It’s gonna be a day. After the usual “competitive pitch process,” wine staple Kendall-Jackson has awarded agency of record duties to Heat, the San Francisco-based shop perhaps best known for their various EA Sports efforts (or, yeah, this). Regarding the appointment of Heat, Caroline Shaw, chief communications & marketing officer for K-J, offers the textbook explanation, saying, “We’re so pleased to engage Heat for Kendall-Jackson. Their strong mix of strategy, creative thinking and clever writing demonstrated they would bring big ideas and solid execution to our business.” Heat will handle all new ad initiatives for the including digital, experiential installations. print and POP for the wine brand, which the parties involved say is trying to reach a younger audience.

Kendall-Jackson’s previous AOR was GlobalWorks Group, which handled the account for approximately a year.

Kiefer Sutherland’s voice is somehow simultaneously soothing and forceful. His gravelly intonation, coupled with his beautifully weathered face, is completely convincing regardless of the words involved. In this Jose Cuervo spot created by McCann Erickson New York, Sutherland’s ultimate message is, “Have a Story.” He pushes a shot across the bar to us and then we follow him for an impromptu concert, a spontaneous tattoo, a brief lover’s brawl, and some bonsai clipping.

It’s not the first time Sutherland’s channeled his 24 character, Jack Bauer, though Cuervo’s spot is a subtle representation. For Acer of course, he got jazzed about a new Dynamite Cupcakes business, obviously involving explosions and suspense.

On the football field, Peyton Manning runs the Denver Broncos with a robotic efficiency fitting of a man with a giant, shiny forehead. His younger brother Eli roams the sidelines for the New York Giants with the mopey glare of a six-year-old who wants to pick his nose but can’t because cameras are watching. Usually, the funniest thing about the Manning brothers is that they’re so unfunny. They’re stiff and white. But every once in a while – don’t forget the acclaimed “Football Cops” – they unleash some comedy genius for a football-related commercial.

The newest addition to the Manning oeuvre is a fake R&B music video created by Grey for DirecTV and NFL Sunday Ticket. #footballonyourphone. Remember that hashtag. It’s going viral, because a company that deals with an incredibly popular sport got two huge stars to subvert their normal personalities and completely buy-in to a goofy campaign that could’ve been an abandoned Lonely Island digital short. In the first 12 hours or so after it hit Youtube, the clip reared in 100k views.

Everything about the spot is smart, right down to the tiny Archie Manning cameo and the best/worst hair design you’ll see this year until American Hustle, starring Bradley Cooper’s curled terribleness, hits theaters. Peyton may be known as the more gregarious of the two brothers, but Eli is a vastly underrated comedian in his commercials. He ends up stealing this show with some odd riffs on milk, blouses, and Alexander Graham Bell. Pay attention, brands: This is how you go viral.

“What would you do, if you were stranded on a tropical island with only a smartphone?” Les Stroud, survival expert and reality TV star, asks in Samsung’s new spot. #SOS? Daily selfies? Think of your answer and get it put to the test with Samsung’s promo for the Galaxy S4 Zoom. Sixteen chosen contestants will be flown to the Caribbean where they’ll learn survival skills from Mr. Stroud. The best eight will move to a secret island, where they will compete in survival challenges, accompanied by their Galaxy gadgets. Viewers of the show then vote on the contestants in real time via their social media posts. The winner gets an island (or $100,000, so an “island experience,” whatever that means).

“It’s an ambitious project but one that will surely not be forgotten,” said Craig Borders, the producer and director behind series like Laguna Beach and Ink Master and SOS Island‘s executive producer. “People crave new entertainment experiences and this series is sure to deliver, while tapping into the social media realm in an unprecedented way.”

It’ll be interesting to see how Samsung avoids a clusterfuck when they’re dealing with a cadre of stranded people, all documenting their experiences in real time. The solution, of course, is for nothing to be in real time, and no one to be really stranded. In that case, we’ll be watching another piece of canned TV. There’s nothing enticing about that, social media streamed or not.

If you live in either Chicago or Boston, you may have watched (or wanted to watch) the Stanley Cup Finals, in which case you realized that you don’t have access to NBC Sports. After some McGyver-ing and hooking you iPad to your TV, you got thousands about thousands of commercials advertising that NBC Sports would be broadcasting every game of England’s prestigious Barclays Premier League. After digesting this fact, you immediately stopped caring because 1.) You’re an American who likes ‘merican sports and 2.) Again, you don’t have access to NBC Sports.

But who better to make you, an American without access to NBC, care about this development than Jason Sudeikis, a former Saturday Night Live cast member who has appeared basically fucking everywhere in the last month? First, dude quits SNL. Then, he starts going on a press tour for his terrible-looking new movie, Meet The Millers, where he stars opposite Jennifer Aniston, who plays a middle-aged stripper. Then, he joined ESPN to count down the top 50 “This Is SportsCenter” ads last week. Then, he made cameo appearance in Drinking Buddies, a new film playing on Apple TV before it hits theaters at the end of the month and stars Sudeikis’ real-life fiance, Olivia Wilde. Then, Kiran shows me this and asks me to write about it, compelling me to start complaining about how Jason Sudeikis is fucking everywhere these days. Then, wouldn’t you know it, he releases a viral video YESTERDAY where he leads a parody version of Mumford & Sons, with Ed Helms, Jason Bateman and Will Forte starring as his bearded indie-folk backing band.

Seriously, it’s absolutely impossible to get rid of this guy. Watch him play a dumb American coach who doesn’t get soccer above in a new campaign from the Brooklyn Brothers (who you may remember from those kick-ass John Krasinski/Alec Baldwin New Era spots), and then don’t talk to me about Jason Sudeikis until you’ve developed some sort of Sudeikis repellant.

Read more

Adidas and Sid Lee are framing the new “Unite All Originals” as Run DMC vs. DJ A-Trak, but the versus bit comes on too strong. The campaign is much more affable than combative, think of it as a buddy cop combo where there are three buddies instead of two and the buddies like to wear black felt hats.

Run DMC’s famed history with Adidas dates back to the 1980s, and they’ve been lending their benign street cred to the three stripes ever since. A-Trak may not be comparable as a household name, but he’s a worthy spokesman for the next generation, as you can see in some coverage from early March. For this new campaign, the two acts are combining for a fan-controlled music video that will be dictated user voice commands. A true embodiment of “My Adidas.”

Credits after the jump.

Read more

After their global campaign in which people could buy personalized Coke bottles and cans, Coca-Cola Israel and Tel Aviv-based Gefen Team built a campaign around personalized billboards. Users downloaded a special app, then entered their name. Using geofence technology, the billboard would sense the user’s nearness and display their name. Each user would receive a message notifying them their name was splashed for the street to see.

Coca Cola used Israel’s “main billboards,” meaning users would see their names in lights more than once. And no matter how finite, people love fame: during the campaign period, the app reached 100k downloads and ranked #1 in Israel’s app store.

It seems like an elementary gimmick, but it’s got new-technology legs and exciting potential. Maybe the next brand to use these billboards will display a full message, making commuters’ life that much more fun.

We always welcome new writer to the fold and now we bring in the first in a series of of posts Maude Standish,
co-founder of Tarot, a Millennial trend and insight company, who will look at Millennial trends and their implications for brands. Now, on with the show.

We get it.  You don’t like us. And by us, I mean the roughly 82 million Millennials living in the US.  You think we are all living in our parents’ basement, eating organic food we bought with food stamps, posting selfies, and counting down the day not by what we did, but how many “Likes” the internet bestowed on us.

You think we are idiots. No matter that we are on our way to being the most educated generation in the history of America, you think we aren’t going to understand you unless you talk to us in internet speak. OMG. LOL. ?WTF?

You think it’s our fault that we aren’t listening to you. That we are too ADHD to pay attention to what’s important. (And OBVI what you are saying is TOTES more important than anything else we could possibly be doing. I’ll put this iPhone down now and watch your ad.) But guess what?   It’s not our fault that we’re not listening to you–it’s yours.

Yeah, yours. Because you Boomers and Gen Xers are all so busy describing us that you have forgotten to listen to us. Even if we are all those things that you think we are, that’s not how we see ourselves. And until you see us as we see ourselves you are not going to connect with us.

Read more

Ford “C-Max” 30sec from Musikvergnuegen on Vimeo.

To promote Ford’s 2013 fleet of car models, Team Detroit created a set of trailer-style spots, each paying homage to a major Hollywood genre. When a girl wants to get away from her clingy vampire boyfriend, she drives through the night in a Ford Focus. A city is under attack by a freak robot, and the man who saves the day drives Ford’s F150. Hollywood-based music house/mouthful Musikvergnuegen created original music and sound design for all of the 15 spots, giving them a more authentic blockbuster feel. Each ad feels spot on, showing how the majority of our current movie landscape is completely cookie cutter. My heart swells when two long distance lovers meet up for lunch because of their Ford Edges; I would watch the mysterious film about a “legendary” Mustang driver. It’s easy to get swept up in the sound.

Hopefully these trailers will show before movies in theatres; it’d be funny if viewers get excited. In the meantime, check out the spots via Musikvergnuegen.

Credits after the jump

Read more

As has been widely reported this morning, Draftfcb has renewed its relationship with Kmart and this statement from a spokesperson for parent Sears Holding Co. (the agency referred all inquiries to the client) basically sums it up: “Kmart has concluded its agency review. Draftfcb will retain its AOR status as well as acquire additional responsibilities for our fashion business.” We’ll let you know if a memo falls into our hands, but it looks like the success of “Ship My Pants” and subsequent play-on-words campaigns from DFCB for the retail chain sealed the deal. We’ve been told by folks on the Spy line that McCann NY “finished a very close second.”