What about asking youngsters, instead of experienced creative directors, to create the strongest communication campaigns?
Pets4Pets Project taught little kids the secrets of the advertising industry; inviting them to imagine new social campaigns to help protect the animals they love the most. WWF, together with a team of creatives, photographers, illustrators, film directors, animators, post-producers and speakers helped students at an elementary school experience the whole creative process: from the brief, to the Pre Production Meeting, to the shooting, to going on-air. The result? Well see for yourself in the case video.
The adventure starts in the classroom, then moves inside the creative agency and finally arrives on a production set. For all the experienced creatives there’s just one strict rule: “never ‘contaminate’ the kids’ ideas”, just offer them the production advice they lack. First Challenge: a print campaign.
Second Challenge: a TV commercial.
The results
“From the first sketch on a piece of paper, to 2 TV commercials, 4 radio announcements and 8 print campaigns, ready to go on-air”. For every creative piece, you can see the “before” and “after”: from the kids’ original sketches to the final executions ready to go on-air. One thing is immediately evident: the kids’ work is already 100% creatively effective.
The team of professionals just helped them “translate” their ideas into a language that adults can understand.
Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett Italy Executive Creative Director: Francesco Bozza Associate Creative Director: Andrea Marzagalli Creative Team: Andrea Stanich, Sergio Spaccavento, Paolo Boccardi, Alice Crippa, Serena Micieli, Silvia Savoia Executive Producer: Debora Magnavacca Year: 2013
On the 21st of September CANAL+ launches a new channel, fully dedicated to series, which will be automatically included in the subscription.
The campaign, created by BETC Paris, is a tribute to series and their addictiveness – once you start watching you’re dying to see what happens next… This idea was the starting point for the creative team, the same one as behind The Closet and The Bear. The film was shot in Vancouver during the summer. It was directed by Steve Rogers through Wanda and is followed by an outdoor campaign all over France.
“The idea was to make an intriguing film that creates suspense – you can’t wait to find out how it ends. Just like when you watch a good series. This was one of the reasons we chose dwarf clowns; in great series there’s often something a bit odd about the unusual characters that makes you become attached to them (a cop serial killer, a depressed Mafioso, a family of undertakers…). – Stéphane Xiberras, CCO and President BETC Paris.
Advertising Agency: BETC Paris EXECUTIVE CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Stephane Xiberras COPYWRITER : Jean-Christophe Royer ART DIRECTOR: Eric Astorgue ASSISTANT ART DIRECTOR: Damien Binello STRATEGIC PLANNING: Clarisse Lacarrau, Vianney Vaute TRAFIC : Coralie Chasset PRODUCTION COMPANY: Wanda DIRECTOR: Steve Rogers
Giffarine EQ-10 Skin Care – Belly Button Face (2003)
Two sons try to get revenge on their mother’s plastic surgeon. He lited so much that her belly button is where her face should be. Family photos will never be the same again if only she had used Giffarine EQ-10 wrinkle cream.
Advertising Agency: BBDO Bangkok Gold Lion
Soken – Kill Bill Kill Bill/Tititititanic/X…X…X (2004)
This series show the problems when you play a DVD player. It then recommends a Soken DVD player instead. Kill Bill Kill Bill: the officer man talks to his colleague about the ‘Kill Bill’ DVD. When he is speaking, he is repeating himself again and again. Why? Because his DVD player doesn’t play smoothly. Tititititanic: the office girl talks to her friend at the elevator about the ‘Titanic’ DVD she saw yesterday. However, she isn’t speaking smoothly. Why? Because her DVD player can’t play smoothly either. X…X…X: the Junior Visualiser talks to his co-worker about a Japanese porn DVD. When he is speaking, he freezes up. Why? Because his DVD player is frozen.
Advertising Agency: Euro RSCG Flagship Bangkok Gold Lion for the Campaign
Samart Ringtones – Pole Dancing (2004)
In a train, there is a beautiful woman standing and holding a pole. When she bends down to fix her shoes, the “Cherry Pink” ring tone from another passengers mobile starts to ring. The office girl who is in the position of bending while holding the pole suddenly looks just like a stripper pole dancing. The power of ring tone.
A man and a worm clash over the best tea leaves at the top of a plant.
Advertising Agency: BBDO Bangkok Gold Lion
Ford Ranger OpenCab – King Kong (2005)
A giant kingkong hand snatches a banana-laden truck. Playfully the monkey mistreats the truck. The kingkong”s dad arrives, telling junior it’s lunchtime. Junior ignores dad and continues
playing. Dad picks up the car, tossing it away and smacks junior’s ear. Super : In a man’s world you have to be tough.
Advertising Agency: JWT Bangkok Gold Lion
Krungthai Bank – Headman Villager Lee (2005)
Having a huge piece of log. Pooyai Lee, a Headman Villager gave his idea to the villagers to produce something, starting with a boat, table set, and a cutting board, and all were failed. Until he was left with the idea to make a toothpick. The morale: “without a thoughful plan, any huge capital can be blown away.”
Advertising Agency: Y&R, Bangkok Bronze Lion
Scotch – Date (2005)
A couple are in a restaurant.The girl looks depressed. She tells her boyfriend not to work so hard. She asks if he has some time for her. He put his hand on hers. Suddenly he taps his finger on her hand and moves it around like a computer mouse. Super : Scotch. Antidote for workaholics.
Bangkok insurance wants to communicate the message “Maximum care” and we created a series of TVCs based on that. The idea is to show that the chance of being lucky in certain accidents or situations is less than 1%. The executions play with people being unbelievably lucky in perilous moments.
Advertising Agency: Creative Juice/G1 TBWA, Bangkok Gold Lion for the Campaign
Baby Face Foam – Love Story Campaign (2006)
Decades ago before DVDs, the classic Thai selling method was free outdoor cinema that sold a product during a show. We brought that back… We created “The Love Story” series of 4 episodes that not only sells but also pokes fun a conventional ‘Beauty’ commercials. Airing schedule: prime time on the two most popular channels in Thailand every Friday, Saturday & Sunday starting from June 24th.
Advertising Agency: Jeh United Bangkok Gold Lion for the Campaign
The Thai Olympic Fibre Cement – Shakespearean Gecko (2007)
Sharing the fate of Romeo and Juliet, one lizard sacrifices his life to be with his lover because of the cracked ceiling problem.
Advertising Agency: Publicis Thailand Silver Lion
Bangkok Life Assurance – Salesman (2007)
Bangkok life assurance creates brand awareness by focusing on their unique selling point:their salesmen’s sincerity. Consumers normally are disgusted by salesmen but with Bangkok insurance this perception will totally change.
Advertising Agency: Creative Juice/G1 TBWA Silver Lion for the Campaign
Sylvania Light Bulb – Pic-Nic (2008)
“Nothing to be scared of if there is light. The light is your true friend”.
This is a story about being scared of the dark. During a picnic in the daytime, a father introduces various kinds of Thai ghosts to his son. He has fun getting to know them. Once the light was off, everything became scary. After the launch, this television commercial became the “Talk of the town” and has been requested for download by consumers from many websites.
Advertising Agency: Jeh United Bangkok Gold Lion
D7 Coffee – Wake up Thailand! (2008)
D7 coffee TVC series were created by tying the functional benefit of coffee with controversial issues in Thailand. D7 coffee stimulates not only the body but also the morality of the person.
Shows a family walking along when the father received a phone call from his doctor. He finds out that he has liver cancer. With the family distraught and worrying about how they will support themselves, Muang Thai offers them the assurance they need.
Advertising Agency: JWT Bangkok Silver Lion
Thai Life Insurance – Silence of Love (2012)
This commercial asks the audience to stop and think about the immense value of the care that fathers provide to their children and the sacrifices they make in the name of unconditional love. The story is told through the eyes of a teenage girl who feels alienated because of her inferiority complex due to her father’s deafness. She refuses to accept her father’s love and turns to other sources. When met with disappointment she decides to commit suicide. However, her father discovers her in time and does whatever it takes to keep his daughter alive. As she recovers at the hospital she finally comes to the realization that, even though her father is not perfect, his love for her is perfect and that it was herself who overlooked all his parental acts of love. It’s past time to care for those who have cared for you. Thai Life insurance. Caring for Thai lives.
“The people at Virgin Atlantic are what make it special. I’m proud of every single one of them. See how we are flying in the face of ordinary in our new ad above.”Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Group
Virgin Atlantic is “Flying in the Face of Ordinary” with its new global brand proposition. THe campaign brings to life Virgin Atlantic’s innovative and pioneering spirit, capturing the airline’s passion for flight and demonstrating how Virgin Atlantic goes beyond the norm to deliver unforgettable experiences for its passengers.
As a child, could you catch fish with your bare hands while standing knee deep in the local river? Did you have uncanny, almost otherworldly powers of clairvoyance that let you glimpse the future—and even change it for the better? Could you make paper airplanes before you could crawl?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you should stop what you’re doing and go work at Virgin Atlantic.
All sorts of outlandishly precocious children grow up to become Virgin Atlantic workers in RKCR/Y&R’s stylish, fantastical, tongue-in-cheek launch spot for the carrier’s new global campaign. Styled as a kind of faux movie trailer—cut into 30-, 60- and 90-second TV edits, as well as a cinema version and a two-minute online spot—the spot celebrates the airline’s staff as literal superheroes. Their special gifts include rapid reflexes, preternatural intuition, creative problem solving and heightened empathy. Naturally, as adults, they rendezvous in Virgin’s ranks as cabin crew, ground staff, designers and pilots.
The tagline: “Virgin Atlantic. Flying in the face of ordinary.”
Launched with the new year, the campaign is unapologetically nostalgic and retro, but knowingly so. Air travel hasn’t been glamorous in decades, yet Virgin brings back some of that attitude—along with the attendant fashion and sex appeal—but in a way that’s exaggerated and borders on self-parody. Promising superhuman staff, in the end, is no promise at all. But in typical Virgin style, the carrier builds the whole campaign around such false claims, and expects you to quit worrying and just enjoy it. And it works—largely due to the skillful direction by Partizan’s Antoine Bardou-Jacquet.
The airline explicitly wants to “bring the glamour and fun back into long-haul travel,” says Simon Lloyd, its director of marketing. Mark Roalfe, chairman and executive creative director at RKCR/Y&R, adds: “We wanted to bring to life that special spark that makes the people at Virgin different. I think the film really captures that, but with the tongue-in-cheek tone of voice that we’ve built with Virgin over the last 18 years.”
Sir Richard Branson, President of Virgin Atlantic said: “We’re always on the lookout for gifted young people to grow our business. Our staff hold the keys to the future of Virgin Atlantic, they work so hard and we are delighted to dedicate this new advert to them.”
“At a time of soaring youth unemployment, our advertisement is a powerful New Year message encouraging everyone to look again at young people and the talents they have to offer to businesses and industries all over the country. People are at the heart of Virgin Atlantic and we believe this advert celebrates this”.
True glamour may be gone from air travel for good. But in the ads, if nothing else, you can still count on Virgin to make it fun.
VFX Supervisor Rob Walker said, “It was great working with Antoine and Rainey Kelly. The guys came to us with some really cool ideas for us to realize, such as a little boy catching live fish with his bare hands. We had an intensive shoot in South Africa and a challenging deadline to meet, but this was the perfect job for MPC as it combined all of our disciplines.”
We’ve had an excellent team working on this project, everyone’s dedication and passion has helped to craft a wonderful piece of work. Our CG department has created holograms, paper planes, an aircraft and a DNA sequence. We’ve also completed extensive rig removal, multiple pass compositing and DMP work to embellish and create environments”
Advertising Agency: RKCR/Y&R, London Executive Creative Director: Mark Roalfe Creative Partners: Pip Bishop, Chris Hodgkiss Production Company: Partizan Service Company: Stillking Director: Antoine Bardou-Jacquet Year: 2012
Though he was not the first artist to create an image of Santa Claus for Coca-Cola advertising, Haddon Sundblom’s version became the standard for other Santa renditions and is the most-enduring and widespread depiction of the holiday icon to this day. Coca-Cola’s Santa artworks would change the world’s perception of the North Pole’s most-famous resident forever and would be adopted by people around the world as the popular image of Santa.
In the 1920s, The Coca-Cola Company began to promote soft drink consumption for the winter holidays in U.S. magazines. The first Santa ads for Coke used a strict-looking Claus. In 1930, a Coca-Cola advertised with a painting by Fred Mizen, showing a department store Santa impersonator drinking a bottle of Coke amid a crowd of shoppers and their children.
Not long after, a magical transformation took place. Archie Lee, then the agency advertising executive for The Coca-Cola Company, wanted the next campaign to show a wholesome Santa as both realistic and symbolic. In 1931, the Company commissioned Haddon Sundblom, a Michigan-born illustrator and already a creative giant in the industry, to develop advertising images using Santa Claus. Sundblom envisioned this merry gentleman as an opposite of the meager look of department store Santa imitators from early 20th century America.
Sundblom turned to Clement Moore’s classic poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” (better known as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas”) for inspiration:
His eyes — how they twinkled! His dimples: how merry, His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry; His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow, And the beard of his chin was as white as the snow
The ode’s description of the jolly old elf inspired Sundblom to create an image of Santa that was friendly, warm and human, a big change from the sometimes-harsh portrayals of Santa up to that time. He painted a perfectly lovable patron saint of the season, with a white beard flowing over a long red coat generously outlined with fur, an enormous brass buckle fastening a broad leather belt, and large, floppy boots.
Sundblom’s Santa was very different from the other Santa artworks: he radiated warmth, reminded people of their favorite grandfather, a friendly man who lived life to the fullest, loved children, enjoyed a little honest mischief, and feasted on snacks left out for him each Christmas Eve . Coca-Cola’s Christmas campaign featuring this captivating Santa ran year after year.
As distribution of Coca-Cola and its ads spread farther around the world, Sundblom’s Santa Claus became more memorable each season, in more and more countries. The character became so likable, The Coca-Cola Company and Haddon Sundblom struck a partnership that would last for decades. Over a span of 33 years, Haddon Sundblom painted imaginative versions of the “Coca-Cola Santa Claus” for for Coke advertising, retail displays and posters.
Sundblom initially modeled Santa’s smiling face after the cheerful looks of a friend, retired salesman Lou Prentiss. “He embodied all the features and spirit of Santa Claus,” Sundblom said. “The wrinkles in his face were happy wrinkles.” After Prentiss passed away, the Swedish-American Sundblom used his own face as the ongoing reference for painting the now-enduring, modern image of Santa Claus.
In 1951, Sundblom captured the Coca-Cola Santa “making his list and checking it twice.” However, the ads did not acknowledge that bad children existed and showed pages of good boys and girls only. Mischievous and magical, the Coca-Cola Santa was not above raiding the refrigerator during his annual rounds, stealing a playful moment with excited children and pets, or pausing to enjoy a Coca-Cola during stops on his one-night, worldwide trek. When air adventures became popular, Santa also could be caught playing with a toy helicopter around the tree.
Haddon Sundblom passed away in 1976, but The Coca-Cola Company continues to use a variety of his timeless depictions of Saint Nicholas in holiday advertising, packaging and other promotional activities. The classic Coca-Cola Santa images created by Sundblom are as ubiquitous today as the character they represent and have become universally accepted as the personification of the patron saint of both children and Christmas.
As Joanna Berry, Lecturer in Marketing at Newcastle University Business School, explains: “Whilst Sundblom didn’t invent Santa as the jolly, white haired rotund old man we all now expect, he certainly did more than anyone to imprint that image onto our minds in relation to Coca-Cola in one of the most enduring brand images ever to have been created.”
“A hero is more than a person, a hero is a belief. A belief that, against impossible odds, the world can be saved—and that the world is still worth saving. Heroes inspire that belief in us. They renew our faith and give us that most precious of all gifts—hope. The world needs heroes. That’s why, when a true hero arrives, the world will honor him.“— Xbox.com introduction of “Believe”.
In a bid to reach new audience for Halo franchise for the release of Halo 3, a futuristic human versus aliens science fiction videogame, McCann and T.A.G. in San Francisco came up with this complex integrated campaign that utilizes both film and online advertising. They created a large diorama that documented a historic battle, which was filmed for tv and cinema spots. An interactive flythrough tour of the diorama was then also placed online. It was all intended to present Halo as a story with real emotion. “Our objective was to use every medium we could to communicate the simple idea that Master Chief (the hero of the game) is a true hero to all humankind” says John Patroulis, creative Director at T.A.G.
“The goal was to make this the biggest title lunch in Xbox history” Patroulis continues. “And we went about it by executing a global campaign that used absolutely no game footage, starred either plastic figures or old men in its films, used classic music as its soundtrack, and almost never showed Master Chief”
“The ability to really move people is limited in a 30- or even 60-second TV spot, but the chance of something that’s more interactive or longer format…that’s the same feeling you get as after you’ve gone through a story or an experience and that’s what moves people... – Taylor Smith, Global Communications Director, Xbox
Halo 3 became the fastest pre-selling game in history and made 170 million in sales on its first day, the biggest launch in entertainment history.