Hasta La Creative!

Are you up for some BGCP3TV in HD?

Los Angeles Clippers stars Blake Griffin and Chris Paul have each shown, separately, that they can anchor comedy. In State Farm’s Chris and Cliff campaign, Paul showed that he’s perhaps the NBA’s most gifted endorser. And Griffin? Well, he’s done so much comedy that he has his own section on Funny or Die.

Now, they’ve teamed up for an interesting project from Wieden + Kennedy New York and Jordan Brand—a pair of five-minute videos that are full of quirky comedy sketches. Both are pretty amusing—not surprising, since Neal Brennan, co-creator of The Chappelle Show, served as director and co-writer on these.

Griffin and Paul are launching new shoes a month apart, but these sketches are a whole lot more entertaining than some action footage would have been.

W+K’s Eric Helin wrote some sketches, as did Brennan. There wasn’t too much improvising—most of what you see was on the page, though Griffin and Paul made it their own. “I’ve worked with a ton of athletes and can honestly say Blake & Chris are among the best,” said Gary Van Dzura, W+K creative director. “They’re natural in front of the camera and have a great comedic timing.”

“Pretty much what you see is what you get,” Brennan added. “They’re friends who clearly spend a lot of time together. They like and respect each other and are used to making jokes all day. I was also amazed at how quickly they were able to memorize the material.”

Asked if there was a limit to how goofy he wanted the sketches to be, Brennan said: “One of the sketches that got cut out was super crazy. But I don’t think anybody really thought of them as crazy/not crazy. At least I didn’t. I just thought of them as tonally correct and funny/not funny. The Ohhh Bros. sketch is about guys whose lives are ruined by reacting to basketball plays. That’s pretty crazy.”

CREDITS
Client: Jordan Brand
Project: BGCP3TV in HD
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, New York
Executive Creative Directors: Susan Hoffman, David Kolbusz
Creative Directors: Gary Van Dzura, Jimm Lasser
Writer: Eric Helin
Art Director: Erwin Federizo
Head of Content Production: Nick Setounski
Producer: Orlee Tatarka
Account Team: Jerico Cabaysa, Price Manford, Heather Morba, Cory McCollum
Business Affairs: Sara Jagielski
Production Company: Go Films
Director: Neal Brennan (Director & Co-Writer)
Executive Producer/COO: Gary Rose
Executive Producer: Adam Bloom
Line Producer: Marc Benardout
Director of Photography: Chuck Ozeas
Editorial Company: Starch Media
Editor: Bijan Shams,  Scott Ashby, Jeremy Hsu
Post Producer: Susan Applegate
VFX Company: Stardust & Elastic
VFX Lead Flame: Alex Frisch
Telecine Company: MPC LA
Colorist: Ricky Gausis
Mix Company: Eleven
Mixer: Jeff Payne & Ben Freer
Producer: Susanne Hollingshead
Song: “Junkyard”  (Original Composition)
Artist: James Poyser

Last week we met Wieden+Kennedy’s new work for Gap in the form of family-centric spots directed by Francis Ford Coppola’s daughter Sofia (we were partial to the super-awkward mistletoe scene).

The ads were very different than the darker, more abstract work by David Fincher — and the agency’s latest additions to the brand’s holiday campaign are even more unusual. The theme of the “Play Your Stripes” series is clothing items recast as musical instruments.

As W+K explains it, the agency “re-imagined” the client’s holiday catalog and made a short film for each of ten individual products, tying it to sound in some way. Here’s the first one, “Hi-5 Machine,” with the tagline “These girls mittens hi-5 each other whether they want to or not.”

While these ads won’t air on TV, Gap is promoting them on its social channels and sending them to various music pubs.

Nine more gallery-ready shorts after the jump.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

W+K has a new ad for Nike, promoting the launch of its new LEBRON 12 sneaker today with a celebration of LeBron James’ return to Cleveland directed by the Malloy Brothers.

Yes, that’s right: another LeBron James ad about the star’s return to Cleveland. This follows on the heels of Translation’s spot for Sprite (which we wrote about yesterday) and R/GA’s “Re-Established 2014? for Beats, which deal with the exact same subject, as well as the recent Kia spot from David&Goliath, also starring James. Nike’s new spot will run tonight during the Cavs first home game, when it’s theoretically possible that ads featuring James will run back-to-back-to-back.

So there’s a bit of an oversaturation issue with this message, to put it mildly. But how does W+K’s version compare to the others we’ve seen? It might actually be the most melodramatic of the bunch. It opens on James giving a pep talk to his team about giving their all for the city of Cleveland. Soon the entire city is in a huddle, chanting, “Forward! Together!” It’s well-shot, in black and white, but the message comes across as a bit over-the-top, all the more so given the story’s overexposure. The spot will continue to run through November.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation) is the latest marquee Hollywood director enlisted for Wieden+Kennedy’s “Dress Normal” campaign for Gap, following David Fincher‘s efforts in August and taking the reigns of four holiday  spots — a pair each for broadcast and online.

The ads spin the “Dress Normal” tagline by showing some abnormal (and often cringe-inducing) family holiday moments. But then what’s more normal than pondering the family you’ll never understand? Each spot ends with the message “You don’t have to get them to give them Gap” preceding the tagline. It’s an interesting approach, positioning Gap as a gift for those family members you have no idea what to give to, but it sits well with the “Dress Normal” tagline and Coppola and company do a good job of making it work in most of the ads.

In perhaps the most successful of the spots, “Gauntlet” a girl returns home to her large, boisterous, and often odd family. Perfectly set to the Johnny Cash song “I Got Stripes,” she makes her way through the house greeting her relatives with an awkward expression on her face that says a lot about the effort she’s putting in to deal with these people. It feels like a telling glance into the lives of a particular family, which is the approach taken throughout these efforts and, along with some great song selections, what makes them charming. The other broadcast spot, “Mistletoe,” documents a particularly cringe-worthy moment under the mistletoe at a holiday party. It’s almost hard to watch, but then that makes it fit the “You don’t have to get them to give them Gap” all the more.

In addition to the two online ads — “Crooner” and “Pinball” — the campaign is supported by print and OOH elements, as well as digital banner ads launching on Gap’s social media channels and GapGiftGuide.com on November 3rd. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here’s some new work from Wieden+Kennedy New York for a client listed as “Jordan” (note the lack of “Air” there).

The story: Blake Griffin and Chris Paul, both of whom happen to play for the LA Clippers and both of whom happen to be launching new shoes around the same time, have scored a couple of sketch comedy shorts on Adult Swim. Developed with the co-creator of the much-missed Chappelle Show, the project “BGCP3TV in HD” is a promotion for Jordans and “a shout out to the city of Los Angeles.”

The first episode aired several hours before our dog rudely woke us up this morning:

So they can’t even operate without their shoes. Since these episodes aren’t technically ads, do we call them “branded content” or “sponsored content?”

Promos and credits below.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Dodge company, founded by the brothers Dodge as an auto parts supplier around the turn of the (last) century, first began making its own cars almost exactly 100 years ago.

To celebrate that centennial, W+K Portland has a new spot paying tribute to the Dodge brothers and the styles of their age and introducing the Dodge Challenger, a model designed to recall the spirit that led their business in its early years.

The spot, titled “Ballroom — They Dreamed Big”, adds a nostalgic sheen to the era of Fitzgerald’s Gatsby; the release calls it “an imaginary tale of John (Tyler Bryan) and Horace (Joe Coffery) Dodge celebrating their success with friends 100 years ago.”

Looks like quite the pre-Prohibition shindig.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

“We hear” may not be the most appropriate category for this post; “we see, on Twitter” would be more accurate.

But it certainly looks like Karen Kaplan, CEO and chairman of Boston’s Hill Holliday, met with Wieden+Kennedy managing director Tom Blessington at Fenway Park to say goodbye to Derek Jeter this weekend.

As to whether Kaplan’s merger mention is serious or not, it would make sense given the Cadillac account’s recent move from HH to Lowe Campbell Ewald and the subsequent disbanding of IPG’s Rogue unit.

It would also be particularly interesting because W+K remains independent while HH, as part of the IPG conglomerate, is a publicly traded entity.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

W+K New York enlisted the voice acting services of Donald Sutherland in their latest effort for Delta Airline’s “Keep Climbing” campaign.

Cleverly titled “No Bag Left Behind,” the spot derives from the insight that Delta flies more people than any other airline. Positioning this insight in an emotional context, the 60-second broadcast spot breaks from the more rational, documentary-style tone “Keep Climbing” has taken in the past, also employing the use of color for the first time in the campaign.

Directed by Noam Murro, the ad follows the bear-shaped bag of a small girl as it is cared for by Delta employees ensuring its safe delivery. Sutherland’s voice provides the perfect calm cadence to narrate the spot, concluding with the line, “…but when you’ve got an entire company who knows that the fewest cancellations and the most on-time flights are nothing if we can’t get your things there too, it’s no wonder more people choose Delta than any other airline,” delivered as the very relieved girl picks up her bag. The spot, which launched yesterday, will run until the end of November. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

If watching Drew Brees talk to a hyper-awkward robot for six minutes is your kind of thing, then Old Spice has an ad for you.

The New Orleans Saints quarterback keeps his cool during “4th and Touchdown,” a fictional sports news show hosted by Old Spice’s new mascot, who in the recent past has been doing well with human women, despite his total lack of social skills.

Absent that context, the moral now seems to be that viewers should act like Drew Brees, not like a hyper-awkward robot, which is pretty sound advice regardless. Even if the robot claims to have great hair thanks to Old Spice, he’s not the most reliable narrator.

The pair’s antics range from fairly grating to pretty amusing, with some sharp writing and and a lot of waiting between the high points (see: roughly 4:15, Brees pretending to be a brass instrument). In a way, the finale rewards your patience, though may not be quite enough to compensate (perhaps a shorter edit would be in order?).

Anyway, the whole thing deserves credit for trying to send up the tradition of senseless televised sports coverage, even if the pass doesn’t quite connect. That robot does a solid impression of a smug anchor.

And if you do like it, stay tuned for more. The brand is promising appearances from Kansas City Chiefs running back Jamaal Charles, Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver A.J. Green and Seattle Seahawks defensive back Earl Thomas.

Anyone who knows Jim Riswold knows he has a bit of a Hitler obsession—or more specifically, an obsession with making the Nazi leader look stupid through art. Speaking to Vice in 2011, the legendary Wieden + Kennedy copywriter explained:

“Bad guys don’t mind being called bad guys. But bad guys don’t like to be laughed at. I have always thought humour could diffuse fears and deflate even the most evil of egos. Voltaire said, ‘I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it.’ I made Hitler look ridiculous. Hitler is ridiculous. But please don’t tell him I said so.”

Now, Riswold gets to show off some of his Hitler work in a new documentary called Meet the Hitlers. Directed by Tool’s Matt Ogens (who also created the acclaimed doc Confessions of a Superhero), the film explores people named Hitler or related to Hitler, and how keeping that name has molded their lives.

As part of the film, Ogens profiles Riswold, who documents Nazi-themed objects as a way of disarming the hatred and making fun of the consumer culture behind Nazis and Hitler. Check out a scene from the documentary here:

Meet the Hitlers is also launching a digital campaign that includes whatsinaname.me (created by TRUST), which looks at many people with absurd names (including some named Hitler from the movie) and how those names helped to shape their lives.

Soon, an interactive experience at meetthehitlers.com will allow users to experience what it might be like if their last name were Hitler.