By the way, those stars in question are musician Pusha T, Grigoriy Dobrygin, a Russian actor/director, Yoon, a designer from Japan, VJ Mian, VJ/designer from China and Smithe, a Mexican illustrator. And of course, Pharrell.
The spot is atmospheric, dark and set to the kind of moody orchestral music that feels at home in a Jason Bourne movie. It’s quite a stark contrast between the Originals house party campaign that ran from 2008 till around 2013 or so. Those spots all featured celebrities from all walks of life, too, but they were usually hanging out with cool kids in houses and street corners. And while that campaign was all style and no substance, at least it was fun. It felt like anyone could join in the fun. And the tagline reflected that: Celebrate Originality.
Now it’s as if adidas Originals has gone from being the the center of the party who welcomes all to being this moody kid who sits in a dark corner, holding you at arm’s length, demanding you treat him with Respect™ because he is a Serious Artist™, but don’t start putting expectations on him because he does what he wants, and whatever you do, don’t ever call him a Superstar.™ That’s more like Selfhate Originality.
For Cubs fans who care, there are some cameos in this spot. Krista Dotzenrodwho is a Cubs fan whose fifteen minutes of fame centered around catching a foul ball in her beer and chugged it, appears in the video. And Matt Bush, a Havas Copywriter who worked on the project, and is also a Cubs fan, has a cameo as The Bearded Guy Who Eats Popcorn. Hey Matt– time to start your IMDB page if you haven’t already. Just know that there’s already an actor with your name, so you might have to change it. Never know– that second career might take off!
Keds footwear brand are relaunching and the star of their “female empowerment” campaign is none other than leggy Taylor Swift.
Back when I taught at portfolio school I used to assign “non-sexy projects,” so students could realize any product can be fun, no matter how boring it looks on paper. Take this silly but fun ad for LCI Insurance.
LCI might not actually do the kind of work you do but they are accomplished insurance professionals who have been serving Louisiana businesses for 25 years.
Here’s the impression of one successful American Creative Director, talking anonymously to Adland:
It’s very pretentious and for me it doesn’t capture the real benefit of AirBnB – seeing a city like a local. It’s skirting around it a bit, but doesn’t hit the mark. It’s trying to say that AirBnB will let you experience what it’s like to live someone else’s life. It doesn’t, and I don’t want that anyway. I just want to immerse myself in local culture by living like a local. This seems to be less about getting inside someone else’s apartment, and more about getting inside their head. Which is creepy – a bit like that movie “Being John Malkovich”.
I’m reminded of a term which I came across recently in an astoundingly good blog post by Asbury & Asbury – “Mission Escalation Trend”. You can read the entire post here, but the bit which made a huge impact on me was the concept of increasingly abstract thinking.
First, there’s the mission escalation trend. This is the homeopathy of marketing. It involves taking the functional purpose of any given product, diluting it to a slightly more abstract level, then diluting it again and repeating the process until you reach a level of abstraction so remote that any sense of specific purpose has been lost entirely. So if your product is a bar of chocolate, it’s not about giving people something chocolatey to eat, it’s about giving them a tasty treat. And it’s not about giving them a tasty treat, it’s about giving them a treat in a wider sense. And it’s not about the treat as such, but the enjoyment you get from that treat. And it’s not about the physical enjoyment, but the emotional enjoyment. And it’s not about the emotional enjoyment, but joy itself. And it’s not about experiencing joy, it’s about believing in joy. And now your brand purpose is more closely aligned to Buddhism than it is to chocolate.
I think one might argue that we’re seeing the mission escalation trend at work here. So you’re not subletting a room in someone else’s apartment to save money and live like a local, you’re entering their world. And it not about entering their world as such, but understanding their point of view. And not about understanding their point as view, but truly experiencing a new life. And it’s not about experiencing a new life, but about believing in the collective goodness of humanity.
And how far removed has this become from the reality of why people use AirBnb: Because they want a cheap and convenient room without staying in a hotel (too expensive) or a backpacker (too slummy). I admire the sheer bravery of producing work like this, but it is homeopathy. It’s abstraction at the highest level.
Such work is always going to be ripe for parody and digital studio Portal A, have created a brilliant film mocking what your AirBnb guest is more likely to get up to while you’re away. As they say “It’s His House Now.” It goes without saying, top marks for finding and getting Sally from Oblivion (spoilers) to narrate. My only complaint is a pedantic one – don’t have your main character take a drag on an unlit cigarette. That’s just silly. I guess it was was a strict No Smoking house.
They chose The Children’s Silverlake Choir’s rendition of Roger Hodgson’s “The Logical Song,” as the soundtrack. But hell, the underlying tone of this spot is so surprisingly dark, they could have gone with Pink Floyd instead of Supertramp. Another Brick In The Wall, part 2, anyone?
Thank god there’s HP, tho! Oh, and offspring we can live vicariously through. Let’s be honest, the daughter was how she got the spark back, anyway.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
