Hasta La Creative!

Barry Sanders has always been good at the vanishing act. He did it most famously in 1999 by retiring from the NFL at age 30, when he was just 1,457 yards short of the league rushing record. He does it again, comically, in this new Pepsi MAX ad from TBWA\Chiat\Day in Los Angeles and director Matt Dilmore. In the ad, Sanders, getting a shave at a barber shop, is about to reveal the real reason he retired—but suddenly he goes up in a puff of smoke, and reappears in the living room of some gamer who has "unlocked" him while playing Madden NFL 25, thanks to a code on a Pepsi MAX cap.

Sanders' involvement with Madden NFL 25 goes beyond the new ad. Though he's been retired for almost 15 years, the 45-year-old was recently voted by fans to be the cover athlete of the game's latest edition. "Being on the cover of Madden introduces you to so many new fans that never saw you play," he said recently. "It's been a thrill for me, and I just never saw it coming."

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Pepsi MAX
Spot: "Disappearing Sanders"

Agency: TBWA\Chiat\Day, Los Angeles
President: Carisa Bianchi
Chief Creative Officer: John Norman
Creative Director, Copywriter: Zach Hilder
Creative Director, Art Director: William Esparza
Senior Copywriters: Anne Sanguinetti, Kathleen Swanson
Art Directors: Kristina Krkljus, Jenn Tranbarger
Group Account Director: Grace Kao
Management Supervisor: James Aardahl
Account Executives: Erik Wade, Rohit Bal
Planning Director: Neil Barrie
Planner: Drew Phillips
Executive Producer, Producer: Anh-Thu Le
Associate Producer: Stephanie Dziczek
Director of Business Affairs: Linda Daubson
Senior Business Affairs Manager: Laura Drabkin
Talent Payment Manager: Maryam Ohebsion
Broadcast Traffic Coordinator: Eugene Gandia

Production Company: Epoch Films
Director: Matt Dilmore
Executive Producer: Melissa Culligan
Head of Production: Megan Murphee
Line Producer: Geoff Clough

Editing: Cut + Run
Editor: Graham Turner
Assistant Editor: Russell August Anderson
Executive Producer: Michelle Eskin
Senior Producer: Christie Price

Visual Effects: Framestore
Flame Artist: Trent Shumway
Executive Producer: Kati Haberstock
Producer: Mary Nockles

Telecine: MPC
Colorist: Ricky Gausis

Mix: Lime Studios
Mixer: Loren Silber

ESPN's "This Is SportsCenter" is among the handful of classic sports ad campaigns of all time. Launched in 1995 by Wieden + Kennedy in New York, the campaign—originally inspired by the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap—hasn't changed much over the years. And why would it? You don't mess with a winning formula.

The premise of the ads, as we've noted before, is that ESPN's Bristol, Conn., offices are the center of the sports universe—a surreal yet mundane fantasy world where athletes and mascots live and work together with anchors and journalists. Where other marketers portray athletes as superhuman, "This Is SportsCenter" presents them as comically, relatably human. Eighteen years and more than 400 spots later, the campaign continues.

As part of the Adweek story linked above, W+K drew up a list of its 10 favorite SportsCenter ads. Now, ESPN has one-upped its agency—devoting a whole special to its 50 favorite SportsCenter spots of all time. The show, airing this Thursday at 8 p.m. ET and hosted by Jason Sudeikis, will feature anecdotes and stories about the top 50, and fans are encouraged to vote for their favorite spot over on Facebook. Sudeikis will announce the winning spot on the show. (More than 1 million votes have been cast so far.)

Check out the program on Thursday, and click the link below for a sneak peek at ESPN's official top 10 favorite "This Is SportsCenter" commercials.

Video Gallery: ESPN's 10 Favorite 'This Is SportsCenter' Ads

Not many brands have embraced the Anthony Weiner debacle as inspiration for ads. Spirit Airlines did it in its own traditional sleazy fashion. And now Mini has come out with a little auto erotica of its own—creating (as Weiner did) a fake Twitter identity, @CarlosDMotor, and tweeting out an image of a Mini in a bathroom, showing off a little grille. "Wanna get your hands on my stick?" says the tweet. Agency: Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners.

Wanna get your hands on my stick? pic.twitter.com/ZpDQbUnWB8

— Carlos D. Motor (@CarlosDMotor) July 26, 2013

Pereira & O'Dell's social film "The Beauty Inside" for Intel and Toshiba was a major success—an engaging episodic tale with a delightful premise that propelled the small San Francisco agency onto the world stage when it won a Daytime Emmy and three Grand Prix at Cannes last month. So, what do they do for a sequel? They have Harvey Keitel battle zombie alien mustaches, of course.

"The Power Inside" stars Harvey Keitel, Craig Roberts, Analeigh Tipton, Reid Ewing and Zack Pearlman in the apparently somewhat campy story of aliens who disguise themselves as mustaches or unibrows and attach themselves to unsuspecting humans, turning them into unthinking drones. With the help of his friends and technology—and you—the main character, Neil, discovers he’s the only guy who can stop the invasion. (Intel-inspired Ultrabook devices by Toshiba play an important role, we're told.)

Check out the trailer below, and visit thepowerinside.com to audition to be in the film—as a Urick (bad guy) or Guardian (good guy). The six-episode series premieres Aug. 15 at facebook.com/insidefilms.

Bucharest is many things. But one thing it is certainly not is Budapest. That's because Bucharest is the capital of Romania, and Budapest is the capital of neighboring Hungary. You could easily confuse them, of course, which is why Romanian candy bar ROM is out to end the confusion once and for all—with a new ad campaign from McCann Bucharest and MRM Romania.

As illustrated in the video below, it was all Michael Jackson's fault. In 1990, he started the trend by shouting "Hello, Budapest!" at his concert in Bucharest. In 1995, Iron Maiden did the same thing. They were followed by Morcheeba, Lenny Kravitz, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Whitesnake and others. The problem reached comic proportions in 2012, when when 400 Athletic Bilbao fans missed the Europa League final after mistakenly flying to Budapest instead of Bucharest.

Bucharest didn't get mad, but now it wants to get even. Billboards have gone up in both cities, reminding everyone of which is which. A browser add-on adds the words "Not Budapest" next to every instance of "Bucharest." And fans on the ROM website are encouraged to share their Bucharest/Budapest stories and tag them #BucharestNotBudapest.

"It's a confusion that upsets us all, and if there is a brand that can take legitimate action towards this error, that brand is definitely ROM, because it's Romanian, authentic, daring and because it has BUCHAREST written on it," says client marketing manager Gabriela Munteanu. (You may remember ROM from the 2011 Cannes Lions festival, when it won two Grand Prix for a campaign that pretended to Americanize the candy bar, much to the horror of its fans.)

We will have an early indication of whether the Bucharest/Budapest campaign is working, as Iron Maiden returns to Bucharest on Wednesday as part of their current world tour.

The congratulatory ads continue to roll in following the birth of William and Kate's royal baby on Monday. Here's Carling's entry from ad agency Creature—an amusing tale of a palace nursery decorator who's working off faulty information.

Coca-Cola's new "Smile Back" out-of-home stunt (scroll down to see it) is cute and nicely done, and everyone everywhere will love it. But let's overthink it for a moment.

Coke is famously skilled at being able to "Open happiness," as its slogan goes, through innovative real-world stunts. These have ranged from overly generous vending machines to splittable cans and personalized bottles. The typical transaction is that Coke gives you something of obvious value—a free drink or a fun, surprising experience—and that thing makes you happy, sometimes infectiously so. That's an honest interaction. This new stunt, though—produced and crowdsourced with Victors & Spoils and MOFILM—is different. As the company explains in the YouTube description:

"Coca-Cola sent our people all over the world, from Jamaica to the United Kingdom to Pakistan and more, to simply smile at strangers—to see who would smile back. As we passed others on the street, on the bus or in the park, we gave a smile, held up smiley face posters or did a silly dance with a grin on our faces, all to prompt a little friendliness in the mundane. When someone smiled back, they received a free Coke or some other fun prize: everything from sunglasses to hats to bicycles."

So, instead of a product, first you get a smile—from someone who, regardless of how awesome they may seem, has been paid to smile at you. (This is sometimes called a Professional Smile, and is clearly of dubious value.) Then, you must respond positively to this pretend display of affection (bribe) to get the reward that you previously got for free. The transaction has changed—it's backwards. You agree to be made happy by something false in order to have the chance to be made happy by something true. (You might get punched in the nose, actually, if you tried this in New York City.)

That distinction may sound like B.S., but you can sense the difference. It's why Coke's security-camera spot was so good—it captured moments that couldn't have been more genuine. And it's why the "Smile Back" video (and the earlier huggable vending machine from Singapore, which had similar problems involving misplaced affection) feels more manufactured. For all the happiness on display here—and yes, not all of it is bogus—the spot lacks the purity of concept that makes the best Coke work sing.

Happiness is infectious, but this stunt might not leave everyone smiling.

Last week we wrote about Heineken's JFK airport stunt, in which the brand dared travelers to drop their existing plans and go somewhere new and exotic with the push of a button—without knowing where. Today, we have video of some of the gameplay from the campaign, by Wieden + Kennedy in New York. It's pretty amusing. It begins, fittingly enough, with people who won't play the game—i.e., the sane ones to whom we can most easily relate. Then we get to the nutjobs—those outliers who are willing to make that call to friends and family and say they won't be visiting after all, but will be boarding a flight to who-knows-where at the request of people who've clearly been drinking. Most of the folks who take the plunge seem pretty happy with their new destination, although the guy going to Laos—he looks more than a little ambivalent.

CREDITS
Client: Heineken
Project: Departure Roulette

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, New York
Executive Creative Directors: Scott Vitrone, Ian Reichenthal, Mark Bernath, Eric Quennoy
Creative Directors: Erik Norin, Eric Steele
Copywriter: Will Binder
Art Director: Jared White
Interactive Producer: Victoria Krueger
Executive Producer: Nick Setounski
Assistant Producer: Kristen Johnson
Account Team: Patrick Cahill, Jacqueline Ventura, Sydney Lopes
Social Strategist: Jessica Abercrombie
Project Manager: Rayna Lucier
Sr. Community Manager: Mike Vitiello
Director of Interactive Production: Brandon Kaplan
Head of Integrated Production: Lora Schulson
Business Affairs: Sara Jagielski, Lisa Quintela, Quentin Perry
Global Travel Director: Colleen Baker
Lead/Sr. Travel Consultant: Angela Wootan
Sr. Travel Consultant: Joelle Wainwright

Production Company: Legs Media
Director: Dan Levin
Post-Production Company: Legs Media In Collaboration with BrehmLabs

Editors: Frederic T. Brehm, Ian Park, Gabriela Tessitore
Sound Designer: Eric Hoffman
Colorists: Frederic T. Brehm, M. Scott Vogel
Information Display System Fabricator: Solari Corp.
Design & Build Team: The Guild

Thirteen, a PBS station in New York City, continues to insist that its programming is better than the dreck you find elsewhere on cable—by inventing more bogus ads for reality shows that don't exist. Back in May, the NYC office of CHI & Partners rolled out posters for three such shows. And now, it's got three more for your guilty pleasure—Clam Kings, Long Island Landscapers and Meet the Tanners. I'd probably watch all of them, or at least pause, intrigued, on my way up the dial. "The fact you thought this was a real TV show says a lot about the state of TV," the promo say abruptly, just as you're getting drawn in. The tagline is, "Support quality programming," and the campaign is using the hashtag #TVgonewrong.

Old Spice had a couple of hits back in April with its "Shower" and "Watermelon" ads for its Fiji Bar Soap. Now, the brand's Swagger Bar Soap gets some play in this amusing spot from Wieden + Kennedy called "Architect." Again, it's a parody of '80s bar-soap commercials, complete with cheese-spirational song lyrics and meaningful brow-sweat-wiping moments … and a comically sideswiping ending. Nice slippy product shot at the end, too.