For the record, Frank Loesser's "Baby It's Cold Outside" is a duet about a guy who spikes his date's eggnog in the hope that she'll stay the night. Christmas!
I will be doing a bit of Grinching in this post, so let's start with how this is a perfectly fine Sprint ad, but a much better Samsung ad—as it spends quite a while showing off the latest Galaxy S III phone's capabilities, specifically the near-field system that lets you swipe videos and images between phones (at least two of these are definitely GS 3s).
This is also a pretty good Nickelodeon ad, since both Victoria Justice and Max Schneider are staples of the flailing kids' network and its Disneyfied music programming strategy, and both are doing here what it is they do. I would love to be able to successfully pretend to like Schneider's performance style, but I just can't. It's like watching Stevie Wonder's zombie. It's like an undead Smokey Robinson arose from its tomb, Bill Withers somehow failed to slay it with a flaming sword, and it was given its own television show. It's quite bad, though he has a nice voice.
Justice is more appealing, although her performance is sort of the unironic version of Alison Brie's hilarious/sexy "Teach Me How to Understand Christmas" from last year's Christmas episode of Community.
I will, however, admit to being a sucker for the poppier holiday songs in the medley here, especially Wham!'s "Last Christmas" (which even I can see is a perfect vehicle for Schneider, despite it being "lovely weather for a sleigh ride together wi' youuuu" mere seconds later). Also, not to go all Bill O'Reilly, but there are no Hannukah songs in this medley. You wouldn't even have to change the end of "The Christmas Song" (because it's called "The Christmas Song," guys) to "Happy Holidays to You."
Anyway. Props to YouTube vlogger Kurt Hugo Schneider for putting this together. The production is slick (it was shot all in one take), Justice and Schneider look like the product of focus-grouped eugenics, and the phone-hopping video stuff really is cute. And remember: When you're choosing a telecom provider, be sure to switch to Nickelodeon.
CREDITS
Client: Sprint
Agency: Team Sprint (Digitas and Leo Burnett)
Spot: "Holiday Medley with Victoria Justice and Max Schneider"
Executive Creative Director: Michael Boychuk
Group Creative Director: Lawrence Lee
Content Strategy and Development Manager: Mark Book
Executive Producer: Michael Rafayko
Director: Kurt Schneider
Account Director: Andrew Melone
Account Executive: Jake Bruene
