One of the themes already emerging from South by Southwest Interactive has centered on how big-brand execs have come to see what all the fuss is about this year. So Adweek caught up with play-callers for Dell, Pennzoil and 3M to chat about the different plans that have been put into place around the festival.
Here's a clever ad that starts off as a preview for a horror movie called Schizo and ends with Glenn Close talking about BringChange2Mind, the organization she founded. Watch the video for more. Since horror movies often use mental illness as an easy diagnosis for their villains, not to mention the number of fictional serial killers who wear plaid shirts, the juxtaposition here is rather astute.
Here's a candidate for most mercenary ad of the year—a homemade spot that was among those entered into Chevrolet and MOFILM's Oscars competition. Thankfully, it didn't win. It opens on a young woman getting ready to say goodbye to her Golden Retriever. It then heart-wrenchingly backtracks through her relationship with the pet, all the way back to her childhood.
For once, it was a good week for incumbents in account reviews—at least among media agencies. PHD, the media agency for Mercedes-Benz USA since 1999, retained its assignment, with annual media spending of about $320 million. The other finalists could not be ascertained. Likewise, MediaCom has successfully defended media responsibilities on Brand USA, which spends about $30 million in media each year. Sources identified the other contenders as MMGY in Kansas City, Mo. and MBuy in Chicago. Brand USA is a public-private partnership that aims to bring more foreign tourists to the U.S.
Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal + Partners is building out its social media practice, with help from parent company MDC Partners. Attention, a social media shop that MDC acquired in 2009, will now be part of KBS. The specialist agency will keep its name and own profit and loss responsibilities, but now report to KBS CEO Lori Senecal.
Wearable tech is so played out. The real future of wearables? Billboards! In this installment of "Things That Would Never Work in New York City, Because Eww," we travel to to the mystical land of New Zealand to find these clever advertisements from soft drink maker L&P. To remind people to "Hold on to summer," the ads literally give away summer gear. Some of the ads are draped with removable beach towels. Others have foam flip-flops that you can pry out and walk around in or scold your disobedient friends with. Try doing that with your smart watch.
The Oscars has been dubbed the “Super Bowl for Women,” although in many ways it is the antithesis—fewer breaks, snacks and alcohol. But this year’s Oscars marked a departure from past shows—and from the big game itself—because for the first time, women took the show, quite literally.
Google Glass videos are notable for their seamless first-person perspective, which puts you not only in someone else's shoes but in their eyes. You see what they see. No wonder, then, that the empathy-rich form is being hijacked by a PSA effort—to show you something you wouldn't want to see in the first place. A group of London creatives put together the unbranded video below for International Women's Day on Saturday, according to Osocio. Google was not involved.
Japanese ads, as a rule, are hard to predict. But while most of them just seem odd for the sake of being odd, this commercial has a twist anyone can enjoy. Since there's not a lot to it, I won't reveal much, except to say it was all reportedly done without CG thanks to the real skills of 22-year-old actress Rina Takeda. Once you've watched the ad below, you can see more of her in this movie clip.
Sadly, these Diet Coke ads from Animal New York aren't the real thing, but they are pretty amusing spoofs of Droga5's new campaign, which is being interpreted by some as one big cocaine reference. Created to mimic the look and feel of current posters with the new tagline "You're On," these parodies mock the campaign's brief aspirational vignettes, which include lines like: "You moved to New York with the cl
