Blogbook
Wimbledon is celebrating 150 years of history with an epic animation from McCann London, Oscar-nominated directors Smith & Foulkes, and Nexus Studios. Via Adweek:
When one thinks of Grand Slam tennis, Wimbledon is usually the first tournament that leaps to mind. The Australian Open is Aussie fun in the sun, the French Open is elegant, and the U.S. Open’s grit is decidedly New York. But, the legendary tournament in London still retains its top spot due to its history—which McCann London explores in some beautiful new animated work.
The trailer is an amuse-bouche to a broader creative content play that runs to July 15th celebrating the 150th anniversary of the All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club (AELTC) and the sport’s oldest tennis tournament.
[…]
“We’re really proud of this campaign, which perfectly captures how much Wimbledon has changed over the years and gone from strength to strength,” said Rob Doubal, co-president, and chief creative officer, of McCann London. “The guys at Nexus were incredible at capturing the changing styles, not just of design and fashion, but of the Club, the players’ techniques and the atmosphere, all while staying true to the Wimbledon brand people know and love today.”
The work is also a continuation of Wimbledon’s “In Pursuit of Greatness,” brand position, which is in its third year.
The World Cup is here. No, not for rugby. Or cricket. We mean the Beautiful Game, football (or as Australians like to call it, ‘soccer’), a game watched and beloved by millions around the globe but which inexplicably has a smaller presence in Australia, even though Australia tends to qualify into the playoffs. Having grown up in a country whose team has no hope in hell of qualifying even if we keep offering citizenship to other people’s B teams, living in Australia for all of my adult existence has been mildly bizarre. Some parts of Melbourne *cough Lygon Street* are seriously into the World Cup, like most of the rest of the world (*cough Not USA*). The rest… aren’t. I remember when South Korea kicked Italy out of a World Cup in a controversial game. Some South Koreans drove down Lygon Street taunting the Italians. Things were set on fire. The day after, while buying groceries from Lygon Street’s Woolies, my friends and I were asked by the counter person whether we were South Korean (“No…”) and which team we supported (“Um… Brazil!”). Yeah. That’s how seriously people take the World Cup.
Things might be different this year — Italy didn’t qualify, for one, nor did the Netherlands, two normally juggernaut teams. The host country is Russia, a country still facing criticism for doping athletes, mass-culling its popular train-riding street dogs, and many, many other matters. However, it’s still set to be a lucrative World Cup. Via AdAge:
“We think this will be the biggest, most lucrative World Cup to air on English-language TV,” says Mike Petruzzi, senior VP of ad sales, Fox Sports Media Group. While Fox did not offer a ballpark estimate for how much revenue it expects to rake in over the course of the month-long tourney, its broadcast-heavy schedule alone should go a long way toward helping it top ESPN/ABC’s take in 2014.
Tie-in advertising can work to boost interest in your brand–or make you look like one of far too many trying to climb onto the bandwagon. So how do you stand out from the crowd?
Choose your Audience
Nike hedged its bets this year and released a Brazil-centric World Cup ad with music by “heavy baile” artist Leo Justi.
Why Brazil, you might ask? Brazil is one of the most football-obsessed countries on the planet, the mother country for some of the biggest talents ever in the game, including Pelé, widely considered the best player who ever lived, Ronaldo, and, in the current squad, Neymar. Its yellow jersey is instantly recognisable, and it has won more World Cups than any other country. It’s also the favourite team of many people who aren’t Brazilians. Its team is the favourite to win this year’s World Cup, despite an embarrassing showing four years ago. However, World Cup fervour has been muted in Brazil this year because of the political and economic problems that they’ve been suffering:
In Brazil, enthusiasm for this year’s cup has been tempered by a years-long corruption scandal, economic turmoil, and anxiety over an unpredictable presidential election set for October. Perhaps that’s the reason for some Brazilians’ cautious expectations for their side, despite a dominant South American World Cup Qualifying campaign and their status as one of the betting favorites. It won’t help that the Seleçao exited the 2014 tournament in Brazil with a 7-1 drubbing in the semi-finals at the hands of eventual champion, Germany. Brazil are five-time champions and their standard for success is never less than winning the tournament, but a return to the semi-finals in 2018 would probably meet the realistic expectations of most Brazilian fans.
This year Adidas was the one which went full steam with a star-studded cast:
As at the point of writing this article, despite muted enthusiasm in Brazil, the Nike ad is still doing noticeably better, with 7 mil views to Adidas’ 1 mil, despite only being published a day earlier. How did that happen? The Nike ad is extremely focused on the game itself, featuring beautifully filmed shots of various people playing soccer, while the Adidas ad is about… creativity (What?). Nike has shown that it still knows its audience better than its competitor: it knows what they want to watch, share, and watch again.
Does Your Product Even Tie-In to the Event?
Some events make more sense for your brand than others. Be sensitive to whether a tie-in might be appropriate. Woolworths, for example, famously sparked controversy in 2015 by trying to tie-in marketing to ANZAC Day with a cringeworthy “Fresh in our Memories” campaign that they had to quickly take down. Ouch. For something as already rampantly commercial and rife with corruption as FIFA’s World Cup, missteps like Woolworths’ are probably harder to make. Keeping in mind the audience who would be watching though would tell you whether they might be interested in your product in the first place — or be a new target audience you might want to approach.
The key for this is time — and research. Not sure about either? We can talk you through it.
Congrats! Now to make an ad…
Coca-Cola made a World Cup ad, because of course it did:
Its 2018 campaign is about how you’ve had 4 years to stock up for the World Cup, and frankly I’m not sure if the marketing team creating it have actually watched a World Cup game before. If it’s on, and a team that you’re interested in, why in the world would you be making a run outside for a bottle of Coke? During half-time, maybe, but not while the game’s on. Ouch.
Coca-Cola had much better luck with its sponsored World Cup 2018 anthem, Colors, by Jason Derulo:
Colors has been much more successful, with over 20 mil views on YouTube. As unbranded content, it might not necessarily translate to a bottle of Coke in every hand, but the diverse upbeat song has generated positive press online. For a large brand like Coca-Cola, that might be good enough.
And now the Weird…
In other monumental world events that happened this week, there was the Trump-Kim summit in Singapore. With the Singaporean Government footing much of the bill to the tune of $15-20 million, it was in many ways a bizarre event that led to a signed “agreement” similar to agreements already reached in earlier years by different American presidents. That aside, earned media for Singapore was estimated by Mumbrella at $150 million:
Meanwhile, Hoffman Agency general manager for Singapore Maureen Tseng claims the staging will actually prove to be priceless for the country. “You have two of the world’s most recognisable figures being filmed walking and driving through Singapore’s landmarks – and the massive publicity pre, during and post-event,” she explains.
“The fact that ‘where is Singapore?’ became one of the top trending search queries on Google is another unexpected bonus. And, unlike with many global events, both the West and the East were watching. Singapore has reinforced its position as a politically neutral, extremely organised and attractive destination. I don’t think the STB could have planned it any better. In terms of public relations value, the summit would have translated into way more than the $20m price tag.”
Event tie-ins fed through many of the F&B businesses in the country, with tie-in food and drinks such as Peace Summit burgers and other things.
Would you eat a kimchi burger in the name of commercialised peace? We might. In the meantime, fire up the World Cup fervour. Australia’s playing France tonight at 8pm. Go Socceroos!
E3 was on last weekend – one of the biggest gaming events of the year. A Skyrim game was announced for Alexa, and no, it’s not a joke. Via Lifehacker:
Oh Bethesda, you trolls, you. I say that lovingly, as the trailer the company showed off during its E3 press conference Sunday was a nod to its wildly successful Elder Scrolls franchise. The joke, if you didn’t get it, was that Bethesda has dumped Skyrim, the series’ most recent installment, onto nearly every modern platform it can—minus your TI-83 calculator and your car (sort of). So why not have a version of Skyrim for Amazon’s Echo devices, too?
Here’s the fun part, though. You actually can play Skyrim: Very Special Edition on your Echo. And if you don’t own any Amazon devices, that’s fine—you can also play it on any iOS or Android device with a little extra creativity.
If you have any of the devices in Amazon’s Echo family, including its larger flagship speaker, the tinier Dot, or the more-expensive Echo Plus, getting a Skyrim-ish game going is simple.
First, visit the “Skyrim Very Special Edition” skill on Amazon and enable it for your Echo device (assuming you’ve connected your Echo to the Amazon account you’re using when browsing that skill. You have, I’m sure of it, but I just wanted to be thorough.)
Once you’ve done that, wander up to your Echo device and (Dragon) shout “Alexa, Open Skyrim.” The “game” might begin by asking you whether you want to explore an isolated shack or ancient standing stone, for example, and off you’ll go on your adventure. We won’t spoil the rest, including some of the silly Easter eggs you’ll stumble across while exploring, but it’s a pretty fun experience—as if someone was reading a text-based RPG out loud instead of displaying your narration on a monochromatic computer screen.
Bwin has one of the better ads for the World Cup this year, a glossy whodunit including (old) stars of the game, including Diego Maradona. Via Totally Gaming:
Aiming to utilise a cast of footballing icons, online betting operator bwin has launched its World Cup marketing campaign ‘Who Stole the Cup?’
The Hollywood-style heist serves as a fitting follow-up to last year’s promotion, ‘the Race’, it’s also a continuation of bwin’s innovative betting advertising which invites the consumer to “live the action” and predict the outcome of the ad.
Jay Dossetter, head of media relations at GVC Holdings PLC told TotallyGaming.com: “Everything we do with the bwin brand is about delivering players a premium experience, built on excitement, entertainment and exhilaration and that’s reflected in our approach to our advertising.
“We set out to follow-up last year’s blockbuster ‘The Race’ campaign with something that is equally bold and ambitious. Something that continued to set bwin apart from the crowd. We think that the ‘Who stole the Cup’ campaign is unlike any sports betting campaign people will have seen. Packed with footballing royalty – and world cup pedigrees do not come any bigger than Maradona’s – and more than a touch of Hollywood style, we think it will keep the audience on the edge of their seats and kick off our World Cup in style.”
The Adidas ad for the 2018 World Cup is packed full of the beautiful game’s biggest stars, including Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Via Creativity Online:
Yes, it features the likes of David Beckham, Paul Pogba and Lionel Messi, but the spot goes far beyond just soccer legends: in total, there are 56 well-known athletes, performers and celebrities in the 90-second ad, including Caroline Wozniacki, Karlie Kloss, Pharrell Williams, Gabriel Jesus and Jose Mourinho.
Viewers are escorted through a “backstage” of a huge arena where Mourinho directs Luis Suarez, Von Miller, Gabriel Jesus, Karlie Kloss and more to a stage. Rapper A$AP Ferg acts as MC, repeatedly telling us: “Creativity is the answer” as we see Pogba modeling the Adidas Predator Tango 18+ Street, Adidas Tango squads playing five-a-side and freestyle soccer player Caitlyn Schrepfer playing alongside Mo Salah and Dele Alli. The film closes with Messi tearing up a sheet of “the rules” and Pharrell Williams passing the mic to the viewer, and saying: “It’s over to you”.
Famous face-wise, it’s blink-and-you’ll miss-it stuff, but connossieurs are bound to have fun spotting all the different names. The whole effect is a bit like a massive, noisy, celebrity-packed circus-slash-club night. Manu Cossu at Iconoclast directed the film, for 72andSunny Amsterdam.
A genetically modified mosquito represents humanity’s single best chance to eradicate malaria on a global scale and save lives. Via Vox:
Somewhere between 438,000 and 720,000 people were killed by the parasite in 2015. Seventy-two percent of those were kids younger than 5, and nearly 90 percent were in sub-Saharan Africa. Many more people infected with malaria don’t die but suffer a painful and temporarily disabling infection nonetheless. In 2015, anywhere from 187 million to 222 million people were infected. That’s about 3 percent of all humans on Earth, every year.
We have eliminated malaria from the rich world; it used to be endemic to France just as it is to Mali today. And now, with CRISPR gene drives, we have the potential to wipe it out globally and save millions of lives.
CRISPR is a tool developed in the past decade that has made it dramatically easier to make precise edits to the genes of everything from viruses and bacteria to mosquitos and humans. Gene drives allow humans to change the genetic makeup of a species by changing the DNA of a few individuals that then spread the modification throughout an entire population.
In the case of malaria, the idea is to change the three species of mosquito most responsible for its transmission — Anopheles gambiae, Anopheles coluzzii, and Anopheles arabiensis — so that all their offspring would be male, effectively leading to the species’ extinction. Or you could just add a gene making them resistant to the malaria parasite, preventing its transmission to humans.
In Japan, a Buddhist funeral for robot dogs – a company gives a compassionate farewell to robot pets in a historic temple. Via National Geographic:
A dog-shaped robot—as opposed to say, a dish on wheels with a built-in vacuum cleaner—represented a focus on entertainment and companionship. When Sony released the AIBO (short for “artificial intelligence robot”) in 1999, 3,000 units—the greater share of the first run—were sold to the Japanese market. At an initial cost of $3,000 in today’s money, those sold out in 20 minutes.
But AIBOs never became more than a niche product, and in 2006 Sony canceled production. In seven years, they’d sold 150,000 of the robots.
Some AIBO owners had already become deeply attached to their pet robots, though. And here is where the story takes an unexpected turn.
AIBOs aren’t like a remote-control car. They were designed to move in complex, fluid ways, with trainability and a simulated mischievous streak.
Over time, they would come to “know” their human companions, who grew attached to them as if they were real dogs.
The AIBOs’ programs included both doggish behaviors, like tail-wagging, and humanlike actions, such as dancing, and—in later models—speech.
So when Sony announced in 2014 that they would no longer support updates to the aging robots, some AIBO owners heard a much more somber message: Their pet robot dogs would die. The community of devoted owners began sharing tips on providing care for their pets in the absence of official support.
Tom Cruise is notorious (or famous?) for doing his own stunts in films, but even this stunt is a bit extreme for his standards. Via io9:
The high altitude, low opening (HALO) jump is a means of airdropping military personnel into hostile territory undetected, developed in the 1960s by the United States Air Force. It’s a normal sort of thing to appear in a spy movie. What’s less normal—unheard of, actually—is for an actor to perform the unusually dangerous feat. So, of course, Tom Cruise had to do it.
While Cruise is famous for doing his own stunts, this one is ridiculous even by Cruise’s standards. The normal HALO jump occurs at between 15,000 and 35,000 feet—that’s an average of five miles straight up—and requires specialized equipment and substantial training, lest the jumper suffer from the bends or hypoxia. It is not something normal people can even attempt. For comparison, normal skydiving occurs at around 13,000 feet.
To film a Mission: Impossible—Fallout HALO sequence, Cruise performed the maneuver several times, as outlined in a video recently released by Paramount Pictures. In order to film the sequence, which had to take place at sunset, the 55-year-old man jumped out of cargo planes during the three-minute window necessary to get the lighting right alongside a cameraman, with whom Cruise had to position himself in midair, all while managing to survive and succeed at one of the most dangerous things a person can possibly do.
Top Swiss disability advocacy group Pro Infirmis has a new campaign titled “Everyone is equal. No one is more equal” which focuses on challenges. Via AdAge:
Much to their chagrin, people with disabilities are just like everyone else. Because when life gets complicated or just really frustrating, we all respond in similar ways–often by swearing loudly.
A new short film for Swiss disability advocacy group Pro Infirmis shows the recognizable and relatable ways people with different disabilities deal with the indignities of everyday life–just as everyone else does. They struggle with poorly-stocked public toilets, weak grocery bags, dog poop. Who hasn’t left a red sock in with the wash and gotten pink laundry they hadn’t anticipated?
When a man fights a losing battle with a vending machine, the length of his arms is an unimportant detail. And a woman with only one leg has the worst luck with dresses–whether they’re covered in pasta sauce or turn out not to be one-of-a-kind at the gala.
The spot was created by agency Thjnk Zurich and directed by American Jon Barber. It’s a departure from Pro Infirmis’ best known work, “Because who is perfect?”–a tearjerker with an empowerment theme. Thirteen people with disabilities star in the latest film, which was shot over three days. It’s backed by longtime activist Harry Belafonte’s 1957 song “Jump Down, Spin Around,” which the singer himself authorized for use in the project.
Lurpak has such beautiful food ads, courtesy of W+K. This latest one is inspired by the fact that a lot of home cooks get their butter right out of the fridge without waiting for it to soften first. Via Adweek:
While Danish butter brand Lurpak seems to focus its ads at kitchen casuals, hoping to get them more hands-on with their food, the spots also are always a hit with culinary connoisseurs who think of cooking in terms of textures, sounds and seemingly magical transformations.
It’s a rare skill, being able to hit potential customers on both ends of the confidence spectrum, but the brand pulls it off thanks to continually stellar creative from Wieden + Kennedy London.
In the years-long campaign’s newest spot, we see a morning routine reborn as a perspective-shifting progression of food prep alongside the usual scramble of getting out the door. The point? Even a quick cooking experience can be a sight to behold.
The spot (like the product itself) was inspired by the fact that many home cooks use butter right after grabbing it from the fridge, meaning that an easily spreadable butter can make things a bit easier when you’re on the go.
“Research shows that 92 percent of consumers spread butter straight from the fridge so we really wanted to address the issue of spreadability, which we know is a barrier to purchase,” said Lucy Hurrell-Morgan, brand manager for Lurpak, in announcing the new product last month. “With the new recipe we have created for Lurpak Softest, we can tap in to the increasing consumer demand for convenience, but with the taste and naturalness of butter.”