Hasta La Creative!

Mostly wordless spot featuring Olympic hopeful and Dick’s employee Josh Dangel who, when he’s not fitting shoes for other people, is training is butt off. This is part of Dick’s “contenders” series featuring employees who are all trying to go for gold. I like how they let the visceral aspects speak louder than the words. Dick’s seems like the perfect place to work in that aspect. If you don’t have a sponsor, at least you get (I assume) a discount on gear.

Publicis Seattle unveiled the new visual identity for the 2018 Special Olympics USA Games. The agency was tapped as the sole agency to create the identity and corresponding tagline – Rise With Us. The games will be held in Seattle in 2018. The mark took its cue from the Olympic torch shape, but it also represents the water around Seattle as well as the sweat and tears from the athletes, family, and volunteers alike. The colors invoke the water surrounding the area.

Treehouse editor John McStravick helped capture the spirit of team sport in editing a new campaign for sporting apparel innovator Russell Athletic®. Conceived by Dallas agency The Richards Group, the campaign includes broadcast and online ads and features high school football players discussing values that bind their teams and lead them to excel.

Each of the ads weaves scenes of football games and practices with close-ups of young players describing what motivates them. “While we are all created equal, teams are not,” declares one young athlete. “Teams venture into uncharted waters, challenge the laws of physics…” Players in the practice footage wear uniforms embroidered with words that echo the copy: declaration…teammate…brothers. Online ads end with a hashtag that consumers can use to join the conversation through social media sites.

All of the athletes are either current or recent high school football players and that gives the spots a sense of realism lacking in other sports advertising. “They’re not million dollar athletes, they’re just kids,” says McStravick. “That helps viewers identify with them.”

McStravick poured through more than eight hours of source material to produce six ads. (A seventh ad was edited by Treehouse’s Peter Tarter.) “The stories were open to interpretation; there weren’t strict boards,” McStravick says. “We were able to go in whatever direction felt right. It came together very organically with the script.”

The campaign was McStravick’s first for Treehouse, which launched last month. “I am thrilled with how well the campaign has been received,” he says. “It was great working with the team from The Richards Group. They were very collaborative and open to ideas. The whole project flowed very well and that shows in the end product.”

Back in March, Under Armour introduced its E39 compression shirt during the NFL Scouting Combine, and Heisman Trophy winning quarterback Cam Newton and Alabama wide receiver Julio Jones are among those who made headlines as their vital stats were assessed in real-time for viewers using this innovative new athletic evaluation improvement tool. At that time, Under Armour released a :30 teaser spot entitled “Julio Jones: UA E39,” representing the latest collaborations between Under Armour, director Andre Stringer and his colleagues at Shilo and creative think tank WMIG — and we promised to share more amazing results from this ongoing creative collaboration.

At last, this :60 spot has just debuted on ESPN, and it will continue to air widely across the U.S. during all the NFL Draft-related television programming set for the days to come. As you can see, this film adds Shilo’s extraordinary design, animation and visual effects talents into the mix.

By featuring Julio’s authentic performance — and Shilo’s design-infused storytelling approach, guided by ideation from WMIG — Under Armour’s E39 technology is shown to be a phenomenal new way for athletes to maximize their full potential. In the words of Andre Stringer, “This piece continues our trajectory of pioneering a storytelling technique that mixes both live-action and design at the highest of levels.”

Full credits for this spot follow below.

More information is available online at http://www.underarmour.com/e39 and http://www.shilo.tv .

STORY’s Blair Hayes has directed a new spot for The Coleman Company and Doner Advertising that evokes memories of camping through “vintage” footage of people having fun in the great outdoors.
Introducing Coleman’s new Instant Tent, the spot, titled Not All Of It, builds on a series of earlier ads that were composed from home movies and old photographs submitted by campers. The new ad uses some of the same footage, but mixes in new footage, shot by Hayes, and cleverly designed to look like decades old Super 8 material. The new footage shows people setting up the Instant Tent and carousing around a campsite.

Hayes used hand-held Super 8 and 16mm cameras to shoot the camping scenes, and had the talent, which included a real family, improvise their performances. In some instances, he handed cameras to the talent and had them shoot themselves. Still, trying to replicate the look of amateur photography well enough to blend in with the real thing was no easy task.
“The viewer needs to believe that it is 100 percent authentic—that it was shot by a real person with a Super 8 camera 15 or 20 years ago,” Hayes says. “You can shoot with 8mm cameras, but if what you’re filming doesn’t feel real, it’s not going to work.”
Hayes adds that it was particularly challenging to show people setting up the tent in a natural way. “It had to be done in a way where it didn’t feel like a demonstration,” he notes. “You don’t want viewers to think they are being marketed to.”
Hayes believes that most people who view the spot will forget that the tent is a new product and will assume that the whole commercial is composed of found footage. “I defy anyone to guess which scenes are new material,” he states. “I’ve always prided myself on doing commercials that feel real and authentic. It’s a challenge, but it’s fun…it’s what I enjoy doing most.”

“Unity” from the NBA Playoffs Campaign, completed by Brickyard VFX via Goodby Silverstein & Partners. It’s one of seven spots airing throughout the playoffs.

This is Brickyard’s fourth straight year working with the NBA on their playoffs campaign. “Unity” juxtaposes footage of rivals Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, and uses interview clips with each player to emphasize the importance of team unity in achieving victory. Ultimately the seven spots are tied together through different spins on the NBA Playoffs’ “where amazing happens” tagline. DJ Steve Porter set the footage to various beats, mixing and looping dialogue to create the innovative rap-like flow of the spots.