In the latest Old Spice campaign from Wieden + Kennedy Portland mums lament losing their lovely boys to predatory females lured by the boys’ powerful scent
W+K has had an incredibly good run with its Old Spice advertising – surely the quality would drop off eventually? Well, not yet anyhow.
In the launch ad for the Smellcome to Manhood campaign promoting Old Spice’s new body sprays, devoted mums bemoan the fact that they may no longer be the most important woman in their sons’ life.
Two follow-up spots continue the theme
It’s funny, brilliantly acted and performed, unnerving, weird, utterly memorable and distinctive and unlike any advertising we have seen for a long while.
Credits:
Agency: W+K Portland Creative Directors: Craig Allen, Jason Bagley Copywriters: Justine Armour David Povill Art Director: Ruth Bellotti Production Company: MJZ Director: Steve Ayson
Alors que la série The Simpsons fête ses 25 ans, la marque de carnets Moleskine signe une collaboration avec l’univers de Matt Groening. Disponible à la vente en édition limitée, ces 4 modèles contiennent de nombreuses illustrations, détails et stickers en rapport avec les habitants de Springfield.
Google a dévoilé, comme il est désormais coutume chaque année, les termes les plus recherchés en une jolie vidéo appelée Google Zeitgeist. Une création permettant de revivre l’année 2013 passée en moins de deux minutes. L’ensemble est à découvrir en images et en vidéo dans la suite de l’article.
Une excellente initiative de l’agence Digitas pour le constructeur téléphonique Motorola avec cette campagne innovante autour des couleurs. Une opération et une publicité interactive disponible dans plus de 150 000 numéros de l’édition de Janvier 2014 de Wired Magazine. Plus de détails dans la suite de l’article.
In our review of 2013, we run down the top ten most popular stories from the Creative Review website this year. Click on the links to read the original posts
In May this year, Everton unveiled a new club badge (shown above). In the face of huge opposition to it from fans, the club rapidly backtracked and invited supporters to choose from three more options. We covered the original design and its replacement (both posts linked above)
Football fans generally react badly to any attempts to mess with the heritage of their club. In particular, changes of club colours, names or badges can provoke huge hostility. So it was with Everton this year when the club announced a new badge for the 2013–14 season.
Development sketches for the new Everton crest by in-house design team. Creative manager: Nigel Payne. Graphic designer: Mark Derbyshire. Artworker: Lee May
On the face of it, Everton appeared to have gone about things in the right way: it consulted with fan groups and published a lengthy background rationale for the new design. But many fans hated the new look and, in particular, the fact that it no longer included the club motto. A redrawn Prince Rupert’s Tower also failed to find favour even though the new design bore a far closer resemblance to the actual building.
The club responded (or caved in, depending on your perspective) to fan pressure and announced a new, wider consultation process. Working with design consultancy Kenyon Fraser it then presented three new options for public vote. The fans’ favourite (above), which includes the motto, original drawing of the tower, laurel wreaths and the club’s formation date, will be used from the start of the 2014–15 season.
The newspaper’s elegant, beautifully crafted redesign drew almost universal praise from our readers (post linked above), but others doubted its effectiveness
On November 7, The Independent revealed a new look, the result of a three month project from Matt Willey and the newspaper’s in-house design team. In our post, Willey and the paper’s Stephen Petch and Dan Barber, talked through the changes which included a new bespoke type family and a radical masthead redesign.
A new set of typefaces designed by Henrik Kubel of A2/SW/HK and A2-Type featured throughout. Designing from the type up meant that the way each page worked was rethought, restructured, and, in particular, de-cluttered and simplified.
From the front page onwards, the new direction was striking. The previous blocky sans-serif masthead made way for a new design that was at once radical but also elegant. Willey said its placement was a way of making the compact front page appear more sophisticated, creating a taller, more broadsheet-like format.
“I wanted to go back to an elegant serif for the masthead which felt like such a strong part of the newspaper’s identity when it was a great paper,” Willey said. “Running it vertically allows what is a fairly long name to be prominent, unapologetic, without it getting in the way.”
“We were keen to strip out a lot of the clutter, to simplify the colour palette, to have more deliberate and rational use of colour, photographs and graphics,” Willey said of the overall design. “It just feels like The Independent to me.”
Ahead of a long-rumoured merger with US Airways, American Airlines unveiled a new look, ditching Massimo Vignelli’s classic eagle logo
In January American Airlines unveiled a new brand identity from Futurebrand, replacing the 1967 Massimo Vignelli classic with a 3D ‘flight symbol’ and plenty of the good ol’ red, white and blue.
Key to the new look was what was referred somewhat clumsily to as the ‘flight symbol’. This 3D device (above) combined several AA ‘assets’ – the letter A, a star, an eagle and the red, white and blue livery. The ‘flight symbol’ was matched with the airline name (set in a custom face named American Sans) in a new mark.
Anyone who is familiar with Mad Men will have an idea of just what a central place American Airlines has in corporate America. In design terms too, along with perhaps IBM, FedEx and UPS, it has been one of the greats – the last survivor of the golden age of US corporate design when Rand, Bass, Vignelli et al branded America.
Vignelli has said that his original (above) was all about stressing “the professional, no-gimmicks attitude” of the airline. It was, Vignelli’s site says, “one of the few [logos] worldwide that needs no change”.
Obviously, AA thought otherwise. Perhaps relying on a “professional, no-gimmicks attitude” just won’t cut it in the airline business these days.
We asked Vignelli what he thought of the new look: “Design cannot cover the mistakes of bad management, but styling can. That is why American Airlines opted for that solution. The logo we designed had equity, value and timelessness. Why to bother with it?”
This year’s M&S Christmas ad starred model/actress Rosie Huntington-Whitely and Helena Bonham Carter in a fairytale extravaganza
M&S unveiled its blockbuster Christmas TV ad on the same day as some pretty bleak sales figures were announced. Would Rosie and her ever-changing array of undies right the ship?
RKCR/Y&R put Rosie Huntington-Whiteley front and centre in a fantasy treatment which referenced Alice in Wonderland and the Wizard of Oz and also featured Helena Bonham Carter. The ad was beautifully made but perhaps didn’t have the ‘all things to all ages’ appeal of previous M&S Christmas spots. And a lot of you were horrified by the choice of door bell…
Sometimes the stories which capture our readers’ imagination simply showcase a great craft technique, as in the case of this Russian artist
Number six in our list of the most popular stories of the year on the CR website featured the work of Russian graphic artist Dmitri Aske who created a series of striking plywood artworks.
Aske starts with a sheet of plywood onto which he transposes his drawings. The individual pieces are then cut out, painted in acrylics and re-assembled. This series of pieces was shown at the Faces&Laces Street Culture Show in Moscow. Aske started his career as a grafitti artist but now works across graphic design, typography, illustration, street and fine art. For more, see sicksystems.ru
Our Money issue and its follow-up online created a lot of debate in the industry as readers compared their pay with the averages quoted
Are designers badly paid? How much should you charge? What do ad agency creative directors earn? Could you earn more abroad? Our January issue tackled these and other cash-related questions. Online, we shared some of the key findings of the research
Three’s Moonwalking Shetland Pony became a massive viral hit, prompting widespread media coverage and making Socks an instant star
Wieden + Kennedy’s London office conjured up a dancing, moonwalking Shetland pony to demonstrate that mobile network Three understands that ‘silly stuff’ is important to its users. This film – shot by Blink’s Dougal Wilson who worked closely with MPC to create the pony’s magic moves – was a great example of a piece of content that was duly shared like crazy. The silliness of a Shetland pony strutting and moonwalking to the sound of Fleetwood Mac’s Everywhere proved irresistible to many.
As well as the film, W+K, with Blink and Munky, cooked up more ways for the idea to be shared in the form of The Pony Mixer, an app that also lived on Three’s YouTube channel and allowed users to create and share (via Twitter or Facebook) their own remixed videos of the pony performing to different types of music
To mark the 150th anniversary of the London Underground, our special issue delved into every aspect of the tube’s visual communications
It’s rare that one of our posts about the new issue of CR generates masses of traffic but a combination of the subject matter and, we’d like to think, the content ensured that our March special issue on the 150th anniversary of the London Underground received a very positive response online. It sold out too.
David Pearson’s ‘censored’ Penguin Classics cover for Nineteen Eighty-Four caused a huge amount of interest and debate on our site (story linked above)
Brand new covers for five of George Orwell’s books featured in a series of Penguin Classics designed by David Pearson. The set included a remarkable take on arguably Orwell’s best-known novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Pearson’s adept use of type – as demonstrated in his work on Penguin’s Great Ideas series of short, influential texts – was once again at the fore of each of the designs. For Nineteen Eighty-Four, the title and author’s name were almost completely obscured by black foiling.
“It’s obviously the risk-taker of the series,” said Pearson. The design went through numerous iterations “to establish just the right amount of print obliteration. Eventually we settled on printing and debossing, as per the Great Ideas series … leaving just enough of a dent for the title to be determined.”
With its tale of furry fellowship, the Bear and the Hare captivated many. But what really got the debate going was our post on how it was made (linked above)
Adam & Eve DDB’s John Lewis Christmas ads are met with feverish anticipation by the media. This year’s sweet story about the friendship between a bear and a hare featured Lily Allen singing Keane’s 2004 hit Somewhere Only We Know.
But what really interested our readers (and many members of the public coming to our site) was the technique used to create the spot. In a highly unusual move, the ad was the work of two directors, Elliot Dear and Yves Geleyn, working in tandem.
Dear explained that the ad employed a complex mix of 2D stop motion animation and a ‘real’ set. The technique was based on something Dear had played around with at college. “I remembered something that I was doing when I was a student,” he explained, “which was to do illustrations, cut them out and place them in front of the camera [on a set].” But was all that effort worth it?
Toute l’année, notre équipe cherche à vous apporter une dose quotidienne d’inspiration. Comme sur la période 2012 et afin de résumer les 12 derniers mois écoulés, nous avons décidé de vous présenter un Top 30 des articles les plus consultés en 2013. Découvrez le classement de la trentième à la première place.
We’ve made a list, and we’ve checked it twice. Yes folks, it’s our ten favourite ads of the year!
Dance Pony Dance, Three, Wieden + Kennedy London
After a long cold winter, this little Shetland pony moonwalked onto UK TV screens in March and caused a sensation. Excellent execution, a great creative idea and a Fleetwood Mac soundtrack came together to create a spot that proved that it was still possible to create brilliant ads for the telly. What a relief.
Real Beauty Sketches, Ogilvy Brazil
The latest installment in the Dove Real Beauty campaign, this work from Ogilvy Brazil was released in April and quickly went viral. A forensic artist, Gil Zamora, was commissioned to draw two portraits of a series of women: one drawing was based on how the women described themselves, the other on how a random stranger saw them. The finished drawings revealed how unforgiving the women had been on themselves. The film above documents how the experiment worked, and also features the participants’ moving reactions to seeing the two drawings.
Google Misspellings, Snickers, AMV BBDO
April also brought this clever use of the Google search engine to promote Snickers chocolate bars. For three days on the UK site, any time a spelling mistake was typed into the Google search bar, an ad would pop up at the top of the search results saying ‘Yu cant spel properlie wen hungrie Grab yourself a Snikkers’. The work was part of AMV BBDO’s ‘You’re not you when you’re hungry’ campaign, which also featured TV spots starring Joan Collins and celebrities offering up a series of out-of-character tweets, but it was this work with Google that really stood out for us.
Marmite Neglect, Marmite, adam&eveDDB
This documentary style ad for Marmite was released in early August and showed neglected jars of the savoury spread being rescued from cupboards where they lay forgotten. The realism of the spot proved too much for many, with the ad receiving numerous complaints for supposedly trivialising animal cruelty and the work of the RSPCA. The ad was eventually passed by the ASA though, and its original approach wins it a place on this list.
Climate Name Change, 350 Action, Barton F Graf 9000
Later in August we saw this film for activist group 350 Action which launched a petition to name hurricanes after US policy makers who deny the existence of climate change. Ad agency Barton F Graf 9000 created this film featuring spoof news reports to show how the hurricanes might play out on TV. The results are very funny, and the film has received well over two million views on YouTube – proof that comedy can be an effective way of getting people to think about serious subjects such as climate change.
Paddy Power has had another bumper year of news headlines and excitement through its ad campaigns and use of social media (see CR December for a feature on the brand). While the bringing together of Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong-un may rate as the brand’s most bizarre stunt yet, this campaign against homophobia in football proved that the bookmakers could produce ads that were for a good cause too (though its sense of mischief remained intact with the use of the cheeky tagline ‘Right Behind Gay Footballers’). Created in association with Stonewall, the brand sent rainbow coloured laces to premier league football players and encouraged them to wear them to show their support for gay footballers. A number of players, managers and TV sports presenters got involved.
Walter White’s house on Craigslist, Century 21, Mullen
The series finale of Breaking Bad became something of a media event in October, and, sensing an opportunity, US ad agency Mullen created this spoof sales ad for listings website Craigslist. The ad, for estate agent Century 21, offered lead character Walter White’s house for sale. Featuring a clever sales description with numerous in-jokes for fans, the post was up for just three days but quickly spread on social media.
The Epic Split, Volvo Trucks, Forsman & Bodenfors
2013 could be seen as the year of the stunt, or prank ad. We saw customers terrified in a coffee shop to promote the new version of Carrie, and New Zealand beer brand Tui plumb a house with beer. But the best stunt of the year came late, in November, and frankly knocked the socks of all that came before. The latest ad in a series of stunt spots for Volvo Trucks, it showed Jean-Claude Van Damme performing the splits between two moving vehicles at sunrise. Rather unsurprisingly, the ad went bonkers online, receiving 61 million views (and counting) on YouTube alone.
Look Up, British Airways, Ogilvy & Mather
It can be hard to make billboards seem exciting in our multi-media age, but this outdoor campaign for British Airways from Ogilvy & Mather proved they could still surprise. A simple but clever idea, two digital billboards were placed underneath the flight path to Heathrow in London and showed a child standing up and pointing whenever a British Airways flight flew overhead.
Christmas in a Day, Sainsburys, AMV BBDO
Christmas ads in the UK revved up a pace this year, with numerous brands pulling out all the stops to try and capture their audience’s attention during the festive season. With strong competition from John Lewis, M&S and Bailey’s, one campaign loomed large above the rest. At 50 minutes long, Christmas in a Day demanded a lot from its audience, but it delivered: created by director Kevin McDonald it is made up from films submitted by the public shot last Christmas and is both moving and hilarious. With the film gaining vast media coverage as well as YouTube views, it also showed that long-form advertising can really work for brands.
So that’s our pick of the year – what do you think? Share your views (nicely – it’s Christmas after all) in the comments box below….
Topshop a une nouvelle fois fait appel au Studio Neon pour imaginer la vitrine présentée pour les fêtes de fin d’année à la boutique d’Oxford Circus à Londres. Proposant une installation de plus de 150 pétales en mouvement, cette création du plus bel effet appelée Bloom est à découvrir en vidéo dans la suite.
L’artiste japonais Yuken Teruya a décidé de détourner avec talent l’usage premier de ces sacs de grandes marques, pour ensuite y dessiner la silhouette d’arbres. Un message environnemental alliant sensibilsation et esthétique du plus bel effet detournant des sacs Cartier ou encore Ladurée.
Airbnb has launched its first integrated advertising campaign, which sees a team of artists turn 50 of its listings into intricate birdhouses, in order to empahsise the uniqueness of the accommodation on its site.
Created by Pereira & O’Dell in San Francisco, the campaign has a distinct hipster vibe. At its centre is a four-minute-long film, below, which shows the artists creating the birdhouses, and talking about the importance of ‘home’. The message is that Airbnb provides properties that are the opposite of soulless hotel rooms, and are instead imbued with the owners’ personalities.
For those who are in the area, the 50 birdhouses are on public display in New Orleans until December 22, at the Audubon Park’s Tree of Life. The brand has also launched a spin-off site, birdbnb.com, where you can view the birdhouses alongside the original properties they are based on, as well as see a 360-degree view of the New Orleans installation. Some of birdhouses are shown below:
As its first major campaign, this work attempts to position Airbnb as the traveller’s (as opposed to tourist’s) choice for accommodation. Charming as the film is, its hippy style won’t be for everyone, but perhaps that is exactly the point.
Credits: Agency: Pereira & O’Dell Chief creative officer: PJ Pereira VP & ECD: Jaime Robinson ACDs: Rafael Rizuto, Eduardo Marques Production company: Tool of North America Director: Alma Har’el
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