Hasta La Creative!

W+K London launched a new spot for mobile company Three, delivering the message “When stuff sucks #makeitright.”

Like 2013’s viral hit “The Pony,” the spot features its share of anthropomorphic dancing, this time with a Muppet-like creature rather than a small pony. The ad follows the purple creature as he experiences a series of small misfortunes and then remembers advice from his parents to “make it right.” He decides to spread the message, “helping” people stuck in difficult situations, like a girl who dropped her ice cream cone, a cheerleader who falls from a human pyramid, a couple whose car is hanging over the edge of a cliff and a man trapped in quicksand by singing and dancing. Like “The Pony,” the approach is patently ridiculous, but the new effort doesn’t do as well a job of tying the shenanigans to the brand’s message. The spot ends by directing viewers to a campaign microsite, which claims “The Furry Revolution Starts Friday 5 June,” which is perhaps not the best choice of words.

Teddy Goalsevelt–aka Havas Chicago ACD Mike D’Amico–returned to our screens this morning after nearly a year, holding a “press conference” to announce that he will be running to replace the recently departed Sepp Blatter as President of FIFA.

Here’s the video:

As before, D’Amico (who is also a board member of the Chicago chapter of US soccer fanatics the American Outlaws) worked with some of his agency colleagues on the project. When the first round of Goalsevelt videos launched last summer, all participants were employed by Chicago’s Cavalry. Now, however, they’ve all moved on: the video above was created by D’Amico, Chad Ingram of Leo Burnett, Director Logan Hall of Optimus, and current freelancer/former Cavalry ACD/Copywriter Dan Jordan.

Jordan tells us that “Since timing is so crucial for these projects, we crafted the idea Tuesday, [and] shot and edited yesterday…we want to start our Goalsevelt For President campaign today. Not only is FIFA in the news every day, the Women’s World Cup starts this weekend.”

Jordan says that the purpose of the project is “getting noticed,” and the team certainly succeeded on that front the first time around. According to Jordan, the quartet wants to see “how far we can take this”; he described their strategy as a “shoot first, ask questions later kind of thing.”

Regarding the larger FIFA organization and its pending election, Jordan says Goalsevelt is “obviously not a viable candidate, but he’s probably better than the options they have.”

The team has larger ambitions: Jordan spoke of a plan to make a “30 for 30?-style documentary that would be “unrelated to the video that went live yesterday” and told us that future work could include signs, buttons, and other campaign paraphernalia.

Regarding the character, Jordan says, “he has kind of become the iconic face of U.S. soccer. [The people responsible for marketing the league] seem to think so.”

When asked whether those involved in the project plan to use it in their portfolios, Jordan said they would certainly do so if it turns out to garner as much press attention as the previous campaign. He added, “if it isn’t [successful], then this never happened.”

Well, we suppose this is one way to effectively get your name out there–albeit in one of the oddest, most annoying ways possible. If you haven’t heard of online Asian grocery store BapMart.com, well now you know thanks to a pitchman–Mr. Bapmart, natch–who doesn’t just sidle but emerges from out of nowhere and whose vocabulary is seemingly limited to the brand name itself.

Directed by Valiant Pictures’ Vincent Lin, the three spots in the campaign highlight our hero whose fashion sense fits his bizarre personality as he appears then interrupts random strangers’ conversations. We believe it’s his slow whisper that truly sells BapMart, which specializes in discounted items ranging from Korean ramen noodles and Japanese curry to Sriracha sauce and seaweed. Check out more of Mr. Bapmart’s in-store encroachments below.

Credits:

Production Company: Valiant Pictures
Creative Lead/Director: Vincent Lin
Executive Producer: Matthew D’Amato
Art Director: Melissa Choi

While we can’t offer a formal statement or official status update at the moment, multiple sources tell us that New York’s Woods Witt Dealy & Sons will soon be closing its doors.

The shop, founded in 2005 by Harry Woods (formerly of BBDO and TBWA), Gill Witt (BBDO, TBWA, Ogilvy) and Phyllis Dealy (Leo Burnett and more), has created work for major clients including a 2012 campaign that compared Duracell to Jay-Z, but our predecessors at this blog can’t recall fielding any campaign pitches.

WWD&S has been best known for throwing the annual “Wrath of Cannes” party, which we covered many times over the years. These events went down before our time, but we’re told that there was much rejoicing; in 2013 the agency even created its own beer for the occasion.

Over the past few months, several employees have left the agency: longtime art director/ACD Steve Barron, for example, is now VP/Creative Director at Publicis and fellow AD/ACD Alexis Champa is with Weber Shandwick.

We began receiving tips regarding the agency last week; yesterday, after multiple attempts to contact WWD&S, we reached someone at its number in Manhattan who told us that the most relevant press contact was out of the office; in repeated attempts to contact a relevant party over the past 48 hours, we’ve been unable to reach either said contact or any of the agency’s principals (to whom we reached out directly). The given phone number for WWD&S currently leads to a recording telling us that the office as closed and that normal business hours are 9 to 5.

While the WWD&S homepage remains live, its tumblr, Facebook, and Twitter accounts have been deleted.

One of our sources claims that one or more of the agency’s founding partners plan to launch a new agency at some point in the near future.

Updates if we get them.

Today in stories that you may not tie back to the advertising industry, a certain (virtual) gay Swedish sailor has been winning headlines for trolling the Russian navy with an underwater “sign” that repeatedly sends out a signal in Morse code:

“This way if you’re gay.”

The little stunt has earned all sorts of headlines and interviews for members of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society; Vladimir Putin is obviously not a fan.

Our readers may or may not be surprised to learn that there’s an ad agency behind this stunt: it’s Åkestam Holst, the same shop responsible for those odd “have your wedding at IKEA” ads.

First, here’s the video:

ICYMI, 1944 is the year Sweden “legalized” homosexuality, well ahead of the rest of the world (as usual).

From the press release:

“If there is a submarine down there beneath the Baltic waves and the crew should happen to see or hear the Singing Sailor they are welcome to join us in the Stockholm Pride Parade on the 1st of august. In times of unrest, love and peace across boundaries is more important than ever. We want to break-up with the violence. Our invitation is also extended to Swedish subs and military personnel and all others that want to join us, says Daniel Holking, Communications-and fundraising manager with the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society.

The Singing Sailor is also a contribution to the debate that we all should shift military resources into development and rethinking security.”

We don’t have any comment from the agency itself, because the client’s explanation should suffice. We do have the credits, though…

Agency: Åkestam Holst

Kentucky for Kentucky, the Cornett side project behind “KFC Bone Gold Necklaces,” has now unveiled “The Official Socks of Horse Breeding” — in other words, Horse Humping Socks.

The concept is pretty straightforward: much attention is payed to the racing side of Kentucky’s four billion dollar horse industry, but what about the breeding? Those horses have to come from somewhere, and now you can celebrate “with these amazing new socks depicting two thoroughbred horses making sweet Kentucky love.” The socks, designed by Rachael Sinclair, will be available on Kentucky For Kentucky’s website beginning Friday, for twelve dollars per pair. They make the perfect gift.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of MDC’s Anomaly: lovers of puppies, drinkers of Johnnie Walker, haters of “craft” beer, players of baseball, promoters of Dick’s for women.

On that note, we received a curious email this morning from an unnamed soul that certainly reads like the thoughts of a longtime Anomaly employee.

Why did this industry insider contact us? It seems that he is a bit “disillusioned” by his experience at the shop. Maybe he was promised a job involving “groundbreaking” work complete with “fully integrated,” social media-friendly components. Maybe he thought working for Budweiser would involve the development of more “sticky” content and deep, innovative strategy rather than traditional, multi-million dollar tearjerker Super Bowl ads.

Here is the note, complete with grammar/spelling mistakes; we did add a couple of paragraph breaks to make it easier on your eyes.

This summer Anomaly turns 10 years old – and while everyone in our office is always talking about how we’re the agency of the future, I’m starting to think we’re just a really great “AD” agency, meaning: we do really great ADS. Sure the Budweiser Superbowl spot is great, but we got fired from the social media portion of the business.

The Dick’s Sports spots are great (their basically Nike commercials with a Dick’s Sports logo on them) but we don’t handle any of their social media. We make amazing films for Johnnie Walker and Captain Morgan but don’t really do anything else on those accounts.

And when  I asked one of the partners why we don’t do things like EOS anymore they just shrugged and said “Well, we really didn’t create the EOS brand we just worked on their website and packaging.” I guess this is just what happens to agencies that realize its easier and more profitable to stick with the TV model, but for me it’s getting disillusioning.

Your website posted an ad we did ! for the Pepsi Tea brand Leaf, the partners freaked because they didn’t want anyone to know we did that spot. The first comment that was posted under the article you ran said: Thought U guys were cool – Anomaly the new JWT. One of the guys I worked totally nailed it when we saw our fist Panera spot for the Bread Broth Bowl and rolled his eyes and said  the copy sounded like Carl reading from one of his charts.  Anyway – happy 10th anniversary.

What do we make of this one, readers?

This morning McDonald’s unveiled its newest mascot on Twitter with a little help from Leo Burnett, the agency responsible for handling its turnaround.

Here’s the initial message, which went live a couple of hours ago (spot by LB):

Wait, is this who we think it is??! https://t.co/rc9xhQrAUi

— McDonald’s (@McDonalds) May 6, 2015

Is it? Even Mashable had to add an “…uh…” before running an image of “this guy”:

The newer, sexier Hamburglar would appear to be an attempt to both promote a new limited-time “sirloin” burger and position McD’s as a slightly more mature establishment rather than one staffed by surreal, possibly drugged-up cartoon characters.

For more evidence of the latter, the client did recently release an “artisan” (not “artisanAL”) chicken sandwich, which helped one Slate writer deal with the deep shame he felt after ordering an Egg McMuffin.

The client also created the requisite hashtag, returning to the character’s indecipherable catchphrase “robble robble.” Social media couldn’t quite make up its mind on the new guy; Gawker labeled him an “EDM-loving asshole dad” and we personally vacillated between calling him a cyber-criminal and a pro wrestler.

From Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone:

Hamburglar looks like a male stripper. I might be ok with that.

— Tim Dickinson (@7im) May 6, 2015

No “dadbod” on this dude despite his suburban house-husband day job.

Sadly, no one alerted the McRib.

There’s a new Hamburglar? @dadhamburglar “@McDonalds: Wait, is this who we think it is??! https://t.co/3mAoiPAZtF“

— McRib Sandwich (@McRibSandwich) May 6, 2015

CP+B found an unusual way to promote Fruit of the Loom’s No Ride-Up Boxer Briefs: plastic pants.

The agency introduced the idea with a 30-second broadcast spot featuring guys wearing see-through plastic pants jumping around to prove the “no ride up” claim. But CP+B decided to extend the campaign in stealthy fashion. They created a fake fashion line called Plastique, which appeared in a large billboard in SoHo. Fruit of the Loom’s branding appears in the model’s underwear, and more subtly in the Plastique logo. The agency even went so far as to create a fake designer for Plastique, Frank La Rant, giving the character his own Twitter handle, website, an extensive backstory and even a documentary.

“We deliberately made it high-end fashion but with a question mark,” CP+B associate creative director Mona Hasan told Digiday.”We wanted people to say, ‘It’s plastic pants; could this actually be real?’”

Grey New York launched PSA spot for Women Against Gun Violence entitled “Keep Your Finger Off the Trigger.”

“Keep Your Finger Off the Trigger” takes an unusual, even slightly bizarre approach, setting a simple folksy song written and performed by Stephen Krauss to stop-motion animation of dismembered fingers (directed and animated by Johnnie Semerad of Quiet Man). Meant to target millenials, who Women Against Gun Violence say aren’t paying much attention to the gun violence prevention movement, the spot shakes up the category with a different kind of PSA, presumably meant to be more shareable than the stunts and scare tactics you’ll see elsewhere. If nothing else, it certainly is attention-grabbing, between the casual gore and some NSFW suggestions for how to use your finger we expect this will raise a few eyebrows.

“This may not be your dinner table video but it gets the point across, and it gets people talking which is the ultimate goal,” Josh Stepakoff, gun violence survivor and Women Against Gun Violence’s youngest board member, told Adweek “I want my peers, the millennial generation, to use their power to affect change, and I believe this PSA will help get them engaged in the conversation.”

Credits:

Advertiser: Women Against Gun Violence
Spot Title: “Keep Your Finger Off the Trigger”
First Air Date: 4/28/15
Agency: Grey NY
Worldwide Chief Creative Officer: Tor Myhren
Deputy Worldwide Chief Creative Officer: Per Pedersen
Chief Creative Officer: Andreas Dahlqvist
Executive Creative Director: Stephen Krauss
Executive Creative Director: Ari Halper
Singer/Songwriter: Stephen Krauss
Creative Director: Marco Pupo
Creative Director: Joao Coutinho
EVP Director Broadcast Production: Bennett McCarroll
Director of Audio Services/Sound Engineer: Dante Desole
VP Account Director: Elizabeth Gilchrist
Account Supervisor: Katie Stirn
Business Manager: Cecilia Critchley
EVP Director of Music: Josh Rabinowitz
VP Director of Licensing: Amy Rosen
Project Manager: Emma Tonetti

Production Company (location): Quietman
Director/Animator: Johnnie Semerad
Executive Producer: Carey Gattyan
Associate Producer: Clare O’Brien
Editor: Morgan Mitchell
Flame Artist: Stephanie Greenberg