Why Adidas Is Suddenly Selling Odd Pairs of Shoes … Two Rights or Two Lefts

“Odd, isn’t it? For a man to run when technically he shouldn’t even be walking?”

We live in a magical time, when disability doesn’t have to spell the end of an active person’s journey. And a fascinating new Adidas campaign from India draws attention to something that has never occurred to most of us: Why should a blade-running athlete with only one foot—or anyone else—have to buy expensive athletic shoes for both feet?

read more

Gustoso destroys your Neapolitan food stereotypes.

In India there are common misconceptions about Neapolitan food. Such as Pizzas need to be thin and crispy or drenched with ketchup or Tabasco or that pasta has to be soft. BBH India found these `stereotypes based on restaurant reviews and decided to educate people about Neapolitan food, for its restaurant client Gustoso. I love me a funny headline driven campaign. Apparently they worked with chef Giulio Adriani to ensure the dishes are authentic. If I’m ever in Mumbai I want to try this place. I’ll bet its good.

Commercials: 

Ad type: 

Coverfox "Unskippable ads" (2016) 2:00 (India)

We’ve seen plays on skipping ads before in the insurance space, notably from GEICO but now Coverdale’s gotten in on the action. First they dropped pre-roll with a Coverfox employee telling you he was going to follow you around until you renewed your insurance. Then by using Youtube’s retargeting program, they did just that, specifically tracking the people who hadn’t renewed, and reminding them in takeovers of that week’s popular videos. Fun idea.

Suzuki "No Po Po" (2016) 1:52 (India)

New Delhi, Mumbai and Calcutta are three of the noisiest cities in the world. It is so bad that 75% of the traffic cops in these cities have suffered permanent hearing damage. Despite efforts to curtail the excessive and unnecessary honking through signs, fines and slogans, nothing has worked. Maruti Suzuki, the automobile with the most cars on Indian roads, felt an obligation to do something about it. So they created a device that reads the number of times driver’s honk. And then rewards them for not honking. The smart device, No Po Po, was mounted on dashboards and monitored the number of honks in each car. The fewer times you laid on the horn, the more rewards you got.
A companion app let you track how many times you honked as well as set your honking target.
In just three months there was a whopping 43% drop in honking patterns. The moral of the story is this: If shaming doesn’t work, give ’em a reward instead.

Door Step School – Street named after Street Kids – (2016) 2:00 (India)

Door Step School - Street named after Street Kids - (2016) 2:00 (India)
There’s a school called the Door Step School in Mumbai, India, who teach children living in slums. In the slums, ambition isn’t quite like it is everywhere else, and the school recognized that the children needed someone to look up to. That’s how “The World’s First Streets Named After Street Kids” created by FCB Interface came about.

As you can imagine, it’s not easy being a kid in the slums of Mumbai. Life is tough, parents often work day and night but barely make enough to put food on the table. On the other hand, the goons and slum lords seem to have all the time, money and respect a child could want. Unfortunately, without other role models, the criminals are who the children begin to look up to and school falls by the wayside. FCB Interface and Door Step School sought to give these impressionable kids new role models, and while doing so, get them to believe in education and making a better future for themselves. Streets in India are named after famous people but the slums of Mumbai are a maze of hundreds of narrow, crisscrossing streets, many without names. The campaign named streets in Mumbai’s Ambedkar Nagar slum, home of more than 2.4 million people, after the best academic performers in school. The children were celebrated in a road naming ceremony with the community and celebrities in attendance.

This is a very simple, and very impactful, idea.

India's First Ad With a Lesbian Couple Goes Viral

An Indian clothing company is out with an ad that news reports are billing as the socially conservative country’s first to feature a lesbian couple.

Anouk and Ogilvy & Mather Bangalore created the spot, in which the couple get ready to meet—and, the ad suggests, come out to—the parents of one of the women. Three and a half minutes long, the spot aims for a casual tone, showing the women in their apartment, putting on makeup and chatting about clothing, hairstyles and their relationship.

While LGBT themes in ads are increasingly common and overt in the U.S, homosexuality is illegal in India. Two years ago, the country’s Supreme Court reinstated the ban after a lower court had ruled it unconstitutional.

The tagline, “Bold is beautiful,” risks conflating putting on a bright-colored dress with being open about one’s sexuality in a highly hostile environment. But the brand deserves credit for aligning itself with a progressive message—the ad seems to be mainly garnering support on YouTube (where it has more than 1.6 million views), even if the spirit of it is lost on the obligatory bigots yelling in all caps in the comments section of articles.

Yogurt brand Chobani, meanwhile, is out with its own lesbian-themed ad that’s much more explicit—and ridiculous—because why not play to base instincts, too?



An appeal to Cannes Jury members – more awards = more saving the world (2015)

As it turns out, the white pencils and glorious lions for Good are only helping solve the problems of the worlds poor for a mere three months a year. Solution: Lets have more awards! Sure. why not? We only have the Cannes Lions, the Effies, the Eurobest, the Epica, the Andy, the Clio, the Addy, the one show, the AIGA, the D&AD, the Kinsale Sharks, the Spikes, the LIAA, the Cresta, the New York Festivals and those are just the big ones….

#?IdeasForAction In 2003 we had started the #?Page3 and #?FTVstyle campaign to sensitize journalists and media about paying attention to real issues and not just socialites. This year we endeavour to influence the #?Cannes #?LionsAward organisers to have festivals and awards more often so that #?AdvertisingFolks create Public service campaigns with the #?rightintent and more #?sensitivity for #?socialissues throughout the year. Watch the video and kindly share.

Dear Mr. #?TerrySavage,

It’s often said that the entire universe conspires to get a good deed done. Well, in the case of advertising creativity, one could say it conspires a lot more during the months leading up to the #?CannesLionsFestival in June every year.

Which is a good thing. Because it is during this short burst of a couple of months that creative thinkers slam pedal to metal and we witness the birth of brilliant campaigns that benefit humanity. Myriad ideas that feed the hungry, educate the underprivileged, address inequalities and make the world a much better place.

That’s commendable and incredibly inspiring because these cause-related ideas are not for personal gain. These are ideas for good. Selfless demonstrations of the fact that for every social injustice in this world, there’s a copywriter and an art director who are determined to change it. The last vestiges of hope for a world consumed by commercial decay.

It’s 3 months of pure, unadulterated, cockle-warming service to humankind.

But therein lies the problem: Why should the good work stop after the Awards are given out in June? Why should the world be a happier place for just 3 months every year?

We spoke to many underprivileged beneficiaries and understood their obvious disappointment at the abrupt discontinuation of many wonderful initiatives, shortly after the ideas win a Lion. Or soon after they don’t win one, for that matter.

As head of the world’s pre-eminent creative awards festival, you can easily change that. We believe there’s a simple way to ensure many wonderful ideas impact lives positively for not just 3 odd months, but throughout the year.

Please have a look at the attached video for our suggestion. We believe you’ll find it to be a practical solution to the problem at hand.

Do let us know what you think and thanks for taking time to read through this.

Best regards,

Jeroninio Almeida
Founding Director
iCONGO- Indian Confederation of NGOs
http://www.icongo.in/homepage.html

Fuji "Mountain Bikers Save The mountain" (2015) 2:00 (India)

India’s mountainous regions are quickly disappearing as industry destroys them for new infrastructure, mining, and commercialization. For local villagers who live nearby it is not only disrupting their way of life, but since mountains are sacred places, their faith is being lost, so to speak. Thankfully, Fuji Mountain Bikes saw a common love between mountain bikers and faithful alike and decided to do something about the problem. As India is a deeply religious country, no one would dare destroy a temple. So Fuji and its team of bikers went up to the mountain and built one. The end of this film sums it up best. In this case faith didn’t move a mountain. It kept the mountain from moving.

Salaam Bombay Foundation "Project Resume" (2015) 2:01 (India)

In a lot of parts of India, having a girl is considered a curse. A proper education isn’t an afterthought– it’s not even considered. NGO’s like Salaam Bombay Foundation have had their work cut out for them. First in terms of getting girls a proper education, and now with the growing number of girls who do want an education, finding the funds to pay for it. FCB Ulka came up with a way to raise funds with corporations by putting a face to the problem.
They partnered with an HR firm and developed resumes to secure interviews at corporations with the young girls. When the girls sat down and handed their resumes to the HR person, a simple line was at the bottom: For me, this resume will never be a reality. But you can change that.
Salaam Bombay Foundation ended up raising enough funds for 200 girls to go to school. That’s 200 girls there who just might change India for the better. In fact, I would argue they already are.

Greenpeace – Bring Back the Balance – print, India

McCann Worldgroup in New Delhi, India created this campaign for Greenpeace. Each “ying-yang” has been hand illustrated, see the progress photos attached. The images isn’t a giant Katamari Damacy ball (remember those videos?

Grey Treats Iodine Deficiency Through the Decorative Dots on Indian Women's Foreheads

Iodine deficiency is a huge issue in rural India, and here’s one unusual way to help solve the problem—iodized bindis.

The Neelvasant Medical Foundation and Research Center, a non-profit group based in India, worked with ad agency Grey to create and distribute the medically enhanced versions of the decorative dots that women in India commonly wear on their foreheads.

Named the “Life Saving Dot,” the product has slight shades of sci-fi, with recipients soaking up their daily dose of the nutrient through their skin (though it also seems similar in concept to, say, a nicotine patch).

The nonprofit and agency cite breast cancer, fibrocystic breast disease and complications during pregnancy among the health issues linked to iodine deficiency (an insidious form of malnutrition that has historically been associated with goiter and cretinism, but in recent decades has been tied to a broader set of physical and mental problems).

With help from Talwar Bindi, the iodized dots have been distributed in four areas, so far—Badli, a village near New Delhi, and three parts of the Maharastra state: Niphal, Peth and Kopergaon/Sinnar.

Sure, it might not be as classic a solution as dispensing iodized salt, but it’s definitely more colorful … and if it works, who cares?

CREDITS
Grey Group Singapore
Chief Creative Officer: Ali Shabaz
Copywriter: Ali Shabaz / Karn Singh
Art Director: Cinzia Crociani / Sudhir Pasumarty / Sandeep Bhardwaj / Giap How Tan
Designer: Cinzia Crociani / Sudhir Pasumarty / Sandeep Bhardwaj
Illustrator: Sudhir Pasumarty
Project Manager: Sandeep Bhardwaj
Account Director: Gaurav Arora
Account Manager: Marie Tan
Regional Director, PR & Corporate Communications: Huma Qureshi
Regional Corporate Communications Executive: Yanrong Pang

Greyworks
Producer: Jacinta Loo
Editor: Timothy Lee
Editor: Bobby Aguila
Sound Designer / Composer: Marco Iodice

Director: Giovanni Fantoni Modena
DOP: Matte Chi
Production House: Hfilms Milan



Tiny People Struggle to Make a Fruit Drink in This Fun and Ridiculous Indian Ad

Here’s an easy way to make sure the product is the hero. Make everything else around it really, really tiny—and leave the product at regular size.

It works great in this campaign for Frooti, one of India’s oldest and most beloved mango juice brands.New York agency Sagmeister & Walsh designed a whole new visual language for the brand around this idea of a miniature world—which it then brought to life in a stop-motion commercial with help from Aaron Duffy’s agency SpecialGuest, 1stAveMachine director Marc Reisbig and animation house Stoopid Buddy Stoodios.

See the spot here:

As Duffy says, the colorful spot really is an “absurdly ear- and eye-catching little film.” The spot features a miniature version of Bollywood superstar and longtime Frooti spokesman Shah Rukh Khan, who then appears in person at the end to deliver the pitch.

“The goal was to introduce the new packaging in a fresh, bold, and playful way,” Sagmeister & Walsh says of the rebranding. “We introduced four bold colors to the brand which complement the yellow of Indian mango and add a sense of playfulness across the imagery.”

See a bunch more imagery below.

CREDITS
Client: Frooti

Creative Agency: Sagmeister & Walsh
ECD/Partner: Jessica Walsh
ECD/Partner: Stefan Sagmeister

Creative Agency: SpecialGuest
Co-Founder/ECD: Aaron Duffy
Business Director: Ashley McGee
Creative Director/Copywriter: Jonathan Emmerling
Creative Development: Edward Choi and Chloe Corner

Production Company: 1stAveMachine
Director: Marc Reisbig
EP/Partner: Sam Penfield
EP: Melinda Nugent
EP: Garrett Braren
Producer: Leanne Amos
Head of Production: Lisanne McDonald
Associate Producer: Christina Jang
VFX Director: John Loughlin
Editor: Jonathan Vitagliano
Compositor: Chris Russo
Colorist: Seth Ricart/Ricart and Co.

Music/SFX
Music Composer and Supervisor: Amit Trivedi

Animation/Post-Production/Online: Stoopid Buddy Stoodios
Executive Producer: John Harvatine IV
Executive Producer: Eric Towner
Executive Producer: Matt Senreich
Executive Producer: Seth Green
Supervising Producer: Janet Dimon
Producer: David Brooks
Line Producer: Barb Cimity
Production Manager: Mario De Jesus
Director of Photography: Helder Sun
Animation Director: Harry Chaskin
Animator: Matt Manning
Animator: Alfonso Estrada
Director of Character Fabrication: Tennessee Norton
Character Fabricator: Tommy Keiser
Editor: Jenny McKibben
VFX Lead: Jack Hamilton



Indian Ad With Female Boss Sparks an Uproar: Is It Super Feminist or Super Sexist?

There’s a lot going on in this new ad from India, and the Internet is fired up about it.

The spot, for mobile provider Airtel, opens on two working professionals in a meeting. A woman, who’s the boss, gives her male employees a task, and one protests, claiming there’s not enough time to finish it. The boss is sympathetic, but lets him know it has to be done.

She heads home for the day, while he begrudgingly burns the midnight oil. We watch her make dinner, and then there’s an O. Henry twist.

Watch the spot before reading further:

Now, I don’t speak the language, so maybe I’m missing something. But still, I’m confused. The mix of progressive and regressive messaging here is mystifying. At work she’s a strong, resolute boss, but at home she’s a lonely housewife pleading for her husband to leave the office and spend the evening with her? Or maybe she just really likes to cook?

Whatever the case, the Internet is certainly taking sides.

Also, I’m probably being picky in pointing this out, but reporting to your spouse is sort of a corporate no-no, isn’t it?

What say you?



India's Internet Baby: Agency Says Cannes Contender Is Beautiful, Not Terrifying

CANNES, France—Maybe India’s Internet Baby isn’t as horrifying as he seems?

If you think about it, the preternaturally social star of the MTS Telecom campaign—who learns to cut his own umbilical cord immediately after birth—is actually someone to be revered, at least according to the agency that created him.

We thought he was creepy, as most CGI infants are when they do adult-like things. The ad’s utopian vision of ever-younger digital natives also seemed dystopian, to say the least. The ad will make you “weep for humanity,” we wrote, adding that Internet Baby must be stopped. (Others, including Time magazine, later agreed with us.)

But Sajan Raj Kurup, founder and creative chairman at Creativeland Asia—which is hoping the ad snags a Lion at Cannes this week—sent us an email in which he suggests we may have missed the cultural import of the spot. He urges us to look at it in a different way—as beautiful, not terrifying.

Check out his full email below.

Dear Tim,

You have mentioned how the MTS Internet Baby spot will make one weep for humanity. You have also appealed that somebody must stop the Internet baby. As someone who wrote the spot, may I sincerely ask that somebody not to stop my little Internet baby. Very humbly, here’s why:

I live in a country where millions of babies are born into poverty. Hunger in their life manifests itself in many terrifying ways. From basic amenities, to education, security and healthcare.

The Internet and mobile phones arrived in my country in the late ’90s. Today, India is the fastest growing telecom and Internet market. Beyond the economic benefits, there is huge social upside to it. Internet and telecommunications has perhaps been the greatest social leveler in my country. It has begun to empower even the most socially backward Indian in the remotest corner of the country with information, with access, with knowledge, with education, with true power.

I would like to hope that this empowerment continues. And it transcends age-groups, caste, religion and social standing. I would like to hope that every baby born in my country is born to the Internet. The Internet that empowers him or her to start life like any other baby in an urban Indian home, European or an American home. For then he would have knowledge available, at the touch of a button. The same button a child in London presses when he needs to know. The same button that empowers a child in Tokyo.

It is natural for a handful of people to think that this is freaky or unnatural. Remember even the motorcar was called evil by some people a hundred years ago. But let not the playful thought of an Internet-empowered baby at birth terrify us. Let’s not stop him.

There’s no telling how far this generation of Indian children, those born for the Internet, will go. They will definitely go farther than their fathers did. They might even go farther than kids in the developed world. Let them go. Let them break barriers.

Debates and point of view are essential. They are what make our business a lot more fun. But that doesn’t change facts. Technology and the Internet are getting deeper into our lives. And the MTS Internet Baby has made people stand up and take notice.

I would like to invite you to Mumbai after Cannes Lions to witness firsthand India’s flourishing creative scene and our country’s “Internet Babies.” I promise it would be something you would never forget—and you would weep for humanity. With a mixture of joy and excitement.

Yours sincerely,
Sajan Raj Kurup
Founder & Creative Chairman, Creativeland Asia

 
To commemorate the birth of the Internet Baby, Creativeland also ran a promo in which it christened babies born on MTS India’s founding day (which happened to be within the launch month of the spot) as Internet babies and gave away free Internet connections. See that case study below.



This Is India's Most Viral Ad Ever, and It Will Make You Weep for Humanity

How precocious are digital natives today? They take charge of things literally from birth, according to this somewhat terrifying spot from MTS Telecom, which the company claims is now the most-viewed ad ever to come out of India.

The spot—created by Creativeland Asia, directed by Guy Shelmerdine from Smuggler Films and set to “I’m Coming Out” by Diana Ross—has 23.4 million views on YouTube (surpassing the previous Indian record holder, Lifebuoy’s “Help a Child Reach 5” PSA, with 19 million). And its pint-size star fits snugly into a long line of famous unusually dexterous infants, from Evian’s CGI babies all the way back to the original Internet dancing baby. Rather than just cavort about on roller skates, though, he spends his brief first moments of life Googling, stealing and taking selfies. And MTS quite clearly loves that about him.

A rep tells us the company launched the ad in an innovative way—by seeding the spot as a BitTorent file and letting the country’s digital natives find it on their own. And indeed, it got plenty of buzz before it was launched on the brand’s official social channels.

MTS Telecom has entered it in next week’s Cannes festival and hopes to bring home a Lion. We’ll leave it up to you to determine whether it deserves one.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: MTS Telecom
Agency: Creativeland Asia
Production House: Smuggler London
Creative Chairman: Sajan Raj Kurup
ECD: Anu Joseph
Script: Sajan Raj Kurup
Director: Guy Shermeldine,
Producer: Chris Barret,
Director of Photography: Alex Baber
VFX: Glassworks London
VFX lead: Abi Klimaszewska,
Editor: Andy Mcgraw, Stitch
Music Director: Mickey Mcleary



Ogilvy Apologizes for Shooting Malala Yousafzai in Mattress Ad

Someone at Ogilvy India thought it would be a good idea to depict Malala Yousafzai being shot by the Taliban to sell Kurl-On mattresses. Clearly it wasn't.

Ogilvy has now officially apologized for the ad, saying it is "contrary to the beliefs and professional standards of Ogilvy & Mather and our clients." It was originally sent to Ads of the World, which has since taken it down, though you can still see the full ad on AOTW's Facebook page. (The concept is that Kurl-On mattresses help you "Bounce back." The Malala ad shows her falling after being shot, bouncing off a mattress and rising to receive a humanitarian award.)

Other ads in the series featured Steve Jobs being ousted by Apple and Gandhi being tossed off a train for refusing to move from first class. I can only imagine the creatives said, "Geez, we should probably get a woman in there." And Malala is a great choice. Except what happened to her wasn't a cartoon, which is where the whole thing falls apart. Plus, she didn't just "bounce back." She soared above. The ad really is the ultimate trivialization of a horrific event.

Malala has appeared in ads—most notably, Bing's "Heroic Women of 2013" spot. But you know, celebrating her strength and courage is different than shooting her again.

What do you think? If you think the world is way too sensitive now and offended over everything, let me know in the comments without threatening to shoot me. That won't help your point.




10 Downing Street Pub by Dentsu Bangalore

Advertised brand: 10 Downing Street Pub, Chennai Traffic Police
Advert title(s): Had a Drink? Think!

Advertising Agency: Dentsu India Group

Executive Creative Director: Ashwin Parthiban, Shiv Parameswaran
Creative Director: Rathish P Subramaniam, Sachit Sadanandan
Art Director: Rathish P Subramaniam, Shiv Parameswaran
Copywriter: Sachit Sadanandan, Ashwin Parthiban

Additional credits:
Production House – Silent Picture Company
Director – Mark Manuel
Executive Producer – Balaji Selvaraj
Camera – Anbu Dennis, Vignesh Vasu, Jagadeesh Ravichandran
Assistant Director – Al Hoon
Music – Timothy Madhukar
Sound Engineer – Sean Bout
Post Production – RGB
Offline – Manohar
Online – Mohan
Computer Graphics – Velu

Short rationale (optional):
‘Don’t drink and drive’. Its a message that is so ubiquitous in big cities, it has actually become a blind spot. What this jaded ‘public’ message needed was a personal touch. An emotional connect that would not only make people notice this message, but act on it.
Had a Drink? Think!

The post 10 Downing Street Pub by Dentsu Bangalore appeared first on desicreative.

Indian Journalist Accused of Rape Claims ‘Political Vendetta’

Tarun Tejpal, a magazine editor charged with raping a younger journalist in a hotel elevator, said surveillance camera footage would help his case.

    

Indian Publisher Withdraws Book, Stoking Fears of Nationalist Pressure

A retired headmaster’s campaign has led Penguin Books India to agree to destroy copies of a book deemed offensive to Hindus, prompting fears that an ideological shift is underway.

    

India Ink: Penguin Withdraws Book by American Scholar of Hinduism to Settle Lawsuit

A Hindu nationalist group had objected to “The Hindus: An Alternative History,” saying it hurt religious sentiment in India.