Coca-Cola is really having a go at social media this week. Earlier, we had the Coke video that offered a fashionably questionable solution to social-media addiction. And now we have this ultra-peppy new global Coca-Cola Light commercial from ad agency Johannes Leonardo.

Its point is that "liking" things just isn't enough. You have to love them. And you have to love them enough to roll around in them, swing on them, set fire to them, dance with them, kiss them (with gold teeth, preferably) and float away to heaven with them.

Ambivalence toward the "like" is hardly a new stance for marketers, but here it's aggressively communicated with broad, boundless energy as well as other, smaller details—you'll notice there are no computers or smartphones anywhere, and someone is even (gasp) seen reading a book. (The song is "Love Me Again" by English artist John Newman.)

It's a fine message for Coke, really, although it makes the 79,691,932 people who like the brand on Facebook maybe look a little foolish.

Earlier this month, Ogilvy & Mather Los Angeles cut 33 jobs, all but eliminating its ad agency presence (already drastically down from its 350 level in 2000). In December, DDB L.A. parted with longtime client Wells Fargo and relocated 30 agency employees to San Francisco. 

 

Some 20 years ago, network agency offices were the dominant players in Southern California. They’d land a local anchor client—usually a car, entertainment or technology account—and try to build from there, despite the dearth of big marketers out West.

But even as technology—driven from the West Coast—transforms the industry, many remaining L.A. network agencies still have more of an outpost mentality than an entrepreneurial reflex born of such change.

One reason is that West Coast network offices often conform to their headquarters’ more traditional operating model, relegating them to service entities. “If the West was a different country, these agencies would be developed within that culture and have a clearer business role within the network,” said Robert LePlae, former North American head of TBWA\Chiat\Day and McCann Erickson.

Not surprisingly, then, L.A.’s industry dynamism comes from hot independent shops like 72andSunny and content creation upstarts.

“To thrive in this market, you have to thrive at the intersection of marketing, technology and entertainment,” said John Boiler, founder, CEO, 72andSunny.

John Seifert, O&M's North American chairman, said Ogilvy L.A. will now focus on technological and social media PR work there. “We believe a strong presence is essential, but we don’t think anyone has nailed the model of how to take advantage of it yet,” Seifert said.

Aside from the vulnerability inherent in being dependent on a couple of clients, big-agency L.A. offices face other challenges. Prospective new clients can conflict with other existing ones in the network. Agencies don’t cultivate talent like they used to and may have fewer high-profile accounts to keep creatives happy. With technological advances and corporate pressure to trim overhead, the need for a network office is less critical.

“With business consolidation and the recession, clients are migrating to larger markets, and it’s harder to sustain smaller offices,” said Mark O’Brien, North American president of DDB. “L.A. boutiques have an advantage in that it is their primary office.”

Jay Chiat’s onetime boutique redefined L.A.’s ad industry in the ’80s. Network agencies with local roots, like TBWA\C\D, have done better by retaining their local identity. Deutsch’s L.A. office, founded before its acquisition by IPG, still has original partner and chief Mike Sheldon. Draftfcb has the advantage of Foote, Cone & Belding’s strong West Coast legacy born of Don Belding’s L.A. base.

“It’s the kiss of death if clients think you are a satellite office,” said Carter Murray, CEO at Draftfcb Worldwide. “The West Coast used to be all about S.F. Now that power base is shifting to L.A.”

Deutsch’s Sheldon says a certain amount of independence is necessary to succeed in that transformational L.A. “It comes down to thinking like an entrepreneur,” he said. “This city has always been a combination of relentlessness and effortlessness. People work really hard, but it’s difficult to be negative on a sunny day—and it’s always sunny.”

Here's your clever media placement of the day: M&C Saatchi in Stockholm has advertised LG's OLED-TV, which is 4 millimeters thick, on the spine of electronics magazine Lyd & Bilde (Sound & Image), which is also 4 millimeters thick. Throw in a double-sided arrow, a line of copy and the LG logo, and you're done. Via Adland.

Of all the attempts at making inspirational Olympic ads this year, one of the most successful and unexpected came in the closing moments.

CoverGirl's "#GirlsCan" spot, by Grey in New York, brings together some of today's most influential women. And instead of simply celebrating their beauty, the Procter & Gamble brand creates a candid and compelling rallying cry for female empowerment.

Doubters might say a message like "Girls Can" is overly vague or even pandering, but the ad's strength is in the credibility and confidence of its women—who are about as far as you can get from vapid cosmetic shills.

"I heard that girls couldn't rap. I rap," says Queen Latifah, whose smirk and swagger are probably the best part of the whole spot. "Girls couldn't own their own businesses? I own my own business."

In another moment that resonated with many viewers as an act of subtle solidarity, Sofia Vergara delivers her first line in Spanish, mocking the idea that "girls can't play lead."

Also featured are Ellen DeGeneres, Pink, Katy Perry, soul singer Janelle Monae, 16-year-old rapper Becky G and an unnamed hockey player. Thanks in part to its star power but largely to its message, the ad has gained a lot of positive buzz in the short time since it debuted during Sunday's Closing Ceremony of the Sochi Games on NBC.

The YouTube clip had more than 3,000 "thumbs up" and just seven downvotes as of this morning. "This is the one ad on YouTube that I don't hate!" notes one commenter.

The #GirlsCan hashtag has also caught on, getting an early boost on Twitter from the featured celebrities before the ad's premiere. Since the spot aired, more than 1,500 tweets have mentioned the hashtag, with several high-profile women weighing in.

"Love the new @COVERGIRL campaign!," tweeted veteran ESPN journalist Chris McKendry. "Was told 25 years ago girls can't 'do' TV sports. Oh, #girlscan."

CREDITS
Client: CoverGirl
Agency: Grey, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Tor Myhren
Creative: Alice Ericsson, Natsuko Bosaka, Anne Stesney
Producer: Keira Rosenthal
Account: Seema Patel, Ernesto James, Lindsey Kantarian, Andreina Montefusco
Business Manager: Deborah Haas
Music Producer: Josh Rabinowitz
Talent Manager: Lisa Pierce

Procter & Gamble's "Tough Love" ad, which celebrates the pride and determination of athletes and their moms ahead of next month's Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, manages to play on the heartstrings without hitting a saccharin note.

Not long ago, images of kids without limbs struggling to excel in sports would have been viewed as appropriate for fund-raising PSAs but too downbeat for other types of advertising. It's a mark of how far we've come that such visuals are now seen as inspiring and triumphant. And the found footage in this minute-long clip from Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore., showing determined youngsters swimming, racing and skating (with their supportive moms nearby), is especially soul stirring.

Paralympic snowboarder Amy Purdy narrates: "You could have protected me. You could have taken every hit. You could have turned the world upside down so that I would never feel pain. But you didn't. You gave me my freedom because you were strong. And now, so am I."

The ad, running both online and on TV, debuted on Feb. 19 and has racked up 2.2 million YouTube views so far. Part of P&G's "Thank you, Mom" campaign, the spot serves as a companion piece to W+K's similarly themed viral hit "Pick Them Back Up," which follows four athletes from their baby steps to Olympic glory.

Taken together, the two spots make the point that all athletes, regardless of ability or skill level, similarly strive toward their goals. They fight to overcome long odds, personal travails and self-doubt—often relying on the dedication and perseverance of their moms to help them succeed. Such equality communicates a simple, universal truth: You have to let them fall a few times before they can soar.

Philly-based ad agency Red Tettemer O'Connell + Partners is back to carving likeness of its new employees, but it's graduated from crayons to wooden totem poles.

The details of the faces are pretty rough in both mediums, but the new material is clearly more forgiving—if less endearingly weird. Still, particularly lucky hires get adorable paper-doll versions of themselves. It could be an apt bit of foreshadowing, as a career in the industry might leave them feeling flattened, or square anyways. Either approach, however, makes for a more fun welcome-to-the-office present than the usual nothing, and a far more entertaining gift to the world than a run-of-the-mill press release.

One downside (or perhaps it's an upside): One of the new hires can lay claim to literally being the low man on the totem pole.

As far as offbeat staff announcements go, though, RTO+P has some pretty stiff competition in Barton F. Graf 9000's airplane-banner method.

Hey, it's filmmaker Jason Headley! You might remember him from such short films as "It's Not About the Nail," and now he's lampooning the "It Gets Better" project with this mock PSA from people who peaked in high school.

"It Doesn't Get Better" has its moments—the IROC-Z guy and the brunette have great delivery—but it showed up kinda late to the party and isn't quite clever enough to compensate for that. Also, the whole nerdy teen/yacht owner thing almost never happens in reality.

If life in the workforce has taught me anything, it's that most high school nerds end up working for rich, thick-headed dudebros with MBAs.

How does the world's oldest tequila maker introduce a brand-spanking-new website? By keeping one foot firmly in the past.

McCann New York has launched a new site for Jose Cuervo that's actually five sites in one. In addition to its new site for 2014, the brand also imagines what the brand website would have looked like in 1795, 1880, 1945 and 1974.

"Fully actualizing the concept in an authentic way required researching the language and design tropes of each chosen year, and then presenting what we needed to say about Cuervo through those stylistic realities," the agency says.

It's a fun idea, and 1945 and 1974 are both particularly groovy. The only downside, in fact, is that the 2014 version feels visually staid by comparison.

Screen shots and credits below.

1795 website:

1880 website:

1945 website:

1974 website:

2014 website:

CREDITS
Client: Proximo Spirits / Cuervo
Client: Elwyn Gladstone
Agency: McCann New York

Chief Creative Officer: Tom Murphy
Chief Creative Officer: Sean Bryan
Group Creative Director: Mat Bisher
Design Director: Brad Blondes
Senior Art Director: Elinor Beltrone
Copywriter: Sarah Lloyd
Designer: Ledi Lalaj

Production
Chief Production Officer: Nathy Aviram
Executive Integrated Producer: Catherine Eve Patterson
Senior Integrated Producers: Geoff Guinta, Jill Toloza
Associate Producer: Lauren Bauder

Production Company: Transistor Studios
Executive Creative Director: Aaron Baumle
Executive Producer: Damon Meena
Head of Production: Jesse Kurnit
Creative Director: Jamie Rockaway
Art Director: Geoff Keough
Developer: Brian Hersey
Designers: Ryan Weibust, Diana Park, Mauricio Leon, Edgardo Moreno, Tesia Jurkiewicz, Chris Murray and Carolyn Frisch

The new face of Jim Beam, the iconic bourbon brand, might not be quite what you expect. While a rough-around-the-edges cowboy or country rock star might seem to fit the bill—Jim Beam has used Kid Rock at times in the past—its newest spokesperson is the petite and beautiful Mila Kunis.

The 30-year-old actress, who says she is a big fan of bourbon in general, is featured in two new 30-second Beam ads, as well as five other videos ranging in length from 15 seconds to more than three minutes.

The first commercial features a series of quasi-historical events (the transition to the '60s is a little visually jarring), and in the second, Kunis is seen branding her own barrel of bourbon. She narrates, and smolders, in both. The tagline for the new global campaign is, "Make history."

The supporting videos are pretty fun. Save for "Mila Kunis & Hibernation," which feels a little bit too much like a production of a scene in Indiana Jones, the other shorts are funny and quirky and a little less serious than the two main spots. And if you find yourself feeling the need to whisper "Shut up, Meg," it's because Kunis—no stranger to voiceover work—has been the voice of Meg Griffin on Family Guy for the past 14 years.

Nice move on Jim Beam's part in an attempt to appeal to millennials. The campaign is by FutureWorks, a new entity comprised of three regional Beam creative agencies—StrawberryFrog in New York, The Works in Sydney, Australia, and Jung von Matt, Hamburg, Germany.

This wonderfully warped three-minute music-video commercial for Germany's Edeka supermarket chain certainly lives up to its title, "Supergeil," which can mean both "super cool" and "super sexy" (or "horny") in German.

Paunchy middle-aged crooner Friedrich Liechtenstein bathes in milk and cereal, boogies in the aisles, fondles sausages, cavorts with a dude dressed like a battery and reels off naughty double entendres to a techno beat. At one point, he rhymes "muschi" (German for "cat," or "pussy") with "sushi," while a woman slurps raw fish nearby. ("Supergeil" does not translate to "super classy," after all.)

His subdued yet insane performance transcends language barriers, though it's a hoot that one line translates to "Organic is also very, very cool/Very cool organic products, excellent," while a suave chorus exhorts viewers to "Check it out, very, very cool fries, super/Very cool cod, by the way, very cool/Oh look here, toilet paper, ooh, now that's soft/Very, very cool, super." You don't learn to write copy like that in portfolio schools.

Some liken the clip, from ad agency Jung von Matt, to a German "Gangnam Style," citing its funky take on local pop culture. Others compare the bearded Liechtenstein to Dos Equis's Most Interesting Man in the World. Frankly, he reminds me of a different ad character: It's easy to imagine Liechtenstein strutting down a sun-soaked European beach, well-fed gut straining against his Speedo. Easy to imagine, though not particularly pleasant.

IDEA: You hear it often—it's what's inside that counts. That's especially true for an automaker touting a roomy vehicle, like Honda has with its new Civic Tourer wagon in Europe.

To advertise it, Wieden + Kennedy focused on all kinds of interiors in an amazing 60-second spot called "Inner Beauty." The quirky, charming, exquisitely crafted ad takes the viewer, in a first-person view, zooming across a desert and through all sorts of objects—from a golf ball to a suitcase to the Civic Tourer itself—revealing their curious innards.

The brief to W+K was, "There is an estate hidden inside"—i.e., the Civic Tourer has as much room as an estate vehicle (a big van/station wagon in the U.K.). "We decided it was interesting to focus on the human curiosity of looking inside things," said W+K creative director Scott Dungate, "plus the joy you experience when you're surprised and pleased by what you see."

COPYWRITING: The ad opens with the viewer speeding across a desert floor as Garrison Keillor, the brand's longtime voice in Europe, says: "For those who love the inside as much as the outside, this is for you."

Quickly, the camera travels up to and through a golf ball, camera, wrapped gift (with a robot inside), amplifier, suitcase (containing clothes and a snow globe of San Francisco) and chest of drawers (with mostly socks). At the end, it explores the Civic Tourer's interior, then pulls back to show all the previous items flying into its trunk.

"There," says Keillor. "Aren't you glad you looked?"

There was a lot of debate over which objects to include. "I still wish we'd cut through a rock revealing a fossil and 'crystal cave,' but that was a casualty of the process," said Dungate.

The spot ends with the vehicle name onscreen, followed by the Honda name, "The Power of Dreams" tagline, honda.co.uk URL and #CivicTourer hashtag.

ART DIRECTION/FILMING: The visuals are a mix of live action, stop motion and CGI. "We ended up taking things more surreal, but didn't want to feel the CGI too much," said Dungate. "While the final aesthetic is 'hyper-real,' I think it feels quite fresh as it uses a lot of real textures."

Oscar-nominated Nexus directors Smith & Foulkes, whose Honda work goes back to 2004's Grand Prix-winning "Grrr," filmed the live action in Teruel, Spain, and the stop motion in a studio. They wove in the CGI with help from Time Base Arts.

"Quirky was important," said Dungate. "It needed to be playful, human and warm—which can be difficult with inanimate objects and a 'slicing technique.' "

TALENT: Keillor, 71, brings a warm folksiness. "He adds humility, which is a point of difference in a category full of overclaim," Dungate said. "Perhaps even more useful is, it's good for when you're writing. If you can't imagine him saying it, it's probably not right."

The driver of the car is almost invisible. "I didn't want him in there at all," said Dungate. "But someone had to drive, so I lost that argument."

SOUND: There's no music—it's all sound design, rich and complex. "Sound played a big role in bringing humanity to the objects," Dungate said. "It also plays a massive role in storytelling, setting up what the objects are and the lifestyle story relevant to the audience. Take, for example, the little kid laughing in the camera. Or the sound of the jet going into the suitcase. These all help you get the story of each object really quick, which is important as we move through things quite fast."

MEDIA: The spot broke first in Germany, then in other European markets. It's running for a month in the U.K.

THE SPOT:

BEHIND THE SCENES:

EXTENDED EDIT:

CREDITS
Client: Honda
Spot: "Inner Beauty"

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, London
Creative Director, Copywriter, Art Director: Scott Dungate
Producer: Michelle Brough
Account Team: Paulo Salomao/Alex Budenberg/Sophie Moss
Executive Creative Directors: Tony Davidson / Kim Papworth
Agency Executive Producer: Danielle Stewart

Production Company: Nexus
Director: Smith & Foulkes
Executive Producer: Tracey Cooper
Director of Photography: Mark Patten

Editorial Company: Trim
Editor: Paul Hardcastle

VFX Company: Time Based Arts
VFX Supervisor: Mike Skrgatic
Flame Artist: Sheldon Gardner
VFX Producer: Chris Aliano

Music+Sound Company: Factory
Sound Designer: Anthony Moore & Tom Joyce

Mix Company: Factory
Mixer: Anthony Moore & Tom Joyce

You might think that Dior, after paying Jennifer Lawrence a lot of money to be an endorser, would want the woman in its new ad to look pretty obviously like Jennifer Lawrence. But not everyone is convinced she does.

The print ad above, featuring the actress, is drawingpraise, but also some criticism for excessive Photoshopping. It's not on the usual social-ethical grounds but because, as Emily Leaman over at Philly Magazine suggests, the ad looks more like a "pre-pubescent 12-year-old boy than the strong, broad-shouldered, post-pubscent Jennifer Lawrence we know in movies like Silver Linings Playbook and The Hunger Games."

That's a bit of a rhetorical stretch, but you might find yourself blinking hard once or twice before you realize who it is. In reality, it's pretty clearly her—especially when you compare it to some of her early modeling photos. But it is fair to say that between the aggressive retouching (which she tends not to mind) and the haute trappings, Lawrence doesn't look much like the straight-talkinggirl next door image she's grown into.

Jessie Heyman over at Huffington Post, for her part, thinks Dior's new Lawrence looks like Leonardo DiCaprio circa Titanic. Then again, that might be a compliment … he was one of the prettiest young women in Hollywood.

More pics from Lawrence's new Dior campaign below.

In what's being called a first for British television, charity organization Save the Children will air a PSA beginning Tuesday night that includes actual footage of a woman giving birth—and it opens with a stark advisory about the shocking content.

You can see the ad, titled "First Day" and created by London agency adam&eveDDB, below.

It begins with on-screen text: "The following advertisement features a real birth scene which viewers might find distressing." It then cuts to footage, filmed last year (not specifically for an ad), of a young woman giving birth in Liberia—and having the baby cared for by a midwife—at a facility supported by Save the Children.

"For a million newborns every year, their first day is also their last," says on-screen copy. "Basic training for midwives can help end first-day deaths." Viewers are then asked to "Text BORN to 70008 to give £5."

The spot will air after 10 p.m. through Sunday.

Agency and client are unapologetic about the provocative creative. "This is a shocking piece of communication, and it is deliberately designed to make an impact," said Mat Goff, managing director at adam&eveDDB. "One million children dying every year on their first day on Earth is a shocking statistic. So many lives like that of Melvin can be saved simply by having a trained midwife present at the birth. Hopefully it will have the impact that children like Melvin and mothers like T-Girl need."

Added Sue Allchurch, director of marketing and communications for Save the Children: "The 'First Day' creative is a step away from our usual brand advertising, but we felt that a shocking and impactful creative was needed to raise awareness of the scale of the issue and to give the bigger picture of the changes that Save the Children wants to make in the world—stopping children dying for good and helping them fulfill their potential."

CREDITS
Client: Save the Children
Creative Agency: adam&eveDDB
Executive Creative Directors: Ben Priest, Emer Stamp, Ben Tollett
Copywriter, Art Director: Ben Tollett
Planner: Sarah Carter
Media Agency: JAA
Media Planner: Nick Smith
Production Company: The Source
Director: Jonathan Hyams (Save the Children)
Editor: James Sheehy
Postproduction: Finish
Audio Postproduction: 750 MPH

Droga5 is great and all, but it stands to reason, mathematically, that Droga500 would be one hundred times as awesome.

Nail, a small agency in Providence, R.I., invokes the hallowed names of Droga, Mother and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in a series of cheeky new recruitment ads that acknowledge the greatness of those agencies—and then invite you to apply to better versions of them.

Three job ads posted on Google+ include links to droga500.com,mmmmother.com (the "tastier" version of Mother) and goodbysilverstien.com, each of which links through to Nail's site, where you can either apply for a job there (or if you're an "angry attorney," connect with a guy named Jeremy, who can hopefully talk you down).

Says the agency: "We are a small creative shop that competes for talent with big, famous creative shops. So we figured if we can't inspire young creatives to apply for a job here, at least we might be able to confuse them into it."

Via Disco Chicken.

Outdoor ad geeks, here's your latest bit of brilliance, courtesy of Ikea.

German ad agency Thjnk and production studio I Made This teamed up to create Ikea's "RGB billboard," which—much like Ikea furniture itself—makes the most of some very limited space.

The board features three different headlines superimposed on each other in different colors—cyan, magenta and yellow. At night, the board shines red, green and blue (RGB) lightbulbs on the board, revealing, in turn, the different headlines. Red bulbs illuminate the cyan text; green lights up magenta; and the blue-purple lights make yellow visible.

And that's how you turn nine square meters of ad space into 27 square meters.

It's a delightful little visual trick that embodies Ikea's space-saving message. Now, if only it worked a little better during the day.

Via Mindfields on Tumblr.

Woodstock Bourbon's ad showing its hometown's enthusiasm for the brand is pretty funny (well, besides that "Barrellel Parking" sign—groan). But it's right on the brink of being one of those fake homespun liquor ads that Henry Rollins used to laugh at, what with the fiddle music and rural aesthetics. It's like O Brother Where Art Thou? but less subtle.

Perhaps this is because it was made by Australian agency CumminsRoss for the Australian market, and so it needs to show a somewhat cartoony version of Kentucky.

Still, you can't deny the funny visuals. Perhaps Mila Kunis can take a day trip from the Beam distillery in Clermont and learn how to barrel roll like this.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Asahi Premium Beverages
General Manager, Marketing: Kate Dowd
Woodstock Brand Manager: Kelly Jones

Creative: CumminsRoss
Chief Executive Officer: Sean Cummins
Executive Creative Director: Jason Ross
Copywriter: Chris Ellis
Art Director: Aaron Lipson
Managing Director: Chris Jeffares
Group Account Director: Hayden Isaacs
Account Director: Damiano Dipietro
Account Manager: Jessica Chamberlain
Agency Producer: Susannah George

Media: CumminsRoss
Chief Media & Innovation Officer: Kirsty Muddle
Media Manager: Tom Johnson

Production: Guilty
Production company Producer: Jason Byrne
Director: Tony Rogers
DOP: Shelley Farthing-Dawe
Post: The Butchery / The Refinery
Offline Editor: Tim Parrington
Online Editor: Eugene Richards
Grade: Vincent Taylor
Sound Design: Flagstaff Studios
Sound: Paul Le Couteur
Stills Photographer: Christopher Tovo

Bacon is everywhere. (No, not Kevin Bacon.) And it seems everyone loves it—even pigs! It's so great, it once helped a man negotiate his way across the nation dealing exclusively in bacon. Thanks, Oscar Mayer. Now, the bacon craze is hitting the Lehigh Valley IronPigs, the Triple-A affiliate of the Philadelphia Phillies.

The IronPigs this week unveiled what I can only imagine was a highly anticipated bacon-themed Saturday uniform, which includes a bacon-strip logo on the cap, and a "first-of-its-kind" bacon-style piping down both legs of the pants. Check it out at the team's new site, smellthechange.com. For those of us who like to get a bit more bacon for our buck, we can purchase other innovative merchandise such as scratch-and-sniff bacon-logo T-shirts, now available online.

One has to wonder, though. What will this do to the IronPigs' vegetarian fan base? On second thought, who cares!? If they were vegetarians, they weren't real fans anyway.

If loving bacon is wrong, I don’t want to be right. http://t.co/tyRm2x1t26#smellthechangepic.twitter.com/HYSClDtZ2g

— IronPigs (@IronPigs) February 24, 2014

Canadian snack maker Krispy Kernels had a sleeper hit a couple of years ago with its "Couch" commercial, a delightful bit of oddvertising that absconded from Cannes with a bronze Lion.

Now the brand is back with this amusing new ad, "Meditation," which mixes zen meditation with furtive snack eating, with unexpected results.

So much oddball work seems forced these days, but this stuff, from Quebec agency Lg2, is up there with the classic Skittles and Fruit by the Foot ads.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Krispy Kernels
Spot: "Meditation"
Agency: Lg2, Quebec, Canada
Creative Director: Luc Du Sault
Copywriter: Andrée-Anne Hallé
Art Directors: Luc Du Sault, Andrée-Anne Hallé
Account: Mireille Côté, Sandie Lafleur
Director: François Lallier
Production House: Nova Film
Producer: Simon Corriveau
Sound Design: Boogie Studio

When alcohol brands try to broaden their reach beyond their core crowd, the results can often be awkward or even laughable. The best ads are those that acknowledge the brand's base but create a story compelling enough to draw in new audiences.

That's the difficult balance Jägermeister achieves with its new U.K. spot, "Journey to Surf," from London agency The Red Brick Road.

While Jägermeister has a storied legacy dating back to 1935, it's primarily known these days as a shot of choice for "bros." And indeed, this ad brings us the story of a tight-knit group of guy friends heading off for some manly adventures.

But this is no 1990s Mountain Dew commercial about parasailing or base jumping. It's an artfully shot exploration of the icy wilderness, putting perseverance and determination above high fives and chest bumps.

After their epic excursion, the young men find an isolated watering hole and celebrate with shots of Jäger. Even this product payoff is handled well, keeping the focus on camaraderie rather than fetishizing the drink as the driving force behind good times or some equivalent nonsense.

Could this mark a new era for a drink that, while popular, has long seemed unapproachable to those unfamiliar (or perhaps too familiar) with the term Jägerbomb? This is a step in the right direction.

CREDITS
Client: Jägermeister
Spot: "Journey to Surf"
Creative Agency: The Red Brick Road, London
Creative Director: Richard Megson / Matt Davis
Film Production: Academy Films
Director: Seb Edwards
Editor: Sam Rice Edwards, The Assembly Rooms
Post Production: Scott Griffin, Ludo Fealy at Nineteen Twenty Post
Sound Design: Jim Griffin, James Cobbold, Chris Turner at Jungle
Media Agency: AMS Media Group

Here's more billboard crack for you out-of-home addicts.

This fun digital subway ad in Sweden for hair-care products was rigged up to recognize when trains entered the station—and then showed a woman's hair blowing all around, as though windswept by the train. It's a simple, delightful effect—playful, responsive and seemingly magical in the way it erases the line between ad and environment.

Ad agency Akestam Holst and production company Stopp produced the ad for Apotek Hjärtat's Apolosophy products. Stopp in Stockholm says the ad was scheduled to be just a one-day stunt. But Clear Channel loved it so much that they kept it live for five more days "as a way for them to show the opportunities their screens can offer."

Via dsgnrt.net.