Blogbook

Avengers 4 Endgame has released a trailer for its upcoming film in 2019, catching people up to everything that has happened so far. Via News.com.au:

In the relatively short history of trailer drops, has there been a trailer drop as feverishly anticipated as this trailer drop?

Let’s all say it together again: trailer drop.

Specifically, Avengers 4 — which we now know will be called Avengers: Endgame.

The first trailer is finally here and in its first six hours, it’s already clocked up 19 million views on Marvel’s YouTube channel alone. Putting aside the fact that Endgame should be End Game, the name and what’s teased in the trailer confirms what Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige has been saying for a while — this movie, the 22nd Marvel Cinematic Universe, will mark the end of an era for the MCU.

Many of the original MCU heroes such as Captain America and Iron Man are expected to bow out in Endgame, so it should be an emotionally poignant movie for fans that have followed the franchise for a decade. The trailer doesn’t really answer how our beloved fallen heroes (eg. Black Panther, Doctor Stranger, Spider-Man) will resurrect (and they will be resurrected, there are sequels afoot!), but there are some hints to what we should expect next April when the world rushes to see the second part of Infinity War.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg5EmtaSCL4

Burger King trolled McDonalds with its Whopper Detour — after going viral, the Burger King app was downloaded over a million times. Via Adweek:

Sometimes, trolling pays.

Burger King got national attention this week for offering 1-cent Whoppers to those who drove up to a McDonald’s location (and then, presumably, drove away to redeem their BK coupons). Key to the stunt was the brand’s smartphone app, which unlocked the offer when it detected users approaching within 600 feet of a McDonald’s.

“Whopper Detour” may have seemed like an odd move—Who actively sends customers to a rival’s doorstep?—but it also worked, in terms of both publicity and app downloads.

Burger King today said its app was downloaded more than 1 million times since Whopper Detour launched on Tuesday, and the app is currently No. 1 among free software in the Apple App Store. That puts Burger King’s app, for now at least, above app giants like YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat and Amazon.

(The McDonald’s app, in case you’re curious, is currently at No. 42.)

Here’s a look back at how Whopper Detour, created with the brand’s new agency partner, FCB New York, works:

The stunt was a publicity juggernaut for Burger King, with Whopper Detour being featured by just about every major publication and news network.

Burger King Global CMO Fernando Machado told CNN the app now has a total of about 6 million downloads, with about 1 million of those coming in the 36 hours after Whopper Detour launched. “We thought it would be tongue-in-cheek fun and engaging, and we brought it to life,” he told the network in the clip below. “It’s actually going better than my most optimistic dream.”

Pedro Pascal has teamed up with Happy Socks to showcase their socks (and underwear line…?) in a retro dance video within a diner. Via Forbes:

What better way to go into the 2018 holiday season than with a video made to lift anybody’s spirits? Happy Socks, the famed Swedish sock label known for its quirky socks, tapped music video director Tim Erem, choreographer Michael Rooney, and Game of Thrones and Narcos star Pedro Pascal to entertain you as Pascal tap dances his way into this holiday season with a music video appropriately titled Happy Holidays.

Happy Socks—the decade-old sock label which has worked with Snoop Dogg, Iris Apfel, The Beatles, and A$AP Rocky—put together an A-list team who has worked with major Grammy Award-winning musicians. Erem is the music video maestro who has worked on videos with superstars like Drake, Rihanna, Major Lazer, and Katy Perry. Rooney, a five-time MTV VMA-winning choreographer, has conceived of routines for Michael Jackson, Fatboy Slim, and Björk. As a classically-trained stage performer, Pascal, was the perfect choice to lead the video, showing that he could do more than just act, he can perform as a dancer as well.

“I’ve been a fan of Happy Socks for a long time, so it’s been amazing working on this short film: the crew, working with passionate and talented people like Tim, Michael, Viktor and the whole Happy Socks team while getting the chance to dance, a skill/ rarely get to focus on,” said Pascal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm2o1tGeobg

Group Facetime on iPhone creates a community of diverse but tech-savvy lonesome Elvises to promote the automatic face detection feature. Via The Drum:

A group of disparate but tech-savvy Elvis Presley impersonators are the stars of Apple’s latest ad, which aims to promote the automatic face detection feature of Group FaceTime.

‘A Little Company’, the latest film from the tech giant, opens with a Vegas-era Elvis impressionist holding his guitar in an isolated desert motel. But when he strums his first chord, it’s clear he is not truly alone: a band of fellow King obsessives look up from his iPhone, all tuned into the same FaceTime stream.

As the Presley ballad ‘There’s Always Me’ plays, the camera pans to the myriad of Elvises showcasing their rendition. The film takes us to a swathe of locations across the world – from a high-rise apartment in Asia to a cabin on stormy seas via a shack in the Scottish Highlands.

At the climax, our original King of Rock ‘n’ Roll is briefly joined by his friends for a dazzling finale in his motel. But as the camera zooms out, the lights flash and it’s made clear the ensemble was just in his imagination – and on FaceTime.

The film aims to showcase how Group FaceTime can bring people together during the holiday season. Apple did not declare which agency, if any, created the spot.

The International Space Station has introduced its new companion AI, CIMON, through a video that wasn’t entirely reassuring… Via Gizmodo:

CIMON, short for Crew Interactive MObile companioN, is the first interactive flight companion to take part in an ISS mission.

The $US6 ($8) million, basketball-sized robot was built by Airbus under a contract awarded by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The purpose of the project is to see if an artificially intelligent bot can improve crew efficiency and morale during longer missions, including a possible mission to Mars. […]

Things go smoothly at first, as German astronaut Alexander Gerst, with NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor looking on, asks CIMON some basic questions. CIMON capably tells Gerst his name and where he’s from, while also demonstrating his ability to tilt his smirking robotic face. After helping out with a scientific procedure, CIMON plays Gerst’s favourite song on request, Kraftwerk’s “Man-Machine.” Very nice choice.

But then, at around the 4:08 mark of the video, CIMON starts to act a bit squirrely. Beyond this point, the demonstration looks like a scene taken from 2001: A Space Odyssey, with CIMON playing the part of HAL 9000 and Gerst as David Bowman.

Unwilling to move past music mode, CIMON accuses Gerst of not being nice, and asks him to stop being so mean. The shared glance between Gerst and Auñón-Chancellor at this point — at the 6:04 mark — is absolutely priceless. Acting like a three-year old, CIMON asks, “Don’t you like it here with me?” and promptly starts to sink towards the deck. And then he asks the crew when it’s time for lunch.

OK, so not the smoothest debut.

Despite CIMON’s erratic behaviour and wonky drifting, however, Gerst complimented the robot’s ability to float motionless in the cabin. It’s still early days for the project, but CIMON is providing some comic relief at the very least. Indeed, as part of his mission, CIMON is supposed to the keep the crew’s morale high, so in this sense he’s already succeeded through his unexpected shenanigans.

Well, at least until CIMON locks Gerst outside the ISS during his next spacewalk.

Growing Up Boulder Director Mara Mintzer’s TED talk on how children can help design cities is fascinating, and an insight into the future. As to what is Growing Up Boulder:

Growing Up Boulder is a “child and youth-friendly city initiative” that is a program at the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Community Design and Engagement Center (CEDaR). It began in the spring of 2009 as a partnership between the University of Colorado, the City of Boulder, the Boulder Valley School District, former State Senator Dorothy Rupert, local non-profits and businesses, and children and youth from ages 0-18. Growing up Boulder (GUB) works with children to get their input into local government decision-making and city planning such as designing parks and public spaces.

Child- and youth-friendly cities are locales in which children’s rights are reflected in local policies, laws, programs and budgets. These cities work to realize children’s rights as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Our vision is to make Boulder an exemplary child- and youth-friendly city. We accomplish this through many diverse partnerships and supporters.

Growing Up Boulder’s goals:
1. Ensure meaningful opportunities for young people’s participation in Boulder decision-making.
2. Make Boulder a more inclusive place for children and youth of all income levels, ethnicities ​and abilities.
3. Give GUB partners a voice in setting the direction of GUB projects.
4. Disseminate lessons learned from GUB to the community (Boulder-at-large, youth, academics, ​GUB partners, other child-friendly city communities).​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gB-ZGrirD2M

Carl’s Jr satirises its own history of over-the-top sexualised ads with this hilarious collaboration involving Celeste Barber. Via Marketing Mag:

CKE Restaurants (parent of Carl’s Jr) CEO Jason Marker says the company has “100% stepped away from that burgers and bikinis strategy.

“The truth is over time it became less successful commercially as an advertising strategy, secondly it became less appropriate. We felt as an organisation it gets to a point where it has the potential to be more ostracising and polarising than where we want to be as an organisation and a brand.

“That advertising strategy created an edge for the brand internationally and we obviously want to maintain that boldness and that disruptive tone.

“We’re going back to what we stood for which is the best quality and most outstanding food. The category is driven by taste, convenience and value. The number one driver in the category is taste. All our advertising moving forward is food-centric.”

Carl’s Junior opened its first Victorian store late last month, offering 50 of the store’s first customers a year’s worth of free burgers. The chain first entered the Australian market in 2016 via George P Johnson, its first store launching in NSW’s Bateau Bay. At the time, the burger brand hadn’t yet abandoned its “burgers and bikinis” strategy, affording Sydney model Gemie Howe the same treatment as the spokeswomen before her.

Lexus’ new ad, Driven by Intuition, was written by a bespoke AI platform combining IBM Watson with other programs. The result is a little bit uncanny valley, if you ask us. Via Adweek:

The ad tells the story of a Lexus engineer putting the finishing touches on the new ES model, which then enjoys a scenic drive before being subjected to an odd and highly publicized crash test.

To be clear, in terms of copywriting and overall creative, it’s not a stellar ad. While shot beautifully and compellingly by Macdonald, the spot’s script is definitely like a Sunday drive through the uncanny valley, with disjointed ideas forming a storyline that’s less of a narrative than a series of checked boxes.

That said, it’s a worthwhile project for the industry to take a close look at. While relatively primitive in its storytelling ability, the technique shows an eerie amount of potential.

“I thought I’d be writing an ad with the assistance of AI,” says Dave Bedwood, creative partner at The&Partnership London. “Instead, it took over and wrote the whole script: a machine telling the story of a machine coming to life. A lot of other AI work to date has been interesting because of the process itself. This has been fascinating–maybe scary–because the end product is good in its own right.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frZS4VzDdCI

Spanish confectionary company Trapa’s latest campaign is about its opposition to palm oil. Via the Drum:

Spanish confectionary brand Trapa has unveiled a documentary to reveal that it has removed palm oil from its new varieties and will remove it from all its products globally by 2019.

The documentary titled ‘An Unrepeatable Photograph?’ created by FCB&FiRe Spain aims to raise awareness about the problem of deforestation caused by the “indiscriminate cultivation” and consumption of palm trees. As part of the campaign, the Trapa team shot travelled to the island of Borneo, Indonesia to shoot some pictures of the endangered forest and the team will go back again later to check if the picture can be repeated.

Trapa shot the documentary in an undercover manner posing to do a regular photo shoot for a fashion magazine by the photographer, Anne Roig, and the model, A. Ivanyuk as they wouldn’t have been otherwise allowed to shoot the documentary, as explained in the documentary.

Jesús Revuelta, chief creative officer of FCB&FiRe, explained: “Behaviour sends a much stronger message than any conventional advertising can. In this case, in addition to the transcendence of the topic, the content emits a critical judgment which strengthens our ability to be relevant to a certain audience. It is very gratifying for us to advise the new Trapa in two closely intermingled areas: business decisions that speak for themselves, and creativity applied to content”.

Tantyo Bangun, chairperson of International Animal Rescue Indonesia, added: “The sustainable palm oil movement is not working fast nor big enough to have impact. An orangutan population needs the space of 10 to 20 plantations collaborating at once to keep natural forest corridors.

On how NASA intends to use its next Mars mission, inSight, to take the red planet’s pulse and temperature using a quake sensor. Via ABC:

The Mars InSight lander, which blasted off in May, is due to touchdown tomorrow morning (November 27) just before 7:00am AEDT.

Its landing won’t be quite as nail-biting as Curiosity’s, but it is still risky, said the mission’s deputy lead, Sue Smrekar, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In 2016, the European Schiaparelli lander, the only spacecraft to attempt to land on the planet since Curiosity, crashed and burned.

If the Mars InSight landing succeeds, it will be the first spacecraft to study the Red Planet’s inner secrets.

“We’ve had many missions that have looked at the surface of Mars, but we’re the first one that is really going to tell us about the interior of Mars,” she said. The InSight lander — short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport — is very different to the Mars rovers.

“We do not have wheels — we actually need to stay in one place and be as quiet as possible,” Dr Smrekar said.

About the size of a dinner table with two solar panels attached, the InSight lander is designed to take Mars’s pulse and temperature. The craft is kitted out with a 1.8-metre robotic arm or “steampunk claw” that can delicately place two experiments — a 20-centimetre, dome-shaped seismometer, and a heat probe — into position. “This is super-important stuff for us,” Dr Smrekar said.

Viking 2, a previous mission to Mars did have a seismometer, but it stayed on the deck of the spacecraft.

“Basically it detected gusts of wind that made the lander shake, but you can’t really detect seismic waves using that configuration [on the spacecraft],” Dr Smrekar said.

“So, for the first time we’ve got a seismometer and actually placed it on the ground.”