Hasta La Creative!

Would you let Samsung turn the birth of your child into an ad, if it meant the company would also set up a live-streaming virtual reality rig, so your partner could witness the moment—despite being away for work?

A new six-minute, documentary-style commercial does just that for a couple in Australia. The father, Jace, has a fly-in-fly-out job, meaning he spends four-week stretches some 2,500 miles from his family. The mother, Alison, is expecting their third child. Samsung saves the day, with a 360-degree swivel camera in the delivery room in Perth and a VR headset for the dad in Chinchilla, Queensland. 

The results are at the same time beautiful, highly sympathetic and slightly unsettling. Samsung may be giddy with the tech-happy zeitgeist, but at what point does a marketer become intrusive and exploitative?

On the one hand, there’s the appearance of clear benefit for the couple—the father gets to be more present than he would have. On the other hand, the slow-motion footage of the mother pushing her way through labor pains while the music makes a melodramatic crescendo takes what should be an intimate moment and turns it into a heavy-handed piece of entertainment-as-sales pitch.

The shot of the newborn resting on Alison’s chest for the first time is irrefutably powerful stuff. Samsung has invited the entire world to take part in a scene that, while universal, is also incredibly personal. And we’re seeing it not quite from the eyes of the father—but from the eyes of Samsung, in which Samsung is, of course, the hero. 

Sure, it’s a well-shaped piece of advertising—by definition it’s going to be manipulative. But the marketer’s socially awkward perspective is clearest in the kicker. The ad shows Jace at the airport after his flight home, meeting “his newborn son,” the smug, on-screen copy reading, “for the second time.” Technology isn’t an aid to help bring together a family separated by necessity. Technology is a bonafide substitute for reality, and the dramatic effect of the message—that Samsung was the solution—becomes more important than the fact that this guy is actually, finally getting to hold his kid.

So next time, maybe just have your mother-in-law FaceTime the birth for you. 

Leo Burnett Sydney showed off the capabilities of the Samsung Gear VR by offering residents of landlocked Alice Springs the chance to go shark diving.

Working with surf director Taylor Steele of Rapid VR, the agency created a video using footage of great white sharks in Port Lincoln, including a shot of one of the sharks attempting to eat the camera rig. They then established a “Dive Shop” in Alice Springs offering locals the chance to experience a shark dive with the Samsung Gear VR and recorded their reactions. Most people were in awe of the immersive technology, while others found the experience so realistic as to be frightened when they were “eaten” by the shark at the end.

“Beyond the technology itself, what really excites us about the Gear VR is that it’s enabling completely new kinds of experiences, and putting them directly in the hands of our customers,” Arno Lenior, chief marketing officer at Samsung Electronics Australia, told mUmBRELLA. “The potential for this platform is huge – and we wanted to create something that would bring some of that potential to life.”

R/GA stages an extreme version of Tic-tac-toe in its “Life of the Extreme” spot for the Samsung Galaxy Note Edge.

The ad opens on two men in cars, with one of them choosing a meeting spot by drawing an “x” on a digital map and sending it to the other. In the next scene the men meet up, and the ominous music lends the scene a sense of suspense. But instead of some kind of spy showdown, the men instead jump out of a plane together to play a game of Tic-tac-toe while in freefall. The rather absurd staging of an extreme version of what amounts to just about the least “extreme” game imaginable then meets with an unexpected interruption before its fairly predictable outcome.

This is an odd approach, to say the least, and while its strangeness may make the spot memorable, there’s not a lot here to actually sell the Galaxy Note Edge. It seems more than a little unlikely that people would purchase a phone for its Tic-tac-toe capabilities.

Moody black-and-white photography. Whispered dialogue. Ethereal soundtrack. Pouty orgasm faces. Sensual mid-air ballet.

Amazingly, this isn’t a perfume or fashion ad from the ’90s but Cheil Worldwide’s latest spot for Samsung Mobile, supporting the brand’s Gear Circle Bluetooth headset.

You know you’re in for a wild ride right from the start, when some skinny dude, chillin’ on the rug in front of a cozy fireplace, engages the product and a wraithlike blonde woman—previously unseen—flies up toward the ceiling, as if she’d sprung out of his very soul. The guy’s also suddenly and inexplicably shirtless at that point, naturally. Soon, he’s also soaring above the ground.

“A bit much for a pair of headphones, don’t you think?” one YouTube commenter asks.

Perhaps. And yet, this stuff is so self-consciously goofy and packed with artsy pretense—not to mention very well made, by Keystone Films director Liukh—that it’s tough to look away.

“Once you belong to the circle, you’ll never want to go back,” a voiceover says at the end. A British accented voiceover—awesome!

That line is vaguely creepy. (A slap at the cult of Mac?) Still, the spot’s blithely campy approach helps it take flight. It’s sure to get a rise out of viewers.

Samsung’s global review is over, and the news from AdAge isn’t much of a revelation: the company is sticking with Publicis. For the most part.

The significant part of the story imparted by “people familiar with the review” who didn’t talk to us is that the company added W+K and BBH to its very large agency roster — and that Leo Burnett retained its creative duties despite a challenge from Grey.

We didn’t get any tips on this one, and the lips of all related parties were sealed:

“Wieden & Kennedy, BBH and Starcom did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Leo Burnett declined to comment. Representatives from Samsung in South Korea and the U.S. did not return requests for comment.”

It’s been a slow week for tips with Advertising Week occupying everyone’s attention here in New York, but we’re impressed that people made so little noise about the future of such a big account.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This Samsung ad, which debuted over the weekend, teases the October release of its Galaxy Note 4—and also, more mercilessly, teases Apple for being late to the phablet game at its iPhone 6 event last week. 

Called “Then and Now,” the minute-long clip reminds viewers that Samsung was the first company to popularize larger-size handsets. To make its point, it presents snippets of dismissive reviews that followed the Galaxy Note’s introduction nearly three years ago.

Being first is all well and good, and perhaps the spot amuses/energizes die-hard Samsung geeks. Still, I doubt its gloating vibe resonates with a broader audience. Coming after last week’s “It Doesn’t Take a Genius” spots (ribbing Apple about its smartwatch and even the ragged quality of its live-event streaming), this spot feels like overkill.

Auch crowing makes Samsung look, well, small. And kind of silly, given that the iPhone 6 Plus sold out on the first day Apple started taking orders.

Don’t expect a counterpunch, though. Apple, of course, is bigger than that.

For more than 30 years, TBWA/Media Arts Lab has enjoyed one of the most prized advertising accounts on the planet. After reports from the New York Post et al. and that entity called “Madison Avenue”, agencies are salivating for a bite of the Apple.

The dirty laundry aired in the form of internal emails during the Samsung trial in April and the subsequent reports that Apple would create more of its own ads in-house may have had something to do with this latest development.

Moreover, word is that whichever outside firm may eventually work on the account will also answer to Jimmy Iovine, president and grand poobah of Beats headphones, BeatsMusic and all other things By Dre that were recently acquired by Apple.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

O terminal 5, um dos mais movimentados do aeroporto Heathrow, em Londres, vai ganhar um ‘banho de loja’ da Samsung. Toda a sinalização do local será modificada, para incluir o novo nome temporário do terminal, que ganha o apelido de ‘Terminal Samsung Galaxy S5’. É como se fosse uma compra temporária de naming rights, válida por duas semanas a partir da próxima segunda-feira, dia 19.

Além da alteração da sinalização, das placas indicativas e até das telas informativas digitais, a Samsung irá revestir o local com publicidade para o smartphone. Portões de embarque e desembarque, áreas de retiradas de bagagem e checagem de segurança, lounges e pontos de entrada e saída de passageiros serão praticamente envelopados com propagandas do aparelho (que, por sinal, parece um band-aid!).

Tudo isso, é claro, custa muito dinheiro, mas parece que a Samsung está disposta a fazer esse investimento todo para alavancar as vendas do smartphone. “Essa é uma oportunidade única de ultrapassar os limites como nenhuma outra marca conseguiu fazer”, vangloria-se Russell Taylor, VP de marketing da Samsung no Reino Unido.

Minha única preocupação é que um naming rights temporário pode acabar confundindo os passageiros e dando ainda mais trabalho para a equipe do aeroporto, que vai precisar se esforçar durante duas semanas para garantir que ninguém se perca ao ‘não encontrar’ o terminal 5. Além disso, se as marcas começarem a revezar frequentemente na renomeação do local, eu não acho difícil que ele passe a ser conhecido como o ‘terminal da propaganda’.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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If it's starting to feel like you'll never be able to escape that Oscars selfie, just imagine working at Twitter headquarters, where it's now an official piece of office art.

Twitter employee Lauren Mitcheom tweeted the photo above last night with a personalized note to Ellen DeGeneres: "Hey, @TheEllenShow! We painted a picture of you at Twitter HQ. Come take a #selfie with us!"

Appearing in the photo are fellow Twitter employees Liz Fiandaca and Genevieve Wong. We've reached out to Twitter to learn more about who created the painting (which I'm sure is going to fly right to the top of their list of media calls to return today). But for now, we're just going to assume, as we do with all things, that Samsung was behind it.