As The Late Late Show with James Corden's Carpool Karaoke has become a viral sensation, CBS had been eagerly looking to cash in on its success. On Monday night, the network finally found its first brand partners for the popular segment, McDonald's and Coca-Cola.

CBS teamed up with the two brands for an integration in Carpool Karaoke with Selena Gomez, which kicked off a new summer sweepstakes, "Sip. Share. Win!," featuring all three companies. 

In the sweepstakes, which runs through Aug. 1, McDonald's customers will be able to use Shazam on their mobile devices to record themselves singing their own karaoke videos using specially marked Coke cups at McDonald's restaurants. The cups feature the lyrics from one of 10 songs, including Gomez's "Love You Like a Love Song" and Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."

As part of the deal, The Late Late Show and Carpool Karaoke's logos will appear in-store and on packaging in more than 14,000 McDonald's restaurants nationwide. The Late Late Show logo on bags and in stores will include a "weeknights on CBS" tune-in mention.

A randomly selected grand prize winner and a guest will win an all-expenses-paid trip to L.A. to attend a taping of The Late Late Show and win a year of live music from StubHub. (One McDonald's employee and a guest will also win the same prize.)

"That's great promotion for us and for the show," said Jo Ann Ross, president of network sales for CBS. "[McDonald's and Coca-Cola] came to us with a very coordinated effort. The sweepstakes was part of that."

Five minutes into Monday night's Carpool Karaoke segment with Gomez, Corden said he was hungry, and they pulled into a McDonald's drive-thru and placed an order (both asked for medium fries and a Coke). As the McDonald's workers freaked out over Gomez, Corden asked for one of the cups featuring her lyrics.

After they pulled away, they chatted while eating and prominently featured the McDonald's bag and cups. Corden was driving, but Gomez ate fries and sipped her Coke as they chatted and sang Gomez's "Love You Like a Love Song." McDonald's and Coca-Cola were featured for four minutes of the 12-minute segment.

"There's a lot of fun on that screen," said Ross of the video, which surpassed 1.5 million views in its first 12 hours on YouTube.

Corden and Gomez also swung by Six Flags Magic Mountain for some roller coaster karaoke, but that was not an integration.

The integration and sweepstakes is an extension of Coca-Cola's "Share a Coke and a Song" campaign, which launched last month.

CBS had been actively searching for Carpool Karaoke brand partnerships for several months, and The Late Late Show's producers told Adweek earlier this year that they were also open to integrations. "It's a very sponsorable bit," said executive producer Rob Crabbe.

Corden already has more than 1 billion YouTube views for his Late Late Show videos, a figure that's "over and above what anybody's wildest dreams were," according to Ross. "A lot of clients are interested in sponsoring it and being a part of it. We wanted it to make sense and wanted it to work for both the show and the clients," she said.

The McDonald's tie-in was an organic fit for the segment: In a previous Carpool Karaoke video, Corden and Justin Bieber munched on McDonald's fries, though they didn't name the company or feature any logos on-screen.

"We are thrilled to be one of the first brands to work with CBS to provide the grand prize VIP experience at The Late Late Show with James Corden and we anticipate enthusiasm from our customers over the opportunity to enjoy this once in a lifetime experience," said Joel Yashinsky, vp of brand marketing for McDonald's USA, in a statement.

The deal with McDonald's and Coca-Cola "is going to be a win-win, and it's a good template as we go forward" and look for other Carpool Karaoke partnerships, Ross said.

While no other integrations have been firmed up yet, Ross said there is a lot of interest in both CBS late-night properties—The Late Late Show and The Late Show with Stephen Colbert—during upfront negotiations, with Carpool Karaoke attracting attention from categories like automotive, fast food and music services.

Not many people know that Burger King pulled out of France for 15 years between 1997 and 2012. But actually, it's true. And the fast-food chain comically revisits that nightmare scenario in a new seven-minute mockumentary from agency Buzzman.

Whopper addicts lose their minds, black-market dealers, counterfeiters and smugglers capitalize, and law enforcement officials enter into a game of Whac-a-Mole against illicit trade in a video that manages to cram in every genre trope imaginable.

Overall, it's willfully idiotic and melodramatic, pushed to the degree where it's at least forgivable on the grounds of being goofy, if not always necessarily funny. But in the ad's most shining moment, a man brags about hoarding burgers in a padlocked and heavily surveilled basement freezer for 10 years, rationing the precious sandwiches.



To be fair, the absurdist concept exceeds the mixed execution, which could be seen at moments as trivializing coverage, such as it is, of more serious topics—or substance abuse epidemics more broadly. Before anyone bristles too much, though, it's worth remembering that fast-food burgers probably aren't much better for you than some narcotics.

Plus, it's worth mentioning the war on drugs has been largely futile—even without the possibility, which seems more reasonable here, that the illicit substances in question could literally sprout legs and scurry away when the cops come knocking.

CREDITS
Client: Burger King
Marketing Director: Béatrice Roux
Marketing Project Managers: Bérénice Charles, Marine Dupas

Agency: Buzzman
President and Executive Creative Director: Georges Mohammed-Chérif
Vice - President: Thomas Granger
Associate Director: Julien Levilain
Copywriting and Artistic Direction: Romain Pergeaux
Artistic Director Assistants: Yohan Benazzouz, Gabriel Palut, François Laboué
Account Managers: Pierre Guengant, Loïc Coelho, Clémence Gateau
Social Media Managers: Julien Scaglione, Loris Bernardini, Marie le Scao
Communication and P.R. Managers: Amélie Juillet, Clara Bascoul-Gauthier
TV Production and Art Buying: Vanessa Barbel, Katya Violi, Benoit Crouet
Producer:Rudy Tasimovicz
Production Manager: Gilles Vatinet
Production: Why Us
Post Production: Nightshift
Music and Sound Design:Schmooze
Director:Simon Levene
Media Agency: MEC

How do you make a soap opera, acted out by Ken and Barbie-style plastic dolls, even nuttier? By adding viral sensation Tiny Hamster to the cast, of course!

French Toast Crunch's "The Tiny & the Tasty" campaign from McCann New York, which premiered a year ago, returns for a second wave of spots with the rodent doing his thing. (We mean nibbling on stuff and looking awwwfully cute.) 

"To keep our fans excited, we implemented the same tactic used by other daytime soap operas: Casting a celebrity guest star," James Dawson-Hollis, McCann global executive creative director, tells Adweek. "Given that the cast of 'The Tiny and The Tasty' is only 12 inches tall, we were limited to using only very tiny celebrities. Naturally, Tiny Hamster came to mind."

Once again, the campaign delivers goofy riffs on daytime drama tropes, including extramarital affairs:



"It was clear from the beginning that Tiny Hamster and Ruthie were smitten with each other, and they quickly developed an on-set romance," Dawson-Hollis says. "If you look closely in 'The Affair,' you can see some light teeth marks on Ruthie's face, which were left by Tiny Hamster during one of their off-camera kissing scenes." 

We won't be looking that closely, but thanks. 

Next, the ol' evil twin meme rears its shaggy head: 



"Hamsters are naturally nocturnal, so many of the scenes had to be filmed when Tiny Hamster was running on less-than-adequate sleep," says Dawson-Hollis. "However, the actor remained a true professional the whole way through filming." 

Unlike human actors who demand fancy catered lunches in their trailers, the little guy was probably satisfied with a few extra pellets in his dish—though in this next cheeky ad, he seems to have developed an affinity for poker chips: 



Aww, those chubba-wubba cheeks! You get the idea.

"We saw a lift in sales that corresponded when the campaign launched last year, and we are optimistic season two will drive the same growth," says Mark Chu, senior associate marketing manager for the General Mills brand. "The relaunch of French Toast Crunch in January 2015 was overwhelmingly successful. It was very obvious people wanted French Toast Crunch to come back."

More spots for the campaign break later this summer, featuring a different diminutive guest star: Luke Perry's Thumb. 

"The mid-'90s were the golden era of daytime drama, and during this time Luke Perry's Thumb made audiences swoon when he starred on a popular television series," Dawson-Hollis says. "Now, the hunky appendage is bringing that same intensity, charisma and raw masculinity to the set of 'The Tiny & The Tasty.' " 

Said digit makes an impression about halfway through the campaign trailer:



Milking the soap opera concept with Tiny Hamster works well enough. But too many spoonfuls of self-conscious kookiness (Luke Perry's Thumb?!) could turn the campaign into a cereal offender.

CREDITS

Client: General Mills
Agency:  McCann New York
Global Executive Creative Director: James Dawson-Hollis
Global Executive Creative Director: Bill Wright
Art Director: Coleman Davis
Copywriter: Daniel Colburn
Chief Production Officer: Nathy Aviram
Sr. Producer: Cindi Blondell
Account: Amber Greenwalt, Britta Larson, Emily Rasmussen
Business Affairs: Christie Wenzel

Production: Helicopter Pictures
Director: Noah David Smith
Editorial Company: No6 NY
Editor: Nick Schneider
Finishing: No6 NY
Graphics Company: Picture Mill
Music Company: Beacon Street Studios
Mix Studio: Beacon Street Studios
Engineer: Rommel Molina

On July 4, thousands of people will gather on the steamy streets of Coney Island in Brooklyn to witness a spectacle that only a city like New York can serve up. Seated onstage at a long table, some 20 iron-stomached contestants will dunk hot dogs into cups of water and then, in a 10-minute window, cram as many of them as possible into their faces. The spectacle is thrilling, it is nauseating, and it is famous. 

Photo: Nick Ferrari; Food Styling: Lynne Chan

Make that Nathan's Famous. Because, while the winner of Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest invariably makes the national news, this seaside scarf-down is really just a marketing manifestation of the brand that gives it its name. Nathan's Famous turns 100 this year, and the Nathan's people will tell you that the eating contest is that old, too—never mind that there's little evidence the event was held prior to 1972. And who cares about that little discrepancy? Well, nobody, really, because Nathan's has always been more than just a frankfurter. The dogs might be 100 percent Angus beef, but the secret ingredients are beach, boardwalk and beer. In other words, when you think of Nathan's, you think of Coney Island.

"The Nathan's name is evocative when it comes to hot dogs," said Charles Denson, director of the Coney Island History Project. "It conjures up hot days at the beach, crowds and family memories at the only grab joint that has survived a tumultuous century of change and loss at Coney Island. It has more to do with survival and nostalgia than anything else."

"It is nostalgia—the company has been making itself synonymous with Coney Island from the very start," agreed Bruce Kraig, author of the books Hot Dog: A Global History and Man Bites Dog: Hot Dog Culture in America. "But you can market the hell out of anything," he added. "We should never forget that they have very good hot dogs."

Indeed so. Nathan's story proves that it's not necessarily the inventor of a product who prospers, but he who perfects it. While Brooklyn restaurateur Charles Feltman didn't invent the hot dog, legend credits him with tucking his pork frankfurters inside buns. One of Feltman's employees was Polish immigrant Nathan Handwerker, who took off on his own in 1916 to open up a hot dog counter. Handwerker not only used his wife's grandmother's frankfurter recipe, but he also charged 5 cents for his dogs—half of Feltman's price.

Today, 100 years later, Nathan's operates 45,000 restaurants and retails its dogs in grocery stores in all 50 states. And while the 425 million franks Nathan's sells annually are actually just a small portion of the estimated 9 billion that Americans eat, the brand has a mystique that competitors like Oscar Mayer or Sabrett can't match. And, of course, it has that contest coming up. Want to compete? You'll have to beat Matt Stonie's 2015 record: 62 dogs (and buns) scarfed down in under 10 minutes.

Nathan Handwerker (1, with wife Ida) used the family's secret spice recipe for the dogs he began selling in 1916 at his stand on Coney Island's Surf Avenue (2). Between 1930 and 1950, the restaurant (3) served as many as 50,000 hot dogs every single day.

This story first appeared in the June 27, 2016 issue of Adweek magazine.
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Lots of Orangina's marketing is about shaking up bottles of the stuff—to mix up the pulp, which makes the carbonated citrus beverage taste better.

"An advertising guy told me there was a weakness, and we're going to make a strength out of this weakness by saying, 'The bottle needs to be shaken,' " Orangina's founder, Jean-Claude Beton, said in an interview a few years before his death in 2013. "Television offered an opportunity to shake things."

Orangina's most recent marketing coup, though, was not in TV but in packaging.

Along with its distinctive bottles, Orangina is also sold in cans nowadays. But people are hard-wired not to shake up cans. So, Paris agency BETC came up with a clever solution: the Upside Down Can.

Check it out below.



It's a simple, delightful little packaging trick, the kind of beverage-can innovation that actually solves a product problem—and isn't tech for tech's sake. The work earned BETC a Silver Lion in Outdoor at Cannes last week. 

Jordan Spieth knows when to come in from the rain.

With the pro golfer's first outdoor commercial shoot for Coca-Cola cancelled because of a torrential downpour, and a deluge forecast for the makeup date, the creative team, led by Wieden + Kennedy and RSA Films director Terence Neale, went to plan B.

Instead of showing Spieth reaching for a cold Coke on a golf course, they worked the rain-out into a new storyline and filmed him inside his trailer, executing various trick shots with items on hand to pass the time:



As for how much filmic fakery was involved, well, it's difficult to say. Spieth took a few mulligans, naturally, but he really did ring up that bell glass shot:



And it took only three takes for him to master the ice bucket. That's pretty cool:



Ironically, once the crew committed to the indoor concept, the sun reappeared, and W+K employed rain towers to achieve the stormy ambiance.

Even so, whether the rain (or trick shots) are entirely for real is beside the point. Viewers took a shine to the spot's dry humor, and the clip has generated more than 1 million combined views across Facebook and YouTube since it dropped two weeks ago.

CREDITS
Client: Coca Cola
Spot: "Rain"
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
Production Co.: RSA Films
Director: Terence Neale
Creative Directors: Hal Curtis, Antony Goldstein
Producer: Ben Grylewicz
Executive Producers: Jules Daly, Tracie Norfleet
DoP: Eric Tremi
Music: Missy Elliott, "The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)"

NBCUniversal's new branded content studio, which the company launched in March to develop and produce content for clients that could also exist outside its own platforms, has landed its first major partnership, with Sabra Dipping Co.

Today, the NBCU Content Studio is launching a digital campaign of satirical videos promoting Sabra's Veggie Fusions Guacamole line. The spots, which are inspired by culinary how-to videos, will appear on NBCUniversal's social pages as well as Vox Media's digital properties via the Concert inventory tool (which NBCU and Vox created in April to sell premium advertising across their combined digital properties).

The videos, which were created by the NBCU Content Studio, look at the other side of cooking how-to videos, and what happens when things go wrong in the kitchen.

The content will run on Bravo, E! and NBC's Today social pages and will utilize NBCU's Social Synch, which helps brands create social media campaigns across the company's portfolio. It will also live on Sabra's brand pages and channels, an example of how the Content Studio's work can exist beyond NBCU.

"Working collaboratively with an innovative, new brand partner like Sabra, allowed us to experiment and create a new type of storyline that taps into the cultural food zeitgeist," said Wendy Wildfeuer, svp, The NBCU Content Studio, in a statement. "We leaned into our proprietary insights, storytelling and production expertise, and contextually aligned networks in our portfolio to build a new Sabra content platform."

Added Tracy Luckow, marketing director for Sabra Dipping Co., in a statement. "The access to NBCUniversal's storytelling expertise combined with their scale and targeting for distribution is a win-win for us as we share this new product that has already moved more than 1 million units since its release earlier this month."

The NBCU Content Studio uses NBCU's creative talent, data, distribution and scale (including its partners BuzzFeed, Vox and AOL) to create its campaigns.

While the company has had great success over the past decade creating branded content campaigns for its advertising partners, it realized it could be generating even more business in that space. "People think, 'Oh, I know you do that, but only when I buy media from you and it's part of a media deal,'" John Harrobin, chief marketing officer, NBCU advertising sales, said in March. "But we have opportunity well beyond that."

Some of the best marketing embodies the brand promise you're trying to communicate. This is especially true of well-crafted products, whose advertising had better be well-crafted, too. Droga5 takes that idea to impressive lengths with a new interactive site for Hennessy V.S.O.P Privilège (the agency's first work for this particular Hennessy brand).

V.S.O.P Privilège is known for its remarkable consistency—it's precisely the same cognac in every glass and every bottle, year after year—despite myriad variables at play during its creation. So, Droga5 set out to tell this story of creating harmony from chaos through the digital experience.

"Harmony. Mastered from Chaos" is a responsive WebGL campaign microsite featuring an interactive film experience highlighting the complexity, mastery and tradition that goes into Hennessy V.S.O.P Privilège. Among the advanced technologies it employs: 3-D LiDAR scanning, depth capture and binaural audio recording, merging with live-­action footage.



There's also a 60-second spot that's related to the interactive piece (above). We spoke with Droga5 executive interactive producer Justin Durazzo about the site.

AdFreak: Where did the idea come from to do an interactive site like this?
Justin Durazzo: When we first discussed a production approach for this project, we were very inspired about various technological techniques that could tell the story of harmony created from seemingly unrefined elements or components. We riffed on this using a musical soundscape as the basis for it all and building the rest of the experience around it. We explored worlds and ornate, organic visuals comprised of magnetic ferrofluids to help us envision this notion of particles breaking apart and coming together to form the perfect bottle of Hennessy V.S.O.P Privilége. And a rich, immersive website seemed to allow people the most opportunity to be hands on and explore these concepts while also allowing us to bring together live action photography, highly responsive WebGL graphics and dynamic audio that could change as users make different choices. We wanted to make people feel that notion of creating something from nothing or working with the ingredients you have carefully in order to create something complex and special.

There are some crazy technologies here. Can you explain how a few of them work, and do you have a favorite visual effect in the piece?
We employed the use of LiDAR and 3D Kinect scanning, as they all offer us a great deal of depth information with which we could recreate entire environments from Hennessy in Cognac, France. The point clouds created by these capture techniques are also very beautiful when rendered, and it was a look/feel we were aesthetically drawn to. We articulate them further using CG in post-production for film and WebGL for a fluid interactive experience that works seamlessly across most devices and browsers. The integration of all of these advanced technologies was a challenge we imparted upon ourselves in order to metaphorically speak to the challenge and craft of making Hennessy V.S.O.P Privilége.

What's the relationship between the film and the interactive site? Was one developed before the other, or both concurrently?
They are directly related, complementary and were developed in tandem. All of the film content also lives on the site in some way. The site is a longer format, interactive version of the same story we're telling in the :60, only it allows people to stop and further explore, play with things and get immediate tactile feedback for each 'chapter' in the Hennessy V.S.O.P Privilége production process. It allows you to become the creator so to speak - or at the very least gain a greater appreciation for what the experts at Hennessy in Cognac are doing year after year.



We also spoke via email to Droga5 copywriter Phil Hadad and art director Marybeth Ledesma, who also worked on the campaign.

AdFreak: Hennessy has developed such a rich visual language in its cinematic spots. How does this ad continue that tradition?
Phil Hadad and Marybeth Ledesma: Hennessy has a long history as a luxury brand and it sets the bar for everything we do visually. In this campaign, we're telling a centuries-old story of mastery and craftsmanship and we wanted to visualize it in a powerful, contemporary way. We also wanted the visual style to reinforce the concept of "Harmony. Mastered from Chaos." Blending cinematic live-action photography and high-tech video effects seemed like the perfect way to tell that story and swing between notions of chaos and harmony.

Can you describe the narrative of what's going on in the spot, and how it delivers a message about craftsmanship?
The campaign was designed as a more premium chapter of Hennessy's "Never stop. Never settle" campaign. It's about mastery and the infinite variables that the experts at Hennessy overcome each year to create a cognac that's completely harmonious and consistent.

In the film and interactive experience, we take the audience to Cognac, France and move through the different stages of the Hennessy V.S.O.P Privilège creation process. We see the vineyards and the weather conditions the winegrowers are up against. We see the complexity of the grapes, the distillation of the wine, the cooper who builds barrels by hand, the cellar where the spirits age, and finally the masters who blend and bring everything together.

The LiDAR and 3-D scans were used to represent the forces of entropy and variation that challenge these craftspeople along the way. But the real story is about how Hennessy overcomes these things through the craft and attention to detail that takes place at every juncture. Seeing that, you start to realize that these are people who live what they do. They're people with extraordinary skill sets that you can't find anywhere else in the world, and you begin to understand why Hennessy V.S.O.P Privilège is such a premium spirit.



Which visuals are your favorites?
The opening shot of the vineyards is definitely one of our favorite visuals in the film. Vineyards are usually shown in a sunny, stock image kind of way. But here, we see storm clouds and lightning and an ominousness that sets up the theme of chaos right away.

The LiDAR scan of the distillery is a great visual too. There's a point in the film where a light sweeps through, highlighting all the copper stills. The distillery has never been portrayed in this way.

We're also really happy with the scenes from the cooperage, where they make the barrels by hand. The hammering, the flames and the splashing of the barrel perfectly encapsulate the ritual and the craftsmanship that we found at every stage of the Hennessy process.

Can you talk about the voice talent and the director, and what they brought to the table?
We worked with director Ben Tricklebank on the project, who also served as overseer of the interactive site and the entire project. We were filming, capturing 3-D data, scanning locations and separately recording audio of the Hennessy process all simultaneously, so we needed someone whose talents extended beyond just directing. Ben was perfect. Not only does he have an unbelievable eye as a filmmaker but he also understands what makes great interactive and how to keep the larger story in focus. He was so collaborative, so hands-on and filled with ideas throughout the process. Ben, Active Theory and Plan8 were incredible to work with.

We worked with Leslie Odom Jr. for the voiceover. He plays Aaron Burr in Broadway's Hamilton and is doing about eight shows a week, so the fact that we were able to get him was really incredible. He has a great voice, and his delivery elevated the story with just the right amount of elegance and modern edge. He was amazing. He stepped into the booth and immediately understood what we were going for. We recorded him on the Friday right before the Tony Awards where he won best actor.

CREDITS
Client Moët Hennessy USA
Product Hennessy V.S.O.P Privilège
Campaign "Harmony. Mastered From Chaos"
URL: MasteredFromChaos.com
Launch Date June 30th, 2016
Agency Droga5 NY
Creative Chairman David Droga
Chief Creative Officer Ted Royer
Creative Partner Duncan Marshall
Group Creative Director Nick Klinkert
Copywriter Phil Hadad
Art Director Marybeth Ledesma
Executive Design Director Rob Trostle
Associate Design Director Mark Yoon
UX Director Daniel Perlin
Chief Creation Officer Sally-Ann Dale
Head of Interactive Production Niklas Lindstrom
Executive Broadcast Producer Jesse Brihn
Executive Broadcast Producer Ruben Mercadal
Executive Interactive Producer Justin Durazzo
Interactive Producer Ian Graetzer
Interactive Producer Morgan Mendel
Integrated Production Business Manager Grant Thompson
Director of Integrated Production Business Affairs Dianne Richter
Head of Art Production Cliff Lewis
Executive Art Producer Julia Menassa
Print Producer James DePrima
Senior Retoucher John Ciambriello
Global Chief Strategy Officer Jonny Bauer
Group Strategy Director Aaron Wiggan
Strategy Director Elaine Purcell
Strategy Director Danielle Travers
Senior Communications Strategist Delphine McKinley
Senior Data Strategist Brad Mumbrue
Executive Group Director Steven Panariello
Account Director Kendra Schaaf
Account Manager Andrew DeMatos
Associate Account Manager Rebecca Warren
Project Manager Dean Farella
Client Mo ë t Hennessy USA
CMO & EVP of Brands, USA Rodney Williams
SVP, Hennessy, USA Giles Woodyer
SVP, Strategic Marketing, USA William Paretti
Brand Director, USA Richard McLeod
Global CMO, Hennessy Thomas Moradpour
Global Marketing Director, Hennessy VSOP Violaine Basse
Broadcast Production Company Tool of North America
Director/Interactive Director Ben Tricklebank
Director of Photography Justin Gurnari
Managing Partners Oliver Fuselier, Dustin Callif
Executive Producer Sarah DiLeo
Line Producer Kelly Christensen
Interactive Production Company Active Theory
Creative Director Andy Thelander
Technical Director Michael Anthony
Executive Producer Nick Mountford
Producer Annie Chen
Editorial Rock Paper Scissors
Editor Jamie Foord
Assistant Editor Jay McConville
Executive Producer Eve Kornblum
Head of Production Justin Kumpata
Producer Lisa Barnable
3D Scanning Company SCANable
CEO & Founder Travis Reinke
Post Production Blacksmith
VFX Supervisor Tom Bussell
CG Lead Artist Tom Bussell
CG FX Mike Dunkley
2D Lead Artists Iwan Zwarts, Daniel Morris
2D Artists Nick Tanner, Dan DiFelice
Executive Producer Charlotte Arnold
Producer Bomyee Hwang
FILM: Music and Sound Design Plan8
Executive Producer Tor Castensson, Calle Stenqvist
Creative Director Oscar Tillman
Composer Bali Harko
Composer / Sound Designer Karl-Johan Rasmark
INTERACTIVE: Music and Sound Design Plan8
Executive Producer Tor Castensson, Calle Stenqvist
Creative Director Oscar Tillman
Audio Developer Andreas Jeppsson
Lead Developer Rikard Lindstrom
Composer Bali Harko
Composer / Sound Designer Karl-Johan Rasmark
Mix Heard City
Mixers Phil Loeb, Dan Flosdorf
Executive Producer Sasha Awn
Producer Talia Rodgers

Beer bump watch!

Jung von Matt/Alster made these idiotic but amusing print ads for Bergedorfer beer, showing men posing with their beer bellies, Demi Moore style, as though they're pregnant. Fact is, these dudes did work hard growing those bellies, which is an accomplishment of sorts, and they should be proud of them—even if they won't have the eventual added joy of meeting a new human in the process.

The ads do communicate pretty clearly that guys love their Bergedorfer beer. "Brewed with love" is the tagline. And it is infinitely better to have a beer baby than a gas baby.

Full ads below. Via Adeevee.

Beer brands tend to get wound up in knots trying to communicate their essence. But not House Beer. From its very name down to the aesthetic of its debut commercial, the Venice, Calif.-based brand sticks with simplicity—to engaging effect.

Kevin Butler, an agency veteran who's put in stints at Deutsch, TBWA\Media Arts Lab, Facebook and TBWA\Chiat\Day, directed the new spot. It combines a punchy, knowing, almost Newcastle-like vibe (minus the sneering) with laid-back Southern California lifestyle imagery to create a portrait of a beer that's hip without being too hipster-y.



Of course, professing a lack of pretentiousness can itself be pretentious, and this spot comes pretty close to tipping over into self-congratulation. But the playfulness feels genuine. And for a debut commercial, this one should do a nice job of extending the cult brand's mystique rather than spoiling it.

More minimalism over on the website.

CREDITS
Client: House Beer
Title: "This Is House Beer"
Director: Kevin Butler
Director of Photography: Erik Ian/Keegan Gibbs
Executive Producer: Scott Kaplan
Producer: Jed Herold

Rice. Cheap goods. Pointy hats. Christmas decorations. Fortune cookies!

Those are just a few of the stereotypes that pop into a Western mind when asked to think about Asia—and Asian products. To beat this stereotype, and demonstrate how diverse and innovative Asian countries really are, Singapore-based Tiger Beer partnered with Marcel Sydney to repurpose an old discount store, right in the middle of New York's Chinatown. 

The Tiger Trading Co. pop-up store was open from June 6-9 on Canal Street—an area that lives up to the stereotype and is known mostly for its dollar goods. Tiger's take on Asian merchantry deviated dramatically from that standard, though, showcasing cool products from art, fashion, tech and design.

Over 700 Asian artists were represented in the store, including Felix Tai from Pomch, Douglas Young from Goods of Desire and Kelly Lim of Kllylrck. 



"Tiger is a premium beer. It's an authentic, Asian original. But 'Made in Asia' carries a lot of negative baggage in the U.S.," says Marcel Sydney executive creative director Scott Huebscher. "For our first New York launch, we figured, why not tackle the elephant in the room head on?" 

The store took two weeks to build, with production from Will O'Rourke and design by James Dive of The Glue Society. To underscore the notion that Asian goods are more than just inexpensive European rip-offs, the floor itself was used as a medium—its 118-square-meter glass surface housed a crammed display of cheap trinkets purchased from other Canal Street stores, a striking contrast to the wares above them. (It also seems kind of mean, but the point is fair enough.)

"The design decision to place cheap, clichéd goods underfoot was key," Dive says. "To see what real Asian design is, you literally had to walk over what Asian design isn't."

Users could get into the store by flashing a Tiger Beer coaster from any bar, although they still faced lines that apparently stretched around the block, with some people camping out for 12 hours, the agency claims.



The store sold out about an hour after each evening's opening. While browsing, people could also taste street food from a Taiwanese chef and a streetfood hawker flown in from Singapore ... and have a cool Tiger Beer, of course. 

"New York has the largest Asian population outside of Asia, but most people here don't see past the cheap goods in Chinatown," says Tiger Beer's global brand ambassador, Mie-Leng Wong. "As the No. 1 premium beer in Asia, we wanted to give New Yorkers an unexpected way to explore what Asian quality and creativity is all about. So we invited them to explore and discover the best in contemporary Asia for themselves and reset their perceptions." 

Those perceptions are perilously stale. Today, Chinese shoppers alone account for nearly half of the global luxury market, meaning their overseas spending power can make or break a fledgling brand.

This hasn't escaped the notice of the Chinese themselves. Given that China's enormous, inexpensive labor market and cheap resources are in great part responsible for low-quality "Made in China" perceptions, the country is working to change that by leveraging the expertise it's developed in producting luxury goods for European brands. 

Digital is helping facilitate the change, too: Online fashion retailer Lane Crawford's "Created in China" program is an incubator and showcase for emerging Chinese brands, and now supports the work of about 20 Chinese designers. 

That's just China. Japan, for its part, is a world leader—and the original innovator—of cultured pearls, which comprise 99 percent of the pearl market; Singapore has developed an aggressive innovation reputation in the last decade, and South Korea's pop culture and TV series are killers in the television and music markets. 

For its part, Singapore-born Tiger Beer is also developing a reputation—for gleaning resonant ideas fed by the people it's trying to address. Last year, with help from Droga5 Sydney (its last project before shutting down), the brand created a film conceptualized and produced via crowdsourced ideas on its own beer coasters. (The winning sketchers also served as the film's crew.)

Check out the Tiger Trading Co. site for more on the project, the purpose and the artists.

CREDITS
Client: Tiger Beer
Agency: Marcel Sydney
Production Company: Will O'Rourke
Design/Curator and Project Director: The Glue Society's James Dive
MD/ Executive Producer: Michael Ritchie
Executive Producer/ Head of Projects: Josh Mullens
Producer: Jasmin Helliar
Curator/Designer: Silvana Azzi Heras
Production Designer: Thomas Ambrose
Post Production: Heckler
Public Relations: c/o Chan
Media: Starcom MediaVest

Did you ever play that game Lemonade Tycoon—the one where you start with a lemonade stand and have to turn it into a world-dominating conglomo?

This new Chipotle ad is a lot like that, except you don't have to make any of the stressful decisions yourself. Over the course of four minutes and 15 seconds, you get to watch two kids spend their whole lives doing it instead. 

"A Love Story" is the third in Chipotle's series of animated short films, which kicked off with 2011's "Back to the Start" and a Willie Nelson cover of Coldplay's "The Scientist" and continued with 2013's award-winning "The Scarecrow" (whose Fiona Apple cover of "Pure Imagination," from the Willy Wonka soundtrack, still gives us chills).

Created by agency CAA Marketing and animation company Passion Pictures (which is riding high following its Cyber Grand Prix win at Cannes for the "Justino" Spanish lottery gem), "A Love Story" features its own starry cover—My Morning Jacket's take on The Backstreet Boys' "I Want It That Way." The film was directed by Saschka Unseld, a former Pixar animator who now serves as creative director of Oculus Story Studio; it's his first Passion commercial. 

The spot follows a timid little boy who runs an orange juice kiosk across the street from a bespectacled lemonade stand owner. He pines for her in silence. Then, in a misguided attempt to raise money for a date, he posts fliers for his business all over the neighborhood, ultimately stealing her traffic. 

This kicks off a series of competitive one-ups that will inform the rest of their lives, escalating into their adulthoods as fast-food titans with really gaudy neon signs. 

Also, for reasons that remain murky (PR optics?), everyone's hair gets really big.



The story's moral doesn't drift far from either of Chipotle's previous ads. What begins as a winsome tale of blossoming childhood love rapidly transforms into a weird allegory about forgetting your "fresh-squeezed" roots—encrusting sprinkles on tacos in a super-factory you can't even navigate on your own, and leaving your dog to sleep in a cardboard box on the outskirts of your own city. (That's what happens when you grow up and make money: You exchange flesh-and-blood companions for conveyor belts and robot microwaves.) 

Lost in a maze of competitiveness and pride, the couple wander deer-eyed out into the street, covered in sprinkly sauce and the stench of misery. They rediscover one another. They have both kept their original kiosk fliers (awww). There is a timid little finger-touch. 

And together—after what we imagine must have been a stunning night of catharsis sex—they rebuild. All-natural juice. All-natural tacos (when did tacos become so critical to the story?). An all-natural food truck, right in the middle of their neighborhood park. Most important, everybody's hair returns to manageable proportions. 

"Cultivate a better world," the film concludes—an ongoing theme from this marketer. 

It's a sweet film that reeks of Pixar magic. But it also bears the unmistakable aroma of Chipotle's recent history—the food safety scares, the executive cocaine ring scandal. And in light of all this, it's easy to start wondering, Is this story about Chipotle itself?

Indeed, have all these ads actually been a mounting cry for help, which we collectively failed to heed? What will it take for this darling of fast-food chains to finally push away its sprinkle-crusted tacos (a drug metaphor?) and return to its first love—fresh food, possibly a future in food trucks?

It occurs to us that the safest way to read this new allegory is to avoid past mistakes—writing it off as a facile rallying call to freshness—and, based on the context in which Chipotle currently finds itself, read it for what it actually is: A message in a bottle to a lost love, who can ultimately redeem them both.

Our money's on Wendy.

CREDITS

Client: Chipotle
Title: "A Love Story"
Agency: CAA Marketing

Production, Animation Company: Passion Pictures
Director: Saschka Unseld
Art Director: Katy Wu
Executive Producers: Debbie Crosscup, Ryan Goodwin-Smith
Producer: Sibylle Preuss

Animation, Visual Effects: Passion Pictures
Visual Effects Supervisor: Neil Riley
Computer Graphics: Christian Mills
Animation: Wesley Coman, Chris Welsby, Aldo Gagliardi, Cath Brooks, Catherine Elvidge, Karin Matteson, Scott Bono
Texture, Shading: Ian Matthews, Katreena Erin Bowell, David Domingo Jimenez, Leigh Van Der Byl, Louise Chassain, Sara Diaz, Stuart Hall, Arkin Esfref, Alex Holman, David Watson, Leigh van der Byl, Camille Perrin, Patrick Kraft, Roxanne Martinez
Rigging: Morgan Evans, Matteo Nibbi, Giulia Dell'Armi
Visual Effects: Jamie Franks, Colin Perrett, Kwai Keung IP, Junaid Syed, Antonios Deftarios, Guillaume Zaouche, Gabriele Veronese, Matt Moyes, Robin Nordenstein, Alice Jarre
Light, Render: Christian Mills, Richard Moss, Stuart Hall, Adrian Russell, Patrick Kraftt, Alex Holman, Roxanne Martinez, David Watson, Nikolay Kulishev, Simon Maddocks, Francois Pons
Compositing: Johnny Still, Andre Bittencourt, Raphael Theolade, Valeria Romano, Javier Cid, Alex Grey
Animation Supervisor: Jay Boose
Computer Graphics Coordinators: Joost Zoetebier, Suzanne Forward
Character, Production Design: Katy Wu, Amandine Pecharman
Graphic Designer: Davide Saraceno

Postproduction: Technicolor Postworks
Colorist: Max Horton

Music Producer: Blake Mills
Music Performance: Brittany Howard, Jim James

What do tennis and ice cream have in common? They're both irresistibly exciting, according to a new Wimbledon campaign from Häagen-Dazs, featuring crowd reactions from the stands of the annual London tennis tournament that's now in its second week. 

Grey London hired fashion photographer Adam Katz Sinding, known for his streetside style portraits, to capture the highs and lows of courtside fans for the ice cream brand's Instagram. His crisp, vibrant shots of attendees range from unbridled joy to awe, horror, anticipation and suspense.

There are plenty of dropped jaws and scrunched-up faces, not to mention the occasional obligatory nail-biter. Naturally, beautiful people enjoying ice cream bars are mixed in as well.

Titled "Lose Yourself," it's a light, simple idea celebrating the ice cream marketer's new five-year sponsorship of Wimbledon. 

The campaign is most notable for its execution. Sinding's snapshots are fun to look at and brimming with personality, even when they're not necessarily flattering, and even if they're a little thin on the diversity scale. More subtly, it's also a clever partnership—anyone who's eating a lot of Häagen-Dazs will probably want to run around a fair amount, too. 

There are worse ways to stay in shape than playing tennis, and worse rewards after a hot summer workout than a block of frozen milk and sugar. 

More pics below. 

CREDITS
Client: Häagen-Dazs
Project Title: "Lose Yourself"
Business Units: Grey London, GreyPOSSIBLE, Grey Shopper, GreyWorks
Client: General Mills
Marketing Director, General Mills North Europe: Richard Williams
Marketing Manager Häagen-Dazs Northern Europe: Arjoon Bose
Senior Brand Manager Häagen-Dazs U.K.: Nicole Whelan
Executive Creative Director: Ben Clapp
Copywriters: Greg Ormrod, Sadie Majer
Art Directors: Simon Helm, Thomas Worthington
Account Team: Tamara Bennett, Rachel O'Shea, Michelle Simons
Content Team: Alex Wrigley, Emma Nabridnyi, Laura Gaponenko
Creative Producer: Gemma Hose
Digital Project Manager: Laura Pillings
Planners: Cristina Tazza, Andy Hyland, Matt Tanter
Designers: Matteo Alabiso, John-Patrick Racle, Kit Suman
Retouching: Studio RM
Photography: Adam Katz Sinding
Photographic Assistants: Sean O'Neill, Joe Harper
Media Agency: Mindshare (Lenka Trebichalska, Esther Suquet)
Experiential Agency: BEcause Experiential Marketing
Experiential Business Director: Anna Bradshaw
Grey Shoppers: Rob Sellers, Jonathan Hatton, Jason Cope, Sadie Majer, Sunir Patel

UPDATE: A day later, the spot has more than 50 million views and counting.

Here's the runaway viral commercial of the week on Facebook—an Uncle Drew-style spot created by Thrillist for Smith & Forge hard cider.

The three-and-a-half-minute spot shows CrossFit Games competitor Kenneth Leverich done up in elaborate makeup to look like an 84-year-old man—and crashing Muscle Beach to show those young whippersnapper weightlifters a thing or two.

​The ad, which has 27 million views and counting, was concepted and produced by Thrillist's in-house video team. It's part of a campaign titled Thrillist and Smith & Forge Present Hard Won, which has included a six-part sponsored content series. 

Ever since Lipton's Brisk Iced Tea abandoned its inescapable '90s "That's Brisk, Baby!" ad campaigns from J. Walter Thompson that featured Claymation celebrities, its marketing has focused almost entirely on attracting urban teens by collaborating with street artists. These campaigns have included everything from custom iced tea cans to interactive murals to Brisk Bodega pop-up shops focused on art and music and even a dedicated Tumblr blog.

To help launch one of its newest flavors, Pineapple Passionfruit, Brisk continues its run of urban-themed stunts by going after the trendy and loose-with-cash sneakerhead market.

The PepsiCo-owned brand tapped sneaker artist Dan "Mache" Gamache of Mache Custom Kicks (whose clients include the likes of LeBron James and Kanye West) to design the first-ever Brisk sneakers. But as with Nike's recent Krispy Kreme shoes, Mache will be customizing only a few pairs of the sneakers, as the brand feels that "keeping these kicks super rare taps into the culture of sneaker hunting." 

So what goes into a pair of Brisk Pineapple Passionfruit kicks?

It starts with the blue and yellow "Dunk From Above" Jordan IVs (sneakers that already go for $200, which is actually on the low end for a pair of retro Jordans) and after some paint-thinning, airbrushing and a new logo on the tongue, you get something pretty different from the original but still safe enough that sneakerheads won't roast you for stepping out in public in them. After all, you certainly don't want to go viral like what happened with Steph Curry's recent Under Armour shoes.

To give fans an inside look at the design process and inspiration behind the shoes, Brisk made a short video with Mache and the Brisk character featured on the Pineapple Passionfruit packaging, John Juan. It's not that clear why the iced tea flavor needs an animated mascot, or why that would appeal to urban teens, and the video itself comes off as a little corny, but that might be the point?

Mache seems to take his "meeting" with John Juan rather seriously, and the artist even manages to work in a subtle "What are those?!" reference, which in sneaker circles is an inside joke used to poke fun at someone for trying too hard with their footwear selection. 



The final results are actually pretty cool—maybe a little loud, but it's the summer and loud shoes have never been a problem for the dedicated sneaker fan. Regardless, it's likely that due to their extremely rare nature, the lucky fans who end up with a pair will most likely show them off as art at home rather than wear them outside and risk a dreaded scuffing.

Sneaker fans looking to get their hands on these will have to enter one of two sweepstakes running from July 7 to Aug. 18. 

Back in February, a weird Oreo door suddenly appeared on 18th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in New York, promising untold wonders of cryptic cookie goodness. Now, Los Angeles gets its turn.

The cookie brand's new Wonder Vault installation—created by 360i, Weber Shandwick and Momentum—will be open today only (Monday, July 11) at 1555 W. Sunset Blvd. from 9 a.m. until 7 p.m. PDT. It's an elaborate ad for Oreo's new Choco Chip cookies, and it features rooms that will make adults feel like kids again, as everything within them is oversized.

"The new cookie is a combination of two childhood classics: Oreo and chocolate chip. Together they become a beacon of home, evoking simple childhood memories of wonder and ease," the brand tells AdFreak.

The OOH campaign also has interesting digital components. It's using Twitter Moments to extend the story, and 360i has also created two geo-targeted Snapchat filters, one within the Wonder Vault and another within a mile radius.

The campaign includes two other main elements.

First, there's a launch video (see below), which will be running on digital and social, which takes fans on a journey back to their childhood.



Second, there is also a week-long sweepstakes centered on a conversational ad unit on Twitter. Users will click on a button containing the hashtag, personalize a pre-populated tweet and tweet the video and their response out to their followers for a chance to win a set of Oreo Cookie Jars and two packs of Choco Chip flavored Oreos.

If you stop by the Wonder Vault today, let us know how it is. 

Snow fell last Friday in Minneapolis, even though the temperature was over 70 degrees.

Of course, it was all just part of an ad campaign.

Caribou Coffee engineered the freaky flakes at around 8:25 p.m. at the Basilica Block Party music festival, which draws about 25,000 fans and this year featured bands such as X Ambassadors and Death Cab for Cutie. Street Factory Media and Legend PR worked the snow machines to promote the new Caribou Coolers blended iced coffee beverages.



At first, we imagine, the spectators were all like … WTF! Snow! In July! That's cra-cra!

Lest they lose their cool, perhaps fearing Mr. Freeze was holding humanity hostage with a climate-control device (or that they'd need Poke snowballs to catch 'em all given the unexpected change in the weather), Caribou passed around samples and graciously played this clip on the Jumbotron:

After that, folks were all like … WTF! Iced coffee in July! That's cra-cra!

Anyway, it was a fun stunt that generated lots of attention for the Caribou brand, though hardly the first time white powder—ahem—got blown around at a rock concert.

(Just say no, people!)

We've learned a lot about Usain Bolt through advertising—that he broke the 100-meter world record in 9.58 seconds, hails from Jamaica, a former colony of England (at whose capital he's appeared, avenging his ancestors, as the Grim Reaper) ... and loves McNuggets.

But in a fresh piece in its "For the Love of Sports" campaign, Gatorade digs deeper still.

"The Boy Who Learned to Fly" is an origin story for the one man who can probably give you whiplash just by sauntering past you.



The animated short is brought to you by TBWA\Chiat\Day and Moonbot Studios, whose brand work also includes Chipotle's "The Scarecrow." The film begins with Bolt walking into an arena, where the voice of his mother reaches him—and flings us backward in time.

Every hero has a point of departure. His happens on a nondescript schoolday in Jamaica, where a tiny Bolt grasshops out his front door and races to school. 

"You forgot your lunch!" his mom cries—a foreshadowing if we ever saw one!

Bolt's cheerful dash disrupts everyone on his route. (He even has time to score a soccer goal, intercepting a much slower player.) His exertions ensure he makes it on time for the bell, but by noon, he reaches into his backpack and quickly realizes what he's missing. 

On the playground, an adult with a copious carry-out lunch offers Bolt his spoils if he can beat a big kid in formidable track gear to a tree. And when he does—against all odds!—that same man gives him the motivation he needs to take a career in running seriously. 

Which brings us to the 2002 World Junior Championships. This cute tale of triumph would have been more than enough precursor to seeing a grownup Bolt breaking ribbons, but we get one more layer before we go. 

A great hero isn't just defined by what he or she can do, but by what crippling weaknesses they overcome again and again. Bolt was 15 when he competed in the World Junior Championships, but it's here that we learn what ails him: He's beaten down by the pressure of disappointing his country and the people who are constantly pushing him to win. 

It's his mother who brings him back to earth. As she puts his mismatched running shoes on the right feet, she reminds him, "You can always go faster when you keep it light." 

Bolt would go on to become the youngest winner of that tourney, with a gold medal in the 200-meter race, bringing us to the present day. He's filled out, goateed-up and lighthearted as he dusts the starting block (and the competition). He races onward into the clouds, with bolts of lightning tracing his steps. 

"Will Usain Bolt strike yet again?" a mighty voiceover asks. 

It's work that's big on legend, and light on logos. Indeed, apart from a Gatorade bottle near the end, and the lightning-laced G that closes the film, the brand stays out of it entirely. 

The spirit is in keeping with the overall campaign, which explores the impact sports can have on a young person's destiny through nostalgic stories of athletes. In a spot that came out last month, Bolt appeared with Serena Williams, Paul George and April Ross, training alongside their biggest motivators—their younger selves.

But while that approach is more likely to appeal to adults, this one is clearly meant to grab kids' attention, too. It's an introduction to a new hero, one they can follow in real life and at the upcoming Rio Olympics (where the pressure he's imposed on himself looks pretty familiar).

Maybe that halo will spread to everything else swimming in his aura, including Gatorade (and, perhaps thankfully if you're a parent, excluding Durex).

CREDITS

The Boy Who Learned to Fly
Client: Gatorade
Senior VP / General Manager: Brett O'Brien
Head of Consumer Engagement: Kenny Mitchell
Director of Digital Strategy: Jeff Miller
Senior Manager Digital: Abhishek Jadon
Senior Director Sport and Athlete Services: Jeff Kearney
Gatorade Sports Marketing: Kyle Grote
Gatorade Sports Marketing: Aminah Charles
Agency: TBWA\Chiat\Day
Chief Creative Officer: Brent Anderson
Executive Creative Director: Renato Fernandez
Creative Director: Mark Peters
Senior Copywriter: Cyrus Coulter
Senior Art Director: Paulo Cruz
Director of Production: Brian O'Rourke
Executive Producer: Guia Iacomin
Senior Producer: Stephanie Dziczek
Producer: Cristina Martinez
Print Producer: Gabriella Nourse
Art Producer: Gabrielle Sirkin
Managing Director: Jerico Cabaysa
Brand Director: Robyn Morris
Brand Manager: Erika Buder
Associate Brand Manager: Theo KirkhamLewitt
Group Planning Director: Scott MacMaster
Global Planning Director: Martin Ramos
Planning Director: Abigail Weintraub
Planner: Matt Bataclan
Director of Business Affairs: Linda Daubson
Business Affairs Managers: Stefanie McCall, Mimi Hirsch
Senior Traffic Operations Manager: Judy Brill
Animation Company: Moonbot Studios
Directors: Limbert Fabian, Jake Wyatt
Producer: Wendell Riley
Executive Producers: Lampton Enochs, Brandon Oldenburg, Trish FarnsworthSmith
Editor: Calvin O'Neal Jr.
Art Supervisor: Kenny Callicutt
CG Supervisor: Megan Deane
Animation Supervisor: John Durbin
Rigging Supervisor: Rick Silliker
Pipeline Supervisor: Brennan Chapman
Music: South
Sound Design & Mix: 740 Sound
Mixer: Larry Winer
Sound Designers: Chris Pinkston, A Josh Reinhardt, Rob Marshall
Executive Producer: Scott Ganary
Producer: Jeff Martin
Associate Producer of Mix: Geena Richard

We had high hopes for this A&W Restaurants infomercial by agency Cornett for the A&W mug. Created for InStyle TV, it promised to be tongue-in-cheek, possibly nostalgic and—why not?—mobile friendly. 

Well, it's definitely mobile friendly, if the vertical panels are any evidence.



We weren't wrong to hope. Infomercials have gotten snackier and funner, in hopes of snagging younger audiences. More important, the press release was pretty entertaining, with quotes like, "After watching A&W's new infomercial, I broke down in tears. I've never seen anything more heartfelt." - Spencer.

It also teased a potentially silly detour exploring A&W's efforts to "dig deeper": "Our team of creative scientists at Cornett got to work and after three days of intensive research, we came up with over 100 new uses of A&W's iconic root beer mug. From hand puppeteering to making a great home for a gummy bear—A&W's mug can do it." 

Compared to the PR's playful language, the infomercial itself felt authentically stale in a late-night TV sort of way, with an earnest voiceover, ingratiating guitar music and a QVC-friendly woman demonstrating its various uses—such as "[freezing] to the perfect frosty temperature, leaving your drink so cold ... it gets icy!"

There's even a cringe-meriting cameo from A&W mascot Rooty the Root Bear, who uses his mug as a snack bowl for cheese curds and nuggets. 

"Be like Rooty—fill it to the top and snack to your heart's content," the narrator says. Or you can "keep it on the kitchen counter and hold straws in it, or use it on your desk for keeping pens and paper clips organized." 

Writing out the voiceover copy actually does make the ad feel funny in ways that the PR, so fetching in its self-deprecation ("Our mug is actually a cheese curd vessel"), implied. But we watched it again and felt confused, because we still walk away believing that A&W truly hopes we'll fill our homes with "Americana" mugs full of pencils and straws. 

Could it have just been a PR dude trying to make fizzy wine out of sour grapes?

Nah, the site is pretty tongue-in-cheek, too. Consider:



The only explanation we can come up with is that A&W was actually shooting for an infomercial that would be funny in its stodginess, like these overzealous ShamWow-reminiscent ads for the Las Vegas Animal Foundation. And in its sincere desire to get it right, the brand succeeded—not in making something nostalgically funny, but in making something that somehow manages to be even duller than an actual Flowbee ad.

In a way, that's impressive.

The full copy of the press release appears below.

Hope all is well!

Recently A&W Restaurants worked with InStyle television to create an epic infomercial celebrating their iconic root beer mugs. It starting airing on InStyle TV (not to be confused with InStyle Magazine) last week. It's an infomercial so amazing, I'm sure it will clean house at all of the creative award shows next year.

"In my five years of working in advertising, I've never seen a more moving infomercial. The story, the cinematography, the acting - everything is just so damn beautiful" - Me

"After watching A&W's new infomercial, I broke down in tears. I've never seen anything more heartfelt." - Spencer

"It takes a village to make a great infomercial" - Sarah Blasi

In addition to it being beautiful, we found A&W's new infomercial to also be very inspiring. So inspiring, it inspired us to dig deeper, to go beyond the expected and explore new and innovative uses of the mug. Our team of creative scientists at Cornett got to work and after three days of intensive research, we came up with over 100 new uses of A&W's iconic root beer mug. From hand puppeteering to making a great home for a gummy bear - A&W's mug can do it.

While most mugs offer only one benefit (holding a beverage), ours offers over 100 benefits, making A&W's mug the most beneficial mug in the world.

If you have a second please grab some cheese curds (our mug is actually a cheese curd vessel), hit the link below, watch this amazing infomercial and then check out all of the unbelievable things this damn mug can do on it's very own web page!

http://awrestaurants.com/mug

Thanks and please let us know if you have any questions.

A horned, hairy monster represents a pre-teen's ravenous appetite which, left unchecked, swells to Godzilla-esque proportions in the first-ever ad campaign for Foster Farms Corn Dogs. On the plus side, that furry freak is a beast on the soccer field (we'd pick him for our team any day!)—and the middle-schooler jonesing for a snack never once morphs into Marilyn Monroe:



"We talked to working moms across the nation about the ever-present growling rumble that a 12-year-old boy's stomach makes when they're hungry," says Franklin Tipton, partner and creative director at Odysseus Arms, which developed the integrated push that breaks today across TV, digital, mobile and local activations.

"The idea of an appetite appearing suddenly, growing rapidly, all fussy and monstrous, only to be dispatched by seven grams of protein [from a Foster Farms Corn Dog], nailed what the moms felt about feeding young boys."

Emmy winner Dave Laden's work on silly spots with various varmints for Snapple and Yelp made him the perfect choice to direct, and here he captures just the right self-consciously corny tone. Legacy Effects built two suit sizes for the shoot, and some scenes were achieved using green-screen techniques.

"The Monster Appetite was tricky to style," says Tipton. "Too scary and it leaned toward unappetizing. Too silly or goofy and the idea becomes too juvenile." Ultimately, the look suggests an escapee from Maurice Sendak or The Muppet Show, with, according to Tipton, a yellow/brown hue designed to mirror "the texture of the [product's] cornbread coating."

Dude's so adorable. Couldn't you just eat him up?

CREDITS
Client: Foster Farms Corn Dogs
Foster Farms Marketing Director: Jonathan Swadley
Integrated Marketing Director: Ira Brill
Creative Agency: Odysseus Arms
Design Director: Libby Brockhoff
Creative Director: Franklin Tipton
Managing Director: Eric Dunn
Art Director: Rachel Ngun
Executive Producer: Cherie L. Appleby
Production Company: Hungry Man
Director: Dave Laden
Managing Partner/Executive Producer: Kevin Byrne
Producer: Caleb Dewart
Director of Photography: Chrisophe Lanzenberg
Editorial: Final Cut
Editor: Paul Zucker
Assistant Editor: Dillon Stoneburner
Executive Producer: Eric McCasline
Production VFX: Significant Others
Executive Producer: Alek Rost
VFX, Flame Artist: Dirk Greene
Producer: Garrett Braren
Sound Mix: Beacon Street
Composer: Andrew Feltenstein
Mix Artist and Sound Design: Rommel Molina
Executive Producer: Adrea Lavezzoli
Props/Monster Design: Legacy Effects
Production Designer: Alan Scott
Design and Build: Theodore Haines