Anna Kendrick Isn't 'Beer Commercial Hot' but Is Hilarious in Newcastle's Super Bowl Campaign

via adweek.com

Newcastle Brown Ale, which didn't buy airtime in Sunday's Super Bowl but is doing a wonderfully silly campaign about how it almost did, rolled out more content from Droga5 this week—including the hilarious endorsement below by Anna Kendrick.

Just like last week's Newcastle trailer was the year's best Super Bowl teaser, Kendrick's performance will surely be the funniest among this year's celebs.

Newcastle has done a lot of great stuff around this faux Super Bowl campaign, including a brilliantly self-mocking native ad on Gawker as well as bogus focus-group videos and another endorsement video starring Keyshawn Johnson.

"It seemed like the obvious thing we had to do, and unfair to the world if we didn't," Newcastle brand director Quinn Kilbury said of the Super Bowl ambush. "The Super Bowl is great. The game is amazing, everyone loves the game. But it's become much more about marketing in some ways, and the over-the-top ridiculousness that surrounds it. I saw a lot of that when I was doing the real Super Bowl marketing stuff over at Pepsi, so it's close to my heart, and it is a little ridiculous sometimes. For a brand that likes to poke fun at marketing, we had to poke fun at Super Bowl marketing at some point."

He added: "The brief to Droga5 was, essentially, hijack the conversation around Super Bowl marketing. We had a couple of ideas, but essentially that was it. At first I think we saw doing something around the game itself, but then we thought if you're going to do the Super Bowl, or the Super [Bleep], as we're calling it, you have to be true to the whole marketing show. You have to treat the commercial like it's a $100 million blockbuster."

Pepsi Squanders Grammys Opportunity

via forbes.com

I don’t often write about advertising I don’t like. I’d rather focus on the positive. But I’m making an exception today. Did you see the Pepsi ad that ran on the Grammys on Sunday? I did, and I couldn’t believe what a pile of gratuitous mush I was seeing. Here it is in case you missed it:


But let me start with what I liked. It was a brilliant idea to create a half-time show for the Grammys, as a tribute to all the half-time shows musicians have created for the NFL. I’m not really sure why it’s a good idea from the Pepsi brand, other than they are sponsoring the half-time show of the actual Super Bowl (that’s a media idea, not a creative one), but the “half-time at the Grammys” angle was still an interesting start.

Then the creative happens.

The creative presentation.

Before my analysis as to exactly why I think the creative is off, and judging solely on the execution, let’s reverse-engineer the creative presentation from last fall. Pure speculation, I admit, but here goes.
The creative team was confident, armed and ready. They had five big ideas for the Grammys buy boarded up. And five more ideas behind that in case the meeting goes south. And then about twenty more half-baked concepts that were un-boarded, but available if utterly desperate.
The team presents the first five. Nothing. Client isn’t buying. So they reach a little deeper into the portfolio for the five back-ups and present those. Nothing. Now, the lead account guy is getting nervous. He gives the nod to go to the well of tissues, scribbles, and notes.

Nothing.

And then after a painful silence in the room the lead creative stands up and just starts talking. He says something about Deion Sanders and Terry Bradshaw maybe sparring in song at a mocked up Grammys event. Hey, look, the client’s listening. And then, um, and then Shannon Sharpe, that’s it, he starts rapping. Client is leaning in now. Two other NFL players are DJ’s and then…and then…(the creative director, empty of improv, looks around at his team for a big finish). A junior creative in the back says, “Ditka comes in on a wrecking football!”

Sold.

It probably didn’t go down that way. But the execution certainly made it seem like it was being made up as it went along.

The breakdown.

Several problems with the creative, if you ask me.

1. Empty awareness. What did this execution say to us? That Pepsi has so much money that it can outspend anyone? That Pepsi is “in” with NFL celebs? Yes, there’s the idea of a “half-time show” for the Grammys, but what does that say about Pepsi? This ad was an enormously expensive purchase of empty awareness.
2. The use of celebrities does not cover up the lack of a message. This spot is a great example of the gratuitous use of celebrities. When you don’t have an idea, sometimes advertisers think they can get around that with big names. That’s a fallacy, as you can plainly see above.
3. It’s corny. These football legends try, they really do. I give them all credit for trying their best to pull this off. But the whole thing just comes off as corny to me, and beneath these legends of the NFL. Now we have no message, a bunch of celebs used gratuitously, and a script that doesn’t have the wit necessary to pull it off.
4. There is no brand idea behind it. This is the biggie. I do not get a sense from this spot who Pepsi is, what they stand for, why they exist, nor what their perspective on the world is. Coke is all about happiness (I didn’t even have to look that up). What is Pepsi about? As much as it appears Pepsi would like to teach the world to sing, they first need a brand idea to sing about.

I think Pepsi, with all its resources, can do much better than this. But maybe it’s just me.
After the spot came on, I looked at my teenage son and daughter and their mouths were open in disbelief, as was mine. My son said, “That was awful!”

And he’s the new generation.

Women Are the Dominant Media Voice During the Super Bowl

via http://www.adweek.com

Bow your heads, folks. Let’s have a moment of silence for the end of an era— that of Monday-morning quarterbacking. How antiquated it seems to have to wait until the game’s guacamole dip has browned to share key takeaways about the ads. I cut my teeth as a copywriter at Sports Illustrated and laugh to think how woefully late reader response to the Super Bowl showed up in our pages. 

Illustration: GLUEKIT

Now consumers can talk back in real time (or as social media brand consultant Gary Vaynerchuk quips, “Now the deer have rifles”). And nothing has quite the rat-a-tat-tat impact of a tweet. Of the 20.9 million Super Bowl-related tweets sent during last year’s game, nearly 30 percent were about the ads.

And who’s posting and sharing the most? You got that right—women.

Increasingly, brands are making it a priority to connect with female consumers on Super Bowl Sunday for solid business reasons. Consider these stats: According to Nielsen demographic data, 46 percent of the Super Bowl viewing audience is female, and more women watch the game than the Oscars, Grammys and Emmys combined. She-conomy.com reports that women influence the majority of consumer spending across all categories, and onlineMBA.com published a report that found women comprise the majority of Twitter users (59 percent). Finally, women out-tweet men by 60 percent, per a study of 1,000 British Twitter accounts by Brandwatch.

If all these stats had to be mashed up in one tweet, I’d sum them up with these 140 characters: Women watch equally, buy + share in greater #s than men on Super Bowl Sunday. Ads with female appeal = best return on $4 million price-tag.

So what do women who make ads for a living think about the $4 million Super Bowl spots? On Feb. 2 the world will find out. I’ve invited female advertising creative directors and creatives on both coasts to gather at two host agencies—Hill Holliday in Boston and The Hive in San Francisco—to watch the big game and live tweet their opinions of the commercials. Hundreds more ad women across the country will add their voices to the mix by live tweeting using the hashtag #3percentsb. Some of the participating creatives include DeeAnn Budney, The Hive; Kelli Robertson, Goodby, Silverstein; Kammie McArthur, Swirl; Sue DeSilva, Hill Holliday; Libby DeLana, Mechanica; Alyssa Toro, Connelly; Helen Keighron, Mullen; Jenn Maer, IDEO; Christine Pillsbury, Beam; Libby Brockhoff, Odysseus Arms; Jen Putnam and Melanie Nayer, SapientNitro; Lotus Child, Liquid; and Rebecca Rivera of The 3% Conference.

Of course, men are encouraged to follow along too and retweet and chime in with their own hashtag #admen.

This will be the third year I’ve personally live-tweeted responses to the ads, and, frankly, I just got tired of shushing friends and family during the commercial breaks. It will be so much more fun to invite other female creatives to bring their phones, laptops and sardonic wit and humor to call out the good, the bad and the ugly Super Bowl spots the creative ad community has to offer.

Sadly, so far the track record of the work has been pretty degrading in their depictions of women. In 2013 we saw waitresses turned strippers, scantily clad women tackling each other in the dirt, and a supermodel sloppily kissing a computer programmer.

Those were the major marketing fumbles of the day. Not only were these ads off-putting to women, but many men also tweeted their wish for something other than lowest-common denominator creative. And the old adage that “sex sells” is being refuted with research that says that brand recall dips when the brain is busy processing ta-tas.

This year will be full of new surprises. Pinning all your hopes on a 30-second spot that sets you back $4 million is the ultimate Hail Mary pass.

My female creative director comrades and I are eager to see who completes it.

OLD SPICE MAKES YOUR HAIR COME ALIVE, LITERALLY, IN NEW ADS VIA W+K

via http://creativity-online.com




Let your hair do the talking -- and not just because you're swishing it around. Old Spice and Wieden & Kennedy release a couple of new commercials by MJZ's Tom Kuntz that shows that hair washed and cared for with Old Spice is so alive, so voluble, that it might jump off your head and do your talking for you. The ads will air on TV on Super Bowl Sunday, after the game.

With Previews, Super Bowl Advertisers Borrow From Hollywood

via  http://www.nytimes.com 

ADVERTISERS that want commercials to be perceived as more than product pitches like to call them “films.” When it comes to Super Bowl commercials, the term may be appropriate rather than pretentious.

The release of so many teasers, previews, shorter versions and longer versions before Super Bowl XLVIII on Sunday seems more Hollywood than Madison Avenue. About all that is missing are directors’ cuts.

The reason for the recent departure from the decades-old strategy of keeping Super Bowl ad plans under wraps is the rise of social media like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. They enable sponsors to more easily whet viewers’ appetites for commercials to be shown during the game.

For instance, Squarespace, a web design company, introduced on Jan. 16 a 15-second teaser version of the 30-second spot it plans for the Super Bowl. On Monday, six days before the game, Squarespace intends to release the Super Bowl commercial online, on its website and on YouTube. Then, on Sunday, the company will release, on the same platforms, a 60-second version of the Super Bowl spot.

That ability to prime the pump helps Squarespace, a first-time Super Bowl advertiser, level the playing field. Not only is Squarespace going up against a larger, better-known competitor, GoDaddy, which will be a Super Bowl sponsor for the 10th consecutive year, its commercial will vie for attention with far more famous brands like Budweiser, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Doritos, M&M’s and Toyota.

“The Super Bowl for us is a risk,” said Anthony Casalena, chief executive at Squarespace in New York. “We do a lot of marketing, but it’s the first time we’ll hit a really mass consumer audience.”

The Squarespace commercials were produced internally by David Lee, the company’s chief creative officer, who previously worked at agencies like TBWA Worldwide. The goal is to proclaim “a brand manifesto,” Mr. Casalena said, “drawing a line in the sand” against “cheap web hosting” and presenting Squarespace as the solution to a dystopian web crawling with hucksters, fakes, trolls and celebrities sporting duck faces. “We can’t change what the web has become, but we can change what it will be,” an announcer says at the end of the Super Bowl spot. “A better web starts with your website.”

According to iSpot, which compiles real-time data on how commercials perform in social media, the Squarespace preview has generated what Sean Muller, chief executive at iSpot, called “modest buzz,” ranking 21st out of 25 teasers the company is tracking. Mr. Casalena said he was “really happy” with the response to date, adding, “We shall see.”

“Going into the process, I was much more nervous than I am now,” said Mr. Casalena, who described himself as someone who watches the Super Bowl each year “for the commercials.”

Audi, advertising in the Super Bowl for a seventh time, has a three-step pregame strategy. A 20-second teaser video was released last Tuesday, followed by a 45-second teaser last Thursday. The commercial intended for the Super Bowl, a 60-second spot for the 2015 Audi A3, will go online on Monday; the spot, by Venables Bell & Partners in San Francisco presents the A3 as the entry-level luxury sedan that requires no compromises.

“There’s one critical thing we’ve learned: This has become the social bowl,” said Loren Angelo, director for marketing at Audi of America in Herndon, Va., which benefits Audi because “we need to bring our brand into the American conversation.”

Social media can help “make the story much bigger than the spot itself,” he added. “The more people are talking about you, the more they’re engaged with your brand; we want that ‘share value.’ ”

The growth of social media has led Audi to shift its commercial to the third quarter of Super Bowl XLVIII, Mr. Angelo said, from its usual slot right after kickoff. As the game goes on, “the social conversations escalate,” he explained. “It’s the perfect opportunity for us to get the best level of awareness.”\

 

Audi is also among Super Bowl advertisers like H&M and Jaguar getting ready to create content during the game that can be fodder for social media. For instance, if the weather forces players or coaches “to make compromises,” Mr. Angelo said, comments on Twitter could remind viewers of the premise of the commercial that the A3 is “built without any compromises.”

Audi was among several brands that won kudos for timely Twitter posts during the blackout that struck Super Bowl XLVII on Feb. 3, 2013. A post on the Audi Twitter feed suggested the brand was “sending some LEDs to the @MBUSA Superdome right now” — a jab at an Audi rival, Mercedes-Benz.

GoDaddy is among Super Bowl sponsors that have already released online some or all of the commercials they intend to run during the game. GoDaddy plans two spots, one in each half, and one, a 30-second commercial featuring the auto race driver Danica Patrick, was posted on Wednesday. The GoDaddy creative agency is Deutsch New York, part of the Deutsch division of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

According to iSpot and YouTube, the most-watched and most-shared of the early releases is a 60-second version of a 30-second commercial that Axe, a Unilever brand, will run in the game. The commercial, for the new Axe Peace product line, is by Bartle Bogle Hegarty in London, part of the Publicis Groupe.

Newcastle Brown Ale's Super Bowl Ad Teaser Is the Best You'll See This Year

via http://www.adweek.com

God bless Newcastle Brown Ale. As much as we all enjoy advertising when it's good, so much of it—as Newcastle would say—is bollocks. The British brewer (with help from Droga5) has always excelled at skewering irritatingly transparent marketing tactics, and now it sets its sights on the Big Kahuna itself—the Super Bowl.

The faux teasers below launch an "If We Made It" campaign, celebrating the Super Bowl commercial the brewer would have made—if it had been able to afford one. The deadpan copy is spot on, and as ambush marketing goes, the whole campaign is hilariously done as it takes down the overblown process of Super Bowl ad rollouts.

Gird your loins for more content to roll out into the middle of next week.

DANICA PATRICK IS A BODYBUILDER ON THE RUN IN GODADDY'S SUPER BOWL SPOT

via http://creativity-online.com

Last year, GoDaddy dipped a tremulous toe into the waters of grown-up advertising, with one of its two Super Bowl spots spurning the T&A approach in favor of actually demonstrating why you should host your website with that company. (The other spot, not so much.)

This year, Deutsch N.Y. sets out to prove that GoDaddy has transformed, and has released one of the brand's two Big Game spots early. This one features longtime spokesperson Danica Patrick in an all-new, muscly getup, barrelling towards an unknown destination with a bunch of other bodybuilders. The destination -- a small business, owned by a woman, who uses GoDaddy to "get found."

Ms. Patrick was transformed using a "muscle suit," built in partnership with Legacy Effects. Bryan Buckley directs

Mtn Dew Plans Big Spending Boost Behind Kickstart, Diet Dew

PepsiCo has a new pitch for soda drinkers: You can now Do the Dew all day long.

Kickstart

The marketer's Mtn Dew brand is following last year's successful Kickstart morning beverage launch with new flavors aimed at nighttime consumption. The flavors, called "Energizing" Black Cherry and Limeade, will be backed with a significant marketing investment, including ads that will debut during the Super Bowl pregame show on Fox on Feb. 2, said Greg Lyons, Mtn Dew's VP for marketing.

Sometimes marketers "move on to the next shiny object and they don't support things in year two," he said. But Mtn Dew, he said, is "really leaning into year two on Kickstart and actually going to spend more on Kickstart in year two from a marketing standpoint than we did in year one."

Specifically, the line extension will get a 35% media-spending boost, compared with last year. In the first 10 months of 2013, Kickstart received $17.5 million in measured media, according to the most recent data from Kantar Media.

PepsiCo is also planning to double its media investment on Diet Mtn Dew, which will launch a new campaign during the Super Bowl pregame show that includes a new tagline: "It's the Only Diet with Dew In It." The beverage got $18 million in measured media from January to October last year, according to Kantar.

Overall spending on the Mtn Dew megabrand will grow 20% in 2014, according to the brand, whose agency is Omnicom Group's BBDO.

Mtn Dew Kickstart's 2013 Ad Targeted Mornings

PepsiCo executives are confident that they they have a hit on their hands with Kickstart, which launched in February of 2013 in orange-citrus and fruit-punch flavors that combine the taste and carbonation of Mtn Dew with 5% fruit juice and a dose of caffeine. Sales surged to more than $100 million in the first six months, according to PepsiCo. Importantly for the brand, 10% of the the volume came from outside a broadly defined canned and bottled beverage category that includes soda, energy drinks and juices. That meant plenty of consumers switched to Kickstart from beverages like home-brewed tea and coffee, Mr. Lyons said.

Kickstart "certainly has gained a following," said John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest. So "attempting to add additional day parts makes total sense," he said, referring to the new evening flavors. "I think PepsiCo appears to have the beginnings of a potentially nice little success on their hands."

It is a much needed-boost for the company, which like other beverage marketers has struggled to grow its soda brands in recent years. But Mtn Dew has been able to gain share. In the first nine months of 2013, carbonated soft drink category sales fell by 4.3% at retail not including fountain sales and vending. But Mtn Dew was only down 2.4%, while Diet Dew was down 3.5%, according to Beverage Digest.

Kickstart's Nightime Slogan

Ads for the new Kickstart flavors will include the tagline "Kickstart Your Night." Scenes include men preparing to go out for the evening, mixed with footage of rocket launches, which are meant to be a "metaphor for getting you up for the night," Mr. Lyons said. The sampling program will include trucks called "Night Machines" that will include music and lights and travel nationwide beginning in New York City during Super Bowl week.

The beverage, which comes in tall, 16-oz cans, contains 5% juice, 80 calories and 92 mg of caffeine. A 16-oz Starbuck's coffee, by comparison, has 330 mg of caffeine, while the same size Monster energy drink has 160 mg, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest.

The goal with the new Kickstart flavors is to mirror the morning version by sourcing volume from a wide array of beverage alternatives, including coffee and tea. "There's nothing else positioned exactly like it," Mr. Lyons said. He referred to it as a "sparkling juice beverage" that provides a "little bit of a pick-me up with some refreshment cues, as well."

Meanwhile, the new investment in Diet Dew comes as the brand is seeking more trial. The new tagline is less about taste than the old line: "Yeah, It Tastes Good." While the typical barrier for diet soda drinks is taste, "that's not the case with Diet Dew," Mr. Lyons said. The brand has a high rate of repeat drinkers, but low household penetration at about 10% in the past year, he said.

"The No. 1 barrier was it just wasn't in people's consideration set, especially Gen X males," he said. "So we have a very simple marketing job there, which is to drive awareness and trial."

Super Bowl Ads Get Their Own Pregame Show (and It’s an Early One)

via http://www.nytimes.com

For the last couple of years, Super Bowl advertisers have been drastically changing their decades-old strategy of keeping mum about their commercials until the spots are broadcast during the game. Instead of trying to surprise viewers, many sponsors are filling social-media platforms with previews, teasers and coming attractions in hopes of stimulating additional interest.

In another sign of that strategy’s growing popularity, Google is adding for the first time a gallery of teaser video clips to the annual YouTube Ad Blitz channel devoted to Super Bowl commercials. The gallery, scheduled to go live early Friday morning, begins with preview videos from five advertisers planning to run commercials during Super Bowl XLVIII on Feb. 2: Butterfinger, Doritos, Intuit, Squarespace and Pepsi, teasing its sponsorship of the halftime show.

“What used to be a one-day event, with some postgame water-cooler chat, is now an eight- to 13-week experience,” said Lucas Watson, vice president for brand solutions at Google.

As a result, “major advertisers are trying to win the conversation” before the game, he said, as well as during and after.

Last year, ads for the Super Bowl were watched on YouTube more than 80 million times before the game was played, Mr. Watson said — nearly a third of the total of more than 265 million views for Super Bowl spots on the site that year. Commercials uploaded to YouTube before the game generated about 3.4 times more views on average, he added, than commercials that were released on the day of the game.

At least three other advertisers -- Axe, Jaguar and SodaStream – have joined the five appearing on the YouTube Ad Blitz channel in already releasing teasers for their 2014 Super Bowl commercials. There are discussions with the three advertisers to add their teasers to Ad Blitz, a Google spokeswoman said, and those may go live next week.

A survey released on Thursday by Unruly, a marketing technology company, confirmed the trend that is leading YouTube to offer one-stop viewing for Super Bowl ad teasers. According to Unruly, seven of the 20 ads from the 2013 Super Bowl that were most shared in social media were accompanied by teasers.

Also, the Unruly survey found, 60 percent of the most-shared Super Bowl spots of all time were introduced before they were broadcast during the games.

Although YouTube is adding the pregame teaser commercials to the Ad Blitz channel, YouTube will not ask viewers to vote for their favorites the same way it conducts a vote each year for favorites among the actual Super Bowl commercials.

In adding coming attractions to the YouTube Ad Blitz, YouTube joins Hulu, which will include previews again in the 2014 version of its annual Super Bowl ad program, known as Hulu AdZone.

In the spirit of teaser-mania, Hulu has produced a video clip that promotes its annual vote on Hulu AdZone for favorite Super Bowl commercial.

SCHWARTZ DEMONSTRATES THE BEAUTY OF FLAVOR WITH EXPLODING SPICES

via http://creativity-online.com

Herbs and Spices brand Schwartz tries to capture the beauty of flavor sensations in visual form in this ad by Grey Europe (which, in its use of color, is reminiscent of Sony'sVolcano spot for Bravia). Directed by Partizan's Chris Cairns to an original score penned by UK producer MJ Cole, the spot sees several tonnes of assorted herbs and spices (from black peppercorns to cinnamon powder to chillies) rigged to explode in sync to music. Pyrotechnic experts Machine Shop helped make the explosions come to life (you can see more in a Making Of film abou the project).

The installation, which was built at Pinewood Studios in the UK, incorporated eighteen different herbs and spice, each assigned to the notes based upon their different characteristics and colours. The size and volume of each eruption was also painstakingly adjusted to reflect the sound that it represented. For example, a bright and clean E-flat major chord became fresh green chives. While C, G and E-flat, were ascribed to fenugreek seeds, paprika and turmeric powder.

New AXE Super Bowl Spot Released

Latest Horror-Movie Ad Prank, With a Screaming Devil Baby, Is Completely Messed Up

via adweek.com

Here's one baby that no one's expecting. "Devil Baby Attack," a rather mean-spirited if grimly hilarious marketing stunt for the upcoming horror film Devil's Due, shows what happens when well-meaning New Yorkers try to check on an unattended baby carriage.

Here's what happens: They get screamed at by a horrific demon infant. And sometimes chased around by the horrific demon infant's remote-controlled stroller.

Sure, the prank—by Thinkmodo, which also did last year's super-viral Carrie coffee-shop spot—sparks some fun jump-screams from passersby. But watching the results, it's hard not to think of last year's spot-on parody by Canadian agency John St. about the cruel lengths to which advertisers now seem willing to go.

If we must be subjected to more prankvertising stunts, it would be nice to see ones that punish people for making poor moral choices rather than watch normal pedestrians get tormented because they tried to check on a screaming baby left alone in the snow.

Coke Releases Colorful Bottles Feature the Brazilian Flag, the Sun and More

via http://creativity-online.com

Coca Cola has a history of releasing special edition bottles to commemorate certain events. Now, the beverage brand has released its commemorative mini-bottles for the soccer World Cup, set to be played in Brazil this summer. They feature different images like a happy sun, the Brazilian flag, and others featuring a riot of colors no doubt meant to evoke the country's rich and colorful culture.

The bottles follow the brand's release of special bottles featuring the Brazilian flag, created to support that country during the FIFA Confederations Cup.

P&G Releases New Emotional Spot for 2014 Sochi Olympics

H&M Super Bowl Ad Lets You Buy David Beckham Bodywear By Remote Control

via creativity-online.com

The Super Bowl is getting its first commercial that's enabled for "t-commerce" -- e-commerce through your living room TV.

David Beckham for Bodywear at H&M

H&M plans to air a 30-second spot during the second quarter of Super Bowl XLVIII that will let viewers with certain Samsung smart TVs use their remote controls to engage with the commercial and buy products from David Beckham's Bodywear line, according to H&M and Delivery Agent, the ad tech company supporting the commerce function.

The interactivity doesn't take viewers out of the regular broadcast stream, Delivery Agent said. A small part of the screen will present a pop-up menu while the ad runs on the larger part of the screen, according to the company. The pop-up menu will offer product information, the ability to send that info to another device and the option to buy the product directly. The ad will still be interactive and shoppable for consumers who rewind to it using their DVRs.

Aside from the Super Bowl spot, H&M's campaign includes a t-commerce boutique on Delivery Agent's ShopTV app, which is accessible on some Samsung smart TVs, as well as ShopTV on web, mobile and tablet devices.

The H&M campaign is the first in which Delivery Agent will deliver shoppable content through a smart TV rather than cable or satellite set-top boxes.

EMarketer predicted last year that 22.6 million U.S. households, 18.8% of total U.S. households, would have a smart TV by the end of 2013, and they will again be a focus at this week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where Delivery Agent plans to describe its H&M effort on Monday. But it remains to be seen how many Super Bowl viewers will want to divert their focus even briefly to on-screen shopping.

Delivery Agent, which is expected to go public in 2014, is backed by Samsung, Intel and Liberty Global, among others. It has previously worked with broadcast and cable networks to allow viewers to buy products from shows like Bravo's "Real Housewives of New Jersey," Fox's "Glee" and HBO's "Game of Thrones."

New Pepsi "Halftime" Commercial

This Powerful Driving-Safety Ad Will Give You Goosebumps

via http://mashable.com

It seems like it's hard to find a new way to tell drivers to be more careful, but this ad from New Zealand manages to do just that.

The public-service announcement, from NZ Transport Agency, dissects an accident by freezing the moment before impact. A man who was admittedly driving too fast pleads for his life and that of his son. The request falls on deaf ears, though. "You're going too fast," replies the driver of the oncoming car. The point: Other drivers make mistakes, too, so be careful.

BEN & JERRY'S HITS REALTIME MARKETING GOLD WITH STONER TWEET ABOUT COLORADO

via http://creativity-online.com

As Colorado officially made the use of recreational marijuana legal, we saw few brands jumping on to comment on the legislation with a smart tweet, or Facebook post -- it's a hot-button issue, one that most brands wouldn't feel appropriate commenting on. Except one company, known for satisfying the munchies that strike the most avid of stoners. Ben & Jerry's saw excellent responses to this tweet Thursday. The photo showed a lone tub of the ice cream, with the tweet "BREAKING NEWS: We're hearing reports of stores selling out of Ben & Jerry's in Colorado. What's up with that?"

To date, it's gotten 3,700 retweets, and lots of smart replies. 

COCA COLA TURNS A BILLBOARD INTO WRAPPING PAPER

via creativity-online.com

Right before Christmas, Duval Guillaume and Coke teamed up for a new "Happiness" stunt. They created a billboard made out of wrapping paper, then installed a number of them in shopping malls in Belgium. Passersby could tear off a piece as they walked past -- saving them at least one trip to a stationary store.

Coke launches 2014 campaign to promote positivity

via http://www.prweekus.com

Coca-Cola has launched its ‘Reasons to Believe' campaign that aims to show itself as a brand that “promotes optimism and happiness.”

Ogilvy & Mather created the campaign, which encompasses TV, digital, out of home, and social media. Mediacom handled media planning and buying.

The effort features a series of contrasting scenes that show both negative and positive vignettes, aiming to show Coke's audience that there is “more good than bad in the world.”

Coke has partnered with Kindle, Spotify, and Xbox to extend the reach of its new campaign, while encouraging consumers to “contribute the
ir own reasons to believe” through the brand's recently relaunched digital platform, Coke Zone.

“For 127 years, we have been proud to create bold, thought-provoking campaigns, and the ‘Reasons to Believe' campaign firmly follows in these footsteps,” said Brid Drohan-Stewart, marketing activation director, Coca-Cola Great Britain and Ireland. “This campaign takes us back to the heartland of what our brand has always stood for – talking to people on an emotional level about topics that are relevant to them and spreading happiness and optimism.

“The campaign has already run successfully in 70 countries around the world and is rooted in local research. Coca-Cola as a brand has never been afraid to speak its mind and has an authentic cultural depth across the world – everyone in some way has a nostalgic connection with the brand, evoking happy memories.”