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If Birds Pooped Candy Created 15 months ago by Weiden + Kennedy and directed by Buck Production, this "epic rock opera" for Coke Zero features "a singing bear, candy-pooping birds, an elk with sausage antlers, g-string wearing antelopes and honeycomb encrusted sheep." And after a long 15 months, the spot has finally aired. In Brazil. Because awesomeness like this never makes its way to America. Ten Grenades, An Exploding Car and 5,426 Car Parts Say Slow Down This is drive safely commercial for Auckland's Rodney District is an amazing piece of work. Truly amazing. Not as technically amazing as Honda Cog or as emotionally charged as the classic The Faster the Speed The Bigger the Mess (which you can view here) but still, amazing. Saatchi New Zealand, working with production company Flying Fish and a demolitions engineer, blew up a car with ten grenades and then reassembled the vehicle, piece by piece, creating a work of art. The finished piece is stunning. And the music. Well, that works too. Because Melting Crayons Have Everything to do With Your Friends This would appear to be a lot of money to spend simply to tell people you'll back up their mobile phone contacts, something Verizon has been doing since, well, ever. Now U.S. Cellular (does anyone even use U.S. Cellular?) wants us to know they, too, will back up your precious contacts. And U.S. Cellular does know they are precious. So how was this accomplished? We couldn't gush better than the press release which reads, "To highlight U.S. Cellular's 'My Contacts Backup' feature, which stores your numbers even if you lose your phone, the team found inspiration from the idea that your phone numbers aren't just numbers; they're connections to the people who matter most. The spot celebrates the humanity behind what a phone brings to your life in a colorful way." Yes, people, your friends are melting crayons. Strobey Audis, Midlifers on Hulu, Social Media Mobbin' - Strobey Audi D7 ads. - Middle-agers inflate Hulu 490%. - More BeanCast shenanigans: "Johnny Wall!" - Contemplating Wolfram|Alpha. - Something about pumping iron. And also furniture. - Leonard Nimoy talks origins of the Vulcan salute. (*swoon*). Via @ChristopherY. - Mob mentality invades social media. (Wait a sec ... aren't they kinda the same thing?) - Doner CEO Barry Levine retires. POLL TIME! The Sexploitation Round. This poll was sparked by an Amnesty International effort where a woman is smushed into transparent luggage to illustrate the cause of sex trafficking. Compare with PETA's 2008 Covent Garden stunt, where a naked mom is put on display in a plea for pigs. Granted, the causes are different -- sex trafficking versus animal rights -- but when are these types of tactics okay? Whether you do/don't have a problem with them, we wanna hear you. =P These Ads Will Make You As Dizzy As Nicotine Does Who needs the stimulation of nicotine when you have ads like these for Sao Paulo hospital A.C. Camargo? Created by JWT Sao Paulo, the ads stimulate you in a different way/ Or is it confuse and cause a headache. You decide. Still, we like the very non-typical style of this anti-smoking campaign. ad:tech SF: Levi's Blueprint for Storytelling "When presented with bold new ideas, people reference what they know more than what they can conceive." Senior Director Michael Perman of Levi's passed us oranges, recounted memories of his dad and deluged us with blue-jean trivia in an ad:tech sesh entitled "The Power of Storytelling." See snippets of tweet coverage. It's apt that Levi's give us the skinny on storytelling's underrated appeal, given that its capacity to spin tales has beguiled us for years. Anyway, here's some videographic deja vu. ad:tech SF: Steve Hayden Replaces Industry Fear with a Wee Bit O' Wonder Ogilvy Vice Chairman Steve Hayden conducted a keynote titled "Fear, Love and Advertising" at ad:tech SF last week. I livetweeted it; you can see some of the tweetage here. Hayden kicked off by explaining the premise behind his talk: in this dire economic clime, when everybody's castrating their own creativity, he hopes to encourage the industry to shelf their fears in favour of a little (well-informed) wonder. He woke the muse by blasting us with iconic ads, like the Apple Newton stuff and "True Colors" from Dove's Real Women campaign. Then he gave us a long, colourful explanation of a hexagon he calls Hayden's Mandala -- a complex (and yet simple!) cycle of everything a person/brand goes through when facing a major growth trajectory or change. Here's a video snapshot of that: Then Hayden did something I've never seen a keynoter do before: he passed the floor to people whose products he thinks will change the media environment. I was awestruck, and only more so when I saw what came next. ad:tech SF: Amielle Lake on Mobile Marketing, (Copper) Mining and Pinot-Friendly Cheese Amielle Lake is the CEO of Tagga, a Vancouver-based company that helps agencies add a strategic mobile component to their campaigns. (Think broad SMS efforts, mobile websites, etc). The service -- currently live in Canada and the US -- includes reporting and dashboard management, and payment models are flexy. We sat down yesterday to talk about Tagga in a video interview. As luck would have it, I ended up gleaning a lot more than I expected. Amielle tells this great story about Tagga's birth and the state of agencies at that time; it also turns out she worked in mining and knows French cheese like this. (*crosses fingers*) Funny what you can find out when the pressure's on (ad:tech was ending, hence the skulky suited man in the BG) and you know your first take MUST be perfect (I don't know how to use my video editing software. But you probably guessed that). Compulsive Twitterers can hit the Follow button at: @tagga and @amiellel.
by Angela Natividad
Apr-24-09
Topic: Agencies, Creative Commentary, Events, Industry Events, Mobile/Wireless ad:tech SF: Ryan Holmes Demonstrates Serious Interviewing Fortitude Forget, for a second, about the vacuumy cafe noises and the girl with the crutches in the background. The weather is pretty, Schoggi is cozy and we have pistachio and rosewater macaroons. Fun fact: Founder/CEO Ryan Holmes of Invoke Media, parent company of HootSuite, has never had a macaroon before. When I ordered them at the register, he asked if they were "Asian hamburgers." And then I died. Notes on this video: 1. HootSuite is one of the cooler tools available to marketers on Twitter right now. It has a proprietary URL shortening feature (ow.ly) with a built-in ad and revenue sharing model. HootSuite can also manage multiple accounts at once. An update, slated for the near future, will boast still more features and turn the HootSuite UI into a cross between Firefox (with tabs!) and TweetDeck. Yeah, that sounds scary, but Ryan assures me they've got good info architecture/usability peeps back at Invoke. I believe everything he says. EVERYTHING. 
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