LaSexta is the sixth nationwide broadcast television station in Spain and, starting this year, the only channel in Spain that broadcasts Formula 1. So they commissioned the creative agency Kotoc to make some intro spots and they came out really nicely. My only complaint is that the ships don’t look like their going fast enough. Other than that, the pod racer feel of the whole thing is pretty interesting and the look is definitely nice.

Check out the rest of the intro spots:

Client: laSexta
Produced by: Kotoc | Director: Freddy Córdoba | Executive Producer: David Diéguez | Direction: Roger Córdoba | Art Director: Ruben Córdoba | Production Manager: Vanessa Diéguez | 3d Modelling: Alex Monge, Bernat Fortet, Kepa Casado, Marc Calvelo, Omar Sarmiento, Roger Tortosa, Ruben Córdoba | Animation: Freddy Córdoba , Hugo Garcia, Marc Calvelo | Light/Render/Compositing: Eduardo Lasierra, Marc Calvelo, Roger Tortosa, Sergio Pinto | Graphic Design: Josep Bernaus | Visual Effects: Bernat Fortet, Roger Tortosa | Audio Direction: Alex Candela FLow-Audio | Recording Studio: The Room Bcn Estudio (Jordi Navarro, Gorka Desbrach) | Collaborators Audio: Xuxa Levy, Miguel Pino | Systems: Fran Quinto

via Kotoc

The newest of Intel’s “Sponsors of Tomorrow” ad campaign, “Intel Star”, captures the concept of geek chic well. USB co-inventor Ajay Bhatt hits the cafeteria and is welcomed as the rock star that he is. This ad should hit Intel’s target audience directly in their giant brains.

Rock that cafe with your bad self, Ajay, rock it.

Check out the first in the “Sponsors of Tomorrow” campaign:

Star Wars Weekends is basically the Star Wars fanboy activity of the year. It’s an annual event held at Disney’s Hollywood Studios theme park with tons of Star Wars themed shows and games and membrobilia and everything possible you can think of in any way related to the series. Picture a Star Wars convention financed by Disney and designed by Disney Imagineers.

This year, Disney had some really clever print ads made up for the event, mostly having to do with all the Star Wars characters making their way to the event. Anyway, here they are, all 13 of the new print ads from Disney’s Star Wars Weekends advertising campaign. Enjoy:

Event dates:
May 22, 2009 – May 24, 2009
May 29, 2009 – May 31, 2009
June 5, 2009 – June 7, 2009
June 12, 2009 – June 14, 2009

These are some super fantastic new Scrabble ads designed to liven up the game’s image a bit. Over the past 60′s years that it’s existed, Scrabble has sort taken on a reputation as a favorite of only English majors and elitist word geeks; so it looks like their trying to reach out to a wider audience. They get it, they’re “hip”. Also, is that Ween playing?

The concept of all the words on the board coming alive and interacting is great, but I’m not so sure everyone will “get it” at first. I mean, the people who already like Scrabble probably will, but the more mainstream people they’re trying to recruit, less likely. Still, I love this ad, and the other two in the series:

Ad Info:

Title: THE BEAUTIFUL WORD
Advertiser/Client: MATTEL
Product/Service: SCRABBLE
Agency: OGILVY & MATHER, Paris
Country: FRANCE

Credit Details:
Chris Garbutt Executive: Creative Director Ogilvy and Mather
Arnaud Vanhelle: Copy Writer Ogilvy and Mather
Benjamin Bregeault: Copy Writer Ogilvy and Mather
Mihnea Gheorghiu: Copy Writer
Antoaneta Metchanova: Art Director Ogilvy and Mather
Alex Daff: Art Director
Najin Ha: Art Director Ogilvy and Mather
Benoit de Fleurian: Managing Director Ogilvy and Mather
Marie-Charlotte Lafront: Group Director Ogilvy and Mather
Herve Parizot: President Mattel
Arnaud Roland Gosselin: Marketing Director Mattel

I only wish ads like these would play in the US.
My questions to you: Do people still buy board games in this digi-techno-online-quickness culture? And, seriously… is that Ween playing in the first video? It sounds just like them, and they’ve done commercials in the past. Remember the “Where’d the Cheese Go?” commercial for Pizza Hut? Ween did a version first, and was rejected. Check them out:
Where’d the Cheese Go?
and
Where’d the Cheese Go? (explicit)

Here’s a direct quote from Deaner about those two minisongs:
“Earlier in 2002 we were hired by the largest advertising firm in the country to write music for a Pizza Hut commercial. Pizza Hut had hired them to come up with a whole new image to promote their new Pizza, “The Insider” which had all the cheese inside the crust. In keeping in line with their new cutting edge image, the agency hired Ween to do the music, and we delivered in a big way. Unfortunately, they didn’t like a single piece of the 6 tunes we submitted and they had us rewriting the song every day for a couple of weeks before they hired someone else. In my opinion, it is one of the best tunes we wrote all last year.”

Update:
Here is a very cool (although completely unrelated) stop-motion animation commercial done for Scrabble’s 60th anniversary. This one is from a few months ago:

A few months ago I wrote some words about American Apparel’s style of advertising, and how I think they’ve really tapped in to our collective idea of what’s sexy in the internet-pron age. That porn chic style of advertising has been serving them well so far, and just recently, they turned it up a notch and released a few ads with actual nudity. Now, I’m the first to say that some of AA’s original ads were actually more sexually explicit than an image of a woman’s nipple, but it’s still a line, and they’ve crossed it. Whether this will be a positive or a negative for them is still in question.

However, they’re not the only ones flaunting bewbz these days. The skin is spreading. Urban Outfitters has much less clothing on the models than usual in it’s newest catalog. But they’re still shooting in that hazy, soft-focus sepia that we’re so used to, so they can’t say they’re all that cutting edge just yet. Read on to see some pictures of the naked bodies selling clothes:

Currently, two websites are running AA’s nude ads – Debauchette and Reverse Cowgirl.

But AA and UO aren’t the only flashers in the fashion industry right now. I don’t have many concrete examples, but I swear it’s getting a lot more naked around here. The fashion shows seem much more nippely than usual and the fancy artfreak fashionistas seem to be publishing more skin than I remember seeing before. One example: Gravure Magazine’s black-and-white, 28-page spread of naked hot bodies. I sense a trend.

some of the American Apparel ads:

pics from the Urban Outfitters catalog:

and a few of Gravure Magazine’s noodz:

Nikon has this new series of ads for their S60 model of digital camera. The tagline is “The Nikon S60. Detects up to 12 faces.” It’s really quality marketing: it’s simple and it gets the point across well. Well done.

Ad Info:
Agency: Euro RSCG, Singapore
Photographer: Jeremy Wong
Executive Creative Director: Charlie Blower
Creative Director: Victor Ng
Art Director: Lee Hsueh Ling
Copywriter: Victor Ng, Stephen Kyriakou

Check out full size images of all three ads:

Up until this afternoon, I was totally unaware that the cereal eating habits of society change during the colder parts of the year. It makes perfect sense though; apparently, cold cereal sales drop off during the winter months as people switch to hot breakfasts like oatmeal and farina.

In an attempt to keep customers eating their daily bowl of cold corn flakes during the autumn months leading up to winter, ad agency JWT London has created this “ambient” campaign for Kellogg’s Crunchy Nut CornFlakes. They enlisted the pavement artist Jon Hicks to draw large Kellogg’s bowls around London sidewalks, and sweep the autumn leaves into them to emulate the cornflakes. Clever stuff. Check out some pictures of Jon Hicks working:

Italian fashion line Sasch SHS Teen Clothes has what may be my favorite new-ish ad in it’s “Goodbye Innocence” campaign. They show Safari Girl and Safari Boy in some far off hunting expedition, coming of age, with the various carcasses of their childhood sensibilities set about as trophies.

Not only is this one of the most aesthetically perfect ads I’ve seen in a long time, it’s powerful as well. Not that many teenagers would really be affected by the message, but it’s there nonetheless. This print campaign was actually listed in the finalists for the outdoor category at the London International Awards 2008, with Safari Girl winning a Gold statue in the print category, rightfully so. It’s just so beautiful and perfectly executed. The style and the colors and the look and feel, everything works. I only wish I were in the market for teen clothes.

Check out the the full sized versions of both Safari Girl and Safari Boy:

And check out the full size versions:

the Sasch SHS website

Callegari Berville Grey, Paris – the agency that developed the campaign