Planners today need to be more like conductors able to decipher and orchestrate meaning, understanding and actionable plans from a discordant mix of tactile inputs, digital signals and cultural trends.

Illustration: Niv Bavarsky

Stock markets seem to move arbitrarily. The average tenure of a CMO is getting shorter and shorter; accounts are put into review seemingly as exercise. Brands can be buried by a PR scandal or immortalized serendipitously overnight as a result of the entrenched culture of social media.

Planning can no longer be a haven for meticulous, deliberate academics. Planners need to be on the front lines of this tumult, and their true value is no longer the ability to craft an impeccable, four-month research plan. Increasingly the problem is not a lack of data or information, but an excess of it. Thanks to big data, explaining consumer behavior is not hard anymore. But making the data inspiring is. Turning a client’s mound of research into tight, affordable, actionable ideas is what will make planners indispensable. And we don’t plan far ahead; we interact and try to understand and curate from consumers who carry devices in their hands 10 times more powerful than the computers of 10 years ago.

In his book Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, Steven Johnson makes a great case for how the pop culture we soak in every day is posing new cognitive challenges that are actually making our minds measurably sharper. People can see through it all, and planners must grasp that.

United Technologies’ (a former client of DDB New York) “Cross Section” campaign was a great example of this. UTC is an industrial conglomerate that owns companies like Carrier, Otis and Hamilton Sundstrand. The target was institutional investors who want to be first, right and recognized for it. There is nothing they don’t already know. With this in mind, artists were commissioned to render cross sections of UTC’s technology—helicopters, jet engines and space suits. The intricacies of the products were on display but so were the financial facts about the company. The target appreciated the facts being made visible to them, which in turn helped to build trust in the company.

Effective planners must adapt to the tumult through real-time access to information, allowing them to continually accrue insights. A simple peek at what 1,000 Facebook friends are thinking, doing and feeling can be used as input to a planner’s cultural purview on the world.

A case in point is The Honest Company. Founded by actress Jessica Alba, it provides organic and natural products for babies and adults. The likes the brand has on Facebook help to paint a portrait of moms as we craft our briefs—especially for products that appeal to moms concerned about what they put into and onto their babies.

No budget? Be scrappy and look to new behavior-based sources for insights into the connected, hyperengaged consumer.

Google Trends/Google Search Insights allows us to understand the natural behavior, how consumers seek info, the words people use when searching for a product/category/brand and if there are geographic or seasonal nuances. Social Listening tools like Social Mention, Visible Technologies and Symphony allow us to understand which social platforms consumers favor and the types of conversations they have (including tone/sentiment). And digital content audits allow planners to understand where and how their target consumes content, how they share content and if they generate content.

Big ideas still rule, and having a core platform idea that makes for a cohesive brand narrative is still critical. The New York Lottery has had many campaigns over the years, but the one constant truth is that the work must fuel people’s innate tendency to dream big.

Finally, planners should always be ready to adapt to strange situations. The crazier the world gets, the more clients will want to know that someone can explain what the hell is going on. We must think fast and act like first responders in a brand’s ever-evolving journey.

Maria Tender (@mariatender) is director, brand planning at DDB New York.

Do you like eating in public restrooms? Or does the sight of a toilet and the acrid scent of piss ruin your appetite?

Johnathan Wenske and Kris Haro, both juniors at the University of North Texas, created these nicely made student ads depicting young mothers breastfeeding on toilets—to support bill HB1706 in the Texas legislature, which would protect mothers from harassment and discrimination when they breastfeed their children in public.

The creatives were inspired by the story of a woman who was harassed for breastfeeding in a Target. They decided to shoot three young mothers, perhaps because young moms are least likely to breastfeed. To their credit, the ads don't try to shock. They merely capture the everyday situation many mothers face "when nurture calls." They don't go overboard by art directing a dirty bathroom or even a poorly lit bathroom, but the images are still powerful because breastfeeding in a toilet stall, even a reasonably clean toilet stall, is disgusting.

The three simple headlines are pretty perfect, too.

Seeing breastfeeding in another light—from the perspective of moms forced to nurture an infant in a toilet stall—might help more people to see that the cost of their comfort is another's discomfort. And they might even decide to look away instead of having their say.

See the ads below. Via Yahoo.

IDEA: Pinterest's new Guided Search function offers more structure to your Pinterest searches but retains an element of serendipity. It's programmed loosely enough that exploring certain topics can lead you in unexpected directions, like a tour guide who knows what you might want to see often before you do.

To promote it, the site turned to Molecule, a new creative production company in San Francisco, for a series of online videos (including a two-minute launch spot) whose storytelling style is likewise less than rigid. They're like mini documentaries in which people rely more on curiosity and chance, rather than a well-defined plan, to find what they're looking for.

Guided Search is "all about exploration and discovery, allowing the user to start with an initial curiosity or inspiration and end up finding something they might not have expected," said Molecule co-founder Malcolm Pullinger. "We wanted to capture this feeling through stories and characters that show how this process of inspiration and discovery could play out."

COPYWRITING: The launch spot weaves together six stories. A dad and his daughters look for the perfect pancakes to make. A woman on a bus sees someone holding a book about the California redwoods and begins researching hiking spots. A guy needs help fixing an old Vespa. A woman at a laundromat spies a jogger outside and begins hunting for running clothes. A man tries to decide on the perfect style of beard.

The vignettes overlap; there's very little dialogue. "The variety of stories was intended to show the broad appeal of Pinterest—that it's not just about wedding mood boards and recipes—and also to demonstrate how Guided Search is a tool for exploring and discovering," said Pullinger.

"It was important for us that the video be intimate and have a documentary-like feel," added Molecule co-founder Mohammad Gorjestani. "We decided that a visually driven storytelling approach would be strongest, with dialogue working more like texture."

The spot ends with on-screen text, "Introducing Guided Search. It's full of possibilities," followed by the Pinterest logo.

ART DIRECTION/FILMING: Pullinger and Gorjestani filmed the spot in three days throughout the Bay Area on a Red Epic camera with Zeiss Super Speed lenses. Visually, it's meant to have "an authentic and true-to-life feel," said Pullinger. "This guided our choice of locations, wardrobe, props, etc.—we wanted every detail to look natural. We also used real mobile devices, scratches and all, and used the actors themselves rather than hand models for the product shots, to keep the natural feel."

The cinematographer, Mike Gioulakis, brought "fantastic vérité and handheld instincts," Gorjestani added. "We wanted to have splashes of imperfection, similar to capturing things in real time."

The app was blended in as seamlessly as possible. "We made sure the product moments were justified by the story—that it would be believable for the character to pull out his or her phone and open the Pinterest app in that moment—and that we didn't show more of the app than was necessary to demonstrate the feature and tell the story," said Pullinger.

TALENT: Most of the talent were non-actors—friends, or friends of friends—including a real dad and his girls and an actual Pinterest employee who has a passion for repairing Vespas.

"They are often like a blank canvas and have a lot of enthusiasm," Pullinger said of non-actors. Gorjestani called this kind of scripted documentary style "guided improvisation."

SOUND: A quiet acoustic score, by Keith and Colin Kenniff, builds to a subtle crescendo. "We love how it conveys the feeling of discovery and possibility that are at the heart of the video," said Pullinger.

MEDIA: The characters from the launch spot will appear in their own 30- to 45-second spots over the next couple of weeks.

THE SPOTS:

CREDITS
Client: Pinterest
Production Company: Molecule, San Francisco
Writers/Directors: Mo Gorjestani and Malcolm Pullinger
Producer: Thorsten Hoppenworth
Cinematography: Mike Gioulakis
Art Director and Wardrobe: Kacee Pyles
Editors: Ashley Rodholm and Matt Notaro
Colorist: Ayumi Ashley
Original Music: Keith Kenniff
Sound Design: Joel Raabe

In Brazil, sunscreen brands are all about creating advertising that goes above and beyond in offering you protection.

This case study for Sol de Janeiro showcases a campaign from Ogilvy Rio in which 450 tattoo artists were trained to check their customers for signs of skin cancer. That follows last week's magazine ad from Nivea and FCB São Paolo, which included a removable child-tracking bracelet to help beachgoers from losing their kids.

The Sol de Janeiro work, which relied on lectures from an oncologist, is a smart if narrowly targeted way to raise awareness and signal the brand's devotion to the cause. And for what it's worth, some of the artists have already pointed their clients toward dermatologists, according to the video.

It's also a way better idea than any campaign that encourages consumers to actually get branded tattoos.

It's awards season, and the case studies keep rolling in. This one, from Jung von Matt in Germany, for a campaign to get drivers to stop talking on their mobile phones, should do well among radio judges who enjoy simulated violence for the greater good.

The agency set up a stunt during a live radio show (not during a commercial break) in which a person called in to request a song—and admitted he was driving on the highway. Of course, from there, it doesn't end well.

If you've been to the candy aisle of a grocery store at any point in the past couple of years, you're probably aware that pretty much every name-brand candy bar—Snickers, Milky Way, Kit-Kat—now comes in a little chocolate-dipped, bite-sized (not fun-sized, mind you) form of condensed candy bar goodness.

One candy, however, didn't get that same treatment: the lowly Twix.

Luckily, Mars is finally remedying that with the long-awaited debut of Twix Bites. And judging by the product's new ad campaign from BBDO New York, Mars knows they missed the boat.

"Crunchy cookie, chocolate and caramel in a bite size. An idea so simple, you're probably wondering, why didn't we think of these years ago?" That's the existential question posed by a Mars spokesman in a pair of 30-second spots explaining why the company forgot to shrink one of its most popular candies into bite-sized form. (I mean, for God's sake, they already made 3 Musketeers Bites, and no one in their right mind even likes 3 Musketeers.)

The answer, we discover, is simple: the '80s.

Let me elaborate. Three long decades ago, according to the appropriately titled "Hairspray" and "Walkman" spots, some Mars employees actually had the bright idea to make Twix Bites. Unfortunately, their plans were foiled by the perils of the era—namely, too much hairspray and too much Billy Ocean.

So, maybe the ads are kind of silly. And maybe the whole '80s thing seemed played out 10 years ago. But bravo to Mars for taking responsibility for such a near-fatal oversight. America can now rest a little bit easier.

CREDITS
Client: Twix (Mars)

Agency: BBDO, New York
Chief Creative Officer, Worldwide: David Lubars
Chief Creative Officer, New York: Greg Hahn
Executive Creative Director: Gianfranco Arena
Executive Creative Director: Peter Kain
ACD/Copywriter: Matt Herr
ACD/Art Director: Justin Bilicki

Director of Integrated Production: Dave Rolfe
Group Executive Producer: Amy Wertheimer
Executive Producer: Alex Gianni

Executive Music Producer: Melissa Chester

SVP, Senior Account Director: Kathryn Brown
Account Director: Joshua Steinman
Account Director: Phil Brolly
Account Executive: Aparna Joshi

Production Company: O Postive
Director: Jim Jenkins
Executive Producer: Ralph Laucella
Producer: Marc Grill
Project Manager: Jason Reda
Director of Photography: Robert Gantz
Production Designer: Jason Edmonds

Recording Studio: Sound Lounge
Engineer: Glen Landrum

Editorial Company: Mackenzie Cutler
Editor: Ian MacKenzie
Producer: Evan Meeker
Assistant Editor: Pamela Petruski
Sound Design: Sam Shaffer

Visual Effects House: Schmigital

Composer: Steve Nathanson/Further Lane Music
Music ("Walkman" only): "Get Out Of My Dreams, Get Into My Car" by Billy Ocean

Ikea would like to remind you that the odds are pretty good your parents produced you by having sex on its furniture.

New print ads from the brand in Germany offer a twist on the family-tree motif, with pictures of Ikea beds—dating back to its first, from the late 1940s—inserted in between generations of ancestors. The tagline is, "Where family starts."

That's based on a fun fact—that 10 percent of Europeans were conceived on one of the brand's beds—unearthed by German agency thjnk, which created the campaign (and also made Ikea's clever space-maximizing RGB billboard earlier this year).

Each ad in the new series also features not just beds but one piece of Ikea furniture designed for another room in the house, because why be boring?

Full ads plus credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Ikea
Agency: Thjnk
Chief Creative Officer: Armin Jochum
Creative Directors: Torben Otten, Georg Baur, Bettina Olf
Art Director: Niko Auf dem Berge
Copywriter: Karl Wolfgang Epple
Account Managers: Björn-Thore Bietz, Constanze Frink, Svenja Gollmer, Meike Freymuth
Art Buyer: Lina Eggers
Freelancer Photographer: Kerstin Lakeberg

Get out your Kleenex, because Ogilvy Amsterdam and funeral insurance company Dela have brought back their Cannes-conquering "Why wait until it's too late?" campaign—urging people to "say something wonderful" to those they love here and now.

One of three new long-form ads takes place at a concert hall, as a woman named Martine surprises her widowed father midway through the show by taking the stage and serenading him with a song expressing her admiration and affection. In another, elderly Leo, who has struggled with illness of late, appears poolside during his wife's exercise class to thank her for more than 50 years of companionship and devotion. Finally there's Mark, an overweight, bullied teen, who pays tribute to a special teacher who helped him overcome his social awkwardness.

These are real people, not actors, and their reactions are genuine (Martine's dad and Mark's teacher struggle to hold back tears), which ratchets up the emotional intensity, despite the fact that the approach is fairly restrained given the campaign's premise.

This is powerful stuff—an evocative concept expertly realized—though it makes me feel just a tad uncomfortable, like I'm peeking at intimate moments where perhaps I shouldn't pry.

Maybe my discomfort stems at least partly from the realization that there are people I haven't taken the time to thank and praise. By going so boldly public, the folks in these ads remind the rest of us that a few heartfelt words spoken in private can make all the difference.

Leave it to the auteur Gus Van Sant to take some of automotive advertising's biggest clichés—self-glorifying narration over footage of a luxury car in the desert—and somehow still turn them into something beautifully compelling.

Van Sant, best known for his Oscar-nominated directing of Hollywood hits Good Will Hunting and Milk, helmed three new spots for BMW's upcoming plug-in hybrid, the i8.

They are, as one would expect, artfully shot, using a shifting focal depth to bring some new perspective to the age-old images of a cutting-edge automobile tearing across barren wastelands. (Thankfully they're not salt flats for once.) And the minimalist visuals definitely help you focus on the car, whose sleek lines and sci-fi detailing are definitely not the usual BMW fare.

But it's the narration that truly drives the spots. Featuring actors Michael Pitt (Jimmy from Boardwalk Empire), Sam Hazeldine (Caleb on ABC's recently renewed Resurrection) and Mickey Sumner (co-star of Frances Ha), the ads describe the i8's unlikely evolution from Tron-like concept car to production reality.

"I am one no one believed, a vision, a dream, a crazy idea," intones Pitt, who played Kurt Cobain in Van Sant's Last Days. "I am millions of questions, the endless search for answers that no one has found before. Try, error. Try, error. Try, again and again."

The ads also bring something truly rare to a luxury car ad: a woman's voice.

Most high-priced car ads relegate women to looking elegant in long, flowing dresses while gently caressing the vehicle's curves. If women are shown actually driving a luxury car, it's usually some ridiculous art house scenario where they're fleeing a black-tie gala while throwing a head scarf out the window or some nonsense.

So, while it's not necessarily a Sandra Day O'Connor-level achievement to hear Sumner describing the innovative elegance of a hybrid sports car, it's a refreshing change from the ironic modern monopoly of Mad Men manly man voices Jon Hamm and John Slattery.

These are best viewed in full screen.

CREDITS
Client: BMW
Senior Vice President, Brand Management, Marketing Services: Steven Althaus
Vice Presidents, Brand Management, Marketing Services: Andreas Christoph Hofmann, Wolfgang Breyer
Head of International Advertising, Online, Social Media: Wolfgang Gross
Project Manager, International Advertising, Brand Communication: Heiko Kircher

Agency: Serviceplan International GmbH & Co. KG
Chief Creative Officer: Alexander Schill
Executive Creative Director, Worldwide: Maik Kaehler
Creative Directors: Nikolaus Ronacher, Nina Puri
Head of Production: Sandra Niessen
Agency Producer: Anne Hoffmann
Managing Partner, International: Markus Noder
Management Supervisor: Jens Hoffmann
Account Directors: Melanie Blankenburg, Florian Klietz

Production Company: Iconoclast
Director: Gus Van Sant
Executive Producers: Charles-Marie Anthonioz, Nicolas Lhermitte
Producer: Julien Lemaitre
Director of Photography: Kasper Tuxen
Postproduction: Angus Wall, A52, Rock Paper Scissors
Music: B.C. Smith, Allessandro Cortini
Sound, Design: Lime Studios

"It's the little things in life that makes us happy." That's the message in this print and outdoor Coca-Cola campaign from Ogilvy Berlin, and it's true in advertising generally. Unusually little things tend to get big props—whether you're talking doll houses,mini Abe Lincolns or tiny billboards.

Ogilvy placed these mini kiosks in five major German cities. They sold mini cans of Coke, which was the whole point, but also various other miniature products. They even had a pint-size vending machine. The kiosks sold an average of 380 mini cans per day, which Ogilvy says is 278 percent more than a typical Coke vending machine.

Via The Denver Egotist.

In 2012, Air Wick announced a partnership with the National Park Foundation to produce a collection of home scents inspired by places like Yellowstone and Glacier Bay. The company praised these sylvan preserves for furnishing Americans “with the purest scents of nature.” For the record, the sprayable versions of these scents are made with trideceth-9, dipropylene glycol and other stuff that doesn’t exactly remind one of the great outdoors.

But never mind that. The fact that consumers can look at this 2014 ad for silver lotus-scented oils and imagine their homes redolent of Channel Island breezes demonstrates just how thoroughly air fresheners have wafted their way into our lives. The ad doesn’t explain how an air freshener works or its benefits—because it doesn’t have to. “Everybody knows what this product is,” observed Hayes Roth, former CMO of Landor and now principal of his own brand consulting firm. “And everybody assumes that it’s going to work.”

Things weren’t always so simple, as a look back at this 1947 Air Wick ad shows all too clearly. Air fresheners had been on the market a mere four years when this nauseating little ad appeared in the pages of Esquire. The product’s sheer newness warranted a marketing approach that was a total inversion of what we see today. While 2014’s tropical-island photo suggests how nice people’s homes might smell, this erupting ashtray of 1947 played off the embarrassment of how bad many people’s homes actually did smell.

As Roth pointed out, this “old, heavy style of selling” was common for products like deodorants and mouthwashes, and standard marketing practice at a time when personal and domestic hygiene standards weren’t the fussy priorities they are now. “In the 1950s, nobody was worried about whether you smelled bad,” he said, “and the smoke-filled room was an accepted environment.”

In fact, we can thank products like Listerine and Air Wick for making us aware—if a bit brutally—that our middle-class lives could be more refined if we so chose. A succession of newer air fresheners nudged that trend forward, if clumsily. Air Wick’s 1947 claim that chlorophyll “kills all unpleasant odors” was an assertion largely discredited by the mid-1950s, and for decades air fresheners merely attempted to mask odors with sickly sweet aromas like roses. It wasn’t until Procter & Gamble’s 1998 patenting of cyclodextrin (the active ingredient in Febreze) that the industry moved completely into the realm of effective odor killing.

Today, consumers’ faith in that chemical miracle makes this 2014 ad possible and credible—tropical island and all. 

Specs
Who Brian Ford (l.), co-founder, ecd, and Chris Raih, co-founder, managing director
What Full-service creative agency
Where Venice, Calif.

What if not all sharks live in the water? A block east of the Pacific—one block from GQ’s “coolest block in America”—you’ll find Zambezi, founded eight years ago by the OGs of Silicon Beach, ex-Wieden + Kennedy staffers Chris Raih and Brian Ford. In that time, the sports- and entertainment-focused creative agency has grown to a staff of 80. Much like the Zambezi bull shark, “[the agency] is adaptable and a little ferocious,” said ecd Ford. “Our focus is on turning consumers into fans.” The shop has worked with Li-Ning on the “Way of Wade” campaign and is the agency of record for both Caesars Interactive Entertainment and Fruitwater. Most recently, Zambezi has worked with TaylorMade, a leading golf manufacturer. Meantime, Raih and Ford keep trolling for more blood in the water.

Imagine a Gatorade ad where a kicker misses every field goal, or a Nike spot where a runner trips over hurdles. It would be a little bizarre.

Something similar, though perhaps not as obvious to the average viewer, happens in this ad from Free People clothing, and it has many trained dancers in an uproar. The spot and the print ads all feature a model in beautiful Free People clothing and pointe shoes, but it's painfully obvious she's not an experienced dancer. Dancers do not go on pointe without having extensive training—and frankly, really strong ankles.

This photo on the Free People site has dancers riled up, too.

I spoke with a friend who's a former pro dancer: "Like other sports, ballet is super athletic, and to be on your toes in pointe shoes is not something you just do. You need very good training," she said.

Me: "It's not just that she's improperly posed, is that correct? It's also dangerous?"

Her: "It's super dangerous. Her foot is sickled. Her ankles are not supporting her body and her position well."



The comments on Free People's YouTube channel and Facebook page echo those thoughts.

"Has she been TRAINED????? Her feet are TERRIBLE, her lines are TERRIBLE... I could go on. This is OFFENSIVE to dancers out there. You went and decided to cast some local 'ballet dancer' because she had your look. Shame on you, there are plenty of professionals out there that would have looked stunning in this."

"Please take this shit down."

"This is genuinely offensive to people who are actually dancers. It's clear she hasn't been dancing since she was three … next time hire a professional to model dance-wear."

Free People should take some dance lessons from Under Armour, which is doing it right with American Ballet Theatre soloist Misty Copeland.

We've reached out to Free People for their point of view and will update when we hear back.

Delis, grocery stores, liquor marts and bakeries in Bogota, Colombia—most which close at 8 p.m.—agreed to advertise for one of their competitors, Carulla, by turning their late-night security shutters into billboards for the 24-hour supermarket chain.

The campaign from Ogilvy paid local merchants to post messages on their metal gates, including "The butcher is asleep. The one at Carulla on 85th is awake" and "In here we have everything but if you need it now, go to the Carulla on 63rd."

It reminds me a bit of that DHL stunt (which DHL insisted it didn't approve or condone) that showed competitors of the delivery service carrying large packages touting DHL. Points to Carulla for devising a non-prank concept that delivered for all concerned, with participating stores providing a little extra convenience to customers.

Credits below.



CREDITS
Client: Carulla
Agency: Ogilvy and Mather Colombia
Chief Creative Officer: Jhon Raúl Forero
Executive Creative Director: Juan Pablo Álvarez, Mauricio Guerrero
Creative Director: Julio César Herazo, Amples Regiani
Copywritter: Julio César Herazo, José Cárdenas, Jorge Villareal
Art Director: Amples Regiani, Gabriel Escobar, Mauricio Reinoso
Graphic Designer: Maria Fernanda Ancines
Production Company: Direktor Films
Director: Felipe Suarez
Producer: Lali Giraldo

It's been monogamous for decades. But now, A.1. Sauce wants to get around with all kinds of foods. And that means toying with the tender emotions of steak, its first love.

The condiment brand is officially dropping the word "Steak" from its label after 50 years, and has created this chuckle-worthy video recapping the story of their relationship, as told through Facebook personas for each.

The two-minute spot, from Crispin Porter + Bogusky's Los Angeles office, perfectly captures the sort of bad soap opera plot line to which social media can reduce everyone's life—from the honeymoon phase through that dreaded moment where A.1 tells Steak they need to talk, and on to the part where Steak pretends to be supportive of A.1.'s decision to publicly snub it in favor of, you know, pretty much the whole menu.

"Change looks good on you!" says Steak, with the sort of exclamation point perfectly placed to cast doubt on the sincerity of the statement preceding it.

In addition to the online clip, A.1. will start running its first TV ads in five years beginning on Monday. Even the umbrella tagline for the campaign goes out of its way to be suggestive: "For almost everything. Almost."

Because obviously you don't want to put it on your dessert.



CREDITS
Client: A.1. Sauce
Agency: Crispin Porter + Bogusky, Los Angeles

When you wake up looking like Jim Morrison and Brian Wilson's weird soccer hooligan man-baby, you've slept too long. You might want to get up, dust off the cobwebs and maybe get a friggin' haircut, ya big hippie. 

This delightfully absurd spot from French automaker Citröen and agency Les Gaulois opens with a groggy, unkempt man waking up from what appears to be a pretty satisfying Rip Van Winkle-ish snooze. He wakes up and shuffles to the window, and then we see him assemble the fragments of the years he slept through. 

Take a look below to see what happens next. 

Via Adeevee.

CREDITS

Advertising Agency: Les Gaulois, Puteaux, France
Creative Director: Gilbert Scher, Marco Venturelli, Luca Cinquepalmi
Art Director: Marie Donnedieu
Copywriter: Ouriel Ferencz
Director: Eric Lynne

If you happened to catch this PSA on television in Britain this month, you might be left wondering if it is—could it somehow possibly be?—real footage. And that's the point.

The spot, from Grey London, shows an unborn baby drifting around inside the womb in what is surely the most real-seeming in-utero footage ever. It is, however, all CGI.

"The craft and technique that Digital Domain and [Radical Media director] Chris Milk put into making the ad was amazing, and the end result looks so brilliantly life-like that we hope people will walk away from it questioning whether it's real or not," says Grey deputy executive creative director Vicki Maguire.

The ad, for the British Heart Foundation, even has the baby do the voiceover (in a child's voice). She talks about how she might inherit a heart condition from her parents.

"I wanted to create a sincere and simple piece of film, forging a deeply emotional connection with girl who needs saving even before she is born," says Milk, who also made Arcade Fire's stunning interactive experience The Wilderness Downtown."The story is told in a world that is familiar but still a mystery. She's invited us in because she has something to say. Something vital."

Credits below.



CREDITS
Client: British Heart Foundation
Agency: Grey London
Creative Director: Vicki Maguire
Copywriter: Clemmie Telford
Art director: Lex Down
Managing Partner: Sarah Jenkins
Business Director: Eve Bulley
Account Manager: Grant Paterson
Account Executive: Isaac Hickinbottom
Agency producer: Vanessa Butcher
Creative producer: Gemma Hose
Planner: Ruth Chadwick
Media agency: PHD London
Media planner: Monica Majumdar
Production company: @radical Media
Director: Chris Milk
VFX: Digital Domain
Editor: Brian Miller
Producer: Ben Schneider/Sam Storr
Post-production: Digital Domain
Soundtrack composer: Vampire Weekend
Audio post-production: Grand Central

Re/Max's first ads since it went public are here, and they're Zooey Deschanel-grade quirky.

Four new spots by Leo Burnett in Chicago, which the 40-year-old company tapped in August, feature eager people looking for their dream homes and Re/Max agents guiding them to something even better—though in a different way—than what they'd imagined.

The tagline is, "Dream with your eyes open," but one spot puts it best: "With a Re/Max agent, you'll see how much better than a dream home the right home can be."

While the ads have an odd (and vaguely annoying) rhyming pattern in the voiceover, there's something endearing about the heart of the message. Re/Max is pitting expectations against reality, and trying to show that sometimes the reality can be better.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Re/Max
Agency: Leo Burnett/Lapiz USA
Ad or Campaign: “Dream With Your Eyes Open”
Executive Creative Director: Laurence Klinger
Creative Director: Manuel Torres
ACD/Art Director: Flavio Pina
ACD/Copywriter: Lizette Morazzani
Executive Producer: Ken Gilberg
Producer: Mariana Perin
Senior Music Producer: Chris Clark
EVP, Director of Planning: Wells Davis
VP, Strategy Director: Howard Laubscher
Strategy Director: Felipe Cabrera
EVP, Account Director: Richard Roche
VP Account Director: Ernesto Adduci
Account Supervisor: Sara Abadi
Account Executive: Spencer Colvin
Production Company: MPC Creative
Director: Paul O’Shea, Dan Marsh
Executive Producer: Asher Edwards
Line Producer: Zak Thornborough
VFX/SPX: MPC LA
Post Producer: Diana De Vries

Someone at Ogilvy India thought it would be a good idea to depict Malala Yousafzai being shot by the Taliban to sell Kurl-On mattresses. Clearly it wasn't.

Ogilvy has now officially apologized for the ad, saying it is "contrary to the beliefs and professional standards of Ogilvy & Mather and our clients." It was originally sent to Ads of the World, which has since taken it down, though you can still see the full ad on AOTW's Facebook page. (The concept is that Kurl-On mattresses help you "Bounce back." The Malala ad shows her falling after being shot, bouncing off a mattress and rising to receive a humanitarian award.)

Other ads in the series featured Steve Jobs being ousted by Apple and Gandhi being tossed off a train for refusing to move from first class. I can only imagine the creatives said, "Geez, we should probably get a woman in there." And Malala is a great choice. Except what happened to her wasn't a cartoon, which is where the whole thing falls apart. Plus, she didn't just "bounce back." She soared above. The ad really is the ultimate trivialization of a horrific event.

Malala has appeared in ads—most notably, Bing's "Heroic Women of 2013" spot. But you know, celebrating her strength and courage is different than shooting her again.

What do you think? If you think the world is way too sensitive now and offended over everything, let me know in the comments without threatening to shoot me. That won't help your point.

Hawaii-based Kona Brewing Co. has released a new ad campaign from Duncan/Channon reminding stressed-out mainlanders to enjoy life.

One of two new spots, "Sad Hour," suggests that we set aside one hour a day for all the tedious crap we hate doing so the other 23 hours of the day can be happy. A second spot, "Single-Tasking," introduces the concept of only doing one thing at a time (drinking beer, for example).

Kona is borrowing heavily from old Bartles & Jaymes ads here, and adding a healthy dose of island life stereotyping, but the big guy's delivery is good enough to make it all work.

The ads will air in Orlando, San Diego and Los Angeles markets throughout the summer. "The 'Dear Mainland' campaign truly captures the unique Hawaiian spirit of Kona Brewing and, in a fun way, delivers our message that reconnecting with family, friends and community is what truly matters,"
says Aaron Marion brand manager at Kona Brewing.