Publicis Conseil introduces BNP Paribas' "Hello Bank!" -- which claims to be Europe's first fully-digital mobile bank -- with a smart orchestra stunt. Created in collaboration with master production company B-Reel and the Czech National Symphony Orchestra, the campaign brought together the talents from the musical and tech world for a one-of-a-kind performance by the orchestra that showed what you could do with just your mobile phone.

Taped during a performance in Prague, and led by conductor Libor Pesek, the outfit's 60 musicians put aside their instruments for a special performance of "Carmen."

While it might look staged, the agency also released a behind-the-scenes video [below] showing how the phones and tablets were hooked up to 227 different interfaces, and linked together via WiFi.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

This music video created by Volvo for the dance group Swedish House Mafia cleverly bridges the gap between branded content, product placement and social media. Swedish House Mafia disbanded in March after five years together, so Volvo, and its agency Forsman & Bodenfors, approached them about making a film in which the trio are seen going their separate ways in the brand's new XC60 cross-country vehicles.

While the music video is a poignant tribute to the band who -- at least for now -- will be saying goodbye to the fast-pace life of touring and traveling, it's also an elegant illustration of how the new car can pull its drive away from frenetic city life to more peaceful environs.

Director Adam Berg filmed it beautifully against a moody Scandinavian landscape, and the soundtrack is a cover of one of their early hits, "Leave the World Behind," by singer Lune. The YouTube video has already created a social buzz, and there's also an interactive website, leavetheworldbehind.com, featuring the video and behind-the-scenes information. Scenes from the video will also feature in TV and print commercials by Volvo.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Brandon Allen, CEO and one of the twenty-something co-founders of Santa Barbara-based vineyard Slo Down wines, bares his buns in a thong and cheekless chaps in a new online campaign to promote the vintner's "Sexual Chocolate" wine.

The wine's name pays homage to Eddie Murphy's band from "Coming to America." It also provides lots of fodder for the three ads, which all turn on risque themes. In the first, Allen, dressed in a tuxedo jacket and thong and with Sexual Chocolate in hand, steps into a menage-a-trois -- and turns it into a menage-a-quatre.

In another execution, he carries his glass into a marijuana-filled room while a third spot finds him chained up in an S&M den. The point being, that Sexual Chocolate is the perfect partner for all your good times. The spots were created in-house and directed by Baker Smith of Harvest Films.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Arrested Development's doctor-turned-actor Tobias Funke, played by actor David Cross, puts himself out there on green screen in order to land himself a job -- with James Cameron.

On the site www.insertmeanywhere.biz, which Funke purportedly created, he auditions before Cameron, and the rest of the interwebs, playing various characters from an Action Hero to a Motorcycle Ruffian. And, to make it more convenient for directors of the world, he does it all on green screen, so anyone can easily comp him into the scene of their choice. He's seeking his next role, after a successful run on a spot for a juice called ManGo.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Continue reading at AdAge.com

To promote Mercedes Smart cars to Russians (who like driving big cars), BBDO Russia actively proved to potential customers the benefits of having a smaller vehicle.

Many Russians get towed on weekend shopping trips for parking illegally; and the traffic is also notoriously bad in the city. So in March Smart offered free rides to those stranded by having their vehicles towed -- getting them to take a test drive without requesting one, and see what a difference having a small car makes when parking is scarce and traffic heavy.

623 car-less drivers were rescued during three days. The agency encouraged people to thank the Smart brand on social media, while blogs and news portals picked up on the stories and test drives increased 10 fold. Sales increased by 300% in the two weeks following the event.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Twitter's great. It's your time-waster, your breaking news source, your way to keep in touch with the latest trends and the greatest people. So when it's time to wish your mom a very happy Mother's Day, what do you do? Send her a tweet? I don't think so, buster.

For more Mother's Day goodies from tech companies, check out Google's heartwarming "Here's to the Moms" spot, and watch Skype connect a husband and wife just before the birth of their child.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

AT&T takes a break from shilling phones and gives some love to mom instead, with a new execution from BBDO's adorable "It's Not Complicated" campaign in which moderator Beck Bennett asks a new crew of smart, lippy kids, "Who gives the best hugs?" Their answers, not surprisingly, will melt you.

The spot, again directed by Caviar's Jorma Taccone, will air Friday through Mother's Day, and has a digital component that lets you "personalize" an e-card that can be shared via social media or email.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

TBWA/G1 Paris promotes Nissan's "self-healing paint," a technology pioneered by the automotive brand that makes the car essentially scratch-proof, with this inventive iPad ad that appeared in The Economist.

The ad uses the natural side-swiping motion of tablet users to make its point. When it appears amidst the pages of the magazine, swipes create "scratches" on the body of the car, which then heal themselves.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Canada's Union Hearing Aid Centre has been doing a good job with its surprising, self-targeting ads. In a campaign last year, they had melodious piano music accompanying the most annoying, high-frequency sound ever -- but you could only hear it if you had good hearing. Now, the company and DraftFCB Toronto are back, with a print poster in Toronto's West End that emits that same sound when you walk by.

The poster [left] features copy that purports to test your eyesight, with the font getting smaller on each line. At the end, the tiny font says that if you got that far, you might have perfect eyesight, but really bad hearing -- since they couldn't hear ad's semi-sonic frequency. A television spot does a similar thing, by getting people to test their hearing by pretending to test their eyes, instead.

In previous hearing-related campaigns, Go Outside magazine won the Radio Grand Prix at Cannes last year, for an ad that repelled mosquitoes.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Two buddies are the center of this moving tale out of BBH London, for British fruit juice brand Robinsons. The spot was directed by Academy's Si & Ad. As you'll see, what starts out as a charming story of best friends turns out to be about a relationship that's much, much, more.

The film breaks this Saturday during ITV1's airing of Britain's Got Talent. The idea behind the effort celebrates play -- and makes the point that childhood is most precious when parents are actively engaged with their kids as if they're best mates.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

When the bottles are so sleek, shouldn't the vending machine be too? Ogilvy Paris and Diet Coke team up to design a "Slender Vender" -- an elegant-looking vending machine that was inspired by the aluminum bottles the soda comes packaged in.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Domino's customers can already track the progress of their pizza orders with Domino's Tracker, but now some can watch them being made live via a webcam, too.

In a pilot program being launched today, Domino's has added a live video feed to Tracker, so that customers at a store in Salt Lake City, Utah, can watch pizzas being made from scratch. Five webcams have been placed in the store's kitchen for the entire month of May, and when its customers order online, they will be prompted to go to www.DominosLive.com to watch. The activity is all part of the brand's efforts to be more transparent about its quality, via its campaign through Crispin Porter & Bogusky.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

In a move reminiscent of the Alec Brownstein experiment, Snickers and AMV BBDO created a way to make bad typers recognize why it is that they were unable to spell.

Snikkers Googel worked to bid on misspellings of common search terms. Each time someone misspelled a word, (which was probably often, since people generally rely on the search engine to correct the terms for them), they got tailored ads asking them to "Grab yourself a Snikkers," because "Yu cant spel properlie wen hungrie."

According to the agency, the campaign reached 500,000 people in three days of launch. It proved a smart way for Snickers to not only reach bad typers, but also those who type "LIkE diS" for absolutely no reason.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Making friends the "old fashioned way" is so passe -- at least according to Budweiser Brazil, who's changing up the way we connect with each other with "Buddy Cup," created out of Brazilian agency Africa. The cups are embedded with a chip -- when clinked with each other, the two people would become friends on Facebook. The cups will be used during Budweiser events.

Other brewers have been experimenting with connected objects too. Strongbow Gold Cider and Work Club created a bottle cap with an RFID chip that connected to a "reader," so that bottles with the "Startcaps" would set off interesting reactions around a bar in Budapest.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Finnish dental clinic Hammaspeikko and McCann Worldgroup make posters a little more interesting, in a campaign to promote the clinic's dental whitening services. When the poster is photographed with the flash on, the result of the whitening (plus the clinic's number and a discount voucher) is shown in the photo.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Boston Magazine honors the victims of the Boston Marathon bombings with this uplifting, evocative cover featuring a heart created from the shoes of the marathon runners.

Liz Noftle, deputy art director at the magazine, said that the team wanted to "do something really special," and came up with the concept Monday night, after the bombings happened. The mag staff reached out to "anyone and everyone" to collect shoes, with the team collecting them and organizing couriers to bring them in.

Boston's photo editor, Scott Lacey, shot each shoe individually for the site and the inside story, then drove them down to New York, where photographer Mitchell Feinberg shot them. "We closed the magazine while the city was in lockdown on Friday," she said.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Continue reading at AdAge.com

To raise awareness of its kids' pack menu during Childhood Obesity Month in Puerto Rico, Subway made a social responsibility video showing just how a kid would fill up a supermarket cart if they had the choice. Agency DDB Latina recruited parents and kids without telling them what it was for, then filmed the kids filling the cart with their choices -- mainly sugary snacks -- as the parents watched in horror. The video was shown on local media and discussed on social media, and sales of Subway's kids' pack menu rose by 123%.

The shopping theme of the campaign is reminiscent of this other moving anti-obesity effort from Blue Cross/Blue Shield Minnesota, out of mono and directed by Academy's Amanda Boyle.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The Volkswagen Fusca (the new Beetle in Brazil) has something called "DSG Tiptonic Transmission," which, put simply, shifts gears automatically. To demonstrate this, AlmapBBDO created a YouTube pre-roll that automatically "skipped" the commercial after the requisite five seconds -- making the point that the car doesn't need you to shift gears, even when you're watching videos of cats (or whatever).

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Blink and you might miss it, but Facebook has updated its "F" logo (old logo on left.) The faint blue line that marked the bottom of the box has been removed, and the "F" now extends right through to the edge, leading to a cleaner look for the entire thing.

Scottish designer Tom Waddington pointed out that a number of other Facebook properties have also refreshed their identities, in some cases, for the first time in years.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

A bun and napkin become a metaphor for the appropriate time to chow down on a burger, in this smart print ad for McDonald's, out of DDB Stockholm.

The agency has previously done some pretty delightful work for the fast-feeder, including this cute print ad that showed how easy McDonald's might make your crazy mornings.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Coke is hoping to make Peru a happier nation by strongly encouraging people to smile in their photo IDs. The company set up Coke-branded photo booths in 30 spots across the country, including next to the RENIEC (National Identity Registry), that activated only when the person smiled.

The "Happy ID" project, by McCann Lima, was launched in response to research that shows Peru at the bottom of worldwide happiness charts, despite recent economic growth. The campaign is being supported by a website, out-of-home activity, TV and radio sponsorships, press and TV, while local celebrities have been hired as campaign ambassadors. Coke is also collecting a database of its "Happy ID" holders, and will send them special offers in conjunction with partner brands. Check out full credits on the effort here.

Coke recently has been spreading happiness in Asia, where it sent Japanese DJ Jun Fujiwara around the city recording sounds of happiness with a hacked Coke bottle, in another new effort out of Ogilvy & Mather, Singapore.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Dove conducted a social experiment to prove that women are more beautiful than they think, as part of its continuing focus on "real" beauty in its advertising.

In a campaign by Ogilvy Brazil, filmed by John X Carey of Paranoid in a San Francisco loft, the beauty brand employed FBI-trained forensic sketch artist Gil Zamora, who usually sketches people described by crime eyewitnesses.

First he drew portraits of women according to their own description, and then he drew portraits of those same women according to strangers who had met them on the day. The differences between how they describe themselves and how others describe them are immediately striking.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Continue reading at AdAge.com

German insurance brand DEVK "hijacked" the big screen, showing the crowd at a football match an ad that purported to be a real-life incident in the stands. At half time, a half-naked sumo wrestler appeared on screen climbing down the benches, grabbed a fan and ripped off his shirt -- followed by the question "How do you explain that to your insurance company?"

Creative agency Grabarz & Partner pre-produced the ad and cut it into the live stream. Two more ads showed other simulated absurd accidents, including a person wrestling with a bottle of mustard which develops a life of its own.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Agency RPA, along with Erich Joiner and Academy Award-winner Robert Richardson (Django Unchained, Inglourious Basterds) ensure you'll run home and floss tonight with this grotesque, yet extremely watchable short to promote the Newport Beach Film Festival.

What is a pretty straightforward horror story about a vengeful dentist turns into a fantastic film, with creepy thought montages coupled with moments of unnerving clarity. But what really makes this great is the telling ending.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity-Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Each character gets a dedicated poster in the marketing campaign for Netflix's new season of Arrested Development, (premiering May 26).

Prop-driven prints, created out of Ignition Creative, L.A., reference the history of the show, from Buster's grape juice to George Sr's love affair with his ice-cream sandwich.

For more exciting ideas in brand creativity, check out Creativity -Online.com, follow @creativitymag on Twitter or sign up for the Creativity newsletter.

Continue reading at AdAge.com