Hasta La Creative!

Ikea takes us on a journey to show us how stupid we’re being fornot just sitting and enjoying out food in this extended historical metaphor. It’s a meal, not a competition. Be here and now.

Sorry to tell you but the deck of your dreams won’t be found in real life, even if the deck looks the same because a deck with beer spouting clouds is waaaaay out of your price range, buddy. You’ll have to settle with the deck of your dreams without the clouds that don’t work, but hey, if you put some money into it then you can sell it later at a profit, assuming the cloud market stays up.

ICA Sweden often comment on current events and seasonal holidays with their weekly ads. In march they welcomed the new intern Abdullah, a.k.a “Abbe”, as a move to reflect the changing Swedish society, and now the himbo Ulf declares his love for Sweden in an unusually patriotic and proud way ahead of our national day 6th of June. “I’ve been thinking” he says, “us Swedes don’t make a big thing about the national day, I mean, we’re not like the Norwegians, but isn’t Sweden something to celebrate?”

“I mean here you get to say what you want, think what you want, and love who you want,” he continues, “and we’re both healthier and happier than a lot of other people here on earth.”
“So it’s not all that strange that so many people want to come here, and you and I who wake up here every day, haven’t we won the lottery?”
Stig then joins in, “This we’ll celebrate with some coffee” and Sebastian agrees that one needs to take the opportunity while the sun is out. How superbly Swedish of them both. As a side-note, ICA charge the Swedish government 68 million kronor a year for debit-cards that are handed out to asylum-seekers, so I guess this ad is expanding market.

Since your baby can’t talk, it can’t tell you if it enjoys the stroller ride. To remedy this, Contours Baby created a life-sized replica of its storller and took adults for a ride to see what they thought of it. Cute idea.

This May, PIRCH will open a 32,000 sq. ft., three-floor, showroom on the corner of Broome and Lafayette. PIRCH, for those who don’t know, is a luxury appliance retailer that allows you to try out the products in store, creating an experience for the shopper that is unlike any other. Believe me, I’d be way more inclined to buy a Miele oven and dishwasher if I could make dinner and do the washing up as a trial run. Actually that’s not true. When I was doing post-production at my last gig, the production company had a Miele dishwasher I was contemplating on stealing. But I digress.

Spike Jonze directed – Crispin Porter + Bogusky Miami wrote this sad story about a little red pixar-style lamp. Poor thing! It’s just a lamp! It has no feelings!

LOS ANGELES—Ross Ching of A Common Thread has directed a new campaign for Shaw Floors that reveals where the company’s new Caress carpet gets its luxurious feel: it comes “squarely” from the softest things on earth. Conceived by Three Atlanta, the four spots present a series of vignettes involving soft objects, including a child’s blanket, a grazing sheep, a pair of fuzzy slippers, cotton candy and a cloud, each of which has a square carved out of its center. The voiceover explains, “All the softness you love is now in your carpet.”

The imagery consists of beautiful, charming family scenes, with the cut-out objects lending them a magical flair. “It’s as though the creators of Shaw’s Caress line scoured the earth in search of the softest surfaces possible,’” says Ching. “That was our motivation behind every single shot.”

Ching used a variety of subtle camera techniques to enhance the story’s “soft” theme. In some vignettes, the camera dollies slowly, allowing viewers to “discover” the missing squares. In other cases, squares are revealed unexpectedly by an actor’s movement. He also makes the squares seem more surprising to viewers by making them unsurprising to the people on screen. In one instance, a boy is handed cotton candy by a park vendor. “As we crane down, the boy’s eyes light up…but he seems to ignore that fact that the center of his candy is missing,” Ching says.

The director adds further to the gentle atmosphere through careful lighting techniques. “We use nothing but soft, beautiful lighting,” Ching says. “The light tends to wrap around objects, casting diffuse shadows with soft edges. Colors are of variable saturation and tone, but are always true-to-life. The set design is focused on modern living.”

Ching ran a highly efficient production; many of the shooting locations were chosen for their ability to serve as multiple, diverse scenes. That allowed him to capture more story segments than were originally planned in the storyboards. The director also added value to the production through hands-on involvement in post-production. “I like to shepherded projects through post, and edit a majority of the spots that I direct,” he says. “Remaining involved through the post-production process is part of my signature approach and helps to ensure the best spots possible.”

A Common Thread is located at 4081 Redwood Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90066. For more information, call 310.823.7300 or visit http://www.acommonthread.tv

Ha! This is hilarious. You know those super boring technical video on how mattresses work? How your spine bens and how your sleep gets better depending on how much support you have there or softness there. Yes, they’re boring. The only thing more boring than watching those things must be making them, so I feel for the visualizers and art directors on this job. Dunlopillo and Geometry Global decided to change things up a bit though, they targeted their super boring foam videos to people scrolling through facebook at night in order to put them to sleep. There’s an effective shortcut in getting people to associate your mattress name with sleep. Over 325,000 sleepless Malaysians responded to the campaign.

Dunlopillo is a dream client (pun intended) as they previously created a campaign on that other thing you do in bed with “listen to your mattress” as a date-fixer-upper for couples.

Just like previous Olympics, P&G celebrate moms with the help of Wieden & Kennedy. This time, it’s the mothers being stronger, and fearless, that is resonating with our olympic athletes. Among them is Sun Zhiyi, the diver whose mother tells him that he can succeed because she knows it in her heart. Showing really dramatic scenes, such as an athlete recalling how her mother coached her away from an approaching tornado, to those little moments where only mom could reassure you like when an elevator is on the fritz, this ad is based in the “strong mom” idea. The tough woman who is never scared, who just knows what to say and do. It’s not just P&G that own this thought now, Teleflora plays up the #Tough Mother too. Compared to the Mom sponsors, 2010, the best job in the world 2012, and pick them back up, 2014, this ad – while successful at making me reach for kleenex, because I am a sucker – is a little too far away from the brands. Tornados and airplanes in lightning are a far step away from washing powder. A mothers daily courage is in the little things, that make the million little things foundation from which the olympians challenge the world.