Imagine you're stuck in summer traffic underneath a humid overpass. A booted car clunks its way along in front of you, while a group of men and women who had too much to drink the night before laugh their way through an unsuccessful sobriety test. Meanwhile, shriners get rear-ended while zebras and clowns survey the scene, when suddenly a giraffe decides to lane split—against traffic.

Who will save you from this circus?

How about a Lyft?

The San Francisco-based ride hailing app's first national TV campaign—which launches today—uses the 60-second spot to set a surreal scene illustrating how to avoid the hassle by hailing a stranger's car.

"For us, this represents the next logical step along the road of just becoming a great global brand and really being a big part of the conversation that's happening right now about culture and transportation and how all of this stuff is evolving for a generation," Jesse McMillin, Lyft's creative director, said in an interview.

According McMillin, much of the inspiration for the one-minute spot came from a style popular in the 1960s by filmmakers like Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard and Jacques Tati. The surreal and visually eclectic style of those directors often built up scenes to an absurd situation. Ironically, those directors all came from an era where everybody wanted a car.

McMillin said Lyft and production company MJZ wanted to reinvent the idea of freedom and access for a new generation of people that's actively shedding materialism for the idea of experience.

"How do you bring that idea where maybe in the 60s it was about cars being at their apex and how cool were they and getting one was a part of this special group? How do you take that same vibe and feeling and communicate it in a different way? That's not only with this spot with a lot of thing we're thinking about."

According to Lyft, 75 percent of the TV spots will run during prime-time hours targeting 18- to 34-year-olds with top-performing networks such as Comedy Central, MTV, Adult Swim and Freeform. Another 25 percent will run digitally in full episodes on AMC.com, ABC.com and TBS.com. The spot also will air via video-on-demand through Viacom, Turner and YouTube.

Accompanying the television spot will be a national out-of-home campaign three times as broad as Lyft's previous campaigns. The campaign will run in 19 markets and 11 airports: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, Miami, Minneapolis, Nashville, New Jersey, Portland, San Jose and Seattle. While some aspects of the campaign will only run in airports, other markets will include ads on transit shelters, bulletins, wallscapes, bus wraps and public transportation.

The campaign in many ways serves to distinguish the brand known for its pink mustache as the more silly, more playful and more irreverent of the two most popular ride sharing services. Lyft's biggest rival, Uber is still much larger in company size and revenue. However, Lyft creative director Ricardo Viramontes said he thinks the playfulness pays off.

"But what's going to distinguish us from any other service is going to be how we treat our drivers, how we communicate to them, how we set up the expecations to what a Lyft ride is," Viramontes said. "The expectation when someone sees this spot is 'Hey, this brand is a fun brand,' and therefore you carry that with you into the car."

Some of the biggest creative names in advertising just received snail-mailed prototypes of book jacket designs ... for novels they haven't yet written. 

It's all part of an ambitious call for entries for the Winston Fletcher Fiction Prize, an annual literary competition for authors working in the advertising industry. MullenLowe London created the personalized books, which are blank on the inside, for luminaries like TBWA's Lee Clow, Goodby Silverstein's Jeff Goodby, Grey's Vicki Maguire, McCann's John Mescall and DDB's Richard Russell—to drum up entries for the contest's third year. 

All of the books feature a cheeky placeholder name: Title Goes Here. The pages have no text, with the exception of a single teaser line that appears once: "What's your next chapter?"

Click the images to enlarge.

The cover of each book features an image that pays homage to a famous work created by its recipient. Clow's references his "1984" ad for Apple, Goodby's honors the "Got Milk?" campaign, Maguire's nods to her work for the British Heart Foundation, Mescall's alludes to "Dumb Ways to Die," the smash hit PSA for Metro Melbourne trains; and Russell's references the Honda "Grrr" ad he co-wrote at Wieden + Kennedy London. 

Similarly customized versions of the books went to other creatives who have done well at advertising awards shows in recent years. The book covers are also running as print ads in advertising trade media. 



The idea is clever, in a cute kind of way. And it's not a bad way to seed publicity for Winston Fletcher's 2016 call for submissions. Entrants must submit a maximum of 4,000 words by Aug. 31 to a jury chaired by Tim Waterstone, founder of the European chain bookstore Waterstone's. The cash prize is worth about $2,900. 

It's also not the competition's first time using gimmickry to promote itself: Last year, it cooked up clueless client commentary on the classic works of adman authors like F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Heller and Salman Rushdie.

The only problem is, the creative stars' most iconic campaigns are probably, at this point, the last things they'll want to write a book about. (Or at least they should be.) 

CREDITS

Client: Winston Fletcher Fiction Prize
Campaign Title: "Winston Fletcher Fiction Prize 2016"
Agency: MullenLowe London
Chief Creative Officer: Dave Henderson
Executive Creative Director: Richard Denney
Account Team: Izzy Falcon, Jess Bird
Agency Producer: Gary Wallis
Photography: MAKE_
Retoucher: Pete Steadman
Designers: Augusta Lindquist, Ryan Self, Rob Hare, Elisabeth Bolzon, Javier Leal-Olivas

Since April is apparently Distracted Driving Awareness Month, Honda is running a series of short videos called #PhoneDownEyesUp that urge us to respect our own limits when it comes to multi-tasking. 

Each ad suggests that if you can't safely complete minor chores and tasks—like gardening, vacuuming or making pancakes—while texting, you really shouldn't text and drive either. 



It's a fair point, only minimally undercut by the fact that these videos were made to be easily shared on mobile-friendly social media. Honda also made custom lock screens for this campaign, which can be downloaded directly from Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram. 



The campaign's target audience is millennials, of course, but we're pretty sure it's not just young people doing this. A parallel campaign for baby boomers that shows them texting during some of their common behaviors—reminiscing about the '60s, writing checks at the grocery store, telling their kids to get "computer" jobs—would raise awareness among another generation known for entitled and selfish behavior. 

Their phones could also offer helpful driving advice, like encouraging them to at least drive the speed limit on the JFX.

More creative from the campaign appears below.

CREDITS

Client: Honda

Agency: RPA
Executive Vice President, Chief Creative Officer: Joe Baratelli
Senior Vice President, Executive Creative Director: Jason Sperling
Vice President, Creative Director, Social Media: J. Barbush
Associate Creative Director: Stephen Hernandez
Senior Art Director: Amy Servidea
Senior Copywriter: Chris Bradford
Senior Vice President, Chief Production Officer: Gary Paticoff
Vice President, Executive Producer: Isadora Chesler
Producer: Phung Vo

Vice President, Director of Digital Production: Dave Brezinski
Executive Digital Producer: Linda Kim
Digital Producer: Amy Seidner

Executive Vice President, Management Account Director: Brett Bender
Vice President, Group Account Director: Adam Blankenship
Account Supervisor: Kaelin McGill
Account Executive: Elizabeth Weakley
Assistant Account Executives: Wynt Curliano, Alanna Mozingo
Vice President, Director of Business Affairs: Maria Del Homme

Production Company: Rabbit Content
Director: Isaac Rentz
Producer: Lauren Solie
Executive Producers: Missy Galanida, Joby Barnhart, Isaac Rice
Director of Photography: Sing Howe Yam
First Assistant Director: George Nessis
Production Manager: Austin Barbera
Production Designer: Cody Fusina

Editing: Cut + Run
Managing Director: Michelle Eskin
Executive Producer: Amburr Farls
Editor: Andy Green

Finishing: Jogger
Executive Producer: Rich Rama
Creative Director: David Parker

Mix: Lime Studios
Audio Mixer: Dave Wagg
Audio Assistant: Adam Primack

A little dab'll do ya. 

Of Pril dishwashing liquid, that is, which has claimed for years that it can get any job done, no matter how greasy, with a single drop. And these are no empty claims: In 2008, the brand—distributed by German parent company Henkel—went so far as to get an independent laboratory to verify its selling point after India's ad watchdog issued a complaint accompanied, we assume, by a dismissive snort.

In a new campaign for Middle East markets, the brand reiterates the single-drop claim by showing off a packaging miracle—the single-drop bottle. 

Here is the anthem spot, created by TBWA\RAAD in Dubai: 



Subsequent spots heighten the drama while reinforcing just how adorably small this bottle really is by comparing it to other, normal-sized kitchen items.

This tiny bottle still casts a big shadow in the market.



TBWA says Pril's competitors have begun making their own single-drop claims, so Pril felt the need to reassert the brand statement in a way that "customers can actually feel with their own hands."

And yes, it's produced at least some bottles. (Production on a mass scale would seem to be silly, not to mention environmentally unwise.) According to TBWA, shoppers can currently sample The One Drop Bottle in participating supermarkets. Please contact AdFreak if you have video proof of this—you might have to use a magnifying glass, because we all know about the weakness of the iPhone's zoom options. 

CREDITS
Client: Pril Arabia
Agency: TBWA\RAAD Dubai
Title: "Pril One-Drop Bottle"
Chief Creative Officer: Walid Kanaan
Creative Director: Manuel Bordé, Joelle Zgheib
Copywriter: Guilherme Grossi
Art Director: Gabriel Gama
jr Art Director: Dany Njeim
Head of Accounts: Joe Laham
Account Lead: Ola Ibrahim
Account Executive: Ruba Moadad
Head of Production: Rouba Asmar

Alabama may be in a sour spotlight after its governor admitted making sexually charged remarks to a onetime senior adviser. But one brewery in the state is sweetening the situation by putting the PG-13 news on tap. 

Huntsville-based Salty Nut Brewery has unveiled Unimpeachable Pale Ale—a summer beer made of peaches, Idaho 7 hops and a little bit of southern scandal—as Gov. Robert Bentley faces calls for impeachment both in and outside his own Republican party for his alleged sexual misbehavior toward Rebekah Caldwell Mason. 



The beer's logo references a conversation Bentley had with Mason—which surfaced via an audio recording in March—in which the 73-year-old governor reminisced about placing his hands on Mason's breasts. Since then, Bentley has apologized, although he and Mason both have strongly denied any physical contact. (Bentley's wife of 50 years, Dianna Bentley, divorced him last summer.) 

"We try to come up with names and imagery that are memorable and descriptive of the beer, and feel that Unimpeachable Pale Ale is both," Salty Nut co-owner Jay Kissell told Alabama news website al.com.

The brewery has Bentley himself to cheer not only for inspiring the beer—but for signing legislation that will allow growlers of Unimpeachable Pale Ale to be sold this summer.

Many people working in advertising prefer not to broadcast their personal political beliefs for fear of upsetting the often delicate client/agency balance—and giving their PR teams something else to worry about. 

So, mark this as yet another unwritten rule destroyed by the rise of one Donald J. Trump. 

Small and mid-sized agencies like barrettSF, Walton Isaacson and TDA_Boulder have all created somewhat self-promotional stunts based on Trump's "divisive rhetoric." But Momentum Worldwide creative director Arye Dworken had a more specific goal in mind—encouraging as many people as possible to stop following the Republican presidential candidate on Twitter.

Dworken spearheaded the "Unfollow Trump" project and created the accompanying website along with Momentum associate creative director Sam Resta, R/GA senior technology director Michael "Pickles" Piccuirro and developer Colin Nelson of Wieden + Kennedy New York. (It's a personal project. Those three agencies are not officially involved in it.) 

"Like most people, I'm super frustrated about the Trump nonsense," Dworken tells AdFreak. "I'm not very politically active; I read the paper and have conversations, but I work in an industry where we ... don't have the bandwidth to do things politically." 

Trump's Twitter influence inspired him to take action.

Over the past few months, the mogul has won headlines on multiple occasions for sharing tweets written by self-described white supremacists, but these stories don't seem to have damaged his campaign or the public's can't-look-away interest in his candidacy.

His 7.77 million Twitter followers include many people who don't plan on voting for him and at least some who consider him a joke. Dworken said he has several colleagues who find Trump to be amusing and/or revolting in equal measure, and this is hardly a surprise given The Huffington Post's now-embarrassing decision to relegate all of its coverage of The Donald to its Entertainment section.

"A co-worker told me, 'I follow him and I can't stand the guy'," Dworken said. "But I think that's a destructive attitude. When this guy signs on to Twitter every day, that's what he feeds off of. By unfollowing him, you're almost signing a petition." 

Therefore, Dworken and his team have encouraged friends and colleagues to unfollow Trump using the site, which automatically posts a tweet expressing the unfollower's support for denying him even a miniscule portion of the attention and instant gratification that he so obviously craves.

Hey @realDonaldTrump, I won't follow you any more. I joined the Unfollowing https://t.co/bOB83MuabL#unfollowtrump

— ARYE DWORKEN (@AryeDworken) April 25, 2016

"This whole Trump thing really pissed me off," Dworken said. "Do we really need more toxicity and narcissistic anger in our lives? Why do we subject ourselves to these things? I have children, and it legitimately concerns me ... it was a sobering cold shower." 

The project is just getting started, and it has not been promoted outside Dworken's circle of friends and colleagues. But so far the group has inspired almost 5,000 people to unfollow Trump, according to its own tracker.

It's worth noting that the #UnfollowTrump hashtag has been used in the past by individuals across the political spectrum who have the same basic theory: The man's growing follower count only makes him more likely to repeat the sort of behavior that inspires pieces like this exhaustive New York Times rundown of the people, places and things he has insulted on the short-form messaging network. As one tweeter who did not disclose her political leanings put it, "Please everyone #UnfollowTrump ... you're just encouraging him."

With a little help, perhaps Dworken and his colleagues can take at least one tiny step toward their shared goal: "Make Twitter Great Again."

Be it ever so humble… 

A pair of suburban houses display human characteristics in "House Love," BBDO New York's sweet online video for Lowe's home improvement stores. 

Over time, as a love story unfolds between a girl who lives in one house and a boy who lives in the other, the structures themselves appear to wink, smile and otherwise express feeling. 

The effects are subtle and never cartoonish. They don't rely on complex visual tricks (and thus never seem like monster houses that will devour us all). Winks, for example, are expressed by movements of window shades and flickering lights, while a strategically placed porch hammock indicates a smile. 

As the boy and girl grow into their teens and become a couple, the houses clearly approve, if heart-shaped chimney smoke is any indication. 

This low-fi approach is quite charming, adding an elevating touch of magical realism to the story. It's also less jokey and more compelling than Lowe's talking lawn animal spots from last month, the first work in its overarching "Make Your Home Happy" campaign, for which this three-minute film is the latest installment. 



Here, creative inspiration stemmed from asking the question, "What makes a house a home?," BBDO senior creative director Molly Adler tells Adweek.

"Where we landed was that a house was a structure, but a home was everything else," she says. "It's family and friends and memories. It's all the ups and downs and in-betweens that make us who we are. People put a lot into their homes. And when they do, their homes almost become an extension of them. When someone loves a home, it comes to life." 

While the spot mainly tells a human story, "it also depicts two houses having their own relationship," adds agency executive producer Ashley Henderson. "As the kids fall in love, the houses too fall in love and experience emotions. It was fun to brainstorm and come up with ways to make these houses more human, and it was important that both the human and house storylines came across." 

For some viewers, this may come across as overkill. Still, the narrative stays true to itself and makes sense in the world of the video. Throughout, Corner Shop director Peter Thwaites employs a deft touch that keeps the anthropomorphized goings-on from getting out of hand. 

In fact, there's surprising emotional depth. After the human characters get married, one of the houses goes on the market but falls into disrepair, its paint cracked and peeling, the yard overgrown. 

Of course, since this is a commercial, things can't end on such a sad note—and they don't. While the finale is a tad predictable, it works well in the context of the brand story, and reinforces the closing line, "Sometimes all a house needs is a little love." (Using "We've Only Just Begun" on the soundtrack suits the mood, but could make some viewers hit their mute buttons in protest.) 

The long-form format allows BBDO to really open the story, key to appealing to its young-adult audience. "This gave us a chance to connect with them in a deeper, more emotional way," says BBDO senior creative director Mike Sweeney. "Millennials want to know what a company stands for. This gives us a chance to tell them in a way we haven't done before." 

CREDITS

Client: Lowe's Home Improvement
Title: "House Love"
Agency: BBDO New York
Worldwide Chief Creative Officer: David Lubars
Chief Creative Officer New York: Greg Hahn
Executive Creative Director: Tim Bayne
Senior Creative Director: Mike Sweeney
Senior Creative Director: Molly Adler
Creative Director: Amy Nicholson
Creative Director: Mandy Hoveyda
Group Planning Director: Emily Viola
Executive Producer: Ashley Henderson
Senior Director: Jim Reath
Account Director: Tyler Harris
Account Executive: Marlee Caine

Production Company: Corner Shop
Director: Peter Thwaites
Director of Photography: Greig Fraser
Executive Producer: Anna Hashmi
Producer: Suzie Greene Tedesco

Editorial: Work Editorial
Editor: Bill Smedley
Executive Producer: Erica Thompson

Post House EFX: The Mill
Executive Creative Director: Angus Kneale
Lead Compositor/ VFX Supervisor: Antoine Douadi
Compositors: Jamie Scott, Heather Kennedy, Mina Mir, Molly Intersimone
CG: Nick Couret Chailloux, Cedric Menard
Senior Executive Post Producer: Sean Costelloe
Senior Post Producer: Rachael Trillo
Post Producer: Hayley Wallach
Colorist: Adam Scott (Mill LA)

Music: Barking Owl
Executive Producer: Kelly Bayett

We don't know how it happened—a human compulsion for puzzle-solving, coupled with a fun flirtation with claustrophobia?—but escape rooms are huge. Every third agency we know takes a client to one (because, as Speed so deftly taught us, there's nothing like a shared crisis to bond unlikely pairs).

And as the last few years have shown us, the Toronto Silent Film Festival has made itself expert at seizing on a trend and tying it—in manners uncanny but genius—to a topic that few care about anymore. With this in mind, it's created the first-ever Instagram Escape Room, where you can partake in the manufactured stress of entrapment wherever you are, for free and without a one-hour timer ticking off the minutes of your scrambling incompetence. 

Over 70 percent of silent films have been lost. That's a whole swathe of storytelling history that we don't have access to anymore. And unlike more modern "lost" films, a lost silent film often leaves little evidence it existed at all ... almost as if it's been swallowed up, or left to rot, in a room that's been forgotten itself. 

That's where the insight came from. 

The Instagram Escape Room account features a panoramic single image of a room, cut into a series of videos. (For best results, play with your phone turned sideways.) When you click on one, you get a first-person "glimpse" of yourself searching that part of the room. Sometimes you'll find a clue; other times, you'll chance upon one of the once-lost films, which will give you a letter. Gather all the letters up for a code that will lead to your escape. 

"Thousands have tried ... only a handful have escaped," teases the case study video below. That may or may not be encouraging, depending on whether or not you have 4G in whatever hypothetical waiting room you're hanging out in (another place you won't be escaping anytime soon!). 



The work, created by Red Lion Canada, reminds us a bit of Rosbeef!'s Instagram zoom campaign for the Sony Xperia Z5. But cutting a single image into a panoply of discoverable worlds is where the comparison stops. 

This marks the fourth year that the Toronto Silent Film Festival has used Instagram—the democratic home to a universe of full-color pictures and videos—to build awareness. And every year brings something surprising and new. 

"We have been partners with The Toronto Silent Film Festival for some time now, and every year I'm impressed with their desire to push the envelope creatively," says Red Lion president and chief creative officer Matt Litzinger.

In 2013, TSFF gave us a scrolling Instagram campaign, which simulated the look of old movies. In 2014, its Instagram Time Machine gave us a fresh appreciation for Charlie Chaplin (whose granddaughter, Oona Chaplin, was notably killed in Game of Thrones' traumatic Red Wedding episode. Doesn't that make him seem that much more relevant?). And last year, users got a shot at creating their very own TSFF Instagram clips.

If the Toronto Silent Film Festival is a model for social creativity, it's partly because it's embraced its own constraints, both real and imposed: Silent film is a tough sell in a world where so much great, full-color, noisy stuff is scrolling before our eyes (although Facebook autoplay is giving it a modern comeback). But these guys believe so deeply in its magic that they're committed to helping people rediscover it, by exploiting all the possibilities of a medium that in many ways serves as its antithesis: Instagram. 

It's easy to build a generalized 360° campaign. But with a focus this tight on a single medium, you're bound not only to look at it differently but to force yourself to find new possibilities in its inner workings.

"The Toronto Silent Film Festival continues to grow," Litzinger says. "With each year, the challenge to innovate on Instagram to reflect the innovation of silent films in their day is a dream creative challenge." 

Also, he adds, "trying to escape is pretty fun."

CREDITS
Client: Toronto Silent Film Festival
Agency: Red Lion Canada
President, Chief Creative Officer: Matt Litzinger
Associate Creative Director: Pepe Bratanov
Designer: Duncan Collis
Copywriter: Kyle Carpenter
Account Director: Nicole Spinner
Account Executive: Abi Berkley
Solutions Director: Lauren Brown
Producer: Meghan Cassidy
Director: Eden Robbins

Since Axe is all about helping its male consumers out with the ladies, why not just let them know exactly what women want? Axe Puerto Rico and DDB decided to do just that—so they conducted The Sexy Beast Survey, which sounds like an enlightened, fun idea in keeping with the newer, more progressive Axe branding.

Until you think about it for a minute.

This survey asks women bad Cosmo-style questions and then attempts to create a physical picture of "what women want"—by distorting an average-sized digital male avatar to comic proportions.

The questions include such absurdities as:

He's Jack and you are Rose, the Titanic has sunk and you're floating on a table in the middle of the ocean. He:
1. Kisses you like it's the last time. Literally.
2. Finds a way to make you feel safe in spite of the hypothermia.
3. Makes jokes so you forget how close death is.
4. Before he freezes, leaves all of his belongings to you.

Thus, I got to choose whether I was interested in sex, security, a man who can make me laugh, or a man with a lot of cash. They then showed me my "ideal man"—a picture of a long-tonged, big-eared, creepy purple monkey creature whom they claimed was a visualization of my perfect sexy beast.

Well, it was certainly beastly. I think it was supposed to be funny.

On the surface it seems like they were trying hard. We're asking women what they want this time! But we only have a specific set of predetermined answers that allow them to pick which stereotype they want. We're helping men know what women want! But we're showing them a creepy distorted figure that's sure to mess with their self-image when we list big feet and a six-pack as key features.

See, who needs a six-pack when you've got the nose, as 72andSunny's remarkable new Axe ad pointed out? What's valuable about you is going to be different from guy to guy. Trying to figure out what all women want, when different women want different things, and trying to conform to a single image of ideal guyness, is dangerous. It's a driver for eating disorders and a call for mean guys to be douchebag enforcers of a single male ideal. It's actually more dangerous than Axe's previous brand of ridiculous male fantasy advertising.



See, Axe is a brand that is sorta, kinda, maybe trying to clean up its image a little—moving from juvenile hyperbole (one spray of our product and women will come running from all corners of the world to attack you with sex!) to the reality that taking a bath and smelling decent is table stakes, and beyond that you actually have to ante up something of value to stay in the game.

This quiz won't give the men of Puerto Rico anything of value. Trust me on this, guys, a billion Cosmo style quizzes will not help you figure out what women want because different women want different things. Some want the six-pack, yeah, but others want the nose, the suit, the moves, the fire. You do you.

Just make sure you work on it. Bathing, grooming and, yes, smelling decent are a requirement. Just not a guarantee.

Specs
Who President Chris Lowery and founder and ecd Margo Chase
What Design and brand consultancy
Where New York and Los Angeles

Chase Design Group knows how to make something pretty—they're designers after all—but they like to do more than that. "We deliver design solutions within a strategy-driven framework and that isn't typical," said Margo Chase, who founded the shop 30 years ago and is now its executive creative director. For one, this brand consultancy works closely with clients to formulate their marketing strategies. As it turns out, that's something brands like Mr. Clean, Swiffer and Always are interested in. Chase, which has 35 employees, recently worked with Nestlé's Coffee-mate brand to create packaging designs featuring various Star Wars characters. "Not only did we do the development of the core artwork, but we worked on the strategy to figure out which characters went with which flavors," said president Chris Lowery. "We're able to bring this cross-pollination of experiences from these different worlds into our work in a way that much of our competition—they tend to focus on just CPG—is not."

This story first appeared in the April 25, 2016 issue of Adweek magazine.
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The iPhone 6S video camera is so good, it will make just about anything like a groundbreaking art film. So says a new ad about a tween girl who leverages her high-definition smartphone camera into a career as an award-winning auteur ... by filming a clip of her mother chopping a red onion. 

In the ad's fantasy narrative, footage of the everyday cooking prep proves so beautiful, the entire world loses its mind over it. The video goes breathlessly viral, and agents scramble to sign the young filmmaker. Ultimately, she finds herself called up to the podium at an industry gala to accept a trophy from the host of everything, Neil Patrick Harris (of course).



It's a fun spot, and a solid strategy. The tech giant has already demonstrated the iPhone 6's photographic prowess when it turned users' snapshots into giant, crystal-clear billboards; it makes sense to follow that by touting the film capabilities of the upgraded model.

And the girl's video does look pretty sharp—on par with top advertising food imagery like Wieden + Kennedy's ads for British butter brand Lurpak.

But mostly, it's nice that the spot—by TBWA\Media Arts Lab—doesn't take itself too seriously: It's a sendup of both an attractive technical feature and of our capacity to express dubious levels of excitement over the mundane. There's no shame in it; why not take pleasure in the small things? (Even if the fanfare here is pushed to the extremes, as it should be in comedy.)

Apple has been batting a high average on that front of late, with its silly homage to Kobe Bryant, Taylor Swift's treadmill flop and Cookie Monster's baking bit with Siri—not to mention the brilliant outtakes from the latter. The upbeat new spot also coincides with the company's release of its less-than-encouraging quarterly results, so some observers believe it's a deft bit of hand-waving to distract from the bad news. 

That may be true, but it's hard to say for sure when dazzled by that genius video of an onion.

CREDITS
Client: Apple
Agency: TBWA\Media Arts Lab

Female weightlifter Amna Al Haddad appears in the latest online documentary for Nike Training's "Inner Strength" series. The young athlete hails from the United Arab Emirates and hopes to qualify for Rio 2016. 

The black-and-white video depicts Al Haddad working out, hijab in place and Nike gear on point (all of which you can buy here). As she drops and lifts terrifyingly heavy weights, she reflects on who she is, what she represents, the spiritual act of weightlifting itself, and what people can learn from her.

Al Haddad's story is well-chosen for reasons both obvious and not: She's a Muslim woman in a male-dominated sport, but just years ago, she was also a journalist with an unhealthy lifestyle who decided to change her situation. 

"I realized I have a competitive spirit in me," Al Haddad says of pursuing bodybuilding, weightlifting and even Crossfit. "That changed my view of strength sports for women." 



And for those who perceive weightlifting as a mindless bro sport, she's got something to say about that, too: Mindlessness is perhaps the point, and that isn't a bad thing.

"You have the weight on the floor, and then bam—it's over your head. That moment in between is non-existent," Al Haddad muses. "You can feel every aspect of the bar, and the two of you become one. It's kind of like meditation." 

Her calm voice, mischievous demeanor, and projected strength credibly address three different targets: Westerners who've never actually spoken to a veiled woman; people whose notions of sports are still framed by gender dynamics; and women who need a lift—particularly veiled women who want to be seen as more than their gender, and more than a headscarf. 

It's a story that's particularly poignant in light of the cultural tug-of-war currently happening in the Middle East, which is trying to strike a coherent balance between its own organic evolution and Western culture. 

A recent survey of Arab youth reported a growing desire to improve personal freedoms and human rights, especially for women, whose rights are fractured at best across the region: In Saudi Arabia they can vote (as of last year) but not drive, for example. 

But the United Arab Emirates is in some ways a model for the women's rights charge: It granted limited suffrage to both men and women in 2006, and last year it elected the first woman in the Arab world to head the National Council. It also has a female foreign ambassador to the United Nations, Lana Nusseibeh, who believes in using the rule of law to empower women.

The hijab itself makes potent fuel for this conversation on the ground floor, particularly in sports. Is it an imposition or a choice? And if it's a choice, does its charged role in a patriarchy make that choice demeaning? 

As Al Haddad says, "I don't normally show all aspects of my personality, but as I keep saying, there's a lot going on under my hijab. I'm a complicated individual, OK?" 

So is the role of the headscarf, for spectators and Muslim women alike. One in five Muslim women exercise at least once a week, which sounds pretty good, but is actually lower on average than any faith group. So it means something to see a relatable human up there on an Olympic platform; it may actually change behaviors.

Thankfully, Al Haddad isn't the only one representing covered ladies—although there remain too few like her. For the 2016 Summer Olympics, fencer Ibtihaj Muhammad will be the first Muslim-American woman to compete in hijab. (In fact, she's always worn it under the mask—but now she'd like everybody to know.) There's also the hijab-sporting Emirati figure skater Zahra Lari, who, despite embracing her role as a symbol of feminine, ethnic and religious perseverence, was nonetheless criticized by another Muslim woman, journalist and author Farzana Hassan, in the Toronto Sun, for not being brave enough to remove it.

It's a complicated subject, but again Al Haddad has perhaps the most apt words for it.

"I'm someone who broke a lot of barriers for Muslim women," she says toward the end of the Nike video. "There's a lot of resistance, a lot of rejection. But when that is happening, you know you are tapping on something that's untouched, and that's when you start to pave a path for others. That pushes me." 

The "Inner Strength" series launched in March of last year, with an episode featuring golfer Rory McIlroy. Since then, it's spoken in the voices of footballer Marcus Mariota, surfer Nat Young, Olympian lifter Mat Fraser, Decathlon world and Olympic champion Ashton Eaton, basketball star Kyrie Irving, and even actor/comedian Kevin Hart, who gets up at 5:30 every morning to get in shape.

Al Haddad is the first woman the project has featured. Her story will appear on Nike Training's Twitter and Instagram channels, as well as the blog, where, as mentioned, you can score her gear.

Would you give a complete stranger who walked up to you on the street access to all the personal data on your phone?

Ad agency Don't Panic stages such a scenario in an amusing video for Liberty Human Rights. The PSA is designed to raise awareness of the sweeping nature of Britain's Investigatory Powers Bill. Derisively known as the Snoopers' Charter, the controversial legislation would allow the government to intercept all manner of digital communications and information.

Shot in London's bustling Soho Square, the two-minute clip, titled "Show Me Yours," stars comedian Olivia Lee, who gets up in people's faces as she demands to see their phones and peruse their data.



"I'm just, you know, hacking people's phones and having a browse," she blithely explains. "I just want to build a detailed picture of who you are—your emails, your texts, your call history, your photos."

At one point, she leans over a guy's shoulder, eyes his smartphone screen, and cheekily inquires, "Tinder and Grindr?" Later, at an outdoor cafe, she sits next to a different dude and asks, "Is that your doctor you've been emailing?"

Lee even carries a mini antenna rig and claims to be accessing people's bank accounts. When a passerby tells her to "Just go fuck yourself," she responds, "But sweetheart, if you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear!"

Shots of storefront surveillance cameras—staples of most busy shopping districts these days, and ubiquitous in London—heighten the Orwellian vibe.

Ultimately, Lee meanders into a government Home Office lobby with her antenna and announces, "I'm just hacking your server." Predictably, she's escorted from the premises by government security personnel.

In the end, viewers are directed to use the campaign's #SnoopersCharter hashtag to get more information.

While not as emotionally stirring as Don't Panic's acclaimed efforts for Save the Children or Human Appeal, this stunt's aggressive comic style effectively re-personalizes the digital privacy debate. When Lee gets up close with random subjects and pries into their dating habits, medical issues and bank accounts, she takes the issue out of the abstract realm and makes it personal again.

It's tough to be apathetic when the data collector is standing right in front of you, ogling your mobile screen and shouting in your ear. (Also, Liberty should take heart that some subjects chose to have their faces blurred rather than sign waivers to appear on camera. Guess they had some privacy concerns.)

Now, in some cases, data captures are essential in fighting the war on terror. That said, if society doesn't draw a line, abuses of power and rampant or casual snooping are all but assured. At the very least, "Show Me Yours" should inspire viewers to consider such notions, while providing some pointed laughs in the bargain.

After all, we've all got "something to hide," even if it's just innocuous personal trivia we'd rather not share. Telling the government to "Just go fuck yourself" when it encroaches on our liberties without due cause should be every citizen's right.

AdFreak spoke with director Jolyon Rubinstein about the project:

Why do a this kind of video stunt?
We wanted something that really grabbed people by their proverbial nuts. We like to employ jeopardy to give films that WTF quality. The Snoopers' Charter is a complex topic, so we created a living breathing personification of the bill itself to make it more personal.

Was it a very challenging or complex shoot?
With hidden camera comedy, you're always flirting with disaster and hoping for brilliance. It was all about making sure the wonderful Olivia Lee was both charming and offensive to all the members of the public we approached. Our phones have become extensions of our bodies, and we talked a lot to Olivia before the shoot about how invasive and personal that object has become to each and every one of us. It was playing on that tension that made the film work.

We shot the film in central London, areas that we knew would be full of people rushing around, using their phones or on their laptops at lunch, and not really expecting any interaction, especially such an extreme and bizarre interaction.

Of course, a few people did get very upset. We found one guy watching porn on his lunch break! But once we explained the reasons for the film, the response became a positive one.

Why visit the Home Office?
The Home Office is at the center of the debate and so [it was] the perfect place to set the film's crescendo. We only shot on GoPros—disguised in take-away coffee cups. They didn't know what was going on! Needless to say, they were not happy to see us. Our favorite moment was how seriously they took the "data capture device," asking us to turn it off, and of course how uncomfortable they were with us trying to access their information. Talk about double standards.

As a viewer, what's my big takeaway?
Shock and anger, followed by signing up to Liberty's campaign. We want people to appreciate how invasive this bill will be, and for them to understand that it is not a case of privacy or security—both are important, and both are under threat.

CREDITS
Agency: Don't Panic
MD: Joe Wade
Director: Jolyon Rubinstein
Producer: Errol Ettienne
Project lead: Nisha Mullea
Project manager: Gabriel Mathews
Talent: Olivia Lee 

Creative Director: Richard Beer
Creative: George McCullum
Creative: Alistair Griggs 

Creative: Eva Steiner
Senior Editor: Jamie Ticker
Filmographer: Ryan Samuda

We're exactly 100 days out from the opening of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio, and less than two weeks away from Mother's Day. To mark both occasions, Procter & Gamble has brought back its "Thank you, mom" campaign for another round. And this time, the marketer has both broadened the scope of why it's celebrating moms and zeroed in on a particular attribute—their strength.

The spot was created by Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Ore., and directed by Jeff Nichols of Rattling Stick. And while previous installations of "Thank you, mom" have mostly focused on the effort and sacrifice mothers make specifically in helping their sons and daughters train for sports, this new spot goes further—showing vignettes of them being rocks for their kids beyond athletics and into their everyday lives.



Many of the vignettes are quite dark. The young athletes aren't just facing the physical and emotional challenges of preparation and competition. They're facing oncoming tornadoes, frightening airplane turbulence, car crashes. In each case, the terrified youngster is soothed by his or her unflappable mother. And only later do we connect this sense of grounding to the athlete's ability to perform under pressure at the highest level of sport.

The final frames are quite familiar, showing—as the past ads did—the athletes and moms embracing after Olympic victory. Those images, connecting public glory to personal love and dedication, have become a visual shorthand for P&G's Olympic marketing and continue to nicely position the packaged-goods company, in its behind-the-scenes role, as the champion and enabler of mothers everywhere (who are themselves, in a nice parallel dynamic, champions and enablers of their offspring).

If the vignettes here seem particularly dramatic, that's because P&G has to keep the campaign evolving even after it perfected the form back in 2012 with "Best Job." And the darker, cinematic visions here feel like a great way of raising the stakes in a way that still connects emotionally. (Also, the idea of celebrating female strength is a very relevant one today, and already a popular one this Mother's Day, as we saw with the Teleflora spot surprisingly set to a Vince Lombardi speech.)

The final onscreen lines of the new spot are perfect, too: "It takes someone strong to make someone strong." That's an even better exclamation point than the "Best Job" coda ("The hardest job in the world is the best job in the world").

As follow-ups to famous campaigns go, it doesn't get much stronger than this.

CREDITS
Client: Procter & Gamble
Project: "Strong"

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
Creative Directors: Karl Lieberman/Eric Baldwin
Copywriter: Matt Mulvey
Art Director: Lawrence Melilli
Integrated Executive Producer: Erika Madison
Account Team: Jordan Cappadocia/Ebony Francis/Eric Gabrielson

Production Company: Rattling Stick
Director: Jeff Nichols
Executive Producer: Joe Biggins
Line Producer: Sally Humphries
Director of Photography: Adam Stone

Editorial Company: Joint
Editor : Peter Wiedensmith
Assistant Editor: Dylan Sylwester
Post Producer: Jen Milano
Post Executive Producer: Leslie Carthy

VFX Company: The Mill
Executive Creative Director: Phil Crowe
2D Lead Artist: Glyn Tebbutt
3D Lead Artist: Nick Lines
Executive Producer: Enca Kaul
Senior Producer: Chris Harlowe
Production Coordinator: Mary Hayden

Company: Company 3
Colorist: Tom Poole
Producer: Rochelle Brown

Music Supervision: Walker
President/Founder: Sara Matarazzo
Music Track: "Experience" by Ludovico Einaudi
Sound Design: Brian Emrich
Additional Sound Design/Mix: Noah Woodburn @ Joint

Mix Company: Eleven
Mixer: Jeff Payne
Producer: Suzanne Hollingshead

Some preroll ads are just so irritating that merely skipping them doesn't seem like meting out proper justice. Sometimes you just want to kill them. And this fun and pretty brilliant Canadian ad for Weed B Gon lets you do just that.

The spot stars an intensely annoying weed named Prickly, who uningratiates himself immediately in the ad by biting a person's leg and screaming. He then goes on to deliver a shouty, Gilbert Gottried-esque speech about how he quickly multiplies until you have lots of obnoxious Pricklies all over your lawn. At the very end, thankfully, Weed B Gon comes along and deep-sixes Prickly for good.

If you encounter the ad as a YouTube preroll, though, there's an amusing functionality that lets you attack Prickly more quickly. When the normal "Skip ad" button appears after five seconds, you also get a "Kill Prickly" button above it. Clicking that button essentially "kills" the annoying middle half of the ad—and fast-forwards straight to Weed B Gon's cathartic murder of Pickly.

See how it works below. (The skip button won't appear here, of course, since this video embed is not acting as a preroll.) 



Canadian agency Rethink came up with the fun campaign, which also includes the character of Prickly appearing as a nuisance in-store, online and in social media. (Irritating characters are a gamble, but this one seems fairly benign in small doses—and he's positively charming compared to the horrors that pharma ads have wreaked on us.) 

"Leveraging an innovative new YouTube feature in combination with fun, irreverent content, we have have been able deliver key brand messages to a new generation of lawn care enthusiasts." Glenn Martin, director of marketing at Scotts Canada.

CREDITS
Client: Scotts Canada
Agency: Rethink

Something wicked this way comes in Droga5's first work for sports supplement brand MET-Rx, featuring an ominous 80-second spot about a football player arriving with his team in an opponent's town—musing about the hell he's about to unleash on the unsuspecting enemy.

The spot, which has also been cut into 15- and 30-second versions, was beautifully shot by filmmakers T.J. Martin and Dan Lindsey, who made the Oscar-winning documentary Undefeated, about a high school football team.

Check out the spot below, which features the unapologetic tagline "Love the monster."



The new spot marks the first national ad campaign for the 25-year-old MET-Rx brand in decades, according to the company. Even for an agency that's used to making gritty sports ads—Droga5 handles Under Armour, of course—the spot borders on sinister.

"This isn't another sports campaign about trying your best," says group creative director Matt Ian. "This is about celebrating the beast that lives inside the fiercest competitors: the heartbreaking, spirit-crushing monster who extinguishes all hope on the field and in the stands. We didn't want to make another underdog story. We wanted something different: an alpha-dog story."

In addition to the ad campaign, MET-Rx us unveiling three new lines of products and a full packaging refresh. It has also enlisted Joey Bosa, defensive end from Ohio State and one of the year's top football prospects, as a brand endorser. 

Axe on Wednesday killed a campaign from DDB Puerto Rico that dealt in regressive, simplistic notions of male-female relationships, signaling once again the Unilever men's personal care brand's newfound preference for more grownup messaging about attraction.

DDB launched the campaign, "Sexy Beast," last week and pitched it to media outlets on Monday. Adweek's AdFreak blog panned the campaign on Tuesday, and by Wednesday the landing page was gone (pushing visitors to the brand's Facebook page instead) and the campaign's YouTube video had been removed.

The campaign had featured a tongue-in-cheek, multiple-choice style survey, aimed at women, asking them about the attributes of their ideal man. The possible answers were cartoony at best, and at its conclusion, the survey spit out a goofy physical image of the user's ideal man—a cartoon caricature with exaggerated features like giant ears (he's a good listener) and a long tongue (he's witty), etc.

Adweek asked DDB about the campaign's disappearance. The agency referred us to Unilever, whose global vice president for the Axe/Lynx brand, Rik Strubel, confirmed Thursday that the work had been killed because it didn't fit Axe's new brand direction—the more inclusive, less meathead-y take on masculinity embodied in 72andSunny "Find Your Magic" campaign.

"As you know we are moving Axe on with the intent to help create a more progressive conversation about masculinity and attraction," Strubel told Adweek. "The work we are doing with 72andSunny has started to bring this to life with great response from men and women around the world. However, it is a journey and we're still evolving ourselves. We might not always be perfect, but people encourage us and it seems that we're moving in the right direction."

Of the Puerto Rico campaign, Strubel said was well meaning but did stray off course.

"I applaud the intent to create a discussion about the multiple ways men can be attractive. It was meant to be funny," Strubel said. "But it certainly did not deliver on the strategy to inspire men to find their magic and work on it … and to ask women about their perspective on what they feel is/is not attractive in a man today. Hence we decided to stop it." 

O Street, a graphic design firm in Scotland, hired one of Glasgow's finest road-lining crews to create a typeface for its new visual identity, using molten thermoplastic on asphalt. 

Glasgow native Thomas "Tam" Lilley, of road-lining company Markon, created the typeface by chalking boxes on the ground, then drawing a full alphabet freehand with molten plastic, which was digitized while preserving all the unique characteristics of letters on tarmac. 



Tam's no lettering n00b. His precise work is the result of 18 years spent road-lining in a single typeface, a career that began when he was 16 years old. According to O Street, "Seeing a master road-liner at work brings to mind a Japanese calligrapher or a Renaissance painter's apprentice."

It's the perfect metaphor for design at its best, elevating the everyday while producing a visual communications tool that's both useful and beautiful—a quality rarely remarked-upon by the everyday pedestrian (or graphic design client, for that matter). 

Watching Tam's craft in the mini-documentary below, made to celebrate the typeface's creation, is moving. It's more than simple lettering; it's a delicate dance with ridiculously hot plastic (180°C, or 356°F), where one misstep can burn your skin off. 



"We make it look easy," says Tam. "I think that's why we don't get the appreciation for what we do, because we're so good at what we do. We just go in, do it and then we're away again."

But like O Streeet, we appreciate Tam's craft, even if the majority of the world may never remark upon the contribution of road-liners (and their cousins, graphic design firms). Here's to the time, expertise and money it takes to make things not only practical but elegant.

Below, a before and after of the O Street logo, via Under Consideration's Brand New:

Saatchi & Saatchi partied like it was 1899 in a this campaign for CIB Bank, building two ATMs that looked 120 years old to celebrate a neighborhood anniversary in Budapest. 

The city held Budapest100 this month, which is a festival celebrating city buildings and other infrastructure that are at least a century old. This year's event focused on Grand Boulevard, which turned 120—and happens to house five branches of CIB Bank. So, Saatchi took the client back to a decade filled with turmoil, when new technologies revolutionized Hungarian society—the 1890s. 

The central attraction was two antique-looking CIB automated teller machines run by steam-powered gears … and the creativity of the Saatchi team.



In a departure from your typical ATMs, these steampunk masterpieces took people's photos and printed "personalized bank notes" with their faces on them. The underlying message of the campaign was that banking services can be modern in any era so long as a company has innovative thinking. (In that vein, CIB recently released a mobile banking app.)

It would have been cooler if the machines dispensed real cash, and if everyone on hand were dressed up as flappers. But it makes a certain kind of sense: With mobile banking, real cash is going the way of the steam engine—so why not play with toy money instead? 

More pics below.

CREDITS
Agency: Saatchi & Saatchi Budapest
Client: CIB Bank
Creative Director: Andrea Toth
Art Directors: Korinna Tánczos, Tamás Szalkai
Copywriter: Orsolya Nagymáté
Account Director: Zsuzsanna Döbrei
Account Executive: Edit Pálfi
Project Coordinator: Orsi Kmetty
Production Designer: Magdolna Varga / Prop Club

Since the dawn of time, humans have been confounded by cats, those mystifyingly aloof creatures whose inner thoughts are famously inscrutable. But no longer! Temptations Cat Treats has invented a cat collar that lets your feline speak in a human voice—so you can finally understand (though probably not) exactly what she is trying to tell you.

The Temptations Catterbox, created by London ad agency adam&eveDDB, contains a microphone, speaker, Bluetooth technology and wifi. It captures the cat's meows and translates them into human speech—words that may or may not actually be what they're trying to say.



The Catterbox is the work of the new Temptations Lab, a scientific-sounding "research workstream dedicated to the future of fun times with your cat," according to the Mars brand. It is 3-D printed, coated in rubber lacquer for the cat's comfort and comes in four colors.

Check it out in action here:

The prototype launched in the U.S. and New Zealand today.

"We're fascinated by cats, so we set out on a mission to get to know them better," says Temptations global brand director Pete Simmons. "Through research, we learned that an adult cat's meow is their way to communicate with humans and, by investing in this prototype device, we can start to improve understanding between them both—giving cats a voice for the very first time. At the Temptations brand, we are passionate about bringing cats and owners together. We have always done this through our treats, but we wanted to go one step further."

"Cats are often perceived as quite hard to get to know, independent pets, so we set up The Tempations Lab to find innovative ways to inject even more fun into a cat and owner's relationship," said Richard Brim, adam&eveDDB executive creative director.

CREDITS
Client: Mars
Brand: Temptations Cat Treats
Project name: Catterbox
Client: Peter Simmons, Global Brand Director
Chief Creative Officer Ben Priest
Executive Creative Directors Richard Brim, Ben Tollett
Copywriter:   Natasha Lyons
Art director: Dan Lacey
Agency producer: Agne Acute, Matt Craigie
Planner: Stuart Harrison, Jessica Lovell
Business Director: Fiona McArthur (Managing Partner), Amelia Blashill (Business Director)
Account Director: Katie Baker
Production company: Acne
Executive Producer: Ben Clark
Creative Director Acne R & D: Johan Holgrem
Producer R & D / Digital: Niclas Bergstrom
Research Acne R & D: Caroline Tell, Mikael Vig
Engineering Acne R & D: Patrik Lindberg
Sound Engineer Acne R & D: Svante Stadler

—Film credits

Client: Mars
Brand: Temptations Cat Treats
Project name: Catterbox
Client: Peter Simmons, Global Brand Director
Chief Creative Officer Ben Priest
Executive Creative Directors Richard Brim, Ben Tollett
Copywriter:   Natasha Lyons
Art director: Dan Lacey
Agency producer: Agne Acute, Matt Craigie
Planner: Stuart Harrison, Jessica Lovell
Business Director: Fiona McArthur (Managing Partner), Amelia Blashill (Business Director)
Account Director: Katie Baker
Media agency: Starcom Worldwide
Media planner:
Production company: Acne
Executive Producer: Ben Clark
Producer Film: Tim Mardell
Director: Joakim Behrman
D.O.P: Adrian Wigerdal & Joakim Behrman
Editor: Pablo Antonio Labanino & James Ireland
Post Production: Cain&Abel
Audio Post Production: ClearCut sound