The Walking Dead Pranks NYC With a Grate Full of Grabby Walkers

You're walking along the streets of New York City, earbuds firmly in place, texting furiously and doing your best to ignore the press of humanity as it swarms around you … when the monster-movie version of the very horror you're seeking to avoid erupts out of a street grate. It would be enough to make you drop your skinny latte on your skinny jeans.

Score another victory for prankvertising and AMC. For a moment there, I had forgotten about The Walking Dead, which shambles onward, entering its fifth season even as the zombie apocalypse genre is starting to feel like a rotten cliché. The stunt itself, orchestrated by ad agency Relevent, is simple and effective, but there's a surprisingly real and sweet moment when the zombies restrain themselves from scaring the bejesus out of a little girl who wanders up to the grate in curiosity.

Of course, they don't have any reticence about scaring their own cast. Norman Reedus was recently pranked by costar Andrew Lincoln and one-limbed Vine star Nick Santonastasso. They set him up with a fake interview in Tokyo and then sprung the undead on him.

Between those two incidents, and the even more aggressive "Devil Baby Attack" prank for the horror movie Devil's Due, it seems ambushing people in NYC with horrifying half-humans is the strategy of the season. If that's what it takes to breathe life into the zombie genre, then prank on.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: AMC
Agency: Relevent
Executive Creative Director: Ian Cleary
Executive Producer: Tony Berger
Creative Director: Jody Feldman
Producer: Bari Henderson
Account Manager: Claire Annas


    



Hyundai Giving Away Another Zombie-Proof Survival Machine in Latest Walking Dead Tie-In

The new ad in Hyundai's ongoing tie-in with AMC megahit series The Walking Dead features a scruffy bunch of zombiepocalyse survivors who could pass for Woodbury refugees taking shelter with Sheriff Rick and crew. That means they'll probably be dead soon. Sharp sticks will get them only so far against angry hordes of walkers and that pesky black cloud that hangs over our heroes.

The latest commercial, from Innocean USA, helped kick off the drama's fourth season this week and launch the next round of Hyundai's Chop Shop initiative. Fans can win a custom-designed, tricked-out, zombie-proof 2014 Hyundai Tucson in the "Survive and Drive" sweepstakes. If it's anything like the inaugural prize, unveiled at the recent New York Comic-Con, there will be razor wire and machine guns.

Hyundai, an early sponsor of The Walking Dead, has to love this killer alliance. The show's Season 4 premiere pulled in a record-busting 16.1 million viewers, up 30 percent from its previous high-water mark. More Chop Shop-centric ads will debut on Hyundai's social media networks within the next few weeks. See the previews below.

CREDITS
Client: Hyundai Motor America
Spot: "Speech"

Agency: Innocean USA
Executive Creative Director: Greg Braun
Creative Directors: Barney Goldberg, Scott Muckenthaler, Tom Pettus
Art Director: Arnie Presiado
Copywriter: Jeb Quaid
VP, Director of Integrated Production: Jamil Bardowell
Executive Producer, Content: Brandon Boerner
Product Specialist: Lawrence Chow
VP, Account Director: Juli Swingle
Account Supervisor: Darcy Tokita
Account Coordinator: Kohl Samuels
VP, Digital Engagement and Strategy: Uwe Gutschow
VP, Media Planning: Ben Gogley
Media Director: James Zayti
Senior Business Affairs Manager: Lisa Nichols
Project Manager: Dawn Cochran

Production Company: Biscuit Filmworks
Director: Mike Maguire
DP: Neil Shapiro
Executive Producer: Colleen O'Donnell
Producer: Tracy Broaddus
Production Supervisor: Mitch Livingston
Casting Agent: Mary Ruth

Editorial Company: Union Editorial
Editor: Jim Haygood
VP Executive Producer: Megan Dahlman

Music Company: Human
Producer: Jonathan Stanford

Telecine Place: Company 3
Online Place: Union Editorial
Record Mix Place: Eleven Sound


    

Agency to Prospective Clients: Call Us or We’ll Send a Drunken Zombie After You

This self-promotional clip from The Ungar Group, a boutique agency in Chicago, shows what might happen if you crossed Mad Men with The Walking Dead. You'd get a dapper, cigar-smoking, brandy-sipping, scab-faced ghoul who warns, "If you're looking for an advertising agency and don't meet with The Ungar Group, you'll regret it for the rest of your lives." Major props for infusing the initial pitch with a threatening tone and aura of hopelessness and decay. Such elements usually take at least a week to permeate agency-client relationships. Actually, lots of ad guys look like the withered zombie in this video. Pitching new business sucks the life right out of them.

    

Zombies Swarm Around Infected Hashtag in Clever Campaign for Walking Dead

Whenever I write about zombies, I tend to bury the lead. That's a grave mistake. Anyway, here's a case study about how the Darewin Agency used social media to make The Walking Dead a hit on France's NT1 TV network. On its Walking Dead site, NT1 advised people to avoid a "zombie virus" by avoiding the #walkingdeadNT1 hashtag, which naturally prompted people to use it. Within moments of posting the hashtag on Twitter or Facebook, users were suddenly followed by hoards of virtual zombies. (Maybe those new followers were just average French people. Undead or Parisian … it can be tough to tell.) Contrast this campaign—in which 30,000 users were "attacked" by zombies in less than two weeks, with 550,000 impressions tallied—with this Walking Dead stunt from Toronto, where a finger was chopped off a pair of giant zombie hands each day until the series' return to TV. Effective for sure, but the French effort required more braaaains. Via Adverve.

Cheap Zombie Flick? You Have No Idea

What can you do with $70 and some social networking? How about produce an interesting zombie flick from the point of view of the zombie that will wow audiences and critics at the Cannes Film Festival and then have the rights of the film bid on by Japanese as well as American distributors? According to CNN, this is what is happening to the no-budget film Colin from emerging British director Marc Price. That’s right, Price made a film for $70.

How in the world is that possible? “The approach was to say to people, ‘OK guys, we don’t have any money, so bring your own equipment,’” and that they did, along with that Price borrowed make-up from Hollywood blockbusters like X-Men and taught himself how to produce special effects. Oh, and he used a couple of websites called Facebook and MySpace to get actors to volunteer to be zombies along with his friends.

This is social networking at its essence; connecting and bringing people together – and when together some amazing things can happen. And now, through social media the movie is picking up more buzz and recognition. The Internet sure is a beautiful place. Who knows, if this movie gets picked up by Hollywood maybe Price can have a bigger budget to work with, like $100. Check out the trailer here.

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Tommy Liu is a Creative at Supercool Creative where he also manages the blog, feel free to leave him a Tomment. Click here for more of his writing as well as his contact info if you dare.