Hasta La Creative!

The company’s new product, Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings, professes to measure the activity and reach of Twitter conversation about shows.

Dodge and Paramount have joined forces in a co-branded campaign from W+K launching the new 2014 Dodge Durango featuring Ron Burgundy (of Anchorman and the upcoming Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, but you already knew that).

The campaign, which spans television, print, digital and social media, debuted October 5th online and on television. Be prepared to see it everywhere.

“With the personal involvement of Will Ferrell, our writer / director Adam McKay, the comedy team at Funny or Die, and the Dodge creative team at Wieden+Kennedy, we were able to create a truly epic partnership,” says CMO of Paramount Picture Josh Greenstein in a statement. But are the spots actually funny? Some of them — they really very widely in quality. Each of the spots takes advantage of the 70s aesthetic in the Anchorman films, taking place in a colorful, very 70s auto showroom. The first spot, “Horsepower” is a bit of a letdown. It resurrects the tired “comparing horse power to an actual horse” theme commonly used in spots for powerful vehicles.

The staring contest with the horse at the end is almost worth a chuckle though. “Glove Compartment” is a lot better: it features Ron Burgundy toting the Durango’s glove compartment, which can hold “two turkey sandwiches or seventy packs of gum.” Another spot finds Burgundy struggling with a script that touts the Durango’s “m.p.g.” performance. The highlight is definitely “Ballroom Dancers,” featured above, which has a comically angry showdown between Burgundy and dancers that he thinks may “live in the rafters.” A lot of this is stuff that only Ferrell could get away with delivering, and only about half of the time is the writing worthy of his talent, but when it works it works. Plus, it will whet people’s appetites for the Anchorman sequel, which is kind of the point.

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues debuts in theaters December 20th. Credits and additional video after the jump.  continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

C-Span2’s average daily rating shot up during Senator Ted Cruz’s speech to protest President Obama’s health care law and C-Span’s audience more than tripled on the eve of the government shutdown, data show.

Facebook and Twitter are vying to become the nation’s digital water cooler as they woo networks and advertisers.

Pearl Media’s interactive billboard at Columbus Circle attempts to spook passing subway riders with a large screen ad that responds to their movements.

The gesture-activated, multimedia billboard has been promoting Witches of East End since September 13th. As Pearl Media CEO Josh Cohen puts it, “The video walls are designed to get busy Upper West Side commuters to put down their small screens and spend time with cool content on a really big screen so that they’ll tune in to their medium-sized TV screens when the series premieres on October 6.” Phew. I think Louis C.K. would probably have something to say about that one.

At any rate, the billboard features two nine square-foot walls, comprised of nine screens each. An extreme close up of a woman’s green iris appears to follow commuters as they walk by, masses of crows fly out of her pupil as the scene changes to trees slowly being consumed by fire. The more movement from those passing by, the more the scene changes. Music and sound are also integrated into the interactive billboard.

The billboard didn’t seem to actually scare anybody (nor, I think, will Witches of East End), but it did stop some people in their tracks and get them to interact with the billboard. Some of them seemed to be having fun. Whether that will get anyone to actually tune into Lifetime is another story.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If you’ve already burned through Friday Night Lights, Parks and Recreation, New Girl, Bob’s Burgers, The League, Orange Is The New Black, and basically any other TV series worth watching on Netflix, set phasers to the documentary section for the 2011 film Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Directed by David Gelb, the movie is a portrait of 85-year-old world-renowned sushi master, Jiro Ono, who’s dedicated (literally) almost every waking moment of his life to perfecting his craft.

The film goes to great lengths to show how far Jiro strives to make the most perfect sushi in the world while simultaneously begging the questions, “What if your entire life was dedicated to only one pursuit? How would that affect your personal relationships? How do you then define success, if the concept of ‘success’ is even an ascertainable goal in your mind?” It’s as troubling a portrayal as it is fascinating, causing the viewer a level of introspection that few other films can achieve. It only made sense, then, for Gelb to follow-up his documentary on the world’s best sushi by filming its American equivalent, Papa Murphy’s Take and Bake pizza, for a new campaign from Wong, Doody, Crandall, Wiener.

It’s clear that Gelb employs some Jiro Dreams of Sushi-style camera work here. However, whereas his documentary focuses on getting to know the people behind the food, his spot has no time to do so. So, we instead get some creepy anonymous hands, kneading pizza dough in slow motion. We get some mom feet, with a mom arm shooting into frame from above to half-hug her child. Finally, we get some assorted family hands, each reaching out of nowhere to grab pizza slices (again, in slow-motion). All of this while creepy piano-plinking plays menacingly in the background.

While watching Jiro Dreams of Sushi, I was nervous that perhaps someone in Jiro’s immediately family would comment on his coldness, or his chef-before-father mentality. While watching this spot for Papa Murphy’s, I was worried that someone would be murdered. Credits after the jump.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

NBC Sports Group has gone big with covering Premier League soccer games as part of a three-year deal. The viewership numbers have shown that the formula for full-blown coverage has been working.

NBC got a great deal, it paid nothing for the America’s Cup races, and it also got lucky, televising a remarkable comeback.

The ratings Tuesday night again show that the networks, this time ABC, can introduce a new show and get a big audience to watch it.

The possible new show would be based in New Orleans and would be introduced the way “NCIS: Los Angeles” was introduced: as a “planted spinoff.”