As part of a campaign called “The Classical Comeback“, DDB Brussels has created an honest-to-God music video to accompany “Symphony No. 9 Allegro con fuoco” by hot-shit Czech star Dvo?ák.
What, you don’t think he’s contemporary? He’s only been dead for 110 years.
Cheerleaders, schoolgirl uniforms and timpani ahead…
That was certainly unexpected. Call it a professionally orchestrated K-pop video.
Digital Kitchen worked with Cards Against Humanity, “the party game for horrible people,” to satirize gamer marketing at the Pax East conference in Boston. The resulting 30 second video is absolutely disgusting.
Digital Kitchen and Cards Against Humanity launched a fake, caffeinated oatmeal called “PWNmeal,”which they dubbed, “The official porridge of e-sports.” The project was meant to satirize the onslaught of marketing targeting gamers are targeted with at conventions, from caffeinated gum to beef jerky (which don’t combine so well). In addition to the above video created by Digital Kitchen, Cards Against Humanity also put together an @pwnmeal Twitter account and pwnmeal.com to make the product seem legit. Gross enough just as an idea, the 30 second video takes things to the next, breakfast evacuating level. Proceed with caution.
Warning: For your own safety, do not attempt to watch the video embedded above unless you are an extreme masochist.
We were kind of hoping that if we ignored it, this one would just go away but it appears we’re not that lucky, so let’s talk about “Let’s Get Social,” the social media marketing anthem from hell.
Introduced as “a very special treat,” which could just as accurately be applied to waterboarding, the song is an assault on the ears and any semblance of intelligence in the listener. With soul-sucking lines like “I’m hoping you’ll share my stuff, and tweet it to the world,” over a bland generic backing track, there are really no redeeming qualities about “Let’s Get Social.” The lead singer (who I’ve chosen not to name out of compassion) doesn’t have a bad voice, and that’s about the only positive thing you can say. Unfortunately, during the chorus the guy who introduced her (again, not including names) joins in with some truly awful backing vocals. After about a minute, when you think there’s no way they could possibly keep this going and/or about the time you start banging your head against the desk hoping to render yourself unconscious, the second verse begins. The audience is invited to join in for a break to post selfies and shit, because this is a song about social media, after all. Just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, background guy begins the most terrible rap you’ve ever heard, which forms a bridge back to the chorus (just what you were hoping for!). It’s an unholy clusterfuck of social media marketing self-importance and people making music who really shouldn’t have anything to do with music. You’ve been warned.
This abomination, in case you were wondering, was a warm-up for a keynote panel at this year’s Social Media Marketing World. Hopefully none of you people were there to suffer through this first-hand.
Vitamin Water is obviously a CP&B client, but we have very little info for this slightly insane Japanese spot other than the fact that one Himanshu Kumar, aka “Heems” of Dat Racist, wrote the music and that DIESEL artistic director Nicola Formichettimay have provided something resembling creative.
Google translate isn’t helping much, but we’ll go with it anyway: how often do you see an ad repping the theater/restaurant you kept telling everyone you wanted to check out last year if only it weren’t a 65-minute subway ride away? We did glean this nugget from the translator:
“The flavor deployment bright colors, you can enjoy to choose what you like to suit lifestyle and mood, the condition of their own throughout the day.”
Accurate.
The key question: is this submission stranger than the 2012 CP&B spot after the jump?
When an ad starts with Gary Busey saying “If you’re like me, you like talking to things,” you know you’re in for a weird ride, and the 60 second Amazon Fire spot from Wongdoody certainly lives up to that expectation.
Busey initiates conversations with a lamp, his pants, and a bell, as well as thanking the fish in the ocean for being there. He also yells angrily at Roku to “Find Gary Busey!” — obviously the spot is designed to highlight Amazon Fire TV’s voice recognition feature, which Roku lacks. If you’re easily made uncomfortable, you may want to skip this one. But then you probably already knew that. This is Gary Busey we’re talking about here.
McKinney continues in the wacky route with their new spot for Mentos, the 30-second “Never Surrender.”
“Never Surrender,” which marks both the first U.S. television spot for Mentos Gum and the first work for Mentos out of McKinney’s New York office, is set at an actual medieval castle and employs Monty Python and the Holy Grail-style goofiness. The hero of the ad is a happy-go-lucky soldier who is impaled by a dozen or so arrows but will not surrender until his gum loses its freshness. “You are ruining the integrity of battle!” exclaims a disgruntled enemy combatant. The spot ends by introducing the new tagline, “Long Last the Fresh.” While not quite funny, the ad does succeed at least at being memorable for its utter goofiness, and it’s easy to imagine a certain type of viewer repeating the “You are ruining the integrity of battle!” line, so the spot could work to spread awareness for Mentos’ new-ish product. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…
Figliulo&Partners, who partnered with Sprint in November, have just launched the new integrated campaign called the “Frobinsons,” promoting the Sprint Family plan, a new pricing plan allowing consumers to decide who they consider family.
“The American family has changed. Our families today are more than our relatives, but also our friends, our neighbors – basically all the people we love,”explains Jeff Hallock, Sprint’s chief marketing officer.
The “Frobinsons” campaign, which was created in partnership with DigitasLBi and MediaVest, will unfold as an episodic story over the coming months and, we’re told we can expect “surprising cameos from stars of sports, music, screen and stage” in the future. For now, the campaign has launched with two, 30-second spots introducing the framily Frobinsons. The first, “Meet the Frobinsons” introduces all the different friends and family making up the group, as well as the word “framily” itself, and should give us an idea what to expect from Figliulo&Partners in the future. The Frobinsons, we learn in the spot, are a strange bunch. There’s the daughter, constantly surrounded by animated birds, who appears to only speak French. Then there’s the son with the southern accent who spends his time crafting miniatures.
Strangest of all, though, is the father, a hamster voiced by Andrew Dice Clay who objects the “framily” term. Yeah, a hamster. Obviously they’re going for the “families come in all shapes and sizes” message here, but is having a hamster dad really the way to go about this? The mother is presented as the sane voice of reason in the group, despite the fact that she is married to a frucking hamster. “Framily Portrait” spends some time examining each member of the extended framily, including a few characters you don’t meet in “Meet the Frobinsons.” The characters (especially the new additions) in the spot and the way they’re presented give “Framily Portrait” a quirky Wes Anderson quality, probably the direction this campaign will take going forward.
The two broadcast spots will air tonight across national network and cable TV, with an angry rant from One Million Moms expected by the end of the week. In addition to broadcast the campaign also includes “in-store along with a number of digital and social extensions,” with print and out-of-home extensions of the campaign in the coming weeks. Stick around for “Framily Portrait” after the jump. continued…
There are no words to describe just how awful SMOSH’s “Meat Vs. Crust Rap Battle” is. The video is leading voting for Defy Media’s new digital campaign for Hot Pockets (two words innocent enough on their own, that, when combined, provoke an unmistakable feeling of terrible nausea).
Defy Media’s campaign for the lazy college student’s standby, fresh off a recent product recall due to possibly tainted meat, is a March Madness style bracket battle called “Sandwich Showdown.” The musical competition, which began March 18th and is timed to coincide with March Madness, pits #TeamMeat against #TeamCrust; with SMOSH and The Warp Zone facing off to win the chance to represent #TeamMeat, and Brittani Louise Taylor facing Taryn Southern to represent #TeamCrust. Voting for “Sandwich Showdown,” which takes place at Hot Pockets’ Facebook page, is still in its semifinal stage. So if you’d like to cast your vote such gems as “I’m in Crust with You” and “Love at First Bite” you only have eleven days to do so. To be fair, the other entrants aren’t so bad as SMOSH. Brittani Louise Taylor‘s “I’m In Crust With You” is affably ridiculous in a much more watchable way, complete with life size Hot Pockets guy as her long-lost love. She gets my vote, or would if I cared enough to cast a vote at least.
“We’re pumped to put our own musical spin on the Hot Pockets brand for the ultimate Sandwich Showdown,” said SMOSH’s Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox. “This is going to be a delicious lyrical competition like you’ve never seen and we can’t wait to face-off and let our viewers decide which one of us reigns supreme.” This statement marks the only recorded instance of “Hot Pockets”and “delicious” being used within two sentences. Stick around for “I’m In Crust With You” after the jump, and if you haven’t seen it you owe it to yourself to check out Jim Gaffigan‘s Hot Pockets bit, which I can’t help thinking of every time I hear anything to do with the culinary missiles of misery. continued…
Ilulissat Water Taxi, a company offering chartered tours of Greenland via, you guessed it, water taxi, released this tongue-in-cheek trailer parody.
Set up as a parody of the typical Hollywood trailer (complete with “In a world…”) beginning the ad for Ilulissat combines humor with footage of Greenland, while also introducing viewers to Ice Force One, the custom-built Targa 25.1/Tarfish boat built specifically for Ilulissat in 2013. The 2:15 spot has an unusual way of showing off the best features of Ilulissat while maintaining a humorous tone — such as remarking about whales, “These giants of the sea are so gracious that you will feel them connect with your soul.” The narrators take on Hollywood trailer voiceovers is also pretty spot-on, although the spot makes the leap from tongue-in-cheek to cheesy towards the end. Watch the highly unusual spot for yourself above, and head on over to Ilulissat Water Taxi’s website if you want to go see glaciers and whales and stuff.
San Francisco-based Pereira & O’Dell were recently invited onto ABC’s Nightline for a segment exploring the recent “hunkvertising” trend, and even created a “hunkvertisement” for the show.
The five-minute segment, entitled “The Art of the ‘Hunkvertisement’” features executive creative director Jaime Robinson and Renuzit director Chris Applebaum explaining the phenomenon to Nightline reporter Nick Watt. After exploring the ins and outs of “hunkvertising” the pair, along with the rest of their team, coach Watt on how Nightline can appeal to more women, and even film a 30 second “hunkvertisement” for the program produced in-house by P&O’D.
It’s kind of fun to watch Watt struggle with the concept of mixing male sexual objectification and humor in ads targeting women, which he at one point labels “bizarre” and then attempt to star (rather uncomfortably) in his own advertisement. Nightline approaches all kinds of reactions to the supposed trend, including the idea that these kinds of ads empower women, that it’s sexist to assume women need a hot guy to sell them kitchen and household items, and the crazies at One Million Moms doing what they do best (being crazy). The segment runs through a number of prototypical “hunkvertisements” in their examination of the phenomenon, notably Renuzit’s “Scent Gents,” which we’ve included after the jump. continued…
DDB Chicago continues bringing out the bizarre for Skittles in a new campaign complete with some perhaps unintended implications.
The new spot features a cloud named Freddie, who, when walked by an elderly woman “rains” Skittles after being pet. Now, the problem with portraying a product as something that comes out of a pet while being walked is…well, pretty obvious right? Okay, I get that Freddie is a cloud and that DDB has been doing strange stuff for Skittles for a while now, but you don’t want viewers asking, “Is that cloud pissing Skittles?” — a distinct possibility here. In the 30-second spot, “Cloud,” Freddie responds very differently when a curious onlooker attempts to pet him, ending with the spot-specific tagline “Pet The Rainbow. Taste The Rainbow.”
The campaign features two more 30-second adverts, each following the same oddball theme, with Freddie going to the vet and the groomers. Additionally, DDB Chicago teamed up with PR agency Olson to build a remote-controlled, Skittles-dispensing cloud. Built from the ground up, the cloud “features two unique dispensing functions and a variety of fun lighting and audio features.” It’s a high-tech evolution of The Rainbow team’s past Skittles-dispensing gifts like pinball machines and vending machines, and a pretty cool extension of the campaign (we’ll hear more about this later in the week). Stick around for credits and “Groomer” after the jump. continued…
Yes, as mentioned, the Climate Reality Project created a video of Olympic gold medalist Ted Ligety, who won in giant slalom in Sochi by the way, talking to a snowflake.
Following the uncharacteristically warm Winter Olympic Games, Ligety decided to team up with CRP on their “I Am Pro Snow” campaign. The spot was created in-house, using b-roll footage from “I Am Pro Snow” partner Warren Miller‘s new film, Ticket to Ride. Climate Reality Project’s creative team combed through the footage for moments when Ligety was speaking with the boom operator, and created a fictional conversation with an animated snowflake. The results are damn near unwatchable, culminating in a painful rap from the snowflake. It’s a shame really, because this is a good cause and more people need to be educated about the realities of climate change, which in this case, was intended to explain why it was hurting snow sports. Well, not quite. If you feel like torturing yourself for 90 seconds or so, you can watch the video above. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…
Back in November, we brought you news of Laser Cat, the giant art-eating cat that projects the art he ingests from his laser eyes. Launched by Hungry Castle and Umbrella and constructed by ADC Hall of Famer and SVA teacher Kevin O’Callaghan, Laser Cat solicited submissions from agency creatives, as well as artists everywhere.
The original (unrealistic) goal was to gain one million submissions, allowing Laser Cat to project the art on the moon at this year’s ADC Annual Awards of Art + Craft in Advertising and Design at the Bass Museum in Miami Beach on April 8th. Unfortunately, the moon is out, but Laser Cat will be on hand at the ADC Awards in Miami to project 10,539 artworks onto the Bass Museum. In addition to submissions from many top agencies, Laser Cat was able to garner some pretty impressive celebrity submissions, including those from Banksy and David Lynch. For more, check out the videos above and below, or head on over to the Laser Cat site. And if you’d like to see Laser Cat in person, buy tickets for the ADC Awards in Miami Beach.
The newly Draft-less FCB worked with Canal+ to create a mockumentary on the famous “Wilhelm scream” entitled “The Woman Who Can’t Watch Movies.”
“The Wilhelm scream,” in case anyone needs a refresher, is the famous stock audio scream recorded by Sheb Wooley and named after the character Private Wilhelm in the 1953 western The Charge of the Feather River, although it was first used in the 1951 film Distant Drums. It saw a resurgence in popularity as a stock sound effect following its use in Star Wars and Indiana Jones. It is now so ubiquitous (it has been dubbed in over 200 films) that it has become something of an in-joke, used in recent years in films by Pixar, the Lord of the Rings triology, and countless other movies. (There are rumors that directors Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Quentin Tarantino “maintain a bet as to who has used the “Wilhelm scream” more.”)
“The Woman Who Can’t Watch Movies” follows the (supposed) story of Sheb’s widow, Linda Dotson Wooley. Linda complains that she can’t watch movies anymore because she “just can’t bear to hear the sound of Sheb screaming out in pain over and over again.” After introducing Linda and her “condition” — a clever (although kind of sad) way to call attention to the sound effect’s ubiquity — the mockumentary introduces viewers to Canal+’s Scream Bank, “a catalog of donated screams for industry professionals to use in place of Sheb’s.” A few comically-off screams are then shown dubbed into a film, a great display of why the “Wilhelm Scream” has become such a well-worn cliche. The video is a teaser for Leave Wilhelm Alone, an upcoming documentary on the “Wilhelm scream.” Stick around for credits after the jump, and feel free to head on over to Canal+’s site and record a scream of your own. continued…
W+K’s trademark nonsensical humor is on full display in their latest, the new spot “Made by Kobe” promoting Kobe Bryant‘s Kobe 9 Collection for Nike, which launched on March 6th.
The spot imagines what it would be like if Kobe Bryant designed a piano: “It will turn piano boys into piano men. It will make Lionel Richie‘s tears cry tears.” Lionel Richie actually appears in the spot, tear slowly rolling down his cheek while he plays the piano, adding to the humorous tone. After talking up the hypothetical Kobe Piano, which looks pretty badass, the narrator introduces the “Made by Kobe*” Kobe 9 Collection. Although the product reveal comes 50 seconds into the 75 second spot, the sidelined Lakers star can be seen wearing his new line throughout the commercial.
The spot is exactly what we’ve come to expect from W+K, calling to mind some of their well-known past hits, like their famous work for Old Spice. The formula may be starting to show signs of age, but W+K still has a big leg up on the countless competitors attempting to imitate this kind of work. “Made by Kobe” will run until March 27th. Now if they’d only release that piano for real. Stick around for credits after the jump.
*Kobe is the name of a 12-year-old Chinese boy who works around the clock to handcraft the Kobe 9 Collection for 2 cents an hour. continued…
Cheil Communications and Harpoon Pictures’ director Anton Jøsef introduce the new Samsung Galaxy Duos with the new spot, “Forged.”
The 38-second spot, “alludes to the elemental power, the dexterous usability and the high-end performance that is wrought in the heart of the Galaxy S Duos.” If that sounds ridiculous, it’s because it kind of is. “Forged” opens on a blacksmith hammering away intently. The creation that “emerges from a fiery crucible, backed by an explosion of intense flames” is the new Samsung Galaxy Duos. That’s right, a blacksmith crafted phone. We then cut to a guy in an office goofily holding up the phone while a coworker gives him a “What the hell are you doing?” look and cough.
So, “Forged” makes fun of the ridiculousness of its concept, making the majority of the spot a buildup to a joke that really isn’t much of a payoff, eventually ending with the tagline “Forged with features” without telling us what those features are. Needless to say, this direction is a bit perplexing. The Galaxy S Duos, by the way, “allows users to keep their work and personal calls separate while also providing better coverage and a stronger signal” — which sounds an awful lot like a feature you would want to highlight in an advertising campaign. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…
Here’s how it begins with Arnold: “Every time you go pee there something interesting playing and you feel strange Shazaming it.” From what we’ve been told by sources, “it is nice to have music in the bathrooms now. Yes folks, “Urinary Tracks” is a thing. From what we’ve been told,it’s a web app that encourages people to tweet and post what they are listening to as they do their business and here is your link, @urinarytracks.
SuperHeroes Amsterdam just released a creepy online spot promoting LG’s new G Flex phone called “The Most Human Phone Ever.”
The 2 minute spot imagines the G Flex as a kind of second skin, which morphs into who you’re talking to. A guy named Dan is celebrating his birthday when he receives the phone as a gift. When the phone (which has blended with his hand) starts buzzing, he answers it to find it’s his buddy on vacation calling from the beach. He’s attacked by a crab which creates a cut in Dan’s hand (really weird, right?) that we see heal in a matter of seconds — a way of showing off the G Flex’s self healing back cover. Believe it or not, following a false ending, it actually gets creepier from here.
Rogier Vijverberg, creative director and founder of SuperHeroes, explains: “Our mission is to bring out the superpower in anyone and anything. How awesome would it be if your phone could morph into your body? You would never drop it down the toilet again for a start. It really excites us to work with such brave innovators as LG, who are not afraid to challenge the realms of possibility.”
Watch “The Most Human Phone Ever” above, at your own risk, and stick around for credits after the jump. continued…
Russian creative agency Hungry Boys has launched a new animated digital campaign to promote the release of the upcoming film “Startup,” about “the burgeoning startup scene in Russia from the early 90s until now,” slated for an April 3rd release. (Here’s a link to the trailer, in case you speak Russian.)
The site allows users to answer a series of questions (after taking all your Facebook info) designed “ to determine whether or not people have what it takes to become an entrepreneur and what sort of startup they might consider becoming involved in.” But don’t take the questions, or the results, too seriously. It’s really just a fun way to promote the movie. Many of the questions have more to do with pop culture preferences than anything pertaining to business, and the startup suggestions are pretty goofy and ridiculous. Here are my results:
Other possible outcomes include deciphering animal noises, personal Instagram cameraman, and home ghost rentals. Head on over to the site to give it a shot for yourself, and stick around for credits after the jump. continued…
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