Hasta La Creative!

W+K Portland launched a new campaign for Old Spice called “Smell Em Who’s Boss” with a series of four broadcast spots.

After the conclusion of the campaign pitting Terry Crews against Isaiah Mustafa for the brand’s Bearglove and Timber with “Truce” in November and the introduction of the “Legendary Man” in January, W+K Portland cooked up a new batch of Old Spice weirdness with “Perfect Ending,” “Standoff,” “Five Year Plan” and “Innocent.”

“Standoff” and “Perfect Ending” takes a Western theme, with the former featuring a man tied to a cart filled with explosives. A villain gets ready to set off the explosives but before he can, the hero saves the town with a can of Old Spice Desperado. Then things get overly self-referential with a woman providing a voiceover saying, “And that’s how our town was freed. And I remember thinking: ‘This would make a strange deodorant commercial.’”

The 15-second “Perfect Ending” finds a character shampooing his hair while riding a bathtub horse and playing trumpet with his feet. “Innocent,” meanwhile shows a man able to convince the police that he wasn’t the suspect in question, despite an APB matching his exact description, while “Five Year Plan” sees a prospective employee turning the tables during a job interview.

The spots very much follow in the “make it as weird as possible” W+K Old Spice formula, while moving on from the characters that have been a mainstay for a brand.

Given the recent “Truce” spot it seems likely we’ve seen the last of Terry Crews and Isaiah Mustafa — at least for awhile. These new efforts manage to find new, unexpected ways for the brand to get its weird on, but they don’t always deliver. “Perfect Ending” might work the best of the bunch, perhaps because it doesn’t seem to even try to make sense. “Innocent” and the self-referential voiceover in “Standoff,” meanwhile feel a bit too forced.

Credits:
W+K PORTLAND
Creative Directors: Erik Fahrenkopf | Max Stinson
Copywriter: Matt Mulvey
Art Director: Lawrence Melilli
Integrated Executive Producer: Erika Madison
Producer: Chris Capretto
Account Team: Georgina Gooley | Nick Pirtle | Michael Dalton

PRODUCTION
Production Company: MJZ
Director: Steve Ayson
President: David Zander
Executive Producer: Emma Wilcockson
Line Producer: Mark Hall
Director of Photography: Robert Elswit

Editorial Company: EXILE
Editor: 5-Year, Innocent: Kirk Baxter
Editor: Standoff Nate Gross
Assistant Editor: Zaldy Lopez

Post Producer: Toby Louie / Brittany Carson
Head of Production: Jennifer Locke
Executive Producer: Carol Lynn Weaver

VFX Company: The Mill | LA
Executive Producer: Sue Troyan
Producer: Chris Harlowe
Coordinator: Rustie Burris
VFX Supervisor: James Allen
2D Lead Artist: Narbeh Mardirossian
2D Artists: Andy Dill, Alex Candlish, Jale Parsons, Don Kim, Lisa Ryan, Brad Scott, Chris Payne
3D Artist: Michael Lori
Matte Painting: Andy Wheater, Nathan McKenna

Music and Sound Design: – Five Year Plan, Standoff
Original Music: Walker
Executive Producer: Sara Matarazzo
Senior Producer: Abbey Hickman
Sound Designer: Brian Emrich / Trinitite
Music and Sound Design: Innocent
Original Music: Joint
Composers: Noah Woodburn, Tim Ribner
Producer: Sarah Fink
Sound Designer: Brian Emrich / Trinitite
Music and Sound Design: Perfect Ending
Original: Music Woodwork
Track: “Sunset Scrubdown”
Composer: Philip Kay
Producers: Rachel Wood, Andy Oskwarek
Vocal Arrangement: Walker
Vocals Producer: Abbey Hickman
Sound Designer: Brian Emrich / Trinitite

Studio:Lime Studios
Engineer: 5-Year, Innocent: Rohan Young
Engineer: Standoff: Sam Casas
Assistant Engineer: 5-Year, Innocent, Perfect Ending: Ben Tomastik
Assistant Engineer: Standoff Peter Lapinski
Executive Producer Susie Boyajan

Color Transfer Company: Company 3
Artist: Sean Coleman
Color Producer: Matt Moran

W+K Portland brings back a screaming Terry Crews for a new 30-second online spot for Old Spice, but that’s just the beginning.

The spot features Crews crashing into a bathroom on an Old Spice rocket and promoting the brand’s “powerful smelling” body spray and body wash, which he uses to cover his “powerful body.” It’s a return to an old formula for the brand, following the slight departure of its previous campaign, but ends with something different: a call to viewers to click through to an interactive experience called “Muscle Surprise.”

Old Spice spokesperson Kate DiCarlo told Mashable “Muscle Surprise” was designed to appeal to the brand’s video game-loving audience. “We know our guys love video games. We know they’re spending a lot of time engaging with their friends digitally,” she said. “But they’re also spending a lot of time engaging with brands digitally, so we thought, ‘Why not give it a try and turn Terry into a game?’”

Calling “Muscle Surprise” a game might be a bit of a stretch, as there isn’t a clear cause and effect to users’ actions. Rather, the surreal interactive experience finds users clicking on Crews’ various muscles to bizarre and unexpected effect, with which muscles they click on, and in what order, leading to different (always strange) results. You can give it a try yourself here, and see if you can figure out how to get the ennui-suffering stapler.

Credits:
W+K PORTLAND
Executive Creative Directors: Mark Fitzloff, Joe Staples
Creative Directors: Craig Allen, Jason Bagley
Copywriters: Jarrod Higgins, Andy Laugenour, Ansel Wallenfang
Director of Interactive Production:Mike Davidson
Interactive Producer: Eddye Borgese, Amy Marsh
Interactive Strategy: Michael Holz
Social Strategy: Danny Schotthoefer
Media/Comms Planning: Lisa Feldhusen, AJ Blumenthal, Mary O’Malley
Account Team: Nick Pirtle, Liam Doherty
Business Affairs: Cindy Lewellen

PRODUCTION COMPANY
Production Company: MediaMonks
Founder: Wesley ter Haar
Director: Tom Rijpert
Executive Producer: Joris Pol
Executive Producer: Nell Jordan
Post Production Producer: Marloes de Rijke
Producer: Tim Ruiters
Executive Creative Director: Jeroen van der Meer
Digital Art Director: Nicolas Mollien
UX Lead: Martin Kool
Animation Director: Pierre Nelwan

Ready for more screaming, twitchy muscles, explosions and horrifying hallucinations? Good, because Terry Crews just made another Old Spice commercial.

The ad, by Wieden + Kennedy and directors Fatal Farm, continues the brand’s “Get Shaved in the Face” campaign for its electric shavers, which Crews helped to introduce early last year in a murderous spot with Little Terry Crews. This time around, we catch Terry right in the middle of a nightmare—and when he wakes up, it only gets worse.

We caught up with Kate DiCarlo, Procter & Gamble’s communications manager for beauty care, to chat about the spot and Terry’s popularity as an Old Spice spokesman. Check out that Q&A below.

AdFreak: How does this spot evolve last year’s “Get Shaved in the Face” campaign?
Kate DiCarlo: “Nightmare Face” brings back Terry Crews to continue the “Get Shaved in the Face” story. This time around, we wake up in Terry’s nightmare, which revolves around unruly face-hair and a familiar face as his wife. Even if it takes a lot of yelling, we’re here to remind guys about the importance of keeping their scraggly hairs in check by using Old Spice Electric Shavers. We want them to know that we have a variety of options that they can choose from, depending on their shaving needs.

Why do you think Terry has such longevity as an Old Spice spokesman?
Terry is a long-time fan favorite, and we’re always thrilled when we find another opportunity to work together. There’s no one else out there like him—with that explosive personality, impressive yelling power and manly chest muscles. Our fans are always asking what’s next for Terry and Old Spice, and so we’re excited to give them more of what they’re wanting, while also helping them shaverize their beards, which results in more handsome face parts.

Fatal Farm handled the direction, editing and visual effects. What do they bring to the table?
We love Fatal Farm and have worked with them in the past on various projects. We love them because they take absurdly ridiculous and ultimately profoundly stupid humor as seriously as we do. Stupid humor is serious business, and they are seriously smart about stupid things.

Here’s yet another item from W+K today, as the agency has debuted its latest campaign for Old Spice, introducing a creepy new android character.

The new character makes his debut in the 30-second “Soccer” (featured above). When the robotic man goes to kick a soccer ball at the beach, he falls directly onto a sunbathing woman, crushing her ribs. Initially irked by the painful injury, she then notices that he smells amazing. When the android says that he can’t get up, she replies, suggestively “Maybe I don’t want you to.” Coming on the heels of the funny Terry Crews-filled World Cup spot, it’s pretty disappointing. It also marks something of a creepiness trend in W+K’s Old Spice work, with the campaign featuring anthropomorphic hair getting the creepy ball rolling earlier this year. Its “our products will make women want you” message is also vaguely reminiscent of Axe’s strategy of marketing to pubescent boys — the only demographic desperate/gullible enough to swallow such a claim. Either approach is irksome enough on its own, but combined they’re truly troubling. W+K’s latest campaign for Old Spice also features the 30-second online spot “Nightclub,” which takes a similar (but possibly even more ridiculous) approach. We’ve featured it after the jump for any interested parties. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

W+K Portland have launched an campaign for Old Spice’s new line of electric shavers and trimmers (price range: $50-80), and have enlisted the help of a familiar face to help launch the new products.

Current Brooklyn Nine-Nine star Terry Crews, who helped introduce Old Spice Shave Gel last year with the spot “Baby”, returns to help market Old Spice’s foray into the shavers and trimmers world. The 45-second digital effort, “Get Shaved in the Face,” is reminiscent of Crews’ iconic work for the brand from years past, with a predictable amount of screaming and general mishigas. In the spot, Crews is in the process of shaving when a mini-crews realizes that he is a hair. As you might expect, things get pretty crazy by the conclusion of the spot, which you can watch for yourself above.

While the strategy might not have the shock value it did years ago, it makes a lot of sense to call on the iconic Crews for the introduction of a new product line. Among the products being introduced are: Old Spice Hair Clipper (“Like a lawn mower for your hair with 8 adjustable settings.”), Old Spice Beard and Head Trimmer, and Old Spice Shaver (“Like 3 smooth barbers for your face, this shaver features a triple-action cutting system with twin foils that shave off stubble and an integrated cutter that shortens longer hairs…”). Stay tuned for credits and a “Baby” refresher after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

After watching Terry Crews scream his way through many an Old Spice ad, it's hard to imagine him as boring. But that's the premise of Toyota's upcoming Super Bowl ad for the Highlander, in which Crews receives life lessons from none other than the Muppets.

Created by Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles and hashtagged #NoRoomForBoring, the 60-second spot, titled "Joyride," features an original song about "unborifying" your life. The Muppets partnership is a dual promotion, highlighting both the 2014 Highlander and Disney's upcoming film Muppets Most Wanted.

Here's the teaser clip, which sets the scene for the Super Bowl spot: