Juvenile humor reigns supreme in this new Kmart commercial from Draftfcb, featuring store workers encouraged stunned shoppers to not be shy and just go ahead and "ship your pants." The shoppers take full advantage, too. Other folks later in the spot even ship their drawers and their nighties, and one old dude even gleefully ships the bed. (The point is, Kmart is offering free shipping of anything from Kmart.com if people can't find it at the physical store.) I'm not sure I'd sign off on a commercial that's basically 30 seconds of people punning about shit, but it's sure worth a chuckle. Props, too, for going all out and including the #shipmypants hashtag. Hat tip to @arrrzzz.
CREDITS Client: Kmart VP, Marketing Planning: Andrew Stein VP, Creative: Mark Andeer VP, Chief Digital Marketing Officer: Bill Kiss
Agency: Draftfcb Chief Creative Officer: Todd Tilford EVP Executive Creative Director: Jon Flannery SVP Creative Director: Howie Ronay VP Creative Director, Copywriter: Sean Burns Agency Producer: Chris Bing
Production Company: Bob Industries Executive Producers: TK Knowles, John O'Grady, Chuck Ryant Producer: Brian Etting Director: Zach Math
The Transport Accident Commission of Victoria in Australia hits the road once again to promote safe driving. TAC has taken many different, well, tacks in its previous efforts—ranging from goofy humor to wretched depression and all-out shockvertising.
"Roadtrip Forever," created by media firm SCA, constitutes a change of direction in form, though not function, as safety education remains the goal, with teens and young adults the target. There are traditional elements, including TV and radio, but its centerpiece is an immersive, highly personalized Facebook experience that lets you log in and pick one of your FB friends to take on a three-minute virtual road trip. Well-crafted cinematic video storytelling is skillfully intercut with bogus status updates and chats involving your various friends. Men experience one trip; women another. Since TAC is the advertiser, it's not giving anything away to say that both journeys end in vehicular tragedy.
"The core idea is to make sure it has an impact, and that at the end of it the user goes, 'Whoa!' " SCA creative director Angus Stevens says in a behind-the-scenes clip. If the campaign alters the way they drive and inspires young people to share the Facebook experience with peers, all the better, he says.
I'm not sure any TCA effort could have as much impact, literally or figuratively, as the "Swap" commercial from a few years back. But "Roadtrip Forever" does pack a punch, albeit in an eerie, thoughtful, almost melancholy way, rather than through sudden shocks or blood and guts. (Sure, it's manipulative, but most PSA efforts of this type are, and the personalized Facebook approach gives "Roadtrip Forever" a more "realistic" immediacy that others lack.)
The first-view "Whoa!" factor does depend, to some extent, on surprise. Still, taking the trip a second time, even when you know what's coming, doesn't significantly dampen the effect. This particular drive delivers on multiple viewings and actually gains emotional resonance as details and nuances begin to register more deeply.
If there's a flaw, it's the basic concept of letting users choose their road-trip companions. Plugging in a beloved friend yields a sad, moving journey. Choosing a "friend" you don't know so well, or picking someone you don't really like—and we all have plenty of those among our FB connections—cushions the impact considerably.
Mr. T guest-stars as a living pun in this Crispin Porter + Boguksy ad for Old Navy Best Tees, which are more stylish and durable than their previous ones. That's not a huge accomplishment, but whatever, it's their ad. (T also appeared in a two-minute Old Navy infomercial last year with Anna Faris.) I enjoyed the quiet irony of putting Mr. T on a plane, when B.A. Baracus was scared to death of them, but it's a little hard for the audience to accept that he can just kick the bathroom door down in a post-9/11 world. No T-shirt in the world can get you out of that kind of trouble.
CREDITS Client: Old Navy Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky Partner/Worldwide Chief Creative Officer: Rob Reilly Executive Creative Director: Jason Gaboriau Creative Director: Robin Fitzgerald Creative Director: Cameron Harris Associate Creative Directors: Alexandra Sann, Mike Kohlbecker Sr. Copywriter: Dafna Garber Copywriter: Chelsea O'Brien Art Director: Mary Dauterman Director of Video Production: Chad Hopenwasser Executive Integrated Producer (Music): Bill Meadows Executive Integrated Producer: Deb Drumm Junior Integrated Producer: Jackie Maloney Executive Business Affairs Manager: Amy Jacobsen Business Affairs Manager: Michelle McKinney Production Company & City: Smuggler, Hollywood, CA Director: Randy Krallman Assistant Directors: Jey Wada, Erin Stern Executive Producers/Partners: Patrick Milling Smith, Brian Carmody Executive Producer/COO: Lisa Rich Executive Producers: Allison Kunzman, Laura Thoel Head of Production: Andrew Colón Producer: Paula Cohen Director of Photography: Bryan Newman Editorial Company & City: Cut + Run, Santa Monica, CA Head of Production/Senior Producer: Christie Price Executive Producer: Carr Schilling Editor: Frank Effron Assistant Editors: Heather Bartholomae, Brooke Rupe Visual Effects Company & City: Method Studios, Santa Monica, CA Executive Producer: Robert Owens Producer: Colin Clarry Set Supervisor: Rob Hodgson VFX Supervisors: Jason Schugardt, Michael Sean Foley Lead Composer: Kelly Bumbarger Graphics & Animation Company & City: Buck, Los Angeles, CA Executive Creative Director: Ryan Honey Executive Producer: Maurie Enochson Sr. Producer: Nick Terzich Associate Producer: Ashley Hsieh Art Director: Jenny Ko Designer: Sean Dekkers Animator: TJ Socho Music Company & City: Search Party, Portland, OR Executive Producer: Sara Matarazzo Producer: Chris Funk Composer: Terence Bernardo Sound Design & City: Machine Head, Santa Monica, CA Sound Designer: Stephen Dewey Producer: Patty Chow Dewey Telecine & City: Company 3, Santa Monica, CA President/Colorist: Stefan Sonnenfeld Executive Producer: Rhubie Jovanov Partner/Managing Director: Steve Erich EGroup Account Director: Danielle Whalen Account Director: Kate Higgins Content Management Supervisor: Laura Likos Content Supervisors: Jessica Francis, Kendra Schaaf Content Manager: Alex Kirk, Michelle Forbush Group Director, Planning: Lindsey Allison Cognitive Anthropologists: Jennifer Hruska, Tiffany Ahern
LowLow is an Irish brand of cheese products that have one-third the fat of regular cheese. But rather than produce the typical diet-food advert where women who don't need to be on a diet wiggle orgasmically as they chow down on cardboard-textured food stuffs, LowLow decided to make fun of the whole concept of diet-food advertising.
In the spot below, we meet the girls from adland: Smug Girl, Ditzy Girl and Muffin Girl. These superficial girls each have their own issues. Smug Girl dines on crackers just to fit into her jeans. Ditzy Girl dances about everywhere she goes because she loves her diet food just that much. And poor Muffin Girl is so obsessed with muffins that she sees them everywhere. However, the truly subversive content is in the jingle which asks, "How many clichés are we gonna stand?" There is more than a passing gibe toward Special K, whose red and white color palette and blue-jean obsession is mocked. And the spot ends with a furious montage of women measuring and weighing themselves as the jingle sings, "They know they bring us down, but it's for our own good, cause we gotta keep you girls all feeling bad about food."
The tagline, "Sick of clichés? So are we," invites you to head over to their Facebook page and rant about how much you hate it when diet-food ads patronize their audience. Clearly, they've struck some sort of chord, perhaps because the whole thing is so silly. After all, no one has ever eaten a low-calorie cheese and been overwhelmed by the sudden need to dance, turn cartwheels on beaches or run through a field of wild flowers. I think the best you can hope for is a diet food that doesn't result in anal leakage.
Hey, what better way for GE to tout its "brilliant machines" designed for the healthcare sector than to show Agent Smith, the villainous sentient AI from The Matrix, stalking the corridors of a bad-dreamy medical scenario? Actor Hugo Weaving dons the shades, suit and earpiece once more, reprising his famous role in this BBDO New York spot (which broke this weekend during Saturday Night Live) as he rides and pushes gurneys, watches himself get examined, flickers across a CT-scan monitor and hovers menacingly while observing an operation. Whoa. Obamacare is even worse than I'd imagined! Makes you long for the kindly Mr. Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, who had a cameo earlier in the campaign. Weaving's an awesome presence, though he is sinister in the extreme, especially at the end, when he offers a kid the choice of a red or blue lollipop in a nod to the Matrix films. Heck, the overall tone is so sterile and creepy that even the real life-saving machines look a bit threatening. Somebody pull the plug!
This "Launch Day" ad for Facebook Home, aka Facebook's new mobile UI, brings the non-pornographic online distractions of one engineer to vivid, Jumanji-esque life. The ad, which is a significant step up from the earlier airplane spot, was shot on location at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., campus, and the people in it are members of the actual product team behind Facebook Home. (These guys must be less camera shy than Intel's workforce.) The spot also reinforces 2013 as the year of the goat in advertising. Remains to be seen whether Home itself belongs in the category of much-derided farm animal. Second new spot, "Dinner," posted after the jump. The two new spots, like the airplane one, were done by Wieden + Kennedy.
Today is the 30th anniversary of San Francisco's Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, one of the most brilliant creative ad agencies in the history of the business. To celebrate, GSP decided to compile a "30 for 30" list of the best work it has produced across those three decades. "We reached out to a group of distinguished GSP alumni—creatives, strategists, media planners, producers, account leaders and others—and asked them to vote for their 10 favorite things produced at GSP in our first 30 years," the agency explains. All those top 10 lists were then crunched into a master list. The top 10 are ranked in order of popularity, followed by an alphabetical list of the 20 runners-up. "Got Milk?" dominates the top 10, placing three spots there, including the No. 1 overall pick—the classic "Aaron Burr" spot (posted below), which got four times as many votes as any other spot or campaign.
1. California Milk Processor Board, "Aaron Burr" (1993)
To say that "Aaron Burr" won our alumni poll by a landside is a bit of an understatement—it got four times as many votes as any other spot or campaign.
And that makes sense: it was the spot that launched a 20-year campaign and a 20-year client relationship, both of which are tremendous sources of pride for the agency.
Director Michael Bay (well before he was known as a big-time movie director) disagreed as to whether or not the spot should clarify who "Aaron Burr" was before the hero tries to say the name. Bay reluctantly got one shot of the painting with Burr's name—the last shot of the day as the film rolled out, making it potentially unusable. (It was the rollout that created the flashing you see in the spot.)
Producer Cindy Epps remembers looking at Erich Joiner and Chuck McBride and crossing their fingers, hoping it would be enough. It was.
Click through to the 30 for 30 site to see the rest—a great collection of classic work.
Get ready to have your mind blown. Dutch band Light Light has created one of the most amazing interactive music videos ever, housed on a site called DoNotTouch.org. The site tracks your mouse pointer throughout the video and shows you where everyone else pointed, as well. You're asked to signal your answers to certain questions, such as where you're located on a world map. But you're also given challenges along the way, like following a narrowing path or not touching a naked woman (thus, it is possibly NSFW). The result is both hypnotic and engaging, which is a rare combo indeed. Watch the video here.
It may not be the height of sophistication, but holy crap—Kmart's "Ship My Pants" ad is having a great run, to say the least. After just five days on YouTube, the pun-heavy spot from Draftfcb—in which Kmart shoppers are strongly encouraged to "ship their pants"—is quickly heading toward 10 million views on YouTube (it has 7.8 million currently) and is being passed around by viewers at an astounding rate of one share for every nine views, according to the viral experts at Unruly Media. With more than 800,000 shares total, it's already the second-most-shared ad of the past 30 days, eclipsed only by the "Bad Motherfucker" video from the Russian rock band Biting Elbows—which isn't really an an ad at all but counts as marketing because it's stuffed full of references to Neft vodka. Also, "Ship My Pants" seems destined to get a second big wave of publicity soon. Draftfcb—which is defending the Kmart creative business in a review that's down to three agencies—says the spot is living online only for now, but a TV run is in the works.
Gil Zamora is an FBI-trained forensics artist with over 3,000 criminal sketches under his belt. Dove and Ogilvy Brazil hired him to interview and draw seven different women—two sketches of each. The first sketch was based on each woman's personal description of herself. The second was based on a description provided by a stranger the woman had just met. Of course, the differences are vast. Watching these women come face to face with the version of themselves in their mind and the version everyone else sees is extraordinary. It's one of the most original and touching experiments to come from the Campaign for Real Beauty in ages, because instead of making faux protests or annoying graphic designers with bullshit filters, they're actually empowering individual women to appreciate their inherent beauty, and in turn, allowing us all to wonder if we've been judging ourselves too harshly. Like all of the best work, the commercial elements are barely there. Beyond the logo, Dove doesn't even attempt to sell soap. Watch the documentary below, and mini-videos of selected women on the web site. Then enjoy the rousing comments section, where people are already attacking Dove for choosing too many skinny, white chicks.
CREDITS Client: Dove Agency: Ogilvy & Mather Brazil Chief Creative Officer: Anselmo Ramos Executive Creative Director: Roberto Fernandez /Paco Conde AD: Diego Machado CW: Hugo Veiga Sketch Artist: Gil Zamora Producer: Veronica Beach Junior Producer: Renata Neumann Business Manager: Libby Fine CEO: Luis Fernando Musa Group Account Director: Valeria Barone Account Director: Ricardo Honegger
Production Company: Paranoid US Director: John X Carey Executive Producer: Jamie Miller / Claude Letessier Line Producer: Stan Sawicki Director of Photography: Ed David
—Long Version Executive Producer: Jamie Miller / Claude Letessier Producer: Stan Sawicki Editor: Phillip Owens Music: Subtractive Sound mix: Lime Studio Composer: Keith Kenniff Mixer: Sam Casas Executive Producer: Jessica Locke Production Sound: Tim O’Malley Color Grading: Company 3 Colorist: Sean Coleman
—Short Version and Cinema Editorial Company: Rock Paper Scissor Executive Producer: Carol Lynn Weaver Editor: Paul Kumpata Assistant Editor: Niles Howard Online: A52 Executive Producer: Megan Meloth Producer: Jamie McBriety Music: Subtractive Composer: Keith Kenniff Sound mix: Lime Studio Mixer: Sam Casas Executive Producer: Jessica Locke Production Sound: Tim O’Malley Color Grading: Company 3 Colorist: Sean Coleman
Here's a pretty incredible piece of editorial from the front page of the sports section in Tuesday's Chicago Tribune—a tribute to Boston following Monday's bombings that turns all Chicago sports fans into Boston fans. It's being hailed almost universally as a tremendous gesture—with the Red Sox themselves being among those already expressing their thanks.
Heineken is trying to tap into club culture with an interactive bottle design that uses micro sensors and wireless technology to interact with drinkers. The LED lights react when people toast each other and sip from the bottle, and they can be synchronized to music as well. It's like drinking out of a Simon game! This bottle is comparable to those Japanese video-game urinals—a cool idea, but it's going encourage some pretty weird behavior. Via PSFK.
A guy named Ed stalks past the glum cubicles of a nondescript office suite, raises his gun and fires a single shot at a middle-aged managerial type, narrowly missing his target. He then begins the laborious process of cleaning and reloading his musket-style weapon—the type of firearm widely used when the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified—giving everyone in the room time to flee. The chilling spot, from States United to Prevent Gun Violence and Grey New York, closes with the lines: "Guns have changed. Shouldn't our gun laws?"
Moms Demand Action and Grey Toronto take a simpler approach with "How Many More Rounds?" That clip shows shells ejecting in slow motion as an assault weapon is fired, with each casing representing a high-profile shooting: Newtown, Aurora, Virginia Tech, Columbine. As the tragedies pile up, the ad asks, "How many more rounds are we going to let this go for?" The same client-agency team also crafted print ads (posted after the jump) that show two kids standing or sitting side by side, each holding a different item, one of which has been banned by federal or local authorities to protect youngsters. The banned items include a version of Little Red Riding Hood, Kinder Surprise chocolate eggs and dodge balls. In each case, the contrasting item is an AR-15 assault rifle.
All three efforts are restrained and thoughtful, and each makes a point in a memorable way without seeming gratuitous. That the cause inspires impassioned and noteworthy creative work is no surprise. It's just a shame this particular ad category has to exist at all.
CREDITS (top spot) Client: States United to Prevent Gun Violence Spot: "Ed—A Petition For Stronger Gun Laws" Agency: Grey NY Tor Myhren – President & Chief Creative Officer Steve Krauss – Executive Creative Director Ari Halper – Executive Creative Director Eric Schutte – Creative Director, Art Director Rob Carducci – Associate Creative Director, Copywriter Richard Bullock – Copywriter Rachel West – Creative Reputation Manager Elizabeth Gilchrist – VP, Account Director Cassie Novick – Assistant Account Executive Bennett McCarroll – EVP, Director of Broadcast Production Floyd Russ – Producer Sam Howard – Associate Producer Adam Goldstein – Director Bonnie Goldfarb – Executive Producer Production Company: Harvest Director: Adam Goldstein Executive Producers: Bonnie Goldfarb, Rob Sexton Line Producer: Francie Moore D.P.: Roman Jakobi Editorial: Mackenzie Cutler Editor - Gavin Cutler Assistant Editor - Ryan Steele Producer - Sasha Hirschfeld Visual FX: Method Studios Jay Hawkins – Lead Flame Artist Stella Ampatci – Matte Painter Jenn Dewey – VFX Producer Sound Design: Vision Post Sound Designer: Ryan Hobler Producer: Lindsay Brzowski Music: G&E Music
The world's most famous spokespitcher, the Kool-Aid Man, just got a glassy makeover to help promote the brand's new sugar-free liquid drink mix. The Kool-Aid Man, who's been around since 1954, was made over by Saatchi & Saatchi in New York and VSA Partners of Chicago. At 59 years old, he's now completely CGI, appears a bit slimmer, has a new voice—including an "expanded vocabulary and developed personality" (!)—and of course his own brand-new Facebook page.
Thankfully, he will still say, "Oh, yeah!" and burst through walls. But in the new commercials, he's also seen working out at the gym, buying flowers and wondering which of his 22 fabulous flavor "outfits" to wear. (Hey, is the Kool-Aid Man gay now, too? If so, that's kool with me—give him a big equals sign over his midsection and make it his new profile pic.) In June, Kool-Aid will also launch a Kool-Aid Man PhotoBomb mobile app, which will allow fans to superimpose images of Kool-Aid Man into their own photos.
"This is one of those fun projects we love to work on: Bring Kool-Aid Man back, better than ever," says Saatchi New York chief creative officer Con Williamson. "When we set out to do that, when we really dug in, we discovered that there's a lot to love in the evolution of this iconic character. We wanted people to get to know him a bit more. Kool-Aid and Kool-Aid Man are undeniably fun and positively bold. We wanted that happiness to shine through in his personality and attitude."
North Korean strongman lardass Kim Jong-un should take some advice from New York Sports Clubs: "Exercise reduces aggression and makes you more attractive to others. Join today." The gym franchise, known for its snarky promos tied to current events, on Monday placed an ad in the New York City edition of the Metro newspaper inviting the portly potentate to use its facilities for a workout. Copy starts, "Kim Jong-un, with a great bod, you don't need a big missile." That particular bit of low-hanging humor will likely fall flat for the rotund ruler, since the whole missile thing's proven pretty useful for him so far. Still, he'll burn more calories pumping iron than he will by pressing the button.
MetService.com, a weather site in New Zealand, recently put up this empty (but nonetheless branded!) billboard frame in Auckland, through which it offered "real-time weather reports." Ha. As a gimmick, I suppose it's amusing enough. Of course, it's hard to tell the temperature from looking at the sky—and that's the major thing people check real-time weather reports for. Fun idea—but just not as clever as they think it is. Agency: Y&R. Check out the case-study video below. Via Adland.
CC Sabathia is a large man, but he's not technically wearing a fat suit. That latter fact—and not just his slimming New York Yankee pinstripes—gives Sabathia the advantage over the horizontally striped (and comically fat-suited) Scott Van Pelt in ESPN's new This Is SportsCenter commercial from Wieden + Kennedy in New York. Now, if they can combine a fat suit and a mullet, they'll really be breaking new ground.
Following the bombings in Boston on Monday, New York City's 5 Boro Bike Tour is swiftly pulling all posters advertising its own May 5 race—because of now-inappropriate imagery showing pyrotechnics going off at the starting line. "We had these ads all over the city, and beginning today, the MTA is removing all of them," the group's CEO, Ken Podziba, told Gothamist on Wednesday."We were getting phone calls and emails from people who thought the ads were inappropriate, and we agreed. The last thing in the world we want to do is offend anybody in a time of tragedy." Podziba said the ad space will probably be left blank—"which I guess is a message in and of itself," he said. "Our hearts go out to the victims and their families. We're in solidarity with them."
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.
LG is making a splash with bathroom humor in its latest piece of prankvertising. Marketing shop SuperHeroes installed ultra-wide LG IPS 21:9 monitors at eye level above urinals in a men's room at Amsterdam's World Fashion Centre. When guys showed up to use the facilities, the screens sprang to life with crisp images of sexy female models, who appeared to be appraising the men's … plumbing. The images were so lifelike, as seen in the hidden-camera footage, that most guys got stage fright—with many suffering a delay before they could urinate, and 25 percent failing to pee altogether.
"The film was shot … with actual visitors of the centre," SuperHeroes creative director Rogier Vijverberg tells AdFreak. "We spent a full day in the adjacent toilet filming the reactions of unsuspecting men. As a backup, we'd hired a handful of extras. Nobody knew they were filmed beforehand, not even the extras."
The video is on track to top 1 million YouTube views in little more than two days. And though invasive, this prank seems more playful and less upsetting than some other recent ones, including the last hair-raising SuperHeroes-LG collaboration—the one with the monitors lining the elevator floor. The guys at the urinals seem mildy miffed, but those elevator riders were truly shafted.
