Hasta La Creative!

If you happened to catch this PSA on television in Britain this month, you might be left wondering if it is—could it somehow possibly be?—real footage. And that's the point.

The spot, from Grey London, shows an unborn baby drifting around inside the womb in what is surely the most real-seeming in-utero footage ever. It is, however, all CGI.

"The craft and technique that Digital Domain and [Radical Media director] Chris Milk put into making the ad was amazing, and the end result looks so brilliantly life-like that we hope people will walk away from it questioning whether it's real or not," says Grey deputy executive creative director Vicki Maguire.

The ad, for the British Heart Foundation, even has the baby do the voiceover (in a child's voice). She talks about how she might inherit a heart condition from her parents.

"I wanted to create a sincere and simple piece of film, forging a deeply emotional connection with a girl who needs saving even before she is born," says Milk, who also made Arcade Fire's stunning interactive experience The Wilderness Downtown. "The story is told in a world that is familiar but still a mystery. She's invited us in because she has something to say. Something vital."

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: British Heart Foundation
Agency: Grey, London
Creative Director: Vicki Maguire
Copywriter: Clemmie Telford
Art Director: Lex Down
Managing Partner: Sarah Jenkins
Business Director: Eve Bulley
Account Manager: Grant Paterson
Account Executive: Isaac Hickinbottom
Agency Producer: Vanessa Butcher
Creative Producer: Gemma Hose
Planner: Ruth Chadwick
Media Agency: PHD, London
Media Planner: Monica Majumdar
Production Company: @radical Media
Director: Chris Milk
Visual Effects: Digital Domain
Editor: Brian Miller
Producers: Ben Schneider, Sam Storr
Postproduction: Digital Domain
Soundtrack Composer: Vampire Weekend
Audio Postproduction: Grand Central

It's awards season, and the case studies keep rolling in. This one, from Jung von Matt in Germany, for a campaign to get drivers to stop talking on their mobile phones, should do well among radio judges who enjoy simulated violence for the greater good.

The agency set up a stunt during a live radio show (not during a commercial break) in which a person called in to request a song—and admitted he was driving on the highway. Of course, from there, it doesn't end well.

Brad Pitt's brother did it. Now it's Kevin Bacon's brother's turn.

Michael Bacon, the less famous of the Bacon brothers—though not entirely unknown, as he is one-half of The Bacon Brothers, the band—has signed up for an amusing campaign by Oscar Mayer to advertise another less famous bacon: turkey bacon.

The video below, from 360i, sets up the goal of the campaign, which is to get people to follow Michael on Twitter and catch his more famous actor brother. (This will be a challenge. Kevin has about 431,000 followers. Michael currently has about 1,300.)

"We really feel for Michael, and we want to support him as much as possible," says Tom Bick, senior director of integrated marketing and advertising at Oscar Mayer. "You just have to embrace each one for its own individual qualities. And that's what we do with our entire line of bacon products—each one is spectacular, because it's made by the bacon experts at Oscar Mayer."

Being used almost literally as a piece of meat doesn't seem to bother Michael, though. Good luck to him.

Fame- hope it's just like I've been picturing it! That's why I'm doing #UnsungBacon with @oscarmayer turkey bacon http://t.co/fFKgbxHqyO

— Michael Bacon (@MichaelBacon36) May 12, 2014

Rats and mice are not endangered species in New York City. (There are thought to be at least as many rats as people in the Big Apple, and there could be five times as many.) But d-CON, the rodent control company, is taking its small victories against our furry friends and publicly celebrating them in an amusing new campaign from Havas Worldwide.

As one part of the integrated campaign, the agency put missing posters for rodents all over the city, at mice level (though presumably not in the subway, where they'd be more likely to be proven wrong in an instant). Havas also created the darkly comic videos below, in which mice families deal with the horror of having ingested d-CON products.

Because if there's one advertising category where depictions of painful death are acceptable, even enjoyed, it's pest control.

   
CREDITS
Client: d-CON
Agency: Havas Worldwide, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Darren Moran              
Group Creative Directors: Dustin Duke, Jon Wagner
Creative Director: Eric Rojas
Creative Director: Gian Carlo Lanfranco
Creative Director: Rolando Cordova
Writer: Eric Bertuccio             
Global Chief Content Officer: Vin Farrell
Co-Head of Production, North America: Sylvain Tron
Executive Producer: Deepa Joshi
Producer Erin Jackson
Chief Strategy Officer: Tim Maleeny
Group Planning Director: Kerin Morrison                      
Senior Strategist: Chris Lake
Global Brand Director: Betsy Simons
Group Account Director: Joe Maglio
Account Supervisor: Darah Rifkin
Production Company: Bar 1
Director: Joe Barone                     
Mixer: Tim Leitner                    
Casting Director: Dawn Mjoen                  
Production Designer: Radek Hanak, Unit+Sofa                              
Editor: David Bartin, Studio 6

Fifteen seconds is short for an ad, never mind a film. But Heineken and Wieden + Kennedy New York premiered just such a movie at the Tribeca Film Festival on Wednesday night—based on a fan's tweet about an evil Abraham Lincoln clone.

"They clone Abe Lincoln's DNA and name the clone president for life…except there's one problem: the clone is evil," Dennis Lazar, aka @awsommovieideas, wrote as his winning submission to the brewer's #15secondpremiere contest, which asked for fans' their wildest movie ideas. Those 115 characters (he had to leave room for the hashtag) were then crafted by a Hollywood film crew into 15 seconds of film—called Linclone.

You can check out the mini-movie below. The credits take way longer than the film itself—luckily there are some outtakes to keep things interesting.

Lazar was flown to New York and given the green carpet treatment by the Tribeca sponsor at the festival. Guests included Robert De Niro himself, who really should have played Lincoln if we're being honest.

Credits and more below.

 
The movie poster:

 
Lazar and DeNiro:

 
A deleted scene from the movie:

 
An interview with the director:

 
CREDITS
Client: Heineken
Project: #15SecondPremiere

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, New York
Executive Creative Director: Susan Hoffman
Creative Directors: Eric Steele, Erik Norin
Copywriter: Mike Vitiello
Art Director: Cory Everett
Social Strategist: Jessica Abercrombie
Brand Strategist: Kelly Lynn Wright
Senior Interactive Strategist: Tom Gibby
Community Manager: Rocio Urena
Head of Content Production: Nick Setounski
Producer: Owen Katz
Print Producer: Kristen Althoff
Broadcast Traffic Supervisor: Sonia Bisono
Studio Designer: Chris Kelsch
Account Team: Patrick Cahill, Samantha Wagner, Kristen Herrington
Business Affairs: Lisa Quintela
Project Manager: Rayna Lucier

Production Company: Jefferson Projects
Executive Producer: Chris Totushek
Director: Eric Appel
Director of Photography: Mathew Rudenberg

Production Company: Whitehouse Post
Editor: Alaster Jordan
Assistant Editor: Matt Schaff
Executive Producer: Lauren Hertzberg
Producer: Alejandra Alarcon
Original Music: The Ski Team

Postproduction Company: Carbon VFX
Lead Compositor: Matt Reilly
Smoke Artist: Joe Scaglione
AE Artist: Maxime Benjamin
Executive Producer: Frank Devlin
Colorist: Yohance Brown
Surround Mix: Sound Lounge
Engineer: Justin Kooy
Executive Producer: Harrison Nalevansky

Cast and Crew
Abraham Linclone: Robert Broski
Dr. Satterberg: Eric Satterberg
Chief Justice: Paul Gregory
1st Assistant Director: Scott Metcalfe
2nd Assistant Director: Steve Bagnara
Production Supervisor: Megan Sullivan
DIT: Scott Resnick
Gaffer: Cody Jacobs
Key Grip: Kyle Honnig
Best Boy Electric: Brandon Wilson
Best Boy Grip: Ceaser Martinez
Set Decorator: Mark Wolcott
Prop Master: Eric Berg
Sound: Bo Sundberg
Boom Operator: Danny Carpenter
VTR: Carlos Patzi
Wardrobe Assistant: Beckee Craighead
Make-up Stylist: Kat Bardot
Make-up Assistant: Becca Weber
Production Assistants: Atif Ekulona, Eric Browning, Ewa Pazera, Julio Cordero, Desire Brumfield
Craft Services: Christina Gonzalez

DDB is hoping the Sumatran tiger doesn't go the way of the vinyl record—particularly the quickly degradable one.

For Earth Day, DDB New York and the Smithsonian's National Zoological Park and Conservation Biology Institute are raising awareness of the endangered animal—of which only 400 are left—by creating an endangered song. 

For The Endandered Song Project, the agency got Atlantic Records band Portugal. The Man to write a new track simply called "Sumatran Tiger" and release it only on 400 lathe-cut vinyl records, which are designed to degrade after a certain number of plays (about 100 plays, we're told). The 400 people who got the record (we were one of them) are being asked to digitize the song, thus keeping it alive, and share it through social media using the hashtag #EndangeredSong.

"We liked the idea that there is this degree of difficulty to the project in terms of what people had to do," Matt Eastwood, chief creative officer of DDB New York, tells AdFreak. "We are responding a little bit to the whole slacktivism thing. We want more than just a tweet. Of course we want that, too, but saving a species is more than just a Facebook like. You have to physically get involved and do things."

DDB initially thought about releasing the song on a cassette. "Then we found out about the lathe-cut records," said Eastwood. "Records, too, are almost extinct these days. And the song will slowly become extinct if you don't copy it over to digital … It's very old school meets new school, which I like. It's old technology, but we're promoting it using the digital technology of Twitter and Instagram and Facebook."

The Sumatran tiger was a somewhat arbitrary choice (there is no shortage of endangered species) but a compelling one, Eastwood added. "It's not an unusual animal, but it's a rare and exotic animal, and everyone loves tigers," Eastwood said. "There are only 400 of them, which to us just seemed so desperate. You could fit them in a car park. It's ridiculous."

Portugal. The Man, whose members hail from Wasilla, Ala., and are committed to environmental causes, were happy to join the cause. The campaign doesn't have a specific call to action for donations, but you can contribute through a link on the campaign site.

Various digital copies of the song have already popped up on Soundcloud, or you can check out our proudly low-fi version here.

When Kevin Spacey appears on screen these days, you expect him to speak to camera in a South Carolina drawl, assess his chances at screwing over a rival, and perhaps even (spoiler alert) kill a person or two.

He does none of those things in E*Trade's new campaign from Ogilvy & Mather, but does aim for an air of mystery in his role as a "talent scout" who can tell by looking at someone whether he or she is "Type E*"—the company's term for sophisticated, savvy, self-directed investors.

This Spacey spot is the first in what will be a series, Ogilvy tells us.

An earlier spot that launched the campaign was titled "Epic Musical" and featured everyday people singing and dancing because they are Type E*. The new campaign follows the demise of the E*Trade baby, the star of Grey's longtime campaign, who was put out to pasture after six years of never growing up.

"If you think about it, our target has grown to become more sophisticated, so the baby needed to grow up as well," said Russell Messner, global managing director at Ogilvy. "That being said, we did not want to alienate the smart wit and irreverence that are inextricably linked to the E*Trade brand. We believe Kevin Spacey, our 'Type E* Talent Scout,' is a great embodiment of this new phase in the brand's history."

CREDITS
Client: E*Trade
Spot: "Talent Scout"
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, New York
Executive Creative Director: Steve Howard
Group Creative Director: Chris Van Oosterhout
Chief Creative Officer: Alfonso Marian
Copywriters: Gage Clegg, Ian Going, Chad Johnson, Allison Lackey
Art Directors: Lauren Van Aswegen, Kevin Riley, Becca Morton
Executive Producer: Maureen Phillips
Global Managing Director: Russ Messner
Executive Group Director: Adam Puchalsky
Account Director: Melissa Bartolini Kearney
Head Planner: Margaret Rimsky
Senior Planner: Ned Sonnenschein
Director: Stacy Wall
Senior Content Producer: Karen Rossiter
Production Company: Imperial Woodpecker
Editing: Chris Franklin, BigSky Edit
Music: Tonal Sound
Color Correction: Chris Ryan, Nice Shoes
Mix: Tom Jucarone, Sound Lounge

Taco Bell's all-out assault on McDonald's breakfast continues in this 30-second spot, "Get With the Times," which posits that eating an Egg McMuffin isn't just uncouth—it's medieval.

While the earlier ads from Deutsch L.A. used real-life Ronald McDonalds as Taco Bell endorsers, this one ridicules the Golden Arches by having the sad-sack protagonist sing a reworked version of "Old McDonald"—to suggest that eating an Egg McMuffin is something you'd do 30 years ago, not today.

Perhaps inadvertently proving Taco Bell's post, the most recent post on McDonald's Facebook page is a Throwback Thursday image of the Egg McMuffin with the caption: "Groovin' since '72. You dig?"

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Taco Bell
Chief Marketing Officer: Chris Brandt
Brand Creative Director: Tracee Larocca
Director, Advertising: Aron North
Manager, Brand Experience: Ashley Prollamante
Deutsch Creative Credits and Titles:
Agency: Deutsch, Los Angeles
Chief Creative Officer: Pete Favat
Executive Creative Director: Brett Craig
Creative Director: Jason Karley
Creative Director: Josh DiMarcantonio
Associate Creative Director: Gordy Sang
Associate Creative Director: Brian Sieband
Senior Art Director: Jeremiah Wassom
Senior Copywriter: Trey Tyler
Director of Integrated Production: Vic Palumbo
Executive Producer: Paul Roy
Senior Producer: Jeff Perino
Associate Producer: Damon Vinyard
Music Supervisor: Dave Rocco

Production Company: Moxie Pictures
Director: Frank Todaro
Director of Photography: Jon Zilles
Executive Producer: Robert Fernandez
Line Producer: Matt Oshea

Food Shoot Production Company: Wood Shop
Director: Trevor Shepard
Executive Producer: Sam Swisher

Editorial Company: Rock Paper Scissors
Editor: Adam Pertofsky
Assistant Editor: Marjorie Sacks
Executive Producer: C.L. Weaver
Producer: Shada Shariatzadeh

Post Facility: A52
Colorist: Paul Yacono
VFX Supervisor: Andy Barrios
Lead Flame Artist: Brendan Crockett
Executive Producer: Megan Meloth
Producer: Meredith Cherniack

Music: Massive Music

Audio Post Company: Lime Studios
Mixer: Mark Meyuhas & Rohan Young
Producer: Jessica Locke

Additional Deutsch Credits:
Mike Sheldon, CEO
Account Management Credits:
Group Account Director: Walt Smith
Account Director: Amanda Rantuccio
Account Supervisor: Krista Slocum
Account Executive: Kim Suarez
Chief Strategic Officer: Jeffrey Blish
Group Planning Director: Jill Burgeson
Director of Business Affairs: Abilino Guillermo
Senior Business Affairs Manager: Ken Rongey
Business Affairs Manager: Georgette Bivins
Business Affairs Manager: Nestor Gandia
Director of Broadcast Traffic: Carie Bonillo
Broadcast Traffic Manager: Sarah Brennan
Senior Broadcast Traffic Manager: Gus Mejia

It took a while, but someone has finally lampooned Cadillac's much-derided "Poolside" commercial starring Neal McDonough. And not just any old someone—Ford Motor Co.

Ford's agency, Team Detroit, shot the parody below, which stars the polar opposite of the McDonough character—Pashon Murray, the founder of Detroit Dirt, a sustainability consultancy and advocacy group. The Cadillac spot showcased the CLR luxury plug-in hybrid. The Ford video shows off the Ford C-MAX hybrid. But Murray's message about today's America is light years away from Cadillac's.

The spoof is posted on its own YouTube channel, not Ford's. But it has Ford's tacit approval. Speaking to the Deroit Free Press, Ford spokeswoman Sara Tatchio described the video as "lighthearted," and added: "I don't think we're mocking a competitor. We're trying to showcase positive work being done in our community."

Yeah, no mockery going on here. GM has not commented.

It's a wonder that cat-related brands don't already rule the Internet.

Cat-food brand and renowned jingle lover Meow Mix makes a move in that direction with an amusing and even potentially useful parody of Kickstarter—called Catstarter—envisioned as a way to crowdsource cool new cat-related inventions. Ad agency EVB conceived the site as a playful, feline-focused version of the well-known crowdfunding platform. But instead of actually backing Catstarter projects financially, you can just click on the ones you like, and Meow Mix will produce the most popular ones.

The site launches with three products; the top vote getter will go into production this spring. (The heated companion keyboard is an inspired one that I'll back right now.) It's also an R&D lab of sorts, as the brand also wants people to suggest ideas for making kitty lives better—something we can all get behind, yes?

Full credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Meow Mix
Campaign: Meow Mix Catstarter
Agency: EVB 
Executive Creative Director: Steve Babcock
Creative Directors: Patrick Maravilla (Copy), David Byrd (Art)
Art Director: Tom Zukoski
Copywriter: Nate Gagnon
Designer: Markandeya Sendan
Illustrator: Natalia Martinez
Motion Graphics Designer: Kevin Brown
Sound Designer: J. Michael Neal
Director of Technology: Ken Goldfarb
Lead Interactive Developer: Josh Kanner
Interactive Developer: Ken Crosby
Senior Producer: Kevin Turner
Vice President, Director of Account Management: Kathleen Foutz
Strategist: Neeti Newaskar
Producer: Kevin Turner