Snapchat 'Live Film' Introduces Taco Bell's Next Locos Taco

Via AdAge

The name of the next Taco Bell Dorito taco is a mouthful: Spicy Chicken Cool Ranch Doritos Locos Tacos.

The chain is announcing the latest in the Doritos Locos Taco line in just as lengthy a format: a four to six-minute-long movie ephermal app Snapchat. Taco Bell said a film of length is a first for Snapchat, which is known for seconds-long messages that disappear after they're viewed. The new taco will be available May 1, with TV, radio and additional forms of advertising launching then, but the social media campaign is kicking off today.

The movie, called "Rush Order," has a script and a cast of Vine and Snapchat "influencers," said Nick Tran, social-media lead at Taco Bell. The plot is about an employee with a despotic boss who insists the employee find out not only what the next Doritos Locos Taco is, but also acquire one.

"Rush Order" was directed by director Jason Zada, co-founder of digital agency Evolution Bureau, which was known for Office Max's Elf Yourself. (He's also known for the interactive short "Take This Lollipop.")

The chain created the film "snap-by-snap" using Snapchat's Stories feature, which makes videos available for only 24 hours after they're first uploaded. Filming of the movie began this morning, and Taco Bell's social-media team, along with the help of Interpublic's Deutsch, added scenes in real time from various locations throughout Los Angeles during the day. The film will conclude at the MTV Movie Awards, just before the start of the show.

An announcement will be made made in the first half of the awards show -- Taco Bell in a longtime sponsor of the broadcast -- during a sponsorship announcement as the program cuts to a commercial break. The announcement will encourage viewers to find out the next flavor by viewing the short flick on Snapchat.

Several marketers have taken to using Snapchat recently, including McDonald's, which in February used the service to announce its new Bacon Clubhouse Burger. Taco Bell also used Snapchat last year to announce the comeback of the popular limited-time Beefy Crunch Burrito.

The latest Dorito taco introduction was more about "innovation on the inside" and flavor combinations, said Stephanie Perdue, VP-brand marketing. In the case of this taco, the innovation is the use of spicy chicken.(The three preceding Doritos Locos Tacos -- the Nacho, Cool ranch and Fiery tacos -- all used ground beef). "We heard from customers that they wanted chicken, and we also heard from them about pairing flavors," said Ms.Perdue, adding that this newest taco was the highest-rated during testing among the Doritos tacos.

Mr. Tran said that the chain's marketing strategy with the Doritos Locos Tacos line is to do something innovative with each new introduction. Since the chain had already used Snapchat for an earlier launch, the chain decided to innovate within the platform itself with an "innovation from the inside" that parallels the product's novelty.

Taco Bell has been among the most active and pioneering in social-media marketing, a strategy that helped it be named Ad Age's Marketer of the Year in 2013.

"One thing we're serious about is how we engage with our fans -- we engage them the way they expect to be engaged," said Tressie Lieberman, director-social and digital marketing. "We do it in a way that provides value back the audience."

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

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Hot off the presses!

Justin Timberlake Surprises Biggest Fans on Set in New Target Commercial A fun prank this time, from Deutsch

via adweek.com



Advertising has been obsessed lately with scaring the crap out of people. So here, for your Friday enjoyment, is a more benign prank. Target, which is the exclusive retail partner for the release of Justin Timberlake's new album, got 20 of the pop star's biggest fans together for a commercial shoot. They thought they would just be singing a Timberlake song for the ad. They didn't realize the great and powerful JT himself would actually be there. Check out the spot below, and a behind-the-scenes video after the jump. All the reactions are genuine. Decent work by Deutsch in Los Angeles—though to be honest, the bar for this kind of thing was set by David Beckham and Adidas last summer. If you don't leave someone sobbing tears of joy, maybe you haven't gone far enough.

Google: Art, Copy & Code -- Smileage

via fast.cocreate.com

Targeting agencies and marketers, Google's back with a new campaign.

After the award-winning "Project Re:Brief," Google's program to partner with advertisers and agencies to reimagine classic ads using today's digital techniques, the search giant is back with a new campaign: "Art, Copy & Code." The new program, which is working with brands and marketers to show how Google tech can work with brand creativity to produce great work, has its first partnership with Volkswagen. "Smileage" is a program currently in beta that extends the automaker's 2012 campaign, "It's not the miles, it's how you live them," via a mobile app that will add "smiles" to any drive you take in your VW -- or any other car. The app was developed along with Volkswagen's agency, Deutsch, and Grow Interactive.

The app measures the "fun factor" of the trip, using factors like location, time, traffic and weather. Sign in with Google+ and share your "smileage" experience with your circles -- photos you or your fellow travelers take, for example.

Google thought of the project based on the stat that 144 millions Americans, everyday spent 52 minutes in a car, on average -- 76% of them completely alone.

The program plans more partnerships with brands like Burberry and adidas.

YouTube Tantrum Throwers and Crybabies get Happy for Volkswagen

via fastcocreate.com

There is no shortage of people having epic meltdowns on YouTube these days. You’ve got the guy who smashes his Xbox to bits because someone calls him fat, the eHarmony girl whose love of cats sets her off on a crying jag and the minor league baseball coach who famously freaks out on an umpire, rips a base off the diamond, and hurls it across the field.
As distressed as these people are on YouTube, we see them in a different light in “Sunny Side,” a Volkswagen Super Bowl pre-game spot released on YouTube. Created by Deutsch L.A. and directed by MJZ’s The Perlorian Brothers (the directing duo of Michael Gelfand and Ian Letts), the video gathers the real people behind the Internet’s most famous freakouts, including the three mentioned above, and plunks them down in a field where they frolic holding hands, smiling and basking in joy while listening to Jimmy Cliff singing The Partridge Family’s “C’mon, Get Happy.”

“Since Volkswagen has always been a brand that champions positivity and happiness--last year, we did a brand spot where people just laughed all the way through the spot, from babies to nonagenarians, and signed off with the line, ‘It’s not the miles, it’s how you live them’—we saw an opportunity for Volkswagen to do something relevant and compelling by transforming the most notable YouTube cranks with some uniquely positive Volkswagen vibes,” says Deutsch executive vice president and group creative director Matt Ian.
That said, Ian and his partner Michael Kadin were hesitant to move forward with “Sunny Side” when Deutsch creatives Mark Peters and Brian Friedrich first brought the concept to them. “We were well aware of all the negativity and vitriol online in social media. How could we not be after living through the last election? But we questioned how many compelling videos we could actually find online to illustrate this trend. However, ten minutes of Googling search terms like ‘meltdown,’ ‘temper tantrum’ and ‘freakout’ uncovered an epidemic. We weren’t making this problem up,” Ian remarks. “Publicly going to pieces is a legitimate cultural trend.”

When it came to casting, a couple of the YouTube tantrum throwers were, not surprisingly, difficult to deal with. “I do know that I was on the phone late with our producers the night before the shoot trying to figure out how to get a couple of people [to the shoot] who had agreed, then backed out, then reconsidered, then backed out again. It wasn’t as amusing as it was completely enraging, and if someone were filming me on the phone that evening, I might have wound up in the video myself,” Ian says, adding, “Ultimately, the people I am referring to didn’t end up in the video anyway, and honestly, I don’t miss them. Michael [Kadin] and I really love who we ended up with. Everyone was great.”
“Sunny Side” was shot in Thousand Oaks, California, at Ventura Farms. “Everyone who came to be in the video was really positive and psyched to be there, but as for getting in a ‘happy place,’ it was a bit tougher than expected. The two days we shot on that hillside were two of the coldest friggin’ days I’ve ever felt in Southern California,” Ian says. “We were all freezing. It was in the thirties when we showed up, and people were huddling around portable heaters between takes. I felt bad for the talent. They couldn’t bundle up in jackets for this thing.”
Cara Hartmann, aka “the crazy cat-hugging lady,” probably suffered the most. She had to wear what she was wearing in her YouTube video: a tank top and pajama bottoms. “But if you look at the shots she is in, she’s got a smile on her face the entire time,” Ian notes. “She was a trooper.”
So was the shoot like some freaky YouTube reunion? “I’d imagine they did recognize one another. I mean, most of them have had mega hit tallies on YouTube, numbers we advertising types would kill for,” Ian says. “I think most of the people on the crew recognized them, too. Michael and I can specifically remember seeing each one of their videos when they broke. I shared the Green Bay fan video--Casey Lewis with her bad luck sparkly nail polish--in every conceivable social media channel I could.”

Prior to shooting the spot, Deutsch went into the recording studio with Jimmy Cliff to lay down a new version of “C’Mon, Get Happy.” While Ian and the creative team loved the song, they were worried that The Partridge Family’s original version might be too over-the-top happy for “Sunny Side.” “So we wanted someone to give it a little more of an edge. Jimmy Cliff immediately popped to mind. We love Jimmy Cliff. The guy is the real deal, a living legend. I remember seeing him as a kid in 1986 at the Capital Theater in Port Chester, New York, and him blowing the roof off the joint,” Ian says. “We felt Jimmy had the cred, the style and the voice to take that Partridge Family theme and really make it his. But even we were surprised by how f-cking cool the song turned out. Watching Jimmy walk into the Brooklyn recording studio of Vel Records, nail the song in like two takes and blow us all away was something to behold.”
For now, the plan is for “Sunny Side” to run on YouTube only, although that could change. “Last year, we intended to do the same with our pre-release spot, ‘The Bark Side,’ but then ended up running that on TV as a sixty second. So who knows?” Ian says.

Deutsch Is No. 10 on Ad Age's Agency A-List

For ages, Super Bowl advertisers had a routine: They went to a pool of the same agencies -- the kind well-versed in Big Game ideas -- knowing these guys had what it took to produce a winning commercial.

Marketers still do that, but in 2012, a new agency made a big splash in that pool. Deutsch has made many marketers rethink their game-day strategy, thanks to the charming work it's churned out for Volkswagen. It was behind "The Force," a Super Bowl ad the Interpublic Group of Cos. agency did for client Volkwswagen in 2011, which became one of the most-viewed commercials ever on YouTube.

 

Agency Deutsch

OWNERSHIP: Interpublic
U.S. OFFICES: 2

"Certainly one thing that makes a massive difference in anything you do is surrounding yourself with great people you enjoy working with and who are highly competent ... When you have that in place you can consistently deliver quality and great work to the marketplace."

-- Tim Mahoney, CMO of VW.

Fans were delighted in 2012 to see Deutsch reprise the "Star Wars" theme it had popularized in the prior year's Super Bowl, this time a teaser with dogs barking the "Imperial March." Consumers posted videos on YouTube of their pets reacting to the teaser. Then, on game day came Deutsch's spot about an overweight pup trying to slim down so he could chase Volkswagens. The ad topped consumer-favorite charts and earned the automaker 1.9 billion earned media impressions, exceeding the prior year's Super Bowl campaign's results of 1.6 billion impressions.
Volkswagen CMO Tim Mahoney said that as a result VW has seen a several percentage-point uptick in consumers intending to consider VW the next time they go car shopping.
Now Deutsch has another VW Super Bowl spot for this year's game and it's challenge will be to outdo itself. Volkswagen is confident the agency can deliver. But what's even more interesting is others are too: several new clients called up Deutsch in 2012 to help them create Super Bowl ads.
In total, Deutsch has five spots from four clients in the Super Bowl. Its first work for Taco Bell will be a Super Bowl spot, the chain's first since 2010. The New York office in June picked up client GoDaddy.com, a regular advertiser in the game (this year it has two game spots), which had previously handled advertising in-house.

Last year Ad Age recognized Deutsch as an A-List standout, betting it would continue its momentum in 2012. Deutsch delivered, upping revenue 8%.

"We're really firing on all cylinders in New York and Los Angeles," said Linda Sawyer, CEO, North America. In any agency network, it's not unusual for different offices to experience different cycles -- one may spend a year absorbing new business, while another is trying to win new accounts. But both Deutsch offices were in sync, picking up organic and new-business wins and fortifying the management with new talent. And both are involved in Super Bowl work this year.

Deutsch, New York, expanded its relationship with Microsoft, adding creative for Outlook. Deutsch, Los Angeles, in May began working with Target -- one of several agencies succeeding hotshop Wieden & Kennedy -- on a project, a move that will likely result in additional work for the agency. And while the agency is currently in a review to defend its PlayStation work, its wins mitigate the potential loss.

If that weren't enough, last year Deutsch was named one of Ad Age's Best Places to Work.