Sure, 72andSunny and Samsung have had some fun comparing the latter’s smartphones to Apple’s in recent years, but in the last several months, it seems like the brand’s finally getting over their complex and showcasing the product line on its own. First, they highlighted the Galaxy S4 with a graduation-centered campaign. Now, they’re showcasing new features for Father’s Day with “hip dads in action.”

In “Swaddle Master,” a befuddled father learns the tricks of the swaddling trade via Smart Pause YouTube. With “Quick Snooze” (below), meanwhile, the same cardigan-wearing dad watches the game with his little one at the end of the day. As his eyes droop shut, the game pauses. He reopens them and it picks up where he left off.

Though this creative work may not go viral or win awards, showing the practical (and less glamorous) application of the S4’s features will perhaps win the hearts of young parents everywhere. On a special occasion like Father’s Day, maybe hitting your target audience is enough?

Credits after the jump.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Now that the fictional game, “Unicorn Apocalypse,” created by 72andSunny in its ongoing campaign to promote Samsung Galaxy has come to fruition, where else to turn but the movie version and a pitch to the one and only Tim Burton. The writer/director takes center stage amongst the sea of geeky, Galaxy-addled developers and comes up with his own standard oddball concepts for where to take “Unicorn” next in this clip called, aptly enough, “Meeting with Tim Burton.”

The 90-second clip was just one of several Samsung ad placements during last nights Oscars broadcast (guess they saved up their Super Bowl budget for this) that told the tale of the evolution of the honestly (and perhaps deliberately) terrible-sounding faux-game. Still, the most recent installments like the one below where the creatives meet the account folks add a decent amount of smirk and snark to balance the scales. Credits after the jump.

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Hey, look! It’s that dude who was on 30 Rock for a few seasons before they realized his character was totally worthless. This guy. Man, has that dude fallen on hard times or what? Let’s all hope he gets back on his feet before things get worse.

Anyway, the above 90-second spot from 72andSunny takes place in the fictional video game development studio of “Unicorn Apocalypse,” a fake game no doubt inspired by Adult Swim’s online “Robot Unicorn Attacks,” but about zombies because 20-something nerds sure love those. If you think 90-seconds sounds like a long time to watch hipster nerds talk about zombie unicorns and play around with their phones, you’d be right.

I’ve been a little back and forth about Samsung’s recent iPhone-bashing campaign. Perhaps it’s because I think it’s a really great idea, but the execution just misses the mark for some reason. Perhaps that reason, as most blatantly exhibited by the spot above, is because Samsung is targeting pretentious millennials who look down about those with different tastes. It makes sense to label iPhone buyers sheep, but there has to be a more subtle way to do it. Also, here’s a newsflash: pretentious people don’t think they’re pretentious. They just think that they’re right. So, portraying an over the top version of the demo (however accurate), will undoubtedly turn off the very consumer you most want.

As the current top comment on YouTube asks, “Why does Samsung insist on making everyone with their phone act like a 20-something douchebag?” Good question. Credits after the jump.

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-Fast-food company A&W, which we all know for its root beer among other things, has appointed Lexington, KY-based Cornett Integrated Marketing Solutions as its new creative AOR. link

-Women’s apparel brand lucy activewear appointed Minneapolis-based mono as its AOR. First work from the new, lowercase-loving partnership will launch in Q3 of this year.

-Doner has taken over for Thayer Media as media AOR for the Marie Callender’s brand.

-Red Lobster has launched its first Spanish-language ad campaign (above) courtesy of Wing, a unit of Grey, which of course won the Darden chain’s ad duties back in 2010.

-L.A.-based Arcade Edit welcomed Will Hasell and Nick Rondeau to its roster.

-VW’s irrepressible spot, “The Force,” cracked the top 10 in the One Club’s list of the best automobile commercials from the past 25 years.

-MDC-owned, San Diego/NY based Vitro has picked up AOR duties for burger chain, Red Robin.

-Kevin Goetz, one-half of directing duo the Goetz Brothers, has joined the roster of L.A.-based commercial prodco, Traveling Picture Show Company. Goetz’s reel can be seen here.

-Along with taking on an expanded role as managing director of bi-coastal/London prodco Epoch Films, founder Mindy Goldberg has added former Directors Bureau EP Melissa Culligan to the roster. Meanwhile, Goldberg’s partner at Epoch, Jerry Solomon, is departing the company to pursue other ventures.

-Minneapolis agency Preston Kelly has hired production designer Tera Gilmore, account supervisor Dan Ryan, and community manager Krissy Welle.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Seeking to push its pay-per-view adult channel Amour in mainstream media, Manitoba Telecom Services enlisted the help of Dare Vancouver, which in turn came up with a campaign that adds an unlikely twist to the most cliched porn scenarios. Biscuit Filmworks director Tim Godsall, who’s helmed everything from DirectTV’s “Opulence” spot to the Cars.com “Neck” Super Bowl XLVI entry, takes the reins behind the camera for this series of clips that has all the production value and bad acting of your average adult film minus the X-rated content. Looks like mission accomplished. Check out two more and credits after the jump.

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“Mom jeans” are pretty bad, but as a young man frightened of losing all fashion sense with age, I have to say that I am personally more terrified of finding myself wearing a pair of dreaded “dad shorts.” At what average age do you think most women start hiking up their baggy pants as high as possible and most men think the that world wants to see their hairy thighs?

In Venables Bell & Partners’ first work for eBay, the San Francisco agency is introducing the online store’s new app for impulse shopping. The “When it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay” campaign debuts tonight with three spots from VB&P, each showing someone trying to keep up with today’s trends by instantly purchasing products from eBay. Says VB&P co-founder and ECD Paul Venables: “When the company that revolutionized how people shop asks you to do something big and new, you get excited. For this campaign, we tapped into the psyche of passionate shoppers and then demonstrated why eBay is the answer.”

In the announce, VB&G cites a statistic that says 60 percent of fashion enthusiasts and 65 percent of electronics enthusiasts own smartphones, compared to less than 30 percent of the general public. See two spots (one featuring an impulse fashion purchase and one featuring an impulse electronics purchase)  and credits after the jump

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Using the tagline “Just the way it is” (is Bruce Hornsby getting royalties?), David&Goliath serves up another ad (directed by Matt Aselton of recent FedEx ad fame) for its client, Carl’s Jr., this time with celebrities included. The main highlight: Daily Show contributor Olivia Munn, in skimpy bikini and all, indulges her carnivorous cravings while riding the waves alongside Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for whatever reason. While there’s no Miss Turkey this time around, there are plenty of other scantily clad women and somewhat appetizing burgers to make up for it. Credits after the jump…

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The agency formerly known as T.A.G., agencytwofifteen, was asked to come up with a marketing program for pharma brand Help Remedies and here’s one of the end results. One of nine–yes, nine–spots were delivered for the “help I can’t sleep” campaign and the San Francisco-based shop honed in right on dreams (cue Inception music). Actually, these look more like fever dreams (but they’re still more linear than mine) but nonetheless, the 2-1-5 worked alongside Tool of North America and the Lifelong Friendship Society to showcase the nocturnal imaginations of everything from puppies to milkmaids.

Along with the spots (three more after the jump), agencytwofifteen developed a dream recommendation website and  worked with SF/Sweden-based interactive prodco We Are Licious to develop a dream recommendation app that will “record” a person’s dream and post them to Facebook, Twitter, etc. What is the target market, you ask? From our vantage point, it appears to be travelers, business types, insomniacs, etc. as the adverts will be shown on demand in hotels, in-flight, in 24-hour drugstores, on late-night TV, online, on a mobile website and on Duane Reade’s screens in New York’s Union Square.

No totems or kicks were involved in the making of this production. Check out credits and some of the others after jump.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.