Pereira & O’Dell Flies Into Birdbnb for Debut Airbnb Work

Pereira & O’Dell nabbed creative duties for Airbnb in September, and three months later, the San Fran shop is launching Birdbnb, their first campaign for the global travel renting company. To supplement Airbnb’s colorful site full of rental options, Pereira & O’Dell created a conceptual platform where artists built 50 birdhouse-sized renderings of actual listings. The finished products will be on display in Audubon Park in New Orleans December 16-22.

The official name of the campaign is “Every Traveler Deserves a Home,” and the 2:10 cut of the above video feels very homey, which is probably the best compliment I can give a travel rental commercial. The 4:30 version drags a bit, kind of like that nice older lady who rents you a room but keeps talking your ear off about topics you don’t care about (2:10 version here, FYI). She’s still kind, but you want to tell her to keep it brief, since, after all, you are the customer. However, selling this type of service does not lend itself to easy choices for advertising, and this effort finds a way to tell a story that makes travel rentals personal.

Credits bookended by some behind-the-scenes videos after the jump.

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Ed Norton Sings Karaoke, Almost Dies Several Times in New Droid Spot

This one’s been making the rounds for awhile now, but we thought we’d give some love anyway. McgarryBowen New York’s new spot for Verizion, “A Lot Can Happen in 48 Hours” features the talents of Ed Norton. It originally aired on December 5th, although it was posted to YouTube about a week before that.

In the spot, directed by Matthijs van Heijningen, Norton is thrown into a variety of dicey situations, with his Droid helping him get through most of them relatively unscathed. “A Lot Can Happen in 48 Hours” opens with Norton waking up to find himself in a strange room, with his Droid still at 3% power. “It’s been an interesting 48 hours,” Norton says, followed by a flashback. We then follow Norton through his series of misadventures, which begins with him finding a lost wallet and using Droid to find the location. This leads Norton to a karaoke bar, where he ogles a taken woman while singing “If I Could Turn Back Time” (the funniest part of the spot).

From here, Norton’s misadventures include attempting to land a plane, being held captive, having a key found in his stomach, playing a high-stakes game of Connect Four, and being held captive once again. Its everything-goes-wrong brand of humor borrows a little bit from The Hangover series, and although the spot seems to employ the kind of random connections Grey NY used in their 2012 DirectTV campaign, the superior execution helps keep it from feeling too easy or derivative. The spot uses a clever setup to promote the Droid’s impressive battery life, and then finds ways to showcase the phone’s other features in the process. This is certainly a far cry better than McgarryBowen Chicago’s disastrous “Denskies” campaign for Sears. Bonus points for the excellent use of a Lykke Li song. Credits after the jump. continued…

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Team One Declassifies More of ‘The Bureau: XCOM Declassified’

In April, we covered the first piece of ambiguous viral ad content for The Bureau: XCOM Declassified, a 2K Games and 2K Marin video game. We’re back to report another promo, titled “Orbit & The Asteroid,” and produced by Team One. This 90-second spot isn’t any less ambiguous than the first ad, most of it about a 1960s era creepy clown television show and the young boy who watches it. According to the creators, there are a number of easter eggs that contain clues for the future of the video game series. The game won’t be released until August 20, which means there are four weeks left for more curious marketing spots, creepy clowns and all. Credits after the jump.

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