Hasta La Creative!

Since the dawn of time, humans have been confounded by cats, those mystifyingly aloof creatures whose inner thoughts are famously inscrutable. But no longer! Temptations Cat Treats has invented a cat collar that lets your feline speak in a human voice—so you can finally understand (though probably not) exactly what she is trying to tell you.

The Temptations Catterbox, created by London ad agency adam&eveDDB, contains a microphone, speaker, Bluetooth technology and wifi. It captures the cat’s meows and translates them into human speech—words that may or may not actually be what they’re trying to say.

The Catterbox is the work of the new Temptations Lab, a scientific-sounding “research workstream dedicated to the future of fun times with your cat,” according to the Mars brand. It is 3-D printed, coated in rubber lacquer for the cat’s comfort and comes in four colors.

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Shoplifters get their comeuppance in adam&eveDDB’s latest work for Harvey Nichols, which promotes the chain’s Rewards App with the tagline, “Love freebies? Get them legally.”

The 90-second spot uses “100% genuine actual real honest footage” from security cameras in the retailer’s flagship Knightsbridge, London, store, agency executive creative director Ben Tollett tells AdFreak. “We got to sit in the Harvey Nichols CCTV control suite with all the store detectives, toggling the cameras around,” he says. “It did feel pretty cool.”

The perps are particularly brazen, pinching clothes, jewelry, perfume and more, often with patrons and staff standing close by. (The department store shouldn’t be surprised by such behavior. Its best-known campaign urges folks to drop by and selfishly pick up stuff for themselves—though payment was strongly suggested.)

For the new commercial, the crooks’ faces are obscured by emoji-like “robber” animations, complete with black masks and, in one case, a knitted ski-cap with slits for the eyes and mouth. Created by the Layzell Brothers at Blink, these effects give the spot an oddly memorable creepy/cheeky vibe.

Ultimately, it doesn’t end well for the baddies. “Don’t bother shoplifting in Harvey Nichols,” warns Tollett. “The only free thing you’ll get is a day trip to the local police station.”

True enough. Knocking over a Reserva store in the dead of night is a better bet.

People have been looking for the Loch Ness Monster for centuries, but now Google has brought some high-tech dragon-hunting software to the search.

The company, with help from London agency adam&eveDDB, has brought underwater Street View to the famous Scottish loch, having introduced it last year to the Great Barrier Reef. You can now jump right into Loch Ness in Google Maps, and peer down into the murky depths.

You won’t see quite as much as you do at Great Barrier Reef. But it’s a charming conceit, and one that Google is running with—even going so far as putting a Loch Ness doodle on the Google U.K. homepage. Meanwhile, adam&eve made the video below to go with the project.

“A huge part of Google’s mission is to help make mysterious places more accessible to everyone, and there’s no more emotive, exciting example of that than revealing what’s beneath the waters of Loch Ness,” says Alex Hesz, director of digital at adam&eveDDB.

“This is a place of enduring mystery and profound beauty, and we were lucky enough to accompany Google’s underwater capture team on a truly extraordinary task. We think that the campaign really captures the scale of that undertaking, the beauty of the place, and the reasons why Loch Ness has retained such a sense of mystery and intrigue for so many, for so long. The fact that everyone can now explore it for themselves is hugely exciting.”

CREDITS
Client: Google
Project: Explore Loch Ness with Google Maps
Brief: Google gives access to explore hidden places
Creative agency: adam&eveDDB/Google Creative Lab
Chief Creative Officer: Ben Priest
Executive Creative Director: Ben Tollett, Richard Brim
Creative Director/s: Paul Knott, Tim Vance and Google Creative Lab
Planner: Will Grundy
Account Management: Alex Hesz and Sam Brown
TV Producer: Ben Sharpe and Jordan Cross
Production company: Sonny
Director: Nick Rutter
Editor: Gary Forrester
Edit House: Marshall Street Editors
Soundtrack name and composer:  “The Search” by Brendan Woithe
Post-production: The Mill
Audio post-production: Clang @ Marshall Street

It’s rare for a brand to base an ad campaign around photographs of the product after it’s been completely torn up and clawed and chewed to pieces and is looking like hell.

Temptations cat treats is doing it anyway. The brand recently noticed that cat owners seem to enjoy posting photos and videos of destroyed packs of cat treats to social media. So, with help from adam&eveDDB in London, it decided to subject some packs to a bit of professional destruction.

Check out the video below, in which a pack of wild animals (OK, probably high-paid cat models) is let loose upon a box of Temptations treats. It isn’t pretty, but it leads to some pretty fun print and out-of-home posters. The Mars brand is now encouraging consumers to start tagging their photos of apocalyptic bag ruination with the hashtag #PackAttack.

The latest spot advertising Sony’s newest smartphone goes well beyond your standard product demo.

The ad, created by adam&eveDDB as part of the brand’s “demand great” campaign, shows us an (almost certainly exaggerated) sequence starring several well-lit skiiers and the best cover of Kavinsky’s “Night Call” to date:

The spot looks like an attempt to position the phone itself — which has not been released yet in the U.S. and will probably make its first appearance stateside in October a mere six-plus months after its predecessor’s debut — as a superior alternative to better-known competitors.

We’re not sure about all that, but the visuals are impressive.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

CANNES, France—All this past week, Cannes Lions judges and presenters talked endlessly about how the best ads are those that inspire and even improve the world.

So, why was the festival’s most awarded campaign an unapologetic (if tongue-in-cheek) homage to selfishness and greed? One whose centerpiece video has a relatively meager 500,000 views on YouTube—and was, in fact, the only ad jeered by attendees at Saturday’s award show here?

The Harvey Nichols holiday campaign “Sorry, I Spent It on Myself” from agency adam&eveDDB took home no less than four Grand Prix, making it the second most awarded campaign in the festival’s history. (McCann Melbourne set the record last year with five Grand Prix for “Dumb Ways to Die.”)

The campaign centered on the creation of cheap products, such as gravel or rubber bands, sold in Harvey Nichols stores with the label “Sorry, I Spent It on Myself.” The video showed customers giving these crap gifts to relatives and loved ones at Christmas while enjoying expensive clothing and handbags for themselves.

It’s a good campaign, and may well have deserved the Integrated Grand Prix. It also won the Press Grand Prix, the Promo & Activation Grand Prix and a Film Grand Prix—one of two awarded in that category, along with Volvo Trucks’ “Epic Split.” And it’s that Grand Prix in Film—where it bested some truly powerful and popular pieces of cinematography—that’s the real head-scratcher.

At a press conference Saturday afternoon, the Film Lions judges gushed about the spot’s “boldness” but struggled to explain how it merited such lofty accolades. I asked them how it could possibly have been a unanimous selection as one of the two best pieces of advertising film in the past year.

“To take greed and make people laugh and smile about it is, I think, incredibly difficult,” said jury member Pete Favat, chief creative officer  of Deutsch L.A. “And as a film, it’s a perfect piece of film.”

I disagree, and it was clear I wasn’t alone when, during a screening of the ad at Saturday’s big award ceremony, some derisive whistling could be heard.

To illustrate why its Grand Prix selection was so baffling, we’ve decided to highlight some of the work it beat for the top spot. You might not agree that any one of them was Grand Prix material, but you’d be hard pressed to argue that they’re lesser films. 

Below are our picks for seven ads that could have, and should have, ranked higher than Harvey Nichols:

 
• Lacoste: “The Big Leap” by BETC Paris

Somehow this stellar piece of cinematography only won a silver Lion in Film. French journalists told me they felt the video was largely snubbed at Cannes, where it was shortlisted in Film Craft but awarded no Lion in that category.

 
• Wren: “First Kiss” by Durable Goods L.A.

While this viral juggernaut with nearly 85 million views has its share of critics, it’s hard to deny it was one of the most compelling, talked-about and just plain interesting videos of the year. Judges clearly liked it quite a bit, awarding it bronze and gold Lions in Film and a bronze in Film Craft.

 
• Coca-Cola: “Parents” by Santo Buenos Aires

Surprising, funny, perfectly crafted. It’s just so damn good. Judges liked it enough to give it a gold Lion in Film.

 
• Guinness: “Sapeurs” by AMV BBDO

A real story, told really well. This piece starring a super-stylish group of Congolese gentlemen won a silver Lion in Film and a bronze Lion in Film Craft. 

 
• Lurpak: “Adventure Awaits” by Wieden + Kennedy London

Anyone who’s ever made a food ad (or, hell, watched a food ad) will realize what a masterpiece of innovative visuals this is. It won gold in Film Craft.

 
• Skype: “The Born Friends Family Portrait” by Pereira & O’Dell

It’ll make you smile. It’ll make you cry. It’s a touching piece of documentary that’s as stylish as it is emotional. But oddly, it didn’t win any Lions in Film. (It did win two silver Lions and two bronze Lions in Cyber and a bronze in Branded Content & Entertainment.) Read the story behind the story in our interview with creator PJ Pereira.

 
• Volvo Trucks: “The Epic Split” by Forsman & Bodenfors

The other Grand Prix winner in Film, and deservedly so. Let’s revisit it to remind ourselves how different these supposedly equal spots are.

 
What do you think? Did the Film judges overreach, or was the Harvey Nichols spot really that good? And what would you have selected?

Há alguns dias, a ONG britânica Save the Children chamou a atenção do mundo para a guerra da Síria com “Most Shocking Second a Day Video”, em que mostrava o cotidiano de uma menina que vê sua realidade se transformar com a guerra. Agora, a organização volta a falar sobre o assunto, mas de uma maneira mais simples, mas não menos poderosa, com o físico Stephen Hawking emprestando sua “voz” às crianças daquele país.

“I’m Giving My Voice” foi criado pela adam&eveDDB e mostra fotos de crianças sírias – desde que o conflito começou, mais de 11 mil foram mortas -, enquanto a voz de Hawking narra um acontecimento real vivenciado por crianças do país: “Eu choro o tempo inteiro”, “Minha casa foi queimada e tudo foi perdido…”, “Quando durmo, eu chamo pela minha mãe e grito”, “Você não consegue nem imaginar o que eu já vi”.

“As crianças da Síria não têm voz. É por isso que eu estou dando a elas a minha. O que você irá dar?”, questiona o físico.

A produção é da Pulse.

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A Litpon vai estrear seu novo posicionamento global durante o intervalo do Oscar, no próximo domingo. A assinatura “Be More Tea” pretende incentivar os consumidores a saírem do piloto automático, e curtirem a vida de forma mais tranquila.

O conceito é batido, mas a execução chama atenção ao utilizar Os Muppets como protagonistas. Kermit, o Sapo (ou Caco para os brasileiros da antiguidade), enfrenta a correria de Nova York para encontrar Miss Piggy, enquanto encontra pelo caminho várias versões estressadas do Animal.

Criado pela adam&eveDDB e produzido pela Biscuit Filmworks, o comercial conta com efeitos digitais da Framestore. O estúdio replicou mais de 100 Muppet's a partir de apenas três bonecos físicos.

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Com criação da adam&eveDDB e produção da Outsider, a Volkswagen resolveu ensinar uma pequena lição de economia para o público, lembrando que o barato pode sair muito caro para quem tenta economizar a qualquer custo, enquanto que um investimento maior pode ajudar a garantir mais segurança e conforto.

Para ilustrar o argumento, o filme Rope mostra dois alpinistas se preparando para iniciar uma escalada. Um deles questiona o outro sobre a corda a ser utilizada, que apesar de ser relativamente nova, parece ser bastante frágil. Enquanto isso, o dono da corda parece ignorar o perigo oferecido pelo equipamento, contando vantagem sobre o preço pago.

Tudo isso para mostrar que, apesar de ser mais caro, o Tiguan vale o investimento.

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Enquanto algumas das principais redes de lojas do Reino Unido adotaram um tom mais emocional – caso da John Lewis e Tesco – e até mesmo mágico – como a Marks & Spencer – em suas campanhas natalinas, a Harvey Nichols optou por tomar uma direção completamente oposta. Com criação da adam&eveDDB, Sorry, I Spent It On Myself incentiva os consumidores a serem um pouco mais egoístas e, em vez de comprarem presentes caros para os familiares e amigos, gastarem com eles mesmos no Natal.

A loja levou tão a sério essa história que, inclusive, está lançando uma linha de presentes baratinhos – afinal, há algumas pessoas que é preciso presentear. A lista inclui tampas para pia, elásticos e palitos de dente, para citar alguns exemplos.

O filme da campanha, dirigido por James Rouse, mostra os presentinhos (uh, da Harvey Nichols) sendo entregues aos destinatários, enquanto a câmera revela como as pessoas gastaram com elas mesmas. Só por aí, já é possível ter uma ideia de como será o Natal de quem realmente embarcar nesta ideia…

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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