new fan base of 8,000 are more engaged and interact with the brand in a more positive way.
Online sales could reach $2 billion today, but that figure is but a tenth of the revenue earned by traditional brick-and-mortar store sales on Black Friday. Walmart alone said it sold 2 million TVs during its Black Friday sales this year. The retailer also sold 2.8 million towels, 1.9 million dolls, 1.4 million tablets and 300,000 bicycles.
Perhaps, Cyber Monday can’t compete with Black Friday because no matter how hard you try, you can’t see this kind of action in an online store.
Hold it, that was pure fantasy delivered to you by a fashion brand.
Let’s look at the real life Black Friday action for a minute.
Clearly, malls and big box stores in America are no longer just for shopping.
Retail space is the new entertainment complex. In fact, auditions were being held throughout the country last Friday for a new reality series. The series will be called “Black Friday Bombers.” Participants on the show will use mixed martial arts to improve their Black Friday shopping experience.
The fighter/shopper with the greatest number of dollars saved wins.
It sounds like an April Fools' joke, but this is totally real. Amazon just revealed a shock-inducing plan to get delivery times down to a mere 30 minutes by using an army of aerial drones. The service is still in R&D, but was teased Sunday night on 60 Minutes by CEO Jeff Bezos in what amounted to a lengthy Amazon infomercial. You can view the entire episode online; he starts talking about it at 11:30. Or just check out the amazing little video below about the service, which they're calling Amazon Prime Air.
The unmanned drones are equipped with GPS and can carry objects weighing up to five pounds, which is 86 percent of the objects Amazon delivers. Their range is up to 10 miles from any fulfillment center, but as Amazon keeps building more and more of those, I imagine that will incorporate most metro areas by 2015. Why 2015? Bezos says that's the soonest Amazon Prime Air will be airborne because of shifting FAA regulations.
Domino's has tested its own delivery drone, but Amazon is getting all the press (along with more than 2 million YouTube views in 12 hours) thanks to Sunday's high-profile announcement. Given that Amazon also apparently provides the private cloud for the CIA, I somehow doubt they'll have much trouble swaying the FAA. Which means that in just a few short years, a massive swarming army of Amazon bots will be descending over your neighborhood bringing holiday cheer.
Let's hope they dress them in tiny appropriate holiday hats.
Now, Target has finally responded to our inquiries, and while the retailer defends the redesign as a way to highlight a larger number of holiday deals, it has declined to reveal whether it was an in-house project or assigned to a digital agency.
"Over the last two weeks we have unveiled several new home pages on Target.com to support the increased number of deals on our site this holiday season," a Target spokesman wrote in an email to AdFreak. "User testing prior to launch, and actual site traffic and sales performance since, have been very positive. We plan additional changes to our design and features, and will track guest response and make adjustments along the way."
Asked specifically whether the redesign was managed internally or by an agency, the rep replied, "Nothing further to share."
AdFreak reached out to four of the largest digital agencies that have high-profile relationships with Target—Olson, SapientNitro, Huge and Razorfish—and each denied any involvement in the redesign. Several said they believed the work was all managed in-house by Target.
Meanwhile, though the initial surge of criticism seems to be fading, most of the feedback to the site redesign remains pretty negative.
"With all the boxes outlining deals and specials," writes Jezebel, "it's like some unholy cross between Pinterest and a supermarket circular."
Gap earns some serious points for its quick, classy response after Arsalan Iftikhar, senior editor at The Islamic Monthly and founder of TheMuslimGuy.com, alerted the retailer that vandals had defaced one of its NYC subway posters featuring Indian Sikh-American actor and fashion designer Waris Ahluwahlia. Hooligans changed the campaign's "Make love" tagline to "Make bombs," and added the slogan, "Please stop driving taxis."
"I wanted the world to see how millions of brown people are viewed in American today," Iftikhar writes in the Daily Beast. "So I proceeded to post this photograph to my 40,000+ Twitter and Facebook followers and asked them to share this photograph with their friends to try and create some social media buzz and overall awareness. After hundreds of re-tweets and Facebook shares by people of all colors and backgrounds around the country, there was so much social media buzz in less than one day that Gap contacted me directly after hearing about its vandalized advertisement and wanted to know the exact location."
@TheMuslimGuy Hi there. Thanks for informing us. Can you please follow & DM us? We'd like to know the location of this.
Then the company took its response a step further. "In addition to Gap’s rocket-fast attempt to find out more details about the situation," writes Iftikhar, "I have to say that the best part about the company’s response to this social media campaign is that it currently has the Sikh model as their current Twitter background photo."
That show of solidarity and understanding is generating gobs of positive press and good vibes. In a world so often divided, it's a great way to bridge the gap.
J.C. Penney, Kohl’s, Sears, Macy’s and Target all open their doors at 8:00 pm this Thursday in what promises to be a new prime time shopping event.
For Best Buy, 8:00 p.m. is not good enough, so their sliding doors open at 6:00 p.m. Many K-mart, Walmart and Old Navy locations will be open all day.
Sure, some 200,000 people have signed a petition to save Thanksgiving, but no petition is going to halt the burning desire to shop for perceived deals.
Are we to surmise from the above Kohl’s commercial that even Bob Dylan, the songwriting genius behind “Forever Young,” is on board with Grey Thursday?
According to Fortune, a dire retail outlook has pushed the Thanksgiving Day shopping trend into unprecedented territory. The moves by retailers have also prompted a fresh wave of outrage by customers who denounced stores for infringing on employees’ family celebrations and further commercializing a holiday rooted in offering gratitude, notes the magazine.
There are traditionalists holding out until Friday. Costco, REI and Nordstrom (all based in Seattle) are closed on Thanksgiving.
People are passionate about McDonald’s McRib sandwich.
The fact that the sandwich is not available at all McDonald’s locations nationwide simply feeds this hunger for the chain’s pork sandwich, which comes with pickles, onions and barbecue sauce and is shaped in an unusual patty, made to look as though there are bones inside.
According to Entrepreneur., one big fan of the sandwich, Alan Klein, turned his passion for McRib into an interesting side-project.
McRib Locator, a website and Android app that tracks where the sandwich is available has already charted around 1,500 sightings, with 300 confirmations this year (confirmed by users emailing Klein a photo of their receipt).
This is the kind of naturally occurring consumer advocacy and consumer generated media that CMOs dream about at night.
This holiday season, there's one thing everyone's sure to be getting on Target.com: a headache.
The recently relaunched Target site is sparking quite a bit of backlash from the design community, primarily due to the site's abundance of drop shadows and overall cluttered-as-crap vibe. The new look definitely puts a lot more product on the home page, but it sacrifices that minimalist "Target look" that the brand has spent so many years perfecting.
While the previous site design also had its critics, this one seems to be beloved by almost no one. Check out a pretty accurate cross-section of recent tweets:
UPDATE: Some on Twitter have suggested that Olson might have been behind the redesign, but agency VP Jeremy Mullman says it wasn't them. "While Olson does a great deal of digital work for Target," Mullman writes in an email to AdFreak, "we did not manage or work on the Target.com redesign." Mullman said he was unsure who had created the new design.
The Walmart on Atlantic Boulevard in Canton, Ohio is collecting food for employees who can’t afford Thanksgiving dinner.
“This store has been doing this for several years and (the food) is for associates that have faced an extreme hardship recently,” Walmart spokesman Kory Lundberg told Business Insider.
Meanwhile, Walmart turned a profit of $15.7 billion last year, and the stock market closed above 16,000 today—a new record high. It is the best of times. It is the worst of times.
In the best of times, people with buying power make conscious decisions about what to buy, and where to buy.
“Small Business Saturday has really resonated with consumers who are eager to show support for their neighborhoods,” said Susan Sobbott, president at American Express OPEN.
Together with the National Federation of Independent Business, American Express OPEN found that 77% of those aware of Small Business Saturday plan to “shop small” this year. Here’s why and where they will be shopping:
Part of the reason consumers are attracted to small businesses is because they are able to find gifts for people who are hard to shop for (70%);
One fifth (21%) of consumers said one of the main reasons they patronize small businesses is because they offer better prices; and
The top five places that consumers plan to shop on Small Business Saturday are food stores (38%), restaurants (37%), clothing stores (35%), bakeries (34%) and gift/novelty stores (31%).
American Express is accepted at Walmart and many small retailers, so the credit card company wins when you shop, no matter where you shop.
When I worked on the Coors business at Integer back in the day, the brewery provided a lot of perks, primarily in the form of baseball, basketball, hockey and concert tickets. Broncos tickets were above my pay scale at the time.
Not surprisingly, the King of Beers plays the perks game at an even higher level.
At this time, the ship is still under construction in Germany. It’s scheduled to arrive in New York Jan. 26. The big game will be played February 2nd at MetLife Stadium. The game is being billed as “the first outdoor cold weather Super Bowl.”
Sadly, Joe Six-Pack won’t be able to book a room on the party boat — rooms are reserved for Bud Light VIPs, including key distributors and retailers.
David Daniels, marketing director for Bud Light speaking to ROI said, “An experience like this drives brand health and equity, and that will translate into sales long-term.”
You might wonder why a B2B event like this would impact sales. In beer, as in many things, you need shelf space at retail. No shelf space, no sales.
And you thought the NBA guys were talented for playing "Jingle Bells" via well-timed three-pointers. Check out the Kmart studs in the retailer's crazy Christmas cross-promotion with Joe Boxer via Draftfcb in Chicago—swaying their sacks to chime out their own impressive version of the holiday standard. That's some musical junk right there. It caps an offbeat year for agency and client, stretching from "Ship My Pants" through last week's evil-filled "Boardroom" spot. Sometimes it's just better to be on the naughty list.
UPDATE: For what it's worth, Chippendales did a similar video back in 2010.
Sears puts some stupid in your stocking as the Denskies, an enthusiastic but hapless family of four, return in a trio of spots by mcgarrybowen. We're talking Little Caesar's-level silliness here, with lots of sight gags, screaming and stuff exploding, and I salute the retail chain for steering clear of safe and sedate yuletide fare.
One ad riffs on The Exorcist, revolving around a possessed fortune teller with really creepy eyes. It's enough to make your head spin. In another spot, a bear chases dad through the woods. Talk about Santa Claws!
In the stupidest and best commercial of the bunch, dad builds a "Robo Granny." She looks a bit like Rosie from the Jetsons, but this bot's way more destructive, zapping everything in the house, including the family cat, with laser-beam eyes. (The daughter deserves an award for the impassioned yet absurdly funny way she screams out "Fluffy!" as the feline's hair goes flying.) I'd like to see granny battle the violent vermin of "Squirrel Revolt," the popular Denskies installment from a few months back. She'd really roast their nuts!
Wearable technology is here and it is not just for geeks. If it were just for geeks, The Google wouldn’t need to cloak their Google Glass developments on a barge in San Francisco Bay.
According to Los Angeles Times and CBS News, the barge/building currently at Hangar 3 of Treasure Island, may be a “kind of giant Apple Store” for Google Glass, the company’s wearable smartglasses.
Once the project is finished, Google would tow the store to San Francisco’s Fort Mason where it would open to the public.
Pittsburgh ad agency Gatesman+Dave put together an online quiz called Ikea or Death that tests your knowledge of both Ikea products and heavy metal. The quiz gives you an ominous, Swedish-sounding word, and you choose whether it's the name of an Ikea product or a death metal band. (Most of the band names dropped here are black metal bands, but whatever.) It's way harder than you think. The tiny sliver of my Facebook feed who aren't posting about weddings or babies have picked up on this recently, and it's a fun way to kill a few minutes. Also, and I don't mean to brag here, but my final scorecard insinuated that I am either Ingvar Kamprad or Satan himself.
After years of the hard sell, some regional and national retailers are actually trying to build brands. Last month, Men's Warehouse jettisoned its bearded chairman from its advertising (after jettisoning him from the company) in favor of a music-driven approach. And last week, Sleepy's put its first outside agency to work with playful new ads. Now, Burlington gets a brand makeover in a character-driven campaign from Silver + Partners.
Directed by Harold Einstein, TV ads feature adults in public spaces oddly voicing their internal thoughts about their clothes and what they represent. And while the clothes don't make the man (or woman), they may reflect his or her personality—at least according to the campaign. Each ad segues from a series of verbal thought balloons to pop-up images of clothes and a male voice that says, "Style says it all." Oh, and there's a bit of hard sell via on-screen copy that notes, "Up to 65% off department store prices every day." The tagline: "Style is everything."
The effort broke this week and follows a similar push by the retailer for back-to-school clothes in ads featuring kids speaking their minds—via internal voices, this time—as they view themselves (and their clothes) in the mirror. Best of that bunch: a boy in a striped shirt and jeans who thinks, "I'm about to go ninja in here," before he strikes a karate pose.
CREDITS Client: Burlington Campaign: "Style Says It for You Agency: Silver + Partners Chief Creative Director: Eric Silver Creative Director, Copywriter: Ashley Marshall Creative Director, Art Director: Jaclyn Rink Crowley Managing Director: Michael Stefanski Account Director: Lauren Pollare Senior Producers: Chris Thielo, Terry Brogan Production Company: Station Film Director: Harold Einstein Managing Partner: Stephen Orent Executive Producer: Eric Liney Editorial: The Now Corporation Editor: Jesse Reisner Executive Producer: Nancy Finn Post, Finishing: Suspect Managing Partners: Rob Appelblatt, Tim Crean Director: Hoon Chong Creative Director: Colin McGreal Director of Photography: Evan Cohen Producers: Tsiliana Jolson, Kevin Daly, Alexander Decaneas Lead Animator: Damien Cho Lead Flame Artist: Brendan O'Neil Telecine: Co3 Colorist: Tim Masick
CREDITS Client: Burlington Campaign: Back to School Agency: Silver + Partners Chief Creative Director: Eric Silver Creative Director, Copywriter: Ashley Marshall Creative Director, Art Director: Jaclyn Rink Crowley Managing Director: Michael Stefanski Account Director: Lauren Pollare Senior Producer: Chris Thielo Production Company: Coverdale Director: Amir Farhang Executive Producer: Andy Coverdale Editorial: The Now Corporation Editor: Jesse Reisner Executive Producer: Nancy Finn Post/End Tag Animation: Hornet Inc. Designer: David Hill Executive Producer: Jan Stebbins Producer: Cathy Kwan Post/Finishing: Suspect Producers: Tsiliana Jolson Telecine: Co3 Colorist: Tim Masick Audio Mix: Sound Lounge Mixer: Tommy Jucarone EP: Vicky Ferraro
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