Texas confectionary Atomic Candy is getting into the Halloween spirit with a creepy new commercial that capitalizes on the current wave of clown mass hysteria.

The spot, from Innocean USA, features a bozo with a baseball bat terrifying an animated piñata into producing candy—sadly, in a fashion that's sure to put viewers off Snickers bars for good. (Lest it need be repeated, scat humor and edibles really don't mix all that well.)



But if Halloween is scary, it won't be the scariest day of this year—that will be Election Day, warn some new print ads from the same agency/client team.

The brick-and-mortar sweets shop, located in the city of Denton, is playing on the extraordinary unpopularity of both major party candidates in the 2016 presidential race. The print work imagines Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump as creepy, glowing monsters, with brightly colored goo dripping from their mouths, in pictures that—depending who you ask—might not seem so far from reality at all.

The striking illustration style is an extension of similar, more photorealistic portraits from the candy store's 2015 campaign. The tagline is simple and effective.

Meanwhile, an older spot from the brand is, for its part, similarly disgusting, if more evocative of weirdo Skittles work of yore.

Atomic Candy is smartly avoiding taking sides in the political debate. But it's safe to say the worst possible outcome would be a clown occupying the White House, and it's pretty clear which candidate more closely resembles a two-bit circus entertainer.

CREDITS

Client: Atomic Candy, Dallas TX
Advertising Agency: Innocean

Print: Trump + Hillary
Chief Creative Officer: Eric Springer
Creative Director / Art Director: Kiran Koshy
Sr. Copywriter: Jason Arentsen
Art director: Stan Chow
Copywriter: Brandon Poole
Illustrator: Robert Ikemoto

Video: The Shed
Chief Creative Officer: Eric Springer
Creative Director / Art Director: Kiran Koshy
Copywriter: Jeff Hodgson
Director: Kiran Koshy
Director of Photography / Finish: Mike Jensen
Camera Assist: Landon Brands
Color: Mike Pethel / Beach House Color
Editor: Adam Henderson / PostOp
Sound Design: Michael Anastasi / Barking Owl Sound
Music: Dustin Ballard
The Clown: Dustin Ballard
Makeup: Krystle Starr
Props / Art: Justin McCormick

The Paris Motor Show is taking place from Oct. 1-16, and Opel has a surprise for visitors to its stand—an Opel Astra you can start with your mind.

Guests are invited to sit comfortably in a chair facing the car, where they're outfitted with a headset that'll get the engine humming with the right mental feedback. The experience has conveniently been dubbed "Opel Mind." 

"Visitors wear a connected helmet which measures their brain activity and communicates it via Bluetooth to the vehicle, which is equipped with a specially designed device," explains co-founder Jean-Baptiste Herman of Tips Tank, the agency that crafted the experience.

"As the visitor increases the production of certain brainwaves, the helmet picks them up, transmitting them to the car, causing it to start up," he says. 



Tips Tank worked with Opel engineers to bring the idea to life, aiming to highlight the General Motors brand's commitment to the Connected Car and its potential uses. (Little Vader would be impressed.) Like skydivers who never stop talking about that one time they jumped out of a plane, visitors who try it can take home a video to share with others. 

"Today, innovative researchers and neurologists are looking into the idea of man controlling machine," Herman goes on. "Our offer lies in this domain, but we're applying it to client experience. ... The Paris Motor Show was the perfect opportunity to unveil this experience and convince even the least impressed." 

The future of mobility is rife with imaginative contenders. Earlier this year, BMW released an AI-powered concept car that lends the impression of "reading" drivers' intuitions and desires. No headset is required; the Vision Next makes recommendations based on environment, and remembers previous preferences. 

Two years ago, Nissan debuted a self-cleaning car prototype—which, if we were put to a vote, we'd probably still leap at the chance to have. (Washing a car takes forever. Turning a key takes, well, a second.)

It remains unclear what thoughts get Opel's motor running, but don't expect to see it on the road anytime soon. The "Opel Mind" remains a demo. 

A star is born!

The infant in this BBH London campaign for first aid awareness group St. John Ambulance is quite the thespian. Little Lucy turns in a powerful performance, plugging the availability—today only, Oct. 13—of a free babygrow (a kind of stretchy onesie) at select Tesco stores throughout the U.K.

This particular bodysuit is designed to teach parents what to do if their baby stops breathing. Its front is decorated with a colorful reminder of the proper procedure to follow after first calling an ambulance—five puffs of air into baby's mouth, then 30 pumps on the chest, followed by two puffs and 30 pumps repeated.

Lucy spells it out in the spot below. Sure, the kid's diction needs some work, but you'll get the message loud and clear:



Critics are just drooling over her debut! And BBH reports that Lucy was no diva on set (though she was spotted hitting the bottle between takes).

St. John is suggesting a £3 donation for the garment, which features a cartoon illustration of Humpty Dumpty, fresh off his tuneful triumph in St. John's nursery rhyme PSA from a few months back. (That campaign has saved at least one baby's life. Alex McHugh, a young mom from Wigan in northwest England, said she used the baby CPR technique shown in the spot to revive her 7-week-old son Joel after he stopped breathing.)

In fact, that ad inspired the onesie—and the presence of both St. John and Tesco on the BBH roster proved the perfect combination for bringing the concept to life.

"The characters [from the rhyming spot] lent themselves perfectly to being used in the real world of newborn babies," says BBH deputy executive creative director Ian Heartfield. "This meant we could put the instructions right in the hands of Mum and Dad, literally, while still having a cute item of clothing they'll want to dress their newborn in."

CREDITS
Client: St. John Ambulance
Director of Brand Marketing, Communications and Fundraising: Steve Conway
Head of Brand and Communications: Emma Sheppard
BBH Creative Team: Fred Rodwell and Andy Parsons
BBH Deputy Executive Creative Director: Ian Heartfield
BBH Strategist: Alana King
BBH Strategy Director: Rowenna Prest
BBH Business Lead: Jon Barnes
BBH Account Director: Emma Johnston-Donne
BBH Account Manager: Louisa Steele
BBH Producer: Billy Dupée
Production Co.: Hangar 7
Director: Matt Carroll
Producer: Lucy Anderson
DoP: Alex Frois
Music: Ed Marquis
Illustrator: Joseph Pelling

Here's a jarring disconnect—hearts and flowers, boxes of chocolates and hand-written love notes mixed with threats and violence.

A new outdoor campaign from the Los Angeles Police Department and mayor Eric Garcetti's office uses a series of well-known romantic tropes as a stark backdrop for a message about domestic abuse.

One billboard is covered in bridal lace with the phrase, "You may now hit the bride," written in wedding invitation-ready cursive. A Tinder-like image decorated with a heart says that Martin, 31, is "looking for a man to bully and humiliate."

A stream of smartphone text messages go from heart emojis and sweet check-ins to the controlling demand, "Where are you?"

The work, from independent ad agency Quigley-Simpson, is a purposeful departure from the current trend of showing the graphic aftermath of domestic attacks. But it aims to be no less provocative.

"We've seen a lot of domestic violence awareness campaigns depicting bruises and battering. Our question was: What else does domestic violence look like?" says agency creative director Sariah Dorbin. "Well, it certainly doesn't look like love."

The campaign, launched for National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, appears in English and Spanish on transit benches, bus shelters and billboards around L.A. with the tagline, "Domestic violence has no place here." 

Many people are familiar with the feeling of dread that accompanies Dad deciding to fix the sink, or build a garden pond, on his own. He crawls under the house, or he starts digging a trench in the yard. No logic can sway him. He is unstoppable in his quest. What often follows are days of hijinks, horror and inevitable self-harm. 

Apparently this problem is universal. But maybe it isn't so much a problem as an affirmation of existence.

In an ad titled "You're alive. Do you remember?", German home improvement chain Hornbach makes its case, using a naked man, an uncomfortable tumble, lots of mud and one strategically placed nail.



Created by agency Heimat, which has done lots of quirky work for Hornbach over the years, the ad seeks to convey all the emotions one feels when undertaking a DIY project. Our man—who is preparing to dig his own pond—first appears on a summit, ready to take on the world as the wind whistles through his hair (and his liberated genitals). His tip forward is a metaphor for reality, where he lifts a pickaxe into the air and heaves it decisively into the ground.

The tumble follows. There are ecstatic moments, when his eyes close under warm sunlight and his skin vibrates over grass. There are harrowing moments when he swims, majestic, through stones. Clouds of sawdust will make your eyes sting, even as he relishes in it, rubbing unvarnished wood in ways we wouldn't even dare handle chopsticks. 

And there is pain. But there is also glory—delicious, mud-caked, triumphant glory.

"Creating something with one's own hands is a unique feeling that every DIY'er knows," says Thomas Schnaitmann, Hornbach's head of German marketing and international communications. "This is the time of the year when all those projects around the house and garden that need to be done invite people to touch, feel and experience." 

Australia's Tom Noakes directed the film with production company Partizan. Almost everything was shot "in camera," on a set that took weeks to build, without major special effects. 

"This is what the spa effect of a comprehensive, Hornbach-style spring project may feel like, a place beyond the increasing urbanization and digitization of our world," says Heimat creative director Guido Heffels. 

The ad is accompanied by a Spring Experience app, which uses haptic technology and the autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) principle to "get our hands dirty," so to speak. In other words, unique sounds are used to "tickle" the brain, giving digital users the feeling of "touching" grass, wood, bark, flowers and more. 

It also links back to the online store, and is marketed as "the world's first tangible online store and sales platform." 



Perhaps what we fail to understand about these sometimes star-crossed DIY projects is that, for the makers, the end result is only incidental. It's the journey—the raw, vivid experience of battling elements with one's hands—that makes them worth undertaking.

"DIY is a haptic journey that makes people aware of life at the level of their physical senses. You could say it stands in opposition to modern, highly rationalized everyday life," Schnaitmann says.

As in life, it remains unclear whether Hornbach's hero succeeds in completing his pond. We leave him in his yard, tearing out roots and swinging a shovel, his houseclothes covered in mud. But he's happy. He is alive. 

CREDITS

Agency:Heimat, Berlin, Germany
Executive Creative Director:Guido Heffels
Agency Producer:Kirsten Heffels
Copywriter:Marlon Fischer
Account Director:Tim Holtköetter
Production Company:Partizan
Director:Tom Noakes
Executive Producer:Moritz Merkel
Producer:Swenja Babucke
DoP:Antonio Paladino
Production Designer:Fiona Crombie
Editor:Nils Landmark
Composer:Thomas Berlin
Vfx:TED & FLO

Do you know what your employer's human resources director does all day? No, really. 

Behind the emails, spreadsheets and Monday morning bagel spreads beats the heart of a real person who somehow manages to control the machinations of that most difficult beast—a group of human beings forced to work together in a shared space for at least 40 hours every week. 

Gusto is a software startup created to help HR directors navigate the maze of requests, complaints and sob sessions that make up their daily routine. For its first ad campaign, it turned to newly formed San Francisco agency Erich & Kallman and actress/comedian Kristen Schaal, best known for her work on Flight of the Conchords and Last Man on Earth. 

Schaal might be the perfect person to portray the archetypal HR exec. She's cool under fire, but one senses the stress beneath her decorum could boil over at any moment and end with a trip to the psych ward. (It never does ... to the great relief of her colleagues, bosses and mentees.)

The first spot in the campaign shows just how much she has on her plate: 



"[Gusto] knew they wanted to do a campaign based around someone who is head of HR; we'd been kicking around a list of names, and Kristen was high on that list," agency co-founder and creative director Eric Kallman tells Adweek. "She can solve problems and remain super likeable."

The next spot riffs on a misplaced bathroom key, and the unusual solution to the problem: 



While Kallman says the above spot did involve "exaggerating the nonstop problems [HR directors] solve," the next ad is a riff on Gusto's own company culture: The team often gives new employees balloons on their first day. 



Prior to beginning work on the campaign, Gusto organized focus groups and surveyed hundreds of HR directors across industries to get a sense of their day-to-day highs and lows.

"As we listened to everything HR admins do for their office, we realized they are truly the CEOs at work–the 'chief everything officers,'" says Gusto co-founder and CEO Josh Reeves. "The inspiration for the campaign was an HR person who juggles it all and does just about everything at the office, including watering the office plants and organizing birthday parties. You'll see elements of our research reflected in these videos." 

Of course, HR directors often have to respond to repeated requests from the usual suspects—like those who just can't seem to remember their damn passwords. 



The ad industry itself is famously challenging for HR directors.

"It was fun to write on this," says Kallman, "because if you work at smaller or mid-level agencies, this type of person exists at most of those companies. He or she does not only the expected payroll stuff but knows all the answers and does everything, really. There's someone like Zoe at every company where I've ever worked." 

For Kallman, those companies include Wieden + Kennedy, Goodby Silverstein & Partners and TBWA\Chiat\Day.

CREDITS
Client: Gusto
Agency: Erich & Kallman
Creative Director: Eric Kallman
Managing Director: Steve Erich
Head of Accounts: Kate Higgins
Producer: Jill Garrison
Production Company: Biscuit
Director: Clay Weiner
Director of Photography: Jon Peter
Production Designer: Kai Boydell
Executive Prodcuer: Holly Vega
Producer: Lisa Stockdale
Editorial Company: Rock Paper Scissors
Editor: Austyn Daines
Executive Producer: Helena Lee
Producer: Amanda Ornelas
Mix: Lime

That didn't take long. Just four days after becoming an instant folk hero after asking a question during Sunday's town-hall presidential debate, Ken Bone has appeared in his first ad. For Uber!

The red-sweater-wearing Belleville, Ill., resident tweeted out a link Thursday to uberSELECT, the high-end car service (featuring rides in BMWs, Lexuses and more) that has just arrived in his fair Midwestern city.

Everyone wants to know if I've decided... and I have. uberSELECT helps you ride in style like me https://t.co/HyOS8z9SRd

— Ken Bone (@kenbone18) October 13, 2016

In fact, as Uber explains on its website, Bone—who describes himself on Twitter (where he already has more than 200,000 followers) as a "somewhat reluctant, undecided, cuddly internet political faceman!"—took the first-ever uberSELECT ride in St. Louis this morning.

"Ken Bone has decided… and he's chosen uberSELECT!" the brand says, in a nod to his undecided-voter status, which is what got him into the debate in the first place.

Fashion advertisers, shame on you all for not throwing him a Bone first. 

A lone dancer, Maëva Berthelot, gorgeously freestyles her way through London's empty streets. The sun is out, and the scene is bright—not quite desolate—as she twists and weaves across plazas, around street corners, and through the Tube, all devoid of life.

"Alchemy," a 2014 electro R&B track from TĀLĀ (since signed to Columbia), plays in the background, and seems to more than make up for the absence of other humans.

And it all leads up to a product pitch for Bose headphones in this new ad from Grey London.



Yes, in the final seconds of the striking minute-long spot, the view cuts to a product shot, then back to the full scene, where it turns out the city is in fact bustling. She just can't hear them; so they might as well not be there.

"We never quite believed we would actually be able to lock down central London in such heavily populated and high security areas," Grey London executive creative director Dominic Goldman tells AdFreak. "We used a helicopter for the ariel shots, which had understandably strict airspace rules. We held back traffic and people for a few minutes each take. This wasn't easy to produce. Most of this was captured in camera with minimal clean-up in post."

It's the agency's first work for the brand since winning the business last year, and it's a strong showing. Jaron Albertin, of the Cannes Grand Prix-winning Gisele Bündchen work for Under Armour, directs, in another riveting display of physical intensity.

"We literally looked at hundreds of dancers from L.A., London, Paris and New York—there's a lot of talent out there," Goldman says. "However, Maëva gave us something very different. We felt she moved with a real emotion and a feeling of poetry."

Visuals of out-of-context dancers moving through public urban spaces—populated or not—make for powerful film, and the general approach here might for some viewers evoke pieces like Girl Walk//All Day, the 2011 feature-length music video set in New York City (that also arguably found fresh, uncredited life in Pharrell's 24-hour video for "Happy" in 2013).

"This isn't meant to feel like an ad," Goldman says. "Our hope is it will be enjoyed as a small piece of entertainment, with a twist."

Regardless, if the headphones really do have that effect, they should probably come with a warning to watch out for traffic. 

There are things we just don't see—remote places under the sea, in the savannah or covered in snow, whose joys, dramas and tragedies we aren't privy to. And yet we affect them. 

In "Dream," a beautiful stop-animation video by DDB New York for the Wildlife Conservation Film Festival, four animals facing extinction tell their stories through the words of "I Dreamed a Dream"—a song you'll recognize if you're a Les Misérables fan. 

The animals appear, majestic and undisturbed, in their natural habitats. The drama begins when a sinister group of men arrive, their battered ship piercing through the darkness. They're scary, twisted figures. Unlike the warm, living faces of the animals, their eyes transmit an eerily commercial luminosity that matches the lights of their cars and ships. 

It all goes downhill from there. The ending constricts the heart, and reminds us that our comforts come at a painfully parasitic cost. 



Since "The Scarecrow," we've rarely seen a standalone piece of animated brand work this strong, though it clearly owes an inspirational debt to that Chipotle ad, which came out three years ago.

Beautifully brought to life by production company Zombie Studio, the video includes guest vocalists Natalie Bergman (who plays the rhino), Ryan Merchant (the whale), Keenan O'Meara (the pelican) and Tal Fisher Altman (the seal), whose wrenching close does lots of emotional heavy lifting. 

The Wildlife Conservation Film Festival takes place from Oct. 17-23 at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater in New York. You can buy a festival pass for $175, or individual "Film Series" tickets for $18 in advance or $25 at the door.

The goal of the WCFF is to develop public awareness programs to teach people about global biodiversity protection. "Dream," created pro-bono for the campaign, will run online, in social and at WCFF events before, during and after the festival.

CREDITS

Client: Wildlife Conservation Film Festival (WCFF)
Christopher J. Gervais, F.R.G.S. - Founder & CEO

Agency - DDB New York
Chief Creative Officer - Icaro Doria
Creative Director - Thiago Carvalho
Head of Art / Creative Director - Bruno Oppido
ACD (Art Director) - Guilherme Rácz
ACD (Copywriter) - Lucas Casão
Head of Production - Ed Zazzera
Senior Producer - Amanda Van Caneghem
Senior Account Executive - Matthew Leach
Music/Talent Manager - Linda Bres

Music & Sound Design
"I Dreamed A Dream" by Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schonberg, Jean-Marc Natel and Herbert Kretzmer
Music, Sound Design and Final Mix by Mophonics

Animation Production: 
Directed by Zombie Studio
Executive Producers: Natália Gouvea, Paulo Garcia

LAS VEGAS—Agency chief creative officers don't get much cooler than Pum Lefebure.

The co-founder (with her husband) and chief creative officer of Design Army in Washington, D.C., is known for her truly eye-popping design work. But she also has such impeccable style that H&M recently came calling—not to have her make them an ad, but to star in one. Not many agency CCOs get calls like that. 

For Lefebure, though, fashion has been an obsession since childhood, she told a packed ballroom full of young advertising people at LIA's Creative LIAisons event here in Las Vegas this week, where she has also been leading the Design & Package Design jury. 

Adweek sat down with Pum to ask her about her favorite advertising and design work, the whole H&M experience, and what it's been like judging this week. 

This is not a swear jar, dammit!

It is, in fact, a "Marketing Buzzword Jar," the latest industry innovation (and silly self-promotion) from Whit Hiler and his goofy gang at Kentucky ad shop Cornett.

Perfect for agencies, marketing departments and startups, the item launches next month and will cost $19.99. Employees put $1 in the jar each time one of them utters a hackneyed, overblown marketing word or phrase. You know, stuff like "big data," "influencer" and "scalability." Dropping the M-Bomb—"millennial"—will cost you $2.

"The idea for the Marketing Buzzword Jar came from a joke," explains Hiler. "We laughed about how profitable a Marketing Buzzword Jar would be in our agency, and we're all about to laugh again—all the way to the bank."

Now, you may well ask, isn't this just an ordinary jar with a gimmicky name and a jacked-up price? Well, Whit Hiler, isn't it?

"This particular jar is amazing," he insists. "It's made of glass with a plastic top. We tested over 600 plastic and glass jars before landing on the jar you see in the photos. It's very well designed, and comes with a nice big 'Marketing Buzzword Jar' logo on the front. Agencies should appreciate the design and branding."

Awesome! We have it on good authority that McCann has long used a stinky old pickle jar to collect its marketing buzzword cash, while Ogilvy favors a shoebox. So this product should really come in handy on Madison Avenue.

Those buying the jar also receive a helpful list of more than 500 brain-bending buzzwords—"Purchase path!" "Customer journey!" "Longform engagement!"—plus 200 free TED talks. (Actually, those talks are already free on YouTube, but … well … the jar!)

Hey, at the very least, eliminating buzzwords should improve intra-agency communications. You might finally be able to understand what the media planners are talking about.

You can fit about 75 to 100 dollar bills in the Buzzword Jar (way more if you wad them up or mash them down with a stick). Proceeds should add up fast, and according to Hiler, the possibilities are endless: "Agencies could spend that money on vintage Russian helicopters, beer for their employees, illegal drugs, vintage Cabbage Patch kids, pitches, Ikea furniture, agency murals, exotic desks, bringing in popular Instagram influencers to speak, a new website, wild animals, art installations, trophies, etc."

Um, Whit … "influencer" is a buzzword. Time to feed the jar! 

While you're out on the town, or busy at work, do you obsess about what might be going on back at home?

Perhaps you're worried the babysitter's skeevy boyfriend will show up for a makeout session, and that his even skeevier friends will start pawing your wardrobe. Or do you imagine your pooch setting off a conflagration in the yard while the house fills with suds from an overflowing tub? Hey, maybe you're convinced your pre-pubescent son will take the car for a spin and back it through a wall,

Actually, all of that stuff could happen at the same time. Couldn't it?

To see what's most likely happening while you're out, watch the ad below, created by CP+B Miami as part of its first major campaign for home security startup Canary:



Huh. It was actually pretty quiet back at home. Guess this wasn't the day for Junior to start driving after all. (Great line delivery, though—get that kid a sitcom!)

Allaying irrational fears among tech-savvy millennials and Gen-Xers is what the company's pitch, promoting overall brand awareness and the launch of its indoor/outdoor HD Canary Flex product, is all about.

"Canary users are highly engaged with the product, checking the app more than three times per day to stay connected to what's happening at home and with loved ones, even if that loved one is a pet," CMO Bob Stohrer tells Adweek. "The key takeaway: Don't let your mind wander. Live life in the know."

Hey, a little more compulsive app checking will never hurt anyone, right?

Staged with comic gusto by Gifted Youth's Peter Atencio, who directed every episode of cult Comedy Central series Key & Peele (as well as, famously, Pepsi's Jeff Gordon prank from a few years ago), the Canary ad was filmed over two days, split between a soundstage and suburban house.

"The whole thing came together almost without incident, which was pretty amazing considering it involved very young children, several animals, some fire, shattering glass and little bit of flooding," says CP+B executive creative director Jay Gelardi. "It's a challenge to trash a house on film while not doing any damage to the actual, beautiful house. So, parts of the house needed to be recreated in a studio, but much of the destruction actually happened—very carefully—on location. And some of the slips and stumbles were unintentional, which always adds to the painful authenticity."

Yes, using Canary to inspect your home from afar could yield tangible safety results. You might discover you left the garage door open or water boiling on the stove, and engage other home-tech wizardry to rectify such situations.

Mostly, though, the product provides an instant balm for modern anxieties. When the overwhelming majority of users check their homes using the app, they'll see nothing amiss, and get exactly the reassurance they're looking for. Unless they rent the place to a commercial film crew, that is. Those dudes sure can make a mess.

CREDITS
Client: Canary
Campaign: "While You Were Out"
Agency: CP+B Miami
Executive Creative Director: Jay Gelardi
Creative Director: Graham McCann
Designer: Andrea Novo
Project Manager: Ethel Jones
Director of Video Production: Kate Hildebrandt
Integrated Producer: Jackie Maloney
Production Company: Gifted Youth. Los Angeles, CA
Director: Peter Atencio
Managing Partner/EP (Production Co): Dal Wolf
EP of Production (Production Co): Anthony Ficalora
Producer (Production Co): Michele Robb
Director of Photography: Jas Shelton
Editorial Company & City: Arcade Edit. Santa Monica, CA
Editor: Sean Lagrange
Executive Producer (Editorial Co): Crissy DeSimone
Producer (Editorial Co): Alexa Atkin
Music Company & City: Beacon Street Studios. Venice, CA
Executive Producer (Music Co): Leslie DiLullo
Principals: John Nau, Andrew Feltstein
Sound Design Company & City: Lime Studios. Santa Monica, CA
Sound Designer: Rohan Young
Executive Producer (Mix And Sound Design Co): Susie Boyajan
Mixer: Mark Meyuhas
Telecine Company & City: CO3. Santa Monica, CA
Senior Colorist: Stefan Sonnenfeld
Executive Producer (Telecine Co): Rhubie Jovanov
Visual Effects Company & City: Method Studios. Santa Monica, CA
Visual Effects Supervisor: Michael Kennedy
Senior Executive Producer (Visual Effects Co): Robert Owens
Producer (Visual Effects Co): Cara Lehr
Lead Compositor: Kelly Bumbarger
Director, Strategy: Sam Alonso
Group Account Director: Marci Miller
Management Supervisor: Julie Pfleger
Content Supervisor: Katie Perez
Executive Business Affairs Manager: Katherine Graham-Smith

You sit down to enjoy a lovely, high-quality craft beer. And then you ruin the gourmet experience by shoving a bunch of Pringles into your gob.

One brewer in Sweden is rectifying this not-really-a-problem problem with a goofy but fun stunt: To go along with the supposed epicurean majesty of its beverage, St. Erik's Brewery created a very high-class snack—potato chips featuring rare Nordic ingredients and sold in a pack of five for a whopping $56.

"St. Erik's Brewery is one of Sweden's leading microbreweries and we're passionate about the craftsmanship that goes into our beer. At the same time, we felt that we were missing a snack of the same status to serve with it," brand manager Marcus Friari says in a statement. "A first-­class beer deserves a first-­class snack, and this is why we made a major effort to produce the world's most exclusive potato chips. We're incredibly proud to be able to present such a crispy outcome."

The recipe for the chips was dreamed up by chef Pi Le. The ingredients include matsutake, one of the world's most sought-­after species of mushrooms, and a special truffle seaweed from the Faroe Islands that can be found only in cold tidal waters.

"All of the chips have been made by hand," the chef says. "It took a delicate touch, a finely honed sense of taste and time to ensure that each chip would achieve a perfect balance between the various ingredients. The taste is a very Scandinavian one. … Most people recognize potatoes and onions, but what stands out is the quality. All of the ingredients are of a stature that not many will have tried before. These chips are an excellent accompaniment to craft beer, or simply enjoyed on their own."

A limited batch of 100 boxes of five chips each went on sale last week, and are already sold out. So, you're out of luck, I'm afraid—and you'll have to stick to Paqui's hellish hot, single-pack Carolina Reaper Madness chips instead. 

The Lincoln Motor Company is out with a new print campaign shot by Annie Leibovitz, the iconic portrait photographer's first ads for a car.

The images feature musician Jon Batiste, artist Tali Lennox, actor Giles Matthey and director Ben Younger in and around the automaker's 2017 Continental, set against downtown backgrounds and country landscapes.

Overall, they are meant to convey a story about a group of up-and-coming creative professionals on a road trip from Brooklyn to upstate New York, featuring headlines like "How worldly you are has nothing to do with a passport" and the tagline "That's Continental."

See the seven ads here: 

Leibovitz has famously photographed celebrities ranging from the Rolling Stones and John Lennon to Queen Elizabeth II, as well as ad campaigns for American Express and Disney. In 2015, Leibovitz shot this year's Pirelli calendar, drastically overhauling the tone of its traditionally sex-driven imagery.

The faces in the Lincoln shoot all have some pop-culture heft of their own. Batiste, for example, leads Stay Human, the house band on The Colbert Show; Lennox is the daughter of singer and songwriter Annie Lennox. A behind-the-scenes video from the shoot offers more insight into Leibovitz's process.



Lincoln, a luxury line long owned by Ford, is in the midst of a multi-year brand reinvention spearheaded by Hudson Rouge, the agency WPP launched in 2012 to handle the brand. Its output has also featured the likes of Matthew McConaughey and Beck.

Read on below for perspective from Jon Pearce, the shop's chief creative officer, on why Leibovitz was the right fit for the campaign, what it was like to work with her, and how the agency approached pairing copy with the images she shot.

I think it starts with the fact that we're positioning Lincoln as a warmer, more human-oriented brand than the other luxury manufacturers, who tend to focus on the machine itself.

So, to launch the new Lincoln Continental, considered their new flagship, we went to the world's most renowned portrait photographer, Annie Leibovitz. She's not a "car" photographer in any sense, so I guess it was a calculated risk we took. But we did know that she would capture something special in her subjects, and integrate them beautifully and memorably with Lincoln's new vehicle. At this point in Lincoln's transformation as a brand, we can't afford not to "go big" with any of our campaigns. Their new vehicles are beautifully designed and the interiors are amazing, so we need to continue to find interesting ways to bring this to the forefront in a relentlessly congested media environment.

Annie likes to work with a narrative story for her shoots. So we presented her with a number of scenarios. She really took to the idea of friends going somewhere for a short stint, and came back to us with a very detailed road trip concept. She told us about the trips she took with her father when she was young, and how the framing of the rear window influenced her seeing things in a photographic landscape format. She was also inspired by the fact that the Lincoln Highway was our country's first transcontinental highway, and that our shoot could be inspired by that.

Her idea for our four subjects was that they were on a location scout for an independent film they were making. And that storyline continues through to who they really are in their personal lives—a film director, a musician/bandleader, an artist and an actor.

I found Annie to be, not surprisingly, very professional and very clear in her vision. She was great to work with, and really understood what we were trying to do with this launch for Lincoln.

When it came time to making the ads themselves, we had written a number of lines expressing this idea of "That's Continental." We're very lucky to have a product name that has a history and resonance in and of itself. We also like that it can be used to describe a "Continental" approach to life—one where you're curious about the world around you, and you use that knowledge not in a showing-off kind of way, but with a quiet confidence. We felt that the continental attitude really came through with Annie's portraits. When we saw her edit of the images, we started pairing the lines we had written to the various portraits. Some of the lines can work on multiple images, but in the end, we think we found some great pairings.

These ads should help further the notion that Lincoln is changing. It's becoming a brand that's much more contemporary than people may have thought. And the quiet confidence you get from the people and settings of these portraits should connect with consumers who may be open to considering a luxury brand like Lincoln, who see in them a different approach than most of the other luxury automobiles out there.

CREDITS
Client: The Lincoln Motor Company
Agency: Hudson Rouge
Global Chief Creative Officer: Jon Pearce
Group Creative Director: Jeff Payne
Associate Creative Director, Art Director: Emlyn Allen
Associate Creative Director, Copywriter: Brett Minieri
Creative Director: Ashley Davidson
Director of Content Production: Suzanne Crowe
Senior Art Producer: Kaia Hemming
Agency Chief Executive Officer: Paul Venn
Account: Doug Molloy, Eileen Lyons, Albert Moy

Photographer: Annie Leibovitz
Production: Annie Leibovitz Studio

—Credits for Behind the Scenes Video
Client: The Lincoln Motor Company
Agency: Hudson Rouge
Department: Brand Publishing Lab
Global Chief Creative Officer: Jon Pearce
Creative Director: Ashley Davidson
Editorial Manager: Ashley Eldridge
Director of Content Production: Suzanne Crowe
Agency Producers: Celia Williams, Stephen Wright
Agency Chief Executive Officer: Paul Venn
Account: Erin Camin

Production Company: Moving Image Projects
Director of Photography: Barbara Leibovitz
Behind-the-Scenes Photographer: Mark Schafer
Production: Annie Leibovitz Studio

Editorial House: Cutters
Editor: Scott Gibney
Producer: Julia Pepe

Visual Effects: The Mill

You won't understand this anti-Trump ad, but a lot of gamers will.

A billboard went up in Florida this month with a cartoon image of the Republican presidential nominee yelling at a desktop computer, along with a super cryptic headline: "Donald Trump mains Hanzo and complains about team comp in chat."

That line will mean nothing to the olds, but to anyone who plays the video game Overwatch, it will clearly broadcast the ad's message—that Trump is a bad team player.

@GHOSTFXCKER Here's a cleaner photo of that billboard. pic.twitter.com/ZccA5eJil2

— Darkwraith Nid (@NidtheDragon) October 14, 2016

And indeed, that's the URL that the ad points to: TrumpIsNotATeamPlayer.com, which features Trump in various video-game costumes next to examples of his not responsibility for anything that goes wrong in his campaign.

Slate explains the ad's Overwatch reference: 

It refers to Hanzo Shimada, a character in Overwatch who is a Japanese archer-slash-assassin with ties to a criminal dynasty. He's a super #edgy loner with this tortured backstory that peaks when he causes the apparent death of his own brother. It's a really sad story, I promise. There's even a great animated short about it.

Overwatch requires players to pick a character and then carry out an objective with their team to win. Some of the options are great all-purpose characters, useful in many situations. But Hanzo, who fires arrows, is hard to use and not always relevant. Players who "main" Hanzo use him as often as possible, even if the situation doesn't necessarily call for a Japanese assassin who fires arrows. When (not if) things go wrong, and if that player is a jerk, he will blame the whole team, even though he picked the wrong person to begin with.

The billboard, and the site, were made by the Nuisance Committee, a super PAC set up by the makers of Cards Against Humanity."We're trying to remind college students, young people, gamers that they need to stand up and be counted. And this is the 'it' game right now," Melissa Harris, spokeswoman for the Nuisance Committee, told Slate, which has a lot more about the billboard and the gleeful reaction to it among young people.

"Our country has never gotten anywhere by blaming other people for our problems," the Trump Is Not a Team Player site concludes. "Hillary Clinton's message, 'Stronger Together,' is the only way for America to come together as a team. With less than a month to go before election day, it's time for us to join Hillary's team and do our part. 

The billboard went up on the corner of North Alafaya Drive and Colonial Drive at the University of Central Florida's campus in Orlando. It will stay up through Election Day.

The Nuisance Committee's other advertising gems this season have included a billboard in Chicago that read: "If Trump is so rich how come he didn't buy this billboard?"

Vancouver radio station Rock 101 has a TV spot for its "Willy in the Morning" oldies show, and it's actually good. No, really.

Titled "Covers," it shows people lip-syncing '80s and '90s pop songs (yes, we're all getting old) and posing with each song's album cover as a clever aesthetic hook. The guy mouthing "Sussudio" is a little too into it, especially considering how cornball Phil Collins got from there, but overall this is a smart pitch for a distinctly nonvisual medium. I'll even forgive them for ending with Loverboy.



After watching the ad, I looked up some clips of Willy's show and, real talk, I'm kinda jealous. Morning radio is a comedy graveyard here in the U.S., so the fact that Willy has something approaching a normal human personality is blowing my mind.

The ad was made by Vancouver agency Spring, and features Willy and his Rock 101 friends.

Don't pity the matriarch of this chaotic household, even though her kids are jumping off the roof, shooting arrows through the living room and tossing silverware down the disposal. Just listen to her when she gives you some advice on simplifying your life. Because if anyone should know a good time-saving app when she sees one, it's this delightfully unflappable gal.

That's the philosophy behind the new digital campaign for Chatbooks, a Utah-based subscription photo book service that's making its national ad debut this week with paid buys on Facebook and YouTube.

The four-minute spot, from viral video mavens the Harmon Brothers, introduces a woman who's "not a frazzled mom—she's a real mom," says Rachel Hofstetter, CMO of Chatbooks and ex-editor of Oprah's O magazine. "Instead of getting stressed about all the crazy stuff going on around her, she just goes with the flow. She's the best friend you wish you had."

And she's telling you about a modestly priced way to capture your family's everyday moments in photo books that you don't have to format, design and create yourself. (Come on, only a "freak mom" has those kinds of leisure hours, our heroine says).



The video, rolling out with a red carpet premiere-style event in Provo on Monday, stars actress-comedian Lisa Valentine Clark. Writers include Dave Vance, who was the lead creative on the Harmon Brothers' Squatty Potty pooping unicorn spot (an ad that has nearly 120 million views to date on YouTube and Facebook).

This is the Harmon Brothers' first work for Chatbooks, a startup co-founded by Vanessa Quigley, a mother of seven children, that has sold 1 million photo books in its first 18 months without advertising.

"Done is better than perfect" when it comes to scrapbooking, Hofstetter says, and the company wanted some educational elements in the video without the typically dry infomercial tone.

"You keep learning why you would want to do this, but the jokes carry you along," she says. "We laughed so hard when we saw it. We said, 'That's it. That's her.' "

LAS VEGAS—Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" is one of those legendary campaigns that changed everything, not just for the Unilever brand but for the category and, indeed, the industry as a whole—helping to usher in an era when brands could be more honest about the artifice of messaging, and become more real and relevant to consumers. 

Malcolm Poynton, now global chief creative officer at Cheil Worldwide, was one of the key architects of the original "Real Beauty" work, a dozen years ago at Ogilvy London.

Adweek caught up with Malcolm in Las Vegas, where he was leading the Integration jury at LIA judging. We asked him about his three favorite ads of all time, and not surprisingly, the Dove work came up. 

Check out the video to hear from the New Zealander about the Dove legacy, as well as his other favorite ads, what he's excited about in the Cheil network (including some nifty product innovation), and how the LIA judging process went. 

LAS VEGAS—At the end of 2009, Adweek picked Honda "Grrr," by Wieden + Kennedy London, as the commercial of the decade.

"It's not often that you see cynical ad mavens shuffling out of the Palais de Festivals in Cannes not only smiling about a commercial but also whistling the jingle. But "Grrr" … is a special case," wrote Eleftheria Parpis. "An unlikely mix of cute animals frolicking in a CGI Eden, flying diesel engines and the gravel-on-velvet voice of Garrison Keillor, the spot won a slew of awards in 2005. It gets ours for the best of the decade, period."

Jay Benjamin can agree with that.

The new executive creative creator at Muh-tay-zik Hof-fer's New York office, who recently left the top creative post at Saatchi & Saatchi New York, named "Grrr" among his three favorite ads of all time when Adweek caught up with him in Las Vegas at LIA judging.

Check out the video to hear from Benjamin about his other favorite ads, his plans for Muh-tay-zik Hof-fer, his admiration for Chris Milk, and why he loves judging at LIA so much. 

And see our complete "3 Favorite Ads" video series here.

A long time ago, in a hospital far, far away …

Duracell returns to the Star Wars universe today, launching a holiday-themed tie-in to Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ahead of that film's release in December. The 60-second spot plays off Duracell's holiday donation of 1 million batteries to power toys at 147 Children's Network Miracle Hospitals nationwide.

Developed by Anomaly and directed in suitably cheeky-epic style by Simon McQuoid, "How the Rebels Saved Christmas" goes straight for the heartstrings, telling the tale of some heroic moppets on a mission of mercy:



"We wanted to continue our partnership with Star Wars this year and continue celebrating the power that imaginative play has on kids," Duracell marketing director Ramon Velutini tells Adweek. "We came across the most incredible insight: Kids at hospitals continue to act as kids even during tough circumstances, and imaginative play plays a big role in their ability to cope during their healing process." 

He adds: "We got the use of a newly opened hospital wing that had yet to be put to use. The exteriors were shot outside of a disused train factory, and all of the Star Wars costumes and gear were flown in separately by Lucasfilm." 

Of course, the Star Wars franchise is all about sequels, and this Duracell ad follows a popular 2015 Force Awakens-themed spot, also from Anomaly, which depicted a spectacular space battle set in and around a suburban house on Christmas morning. This year's commercial has a similar vibe, effectively mixing Star Wars pyrotechnics with earthbound locales and integrating the imaginative world of kids with George Lucas' Imperial vision.

That said, the more serious message of "The Rebels Who Saved Christmas" gives the latest spot extra depth and dimension, casting Duracell in a positive light undiminished by the promotional nature of the enterprise. (The ad is way more charming and less manipulative than some we could name, and the company's real-world philanthropy adds a layer of authenticity.)

Plus, the Star Wars association seems especially apt. Battling illness and injury in a hospital setting can feel like taking on the Dark Side in all its fearsome fury. For ailing fans, a battery-powered mini R2-D2 could be the greatest gift in the galaxy, and the best medicine on Earth.

CREDITS
Client: Duracell
Agency: Anomaly
Production: Imperial Woodpecker
Director: Simon McQuoid
Executive Producer: Charlie Cocuzza
Producer: Anita Wetterstedt
Editorial: Arcade Edit
Editor: Jeff Ferruzzo
Executive Producer: Sila Soyer
Editorial Assistant: Sam Barden
Producer: Fanny Cruz
Finishing/Graphics: Industrial Light & Magic
Associate Producer: Megan Matousek
Colorist: Company 3
Colorist: Tim Masick