Hasta La Ideas

Summer haters being kept in the cold, an illustrated ditty on the perils of ill-advised transgressions on railway lines and a turbo-charged chain-reaction video feature in our latest round-up of entertaining, and endearing, ads from around the world.

From the makers of the award-winning ‘Dads in Briefs’ commercial, Buenos Aires-based Del Campo Saatchi & Saatchi, comes another cinematic masterpiece to celebrate the unsung benefits of BGH Air Conditioners. It features a sinister character peering through his shutters, pondering the “stinking people, sweating away their dignitiy”, the “arm pits”, “piss in pools, rancid smells” and downright “nauseating beings” of the scorchio world outside. Luckily BGH keeps this particular borderline-psychotic ‘summer hater’ confined to his well air conditioned home.

‘Dumb ways to die’ is part of the ‘Be Safe Around Trains’ campaign for Metro Trains by McCann in Melbourne. It combines a catchy title, with a tune impossible to get out of your head and endearing animation by Julian Frost to make a public awareness message eminently viral. Since its release last Friday, it has become the fastest spreading Australian viral video on YouTube. A week on, you will still be singing the refrain – the mother of all earworms.

New Zealand online bookseller Good Books, which donates all its profits to charity, secured the services of String Theory and The Mill’s McBess and Simon for this lush animation ‘Havana Heat’. It’s the second in its Great Writers campaign and is inspired by the cleavage-heaving language of Mills & Boon.

BBDO New York’s Christmas commercial for cable network HBO lends Yuletide-giving an office politics twist. Nothing conveys pent-up loathing quite like an HBO boxset.

Barclaycard’s ‘Toys’ commercial by BBH is a live-action homage to Toy Story featuring a hapless customer who gets stumbles on a store’s secret level entirely populated by living toys.

In true Red Bull style, the brand’s ‘Kluge: The Ultimate Athlete Power Machine’ video was two years in the making and takes the idea of chain-reaction mechanics to another level. Produced by Andy Carlson with Adam Sadowsky, co-founder of Syyn Labs, the film combines 12 ‘machines’ set in motion through a domino-effect sequence of triggers with 11 Red Bull athletes such as golfer Rickie Fowler, hurdler Lolo Jones and snowboarder Pat Moore that keep the action going.

Havas Worldwide Sydney plays on some universal pretensions of amateur DSLR-camera users in its amusing series of clips for Sony’s YouTube channel to promote the NEX camera. From the ‘F-Stop Fusspot’ to the ‘Macro Freak’, these wannabe photography pros are instantly recognisable – you might be one of them.

Finally, McCann Oslo, created this health-and-safety-defying stunt for Microsoft Norway to coincide with the launch of Windows 8 operating system. The ‘Live Tile Experiment’ invited passers-by to experience the software’s Live Tiles feature in the real world.

CR for the iPad

Read in-depth features and analysis plus exclusive iPad-only content in the Creative Review iPad App. Longer, more in-depth features than we run on the blog, portfolios of great, full-screen images and hi-res video. If the blog is about news, comment and debate, the iPad is about inspiration, viewing and reading. As well as providing exclusive, iPad-only content, the app will also update with new content throughout each month. Try a free sample issue here.

CR In print

In our November issue we look at ad agency Wieden + Kennedy in a major feature as it celebrates its 30th anniversary; examine the practice of and a new monograph on M/M (Paris); investigate GOV.UK, the first major project from the Government Digital Service; explore why Kraftwerk appeals so much to designers; and ponder the future of Instagram. Rick Poynor reviews the Phaidon Archive of Graphic Design; Jeremy Leslie takes in a new exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery dedicated to experimental magazine, Aspen; Mark Sinclair explores Birmingham’s Ikon Gallery show of work by the late graphic designer, Tony Arefin; while Daniel Benneworth-Gray writes about going freelance; and Michael Evamy looks at new telecommunications brand EE’s identity. Plus, subscribers also receive Monograph in which Tim Sumner of tohave-and-tohold.co.uk dips into Preston Polytechnic’s ephemera archive to pick out a selection of printed paper retail bags from the 70s and 80s.

The issue also doubles up as the Photography Annual 2012 – our showcase of the best images in commercial photography produced over the last year. The work selected is as strong as ever, with photographs by the likes of Tim Flach (whose image of a hairless chimp adorns the front cover of the issue, above); Nadav Kander (whose shot of actor Mark Rylance is our Photography Annual cover); Martin Usborne; Peter Lippmann; Giles Revell and more.

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