We all love a little drama, and the fourth- and fifth-place spots from this week’s Top 5 have beef. And no, it’s not another brand deal for “Vanderpump Rules” star Ariana Madix or a sassy tweet campaign—just good old-fashioned targeted advertising.
Grab your popcorn and behold the best in creativity from the past week.
Arby’s campaign celebrating the return of its wagyu burger literally centers around beef. But it also took a classic approach to calling out its rivals—before social media, there was out-of-home. A series of silly billboards promoting the restaurant chain’s sandwiches were hyper targeted to McDonald’s and Wendy’s headquarters. A sign reading “Arby’s burger doesn’t clown around,” pokes fun at the Golden Arches’ mascot, and one reading, “Objectively, Arby’s burger is more well-rounded,” takes a jab at Wendy’s square patties.
Amazon Ads launched a campaign last week touting the quality placements of its ads. The spot documents the hard work a group of marketers puts into creating work for a fictional brand—the twist being that it ends up on a billboard obscured by a tree. “All that, for this?” the spot wonders. The ad (which isn’t running in the U.S.) comes on the heels of a recent report from Adalytics that found video ads from fellow tech giant Google may be running on unsavory sites rather than against YouTube videos. Coincidence? Perhaps, but the slow summer months could use a little spice.
Alongside the proliferation of legislation for what educators can and can’t teach, the list of books banned from school libraries has grown at alarming rates recently. The Digital Public Library of America and agency FCB Chicago teamed up to offer respite from attempts to regulate literature by providing free access, targeted by location. “The Banned Book Club,” supported by former President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama, allows anyone in these regions with a handheld device to download banned books on the Palace e-reader app.
Great advertising harnesses the power of empathetic storytelling, and it doesn’t hurt to make it adorable either. An animated spot from Tractor Beverage tells the touching tale of a plastic cup oppressed by the tyranny of Big Soda. As cup after cup line up like lemmings for a dousing of artificial beverage, one receptacle shudders at the prospect of filling itself with the toxic sludge. A gang of bottles surround the cup to bully and peer pressure it into submission, but this cup is a dreamer and breaks free in an epic battle. As one might expect, disrupting the capitalistic mechanisms chaining the plastic population to fountain-soda-servitude isn’t easily done—in this case it involves the severing of one attacker’s straw and lobbing a mint down an enemy soda, causing it to spew viscera. But all ends in bliss, as the cup gleefully fills itself with organic fluid to a cover of Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World.”
Apple continued its ongoing “Underdogs” series, this time with an eye for cybersecurity. The eight-minute episode is a goofy high-speed chase in which the perpetually business-unsavvy group is aided by technology in tracking down a burgled laptop. The video is complete with minivan street racing, a countdown microwave and, of course, not-so-subtle reminders of the devices’ safety features—all of which effectively culminate in a surprising level of well-timed tension, cut with just the right amount of absurdity.
