Step right up, folks, and feel yourself getting gleefully dumber as you watch this new DirecTV Sunday Ticket ad posing as a bad rap video. Dubbed "Football on Your Phone," it stars Eli and Peyton Manning as slack-jawed versions of themselves. At first you'll hate it, but then you won't be able to stop watching. After a couple minutes of rubbernecking, you'll see Eli burst through a large portrait of Alexander Graham Bell and realize you've been beaten about the head with stupidity to the point that you can't help but laugh. In other words, it's like a lazy ripoff of The Lonely Island. Then again, if they'd tried too hard, it probably wouldn't work at all. And it's really pretty great. Agency: Grey, New York.

In May, we saw a billboard use lenticular printing to illustrate how violence against children can easily go unseen. Now, a new PSA from the United Nations Children's Fund is taking a different approach to making invisible abuses visible. "Just because you can't see violence against children doesn't mean it isn't there," says Liam Neeson, star of the Hollywood child-trafficking drama Taken, and a Unicef celebrity ambassador, in the voiceover. Titled "End Violence," the spot offers a gritty and blunt perspective on the dangers and traumas that children across the globe face on a regular basis, from gang rape to cyber bullying. But while the camera pans across a series of scenes where such crimes take place, it doesn't show any of the perpetrators or victims. Instead, Neeson's voiceover fills in, describing the violence that occurred in each. It's a deft and gripping way to deliver a hard-hitting message—shocking the audience into paying attention, without shutting it down by making the violence more overt. A longtime Unicef supporter, Neeson explains why he supported this particular campaign: "It was a topic that became increasingly real to me as a child growing up in Ireland and during the filming of Taken, which focuses on one aspect of violence and abuse against children in the form of trafficking and sexual exploitation." A number of other stars, including Jamie Foxx and Alyssa Milano, have tweeted their support for the campaign.

This playfully memorable campaign for Israel's Steimatzky Books chain via ACW Grey in Tel Aviv does a fine job of communicating the intense, often transcendent relationship that can develop between readers and material on the printed page.

The series is headlined "The right book will always keep you company." Ads show folks fast asleep, the books they've been reading still in their hands, on night tables or nearby, with lifesize characters from the volumes sharing their beds.

The approach is in keeping with this advertiser's past oddball efforts, and it succeeds because the visuals, impressively realized with amazing attention to detail, compellingly illustrate and reinforce the campaign's theme. Of course, many people read as they drift off, but the bed imagery seems especially apt because books can help us think, wonder and dream in new, exciting ways. 

Some commenters find the notion of "sleeping" with Don Quixote, Sherlock Holmes, Gandalf and especially Joseph Stalin, the subject of Robert Service's acclaimed biography, unnerving or creepy. They might have a point, but nothing untoward is ever suggested here. Actually, avid readers often have "intimate," though presumably (and I'd add, thankfully) nonphysical relationships with books, and I suppose these ads do hint in that direction. Still, it's probably best not to read too much into it.

See more images from the campaign, and credits, after the jump. (Via Copyranter)

CREDITS:
Agency: ACW Grey Tel-Aviv, Israel
Executive Creative Director: Tal Riven
‎‏‪Client Manager: Elad Hermel‬
‎‏‪Creative Director: Idan Regev‬
Art Director: Daphne Orner
Copywriter: Kobi Cohen
‎‏‪Planning: Noa Dekel‬
‎‏‪Supervisor: Mor Pesso‬
‎‏‪Account Manager: Nataly Rabinovich‬
‎‏‪Producer: Racheli Zatlawi‬
‎‏‪Production Company: We Do Production‬
‎‏‪Photographer: ‬Shai Yehezkelli

Another day, another resume billboard. Earlier this year, 24-year-old Adam Pacitti landed a job in media—which he describes as an “ultra competitive, cutthroat and slightly vacuous industry"—by spending some $770 on a billboard directing potential employers to a website about himself. It worked. After 60 offers, Adam accepted a position at KEO Digital. AOL Jobs caught up with him this week and parsed the strategy. Is this really a useful template for people looking for work? I mean, no one should have to spend that much money to get a company to look at his resume. 

These new ads for Polish energy drink Tiger start out boring, and then get weird very, very quickly. Run-of-the-mill bar, party and music-festival scenes quickly devolve into young men receiving pep talks from a tiny, hand-held jungle cat on how not to be a total wuss. Apparently, it was a technical feat to get the tiger, animated by Platige in New York, to display the right mix of feline and human characteristics—and it's true, he does look pretty awesome. But if he were a person, he'd still be that friend who's trying to live vicariously through you, by constantly telling you exactly what you should do to get the girl, even though he clearly has no idea what he's talking about. Agency: DDB Warsaw

One spot below, and two more after the jump.

Add FaceTime video chat to the list of features covered by Apple and TBWA\Media Arts Lab in their "Every Day" spots for the iPhone 5. This new clip is similar in execution to earlier series entries about the device's music and photo functions, with copious product-use shots and a subdued, moody score setting the tone. (Nokia had the cheek to parody"Photos Every Day," and fairly effectively, though when rivals choose to define themselves in relation to Apple, it says more about the latter's enduring brand equity and continued presence of mind among consumers than anything else.) These "Every Day" ads do a fine job of showing us the role iPhone technologies play in people's lives, and they resonate better than the client's widely panned "Designed by Apple" campaign, which spends too much time telling us about the company's mind-set and philosophy. The human interface, after all, is where technology truly comes alive, and in its most successful advertising, Apple taps into that connection to reveal the soul of its machines.

Sentient vending machines are all the rage right now. This Amstel spot out of Bulgaria adds the latest twist to the share-baiting trend—forcing antsy consumers to actually stand still in one place for three minutes if they want a free beer. The point? Take a break from your busy day. Really, it's like all the others in that it's just another way to waste your time and maybe have a little fun. But at least it doesn't make you bow to it. All we can say is that if we were Kit Kat, we'd be pretty pissed that we didn't do this first. 

The San Diego Culinary Institute has a trio of talking food ads that are funny, albeit in a dumb way, but also a lot more sexually charged than this kind of ad tends to be. The “Napoleon” ad at least tries to be a little seductive (and who among us hasn't been seduced by dessert before? Don't lie to yourselves), but the “Ducks” ad borders on flat-out inappropriate. I mean, I'm okay with it, but I hope the Institute knows what they're getting into. Some of their incoming applications might get pretty strange. Created by San Francisco agency Muh-tay-zik | Hoff-fer. See all three spots, and full credits, after the jump. 

CREDITS
Agency & Production Company: Muh-tay-zik | Hof-fer
Executive Creative Director: John Matejczyk
Creative Director/Director: Diko Daghlian
Executive Producer: Michelle Spear
Senior Copywriter: Josh Bogdan
Art Director: John Soto
Producer: Michelle Spear, Kelli Bratvold
Account Supervisor: Carolina Cruz-Letelier
Director of Photography: Eric Noren
Art Director: Art Wilinski
Prop Stylist: Jonathan Nicholson
Food Stylist: Katie Christ

Editorial: Barbary Post
Executive Producer: Kristin Jenkins
Editor: Matt O’Donnell
Assistant Editor: Nick Haynes
Colorist: Steve McEuen
Smoke Artist: Greg Gilmore

Audio: One Union
Senior Engineer: Eben Carr [ISDN patch via POP Studios, Santa Monica]
 
On Camera Principals
"Salmon:" Bonnie Sarlette
"Napoleon:" Sterling King (SDCI student)
"Ducks L'Orange:" Brian Karpel (SDCI student)

Voice Actors
"Salmon:" Nathan Lowe, Matt O'Donnell
"Napoleon: Jeremy Wirth
"Ducks L'Orange:" Nathan Lane, Christopher Alex via Voicecaster
END TAG: Nathan Lowe

Venables Bell & Partners is launching another campaign for Google Fiber, and it's already a little more interesting than 72andSunny's recent Google Chromecast work, which was basically watching people watch television. Dubbed “Un-Technically Speaking,” the new Venables push is taking the classic Star Trek approach of explaining a complicated thing with a simple analogy. In the case of the first spot, an extremely articulate little girl uses birdwatching as a metaphor for the Nexus Tablet's vocal command feature. I think that girl might be some kind of beta-level Google contraption, too. Her elocution definitely puts her on my “could be a robot” list. Credits after the jump.

Brand: Google Fiber
Spot: Bird Watcher
Air Date: August 5
Agency: Venables Bell & Partners
Executive Creative Director: Paul Venables and Will McGinness
Creative Director:  Lee Einhorn
Art Director: Ezra Paulekas
Copywriter: Rob Calabro
Director of Integrated Production: Craig Allen 
Agency Producers: Joyce Chen and Adam Battista
Production Company: Arts & Sciences
Director: Matt Aselton
Director of Photography: Masa Takayanagi
Executive Producer: Mal Ward and Marc Marrie
Producer: Zoe Odlum
Editing Company: Final Cut
Editor: Matt Murphy
Music: Beacon Street
Mix: Loren Silber at Lime Studios
Visual Effects: The Mill
Visual Effects Producer: Kiana Bicoy

Blake Griffin does a lot of commercials. A lot. The All-Star has jumped over cars, traveled through time and run the court with a no-game street baller named Drain. In his latest spot, "The Endorser," with Chris Paul, for Foot Locker, Blake is a pitch-machine on steroids (ahem, A-Rod). So, how does he separate business from pleasure? Simple, with the flip of a switch. Thanks CP3! If this is anything like his previous campaigns for Kia, AT&T, or Jordan, I'm sure we can expect Blake and Foot Locker to team up for a few more comical spots. Now, if only we could all time travel so we didn't have to wait. Agency: BBDO New York

Unyielding butter is the worst. It ruins toast, and tween girls' relationships with mothers, and mothers' relationships with new husbands. So says this cheeky new :30 spot from DDB Melbourne for Devondale, an Australian dairy brand. The ad follows a set from earlier this year, in which soy-milk-aftertaste face (the evil twin of pudding face) makes one unwitting man's daughter cry, and sends another's wife off on a tirade about having children. Of course, even if they all bought Devondale's soft butter spread or cow milk products, they'd still be living with a bunch of crazy people. All three videos after the jump. (Via Mumbrella) 

Secret Weapon Marketing's latest terrifically tacky effort for Jack in the Box features big-ass chickens, highway smash-ups and sexting—though, perhaps sadly, not in the same commercial. Three spots tout the impressive size of various menu items in the brand's patented sophomoric style.

To promote Really Big Chicken Combos, "Big Chickens" rehashes familiar comic tropes, spoofing giant-monster flicks and fuss-pot Hollywood directors by staging a film-set sissy fight between two actors dressed as humongous hens. Wags might suggest that the spot lays an egg, though in doing so they'd display more creativity and original thought than the commercial itself. In "How'd I Do It?," the chain's freakish, cue-ball- headed Jack mascot reveals his inspiration for the sausage, eggs, cheese, bacon and other stuff piled high on the Waffle Stack: a highway pile-up of big rigs, each carrying the food items in question. Wags might say that Jack in the Box advertising resembles not mere car crashes, but full-blown train wrecks. I'd never stoop so low.

A third clip shows two young women lounging in bed while texting. One tells the other, "He just said, 'It's big … really big.'" Her friend responds, "Tell him to send a pic." A photo of the Big Stack sandwich arrives, and both women, suitably impressed, say, "Whoa!" The scene then shifts to a restaurant booth, where Jack tells a pal texting on his behalf, "Tell her I'm easy. 'Cuz of the drive-thru." Hmm, who's more unappealing as a sexter, Jack or Anthony Weiner? It's a pretty close call.

"Texting," posted several weeks ago, generated some mild complaint for its sleazy scenario. It vanished from Jack in the Box's website and YouTube channel yesterday. A client rep explained that "the spot had a limited run due to the limited-time-only nature of the product and promotion … Knowing the spot would have a limited run, talent fees were negotiated so that Internet usage would expire when the promotion concluded. But again, this spot ran its full planned schedule."

If Jack in the Box for any reason whatsoever also makes "Big Chickens" and "How'd I Do It?" disappear—or obliterates those hyper-annoying "Nugging" ads from the face of the Earth—I'd be OK with that too.

Two more spots after the jump.

Expedia's "Find Yours" campaign from 180LA, which has produced some pretty forward-thinking and powerful spots in the recent past, is now encouraging you to "Find Your Spontaneity" by entering to win one of the travel service's daily free trips. The ad for the app-based promotion is a bit of an odd hybrid, though, with the first part devoted to Expedia reps explaining their smartphone app to random passers-by and the rest of the spot focused on a supposedly random guy who agreed to hop on a flight to China that evening. Expedia was going for some of the magic Heineken found with its Departure Roulette stunt, but they tried a little too hard, and the resulting ad feels jarringly artificial. Between the beautifully crafted travel shots and the sheer luck of catching a willing guy with a suitcase walking through a park, everything here just feels more staged than empowering. ("How did he get a visa so fast?" wonders one skeptical YouTube commenter.) But hey, a few theatrics are allowable if it means not having to watch an entire ad about how to use a mobile app. 

The father is a human in a dog's body (for reasons "you're too young to understand," he once barked at his daughter), the son is a black American, and their maid is an alien incarnation of Tommy Lee Jones. They are “The White Family,” a staple of telecom Softbank’s marketing, and they have become the most popular recurring commercial characters in Japan. The family is made up of a father (Otosan), a son (Kojiro), a mom (Masako) and a daughter (Aya). Telling you much more about their family dynamic would require me actually knowing Japanese, since very few of the many YouTube clips from the campaign have been subtitled, though you can read a great profile on the family's commercial success in The Japan Times. Like me, you may have stumbled across their ads before and been too distracted by the craziness of their antics to actually recognize it as an ongoing campaign -- one that has been tallied as the nation’s favorite for six years running. The sprawling series of more than 130 spots, credited with vaulting SoftBank from industry newcomer to one of Japan's top mobile providers, have even featured cameos from Quentin Tarantino, Tommy Lee Jones and a real Japanese astronaut filming his appearances in space. For my fellow uninitiated, I’ve compiled some of the more interesting clips from the campaign after the jump. Disclaimer: Seeing more of these ads doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll understand any more of these ads. Hat tip to WTF Japan Seriously.   

Call out the cat herders! A bunch of kitties stampede down the streets of Croydon, England, in Mother's new spot for MoneySuperMarket. "Bill here just saved £304 on his car insurance at MoneySuperMarket and now feels so good he thinks he can run with wolves,” the narrator explains, before noting almost apologetically, “There are no wolves in Croydon." So, the guy runs with the neighborhood cats instead. That's about it. The client tells The Drum it was seeking to maintain "a more British look and feel to the campaign," which certainly holds true for the visuals, though it makes the choice of music, the very American "Oh What a Beautiful Morning," from Oklahoma, feel out of place. The concept starts strong but doesn’t prove to be particularly memorable in its payoff, especially when there are so many feline-themed ads—and spots with swarming creatures of all sorts—it'd take nine lives just to watch them all.

Here it is, the first official Men's Wearhouse brand ad since the departure of iconic founder George Zimmer and the hiring of Phenomenon in Los Angeles as the retailer's new agency of record. (Last month, we got a bit of a sneak peek with a brief spot promoting the chain's charitable effort, the National Suit Drive.) The new spot, "Walk of Fame," is a retrospective of suit fashion through the decades since the store's founding in 1973. It's a fun watch, fueled by The Heavy's track, "What Makes a Good Man?" But I'm not sure the tagline—"For 40 years we've been helping men dress like gentlemen"—really fits in an ad where a guy keeps sleazily spinning around to eye hot women with a level of blatant ogling that went out of fashion long before most of these suits did.

If you ever run across a marketer offering you an impromptu adventure overseas, you might first want to clarify whether it will entail you being kidnapped by clowns and dropped from an airplane. That was the terrifying fate of South African graphic designer Clint Jacobs, the final latest of four participants in Heineken's "Dropped" campaign from Wieden + Kennedy, Amsterdam. As you may have guessed, the campaign (which got a lot of buzz from the related Departure Roulette stunt in JFK) literally drops real people into remote destinations to film their adventures. In the campaign's last installment, a group of Heineklowns tosses the affable Jacobs into rural Poland and makes him hitchhike and tandem-bike his way to Germany, where he must host his own circus. This seems like the sort of proposition you'd have to be drunk to accept, so it works as a long-form beer commercial even if it seems like a total non sequitur. Watch how the story plays out after the jump.

Recently, British insurance comparison service Confused.com and Publicis in London launched ads featuring a new mascot, Brian the Robot, who seems to have a knack for creating uncomfortable situations. Specifically, in one of the spots, he appears to interrupt a couple in mid-blow job. The brand has since denied this interpretation, with the director of marketing telling British advertising site Campaign, "Admittedly, the woman is somewhat startled by Brian appearing in the car window, having been tying her shoelace." The shoelace argument doesn't quite match with Confused's own write-up about the ad, which describes the setting as "a romantic spot overlooking a city at sunset" where "we see Brian approach a lone parked car and tap on one of the closed windows, interrupting a couple looking slightly flustered." According to several YouTube commenters, a newer version of the ad now shows the couple kissing, likely due to dozens of complaints to Britain's Advertising Standards Authority that the original version was inappropriate for children. Check out more of Brian's odd interactions after the jump.

So, San Pellegrino will let folks remotely control robots on the ground and in the air over Italy … but NOT for the purpose of Dalek-like mass destruction? Where's the fun in that? To help bring the sparkling water's "Three Minutes in Italy" promotion to life, Ogilvy & Mather in New York partnered with Deeplocal to create five robots that Facebook users can control romotely to take in the sights of Italy. Four ground-gliding units and one skybot perched on a 40-foot pole allow users to take virtual tours of Taormina, a picturesque village in Sicily. San Pellegrino's Facebook fans can sign up to drive the ground-bots for 180 seconds, viewing the town in real time. The robots are equipped with tablets displaying users' Facebook profile pics, and a translation program allows participants to talk with local residents. Brand ambassadors are on the ground to facilitate engagement, or thwart any attempts to use the robots for evil ends, whichever comes first. Actually, the bots don't look very threatening, especially equipped with umbrellas to protect their components from the sun. (After the jump, watch one robotic romeo chat up an unsuspecting passerby named Christin; That's amore!) The campaign runs through Aug. 17, with virtual tours from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern. It's a novel approach, and it seems only fitting that as robots take more of our jobs, they get to replace us on vacation, too. Via PSFK.

Ever wonder exactly which messaging service Katy Perry uses to chat about being a champion while she’s taking a dump? Well, mystery solved: It’s WhatsApp. In just a few days, millions have already watched the lyric video for Perry’s new single, "Roar," which is told through a rapid-fire group chat on Perry’s iPhone. The video’s popularity, while no real surprise, has definitely been an unexpected boost for WhatsApp, the mobile messaging service that’s featured throughout the video—despite not paying Perry a dime for the endorsement. According to Forbes, a WhatsApp spokesman confirmed the company’s app was definitely the one used in the video, but he said it was not part of any paid arrangement. Perry is reportedly a fan of the app and uses it to stay in touch with her entourage, so this concept might have been drawn from real life. Which makes it pretty entertaining to watch the video with the sound off and imagine what an incredibly strange and arguably psychotic conversation this would actually be.