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American Express: The Journey Never Stops - Top Class Storytelling During the Academy Awards

American Express tells four great stories of celebrity struggle, and ultimate success, in these new spots from Oglivy & Mather, NY. The ads features queen of soul Aretha Franklin, sitcom star Mindy Kaling, GoPro founder Nick Woodman and restauranteur Natalie Young.

The spots first aired in edited form during Sunday's Academy Awards on ABC and is worth sharing as great examples of well-executed storytelling. The only thing missing is a more direct "hero" role and position of the brand in the 4 stories. You get the sense that AmEx has made a difference during the struggles, but I think it would have been possible to tell a bit more about while still keeping the authenticity.

The Playlist:

AmEx did however seek to make a difference for a Nelson George an unknown indie filmmaker trying to finish his film about a struggling ballerina - a small stunt that puts action behind the story and also cleverly encourage viewers to engage on Twitter.

Tonight, let’s help @nelsongeorge finish his beautiful #film. #journeyneverstops http://t.co/ZNs1EfWiNTandhttps://t.co/wD4HM0rKS3

and American Express (@AmericanExpress) February 23, 2015

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Ray-Ban: #Reflections - Time to Take Selfies To New Heights with New App

Ray-Ban and the Belgium-based agency Gents have recently launched a pretty cool app for the Ray-banas around the world.

The Ray-Ban #Reflections app lets you shoot, edit and share unique double exposure pictures using your front and back camera simultaneously. Drawing on the popularity of fans taking photos with reflections in their Ray-Ban sunglasses, the idea was to create a branded app so every selfie now tells a story - with very hipster visuals.

The app fits the lifestyle of Ray-Ban fans perfectly by giving them the possibility to create their own stunning artwork on the device they know best - their smartphone. The best thing is, you don’t have to be a Photoshop wizard. Everybody can create one-of-a-kind masterpieces with a single touch and swipe. Unlike most high-end photo apps, #Reflections offers a user friendly experience without compromising on quality and of course have the best and easiest share functions.

To promote the Reflections app, Ray-Ban launched the concept on social media with a cool Tumblr site and created a special #Reflections layout for the brand’s London flagship store. The Tumblr site collects hashtagged activity, as well, and the brand’s own campaign-focused tweets and posts.

What I love about this app, is the alignment between the product, the target group and their lifestyle. The app diggs into a trend already happening, but adds something new and extra. Back in 2013 I wrote about another brilliant app idea from Ray-ban "Bright Light" leveraging on the exact same things. An outgoing and active target group that wants to go on the sunny side of life got offered an app for taking routes that followed the sun.

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Snack Attack - SumOfUs Aim to Crash Doritos and PepsiCo with New Global Campaign

The consumer group SumOfUs has launched an international ad campaign slamming Doritos and the parent company PepsiCo for its 'destruction of the rainforest' and 'unsustainable use of palm oil'.

The campaign features posters on UK buses and an new advert called "A Cheesy Love Story" or "Love a First Bite" which should supposedly be backed by a 'five figure ad-buy and is produced by Motion Picture Company (you probably know their work as it among others include the Dancing Pony for Three).

The release is perfect timing with the currently running and returning Crash the Superbowl competition by Doritos and the execution is just brilliant - you actually think it is a finalist for the ad competition until.. well the end.

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Adidas Aim to Reclaim "Superstar" in New Global and Year-long Originals Campaign

This Friday Adidas kicked off a new year-long global campaign and it's going to be one of the largest ever for the Originals brand.

The campaign is a celebration of the 45th anniversary of the Superstar, the Originals' most iconic and one of its best-selling shoes. The three-striped shoe, which started off as a basketball sneaker in 1969, was made famous by Run-D.M.C. in the 1980s, when it became synonymous with hip-hop culture.

With the new campaign, Adidas aims to "relaunch" the sneaker and draw attention to the Originals brand by reclaiming the true sense of the word "superstar". According to Alexander Matt, senior director-global brand communications for Adidas Originals, it is nowadays easy to equate superstardom with fame and the amount of view counts, but the most important creative quality is courage.

On youtube Adidas have written: "When the Superstar shoe was first launched by adidas back in 1969, the word ‘Superstar’ was unambiguous. Today, the word has been corrupted to the point of confusion. This year adidas Originals sets out to question what it means to be a superstar."

In the attempt to reclaim superstardom, the creative agency Johannes Leonardo have used the Adidas logo and the three stripes to scratch out the word "superstar", and will use this simple, but cool campaign element throughout the creative content, to create recognisability and coherency across video, print, social, digital and outdoor.

The first film of the campaign starring four superstars; Pharrell Williams, David Beckham, Rita Ora and Damian Lillard, doesn't give an answer to what it means to be superstar in 2015, but focuses on what it definitely is not about.

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Gatorade Celebrates Its 50th Anniversary in Style with 50 Iconic Sports Moments

Gatorade, one of my favourite brands from a content marketing perspective, has been fueling athletic performance since 1965 and celebrates its anniversary with yet another cool new commercial created by TBWA Chiat Day Los Angeles.

The minute-long ad begins with a retro shot of a UF football coach asking his team for 50 push-ups. As the players count from one to 50, a clip of a notable sports icon or moment or even an old Gatorade ad appears on screen to correspond with each number. For example, a clip of Derek Jeter in his signature Yankee Jersey appears for number 2 while a shot of Serena Williams appears for number 24 to highlight a record 24 aces served in one tennis match. The ad includes legends like Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning and Dwayne Wade and finally ends with a coach telling a modern-day UF football team, “Fifty more. Let’s do it again.”

If you don't catch all the moments, you can learn more about each iconic highlight from the reel on the interactive YouTube digital extension, created with the help of digital agency VML. More anniversary work, great content and promotional efforts will roll out throughout 2015.

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Adland Once Again Celebrates Christmas with Everything But Christmas Cards

When you're a respected and acknowledged creative agency you can't just send out traditional, boring christmas cards, you need to do something... well, creative.. and some agencies sure have been thinking out of the box...

Grey London and in particular Mike Kennedy and Pauline Ashford, creatives at the agency came up with the idea of Beard Baubles – small Christmas baubles to adorn people’s hipster beards.

All proceeds from the initiative will go to Beard Season, a charity that uses beards to spread awareness of melanoma. Grey is more over using pictures of some of its staff modelling the baubles as its official and very traditional agency Christmas card.

Ogilvy & Mather Paris created a video, asking what would Christmas be like if it was first tested on a focus group.

The idea and result is actually more funny then you think, and it never hurts to once again indirectly be reminded that the general public wouldn't know a good idea if it dropped through their chimney and made them sit on its lap. As you can guess Christmas is not a big hit and wouldn't pass the testing, and so Ogilvy can't wish everyone a Merry Christmas and can't send out Christmas cards.

Mother London have made another humorous stunt and as you could read on thedrum.com - Mother London has been appointed the global agency of record to represent none other than Jesus and the agency even won the "account" without a pitch.

The agency is currently running the hashtag #IfoundJesusinLondon and is encouraging those who were lucky enough to meet Jesus to share their selfies and and experiences on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr.

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Arby's: "We Have Pepsi" - Failure is Always An Opportunity

Arby's, the american fast food chain, have a mutually beneficial deal with Pepsi, and as part of that agreement Arby's is committed to put the soda in two of their commercials.

However as the year is about to end, Pepsi chose to reached out to Arby’s during October with a friendly reminder: You need to include us in one more ad this year.

The only problem was that Arby’s already had its end-of-the-year creative ready to go — and it didn’t include Pepsi. As the company is currently focused on a relaunch around a new tag-line, “We have the meats,”, the agreement with Pepsi simply was forgotten.

Due to this oversight, Arby's and Fallon, a Minneapolis-based ad firm owned by Publicis, chose to release a 30-second one-shot spot admitting their mistake, and what started as an omission suddenly became an opportunity.

The spot will run from Dec. 7 to Dec. 13 in the Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles markets.

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Sainsbury's: "Christimas is for Sharing" Advert Gets a Mixed Response in The UK

The new Sainsbury’s Christmas advert "Christmas is for sharing" created by AMV/BBDO and produced in partnership with The Royal British Legion is inspired by real events from the WW1 more than 100 years ago.

The spot commemorates the extraordinary events of Christmas Day, 1914, when the guns fell silent and two armies met in no-man’s land, sharing gifts and even playing football together.

A pretty cool element of the campaign is that the chocolate bar featured in the ad now is on sale at Sainsbury’s and all profits (50p per bar) will go to The Royal British Legion and benefit the armed forces and their families, past and present.

According to different ad sites the Advertising Standards Authority received 240 complaints about the ad in the first two days since its launch on TV on Wednesday night in the break in Coronation Street.

The complaints argue it is a crass attempt to exploit the war for commercial reasons, but I think the agency did a great job respecting the historic event and Sainbury's have met the criticism by stressing that everyone put in great efforts and extra measures to create a sensitively and respectfully ad by working closely with historians and the charity to get the tone right.

I personally think they succeeded...

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Sony Xperia Z3: Go The Distance feat. the Brownlee Brothers

Sony and the agency Hey Human have produced some pretty cool content to prove the long lasting battery life on the new Xperia Z3.

The promise is nothing less than 2 full days of battery and the idea to make an endurance test like no other, where physical stamina meets phone stamina is pretty awesome.

The content, starring the two brothers Alistair and Jonny Brownlee - both world champion triathletes, doesn't only show the 48 hours of action in a convincing and exciting way, we also become witnesses to all of the Z3's features including the high level op waterproof rating making it useable for swimming..

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What Happens When Canadian Agencies and Creatives Are Let Loose?

The creative ad industry and strategy™ in Canada have recently been celebrating the latest work and best agencies of the year with a big award show in Toronto.

As part of the celebration strategy™ asked the shortlisted agencies to submit videos that show off their culture or simply to just have fun.

The result is very entertaining and you probably already seen reactvertising from St. John or how Union promotes itself as a family agency, but other agencies got pretty creative as well and here's my favourites:

Leo Burnett Toronto : Slapshot from Noreel Asuro on Vimeo.

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John Lewis Just Launched Their 2014 Christmas Ad: Monty the Penguin

John Lewis received tons of praises for their 2013 Christmas ad "The Bear and the Hare" created by Adam&Eve/DBB - and with good reason. The same can be said about the 2012 ad "The Journey."

Now the company and the same agency is ready with this year's ad and hope to win people over with a cute penguin named Monty.

During this week John Lewis have been introducing Monty through small pre-launch clues with outdoor posters and through small trailer idents on Channel 4 with the hashtag #montythepenguin included everywhere.

Now the full advert is launched online, and even though I personally don't think it gets close to last year, it still is a lovely first step to get into the Christmas spirit.

The ad will first air on TV during Gogglebox tomorrow (Friday) and John Lewis will then start to sell Monty merchandise including stuffed toys, onesies and a children’s book – and is even opening in-store grottos where Google technology will let children experience Monty’s story in 360-degree virtual reality.

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Ogilvy & Netflix: 100 GIFs From Content Library Comes Alive in OOH Campaign

New amazing work from Ogilvy Paris, who have installed digital posters that will be changed continually to match the context of their surroundings using cool GIFs from Netflix's content library.

On a Friday night, the out-of-home ad may show the face of an happy actor with the subtitle: “Finally, the weekend. Relax with some Netflix.” If a big sale is underway at a nearby store, an adjacent poster will show hordes of invading and screaming zombies!...

The campaign is created by Ogilvy in collaboration with MEC and Screenbase and will run all the way through Christmas. The appointed campaign team will watch for weather changes, news events or anything else happening, and will continuously create GIFs from movies and shows available on Netflix.

Netflix hasn’t been available to the French for very long as the service launched this September to what the Telegraph called a “hostile” reception, as local film and television producers worry that it will undercut locally made films. Besides this amazing campaign, Netflix is therefore also trying to win over the French sceptics by producing a series called “Marseille,” a Gallic version of “House of Cards.”

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Honda: Double-Sided Story - Two Parallel Tales Mirrored Into One Brilliant Experience

This campaign for Honda by Wieden + Kennedy, London will most likely be the best thing you will see all week or maybe even all month.

The "Double-sided story" campaign tells a story of a father and his Honda Civic during the day, but simultaneous brings you a very different story of him and his Civic Type R at night.

By simply pushing the letter R on your keyboard you can switch between both narratives, which are created to promote the Civic and its sportier sibling, the Civic Type R.

The beautifully shot video brings you a seamless experience which you just don't come across everyday. Below you can find a few of the earlier teasers, but for the real deal you have to click here.

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Beats by Dre: LeBron James in Re-Established 2014 with Powerbeats2 Wireless

Beats by Dre campaign is better than ever! I loved the campaign with Serena Williams and not least the World Cup campaign "The Game Before The Game" with among others Neymar Jr. and his father. But this new campaign with LeBron James tops it all...

James and Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine have been working together from the beginning and LeBron was involved early in the product testing. Back in 2008, Dre and Jimmy Iovine gave a prototype to LeBron, who ended up asking the company to outfit the entire U.S. Olympic basketball team before they left for Beijing.

Later on LeBron James was given a share in Beats by Dre in exchange for officially promoting the headset - a share that turned into $30 million when Dr. Dre sold Beats to Apple in 2013. - The deal is being said to be “the biggest equity cash payout for a professional athlete in history”!

Now LeBron is once again promoting the company with a cool two minute long ad ending with small follow-up extras about his upbringing in the city, to which he has now returned.

The ad has everything - it's cool, beautiful executed with great music and I love the fact that the voice-over is done by James' mother, Gloria, who starts by saying... wait for it... "Welcome home son"...

Further to the launch LeBron and Beats by Dre have now launched a behind the story video on Facebook, wherein LeBron tells about his life's ups and downs, his motivation and his love for Akron...

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Post by LeBron James.

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IKEA Gets Spooky in Halloween Ad with Cool Re-enactment of The Shining

I have already seen plenty of poor Halloween ads this season and nothing get close to the brilliant work seen last year with my favourite being the "Stay if you dare" campaign from Hotels.com...

One of my favourites this year - so far - is IKEA and BBH in Singapore, which have gone pretty dark and found inspiration in Stanley Kubrick’s horror classic, the one and only - The Shining.

The iconic IKEA showroom lanes create a perfect setting for the re-enactment of the infamous Overlook Hotel scene of a small boy cycling tricycle along eery corridors to equally eery music.

The Halloween campaign is moreover a perfect opportunity for IKEA to communicate its daily late night shopping offering of 11pm to its Singapore customers.

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World Animal Protection - "Before They Book" By BBH London

BBH London has launched an innovative, self-sustaining global campaign for World Animal Protection, the charity formerly known as WSPA (World Society for the Protection of Animals).

Every day, animals suffer in the name of entertainment and every day thousands of tourists are searching online for wild animal attractions such as elephant rides or tiger selfies unaware of the abuse that takes place behind the scenes.

The campaign really hit me personally as I this summer took a half-day trip with Orca Spirit Adventures to go see Orcas and Humpback whales. During the trip we were so lucky to se both and it was very exciting! However as I got caught up in the moment, I secretly wished to get even closer than we did (to get that perfect Instagram picture), but the guide complied with the rules and would not sail too close to avoid disturbing the wildlife animals. Applause to the guide and the guidelines and shame on me and my selfishness - I will definitely be more aware of the behind scenes and effect on the wildlife environment next time...

Back to campaign and the great idea to apply Google search to target tourists whilst they are looking for animal entertainment activities and so to affect people with perfect timing.

At a glance, one of the search results; AuthenticElephantRides.com appears to serve up what they are looking for - a tour operator company. The site offers the likes of jungle expeditions and waterfall treks as every other tour company. However, it soon becomes apparent that all is not as it seems when the fake tour site directs visitors to watch a short film for more information about the elephant riding tours offered.

The smiling guide explains with great excitement to the viewer how working elephants are tortured behind the scenes, her smiling face sharply contrasting with the brutality she is describing. The film then ends with the World Animal Protection logo and call to action: Let tourists know the truth before they book.

After watching the film, visitors are driven to the beforetheybook.org microsite where they can view live data about how many people are searching for elephant rides, and how many people have been educated about the reality of animal entertainment by watching the film on the AuthenticElephantRides.com site.

Visitors to the site are also encouraged to donate to help educate others by making sure that the AuthenticElephantRides.com site is the first Google search result they see. Donations thereby fund the Google search campaign so that the more people who donate, the more people can be educated. The tourists who were the issue, now become part of the solution hopefully in a never-ending cycle.

The campaign is besides fundings raised being supported with paid seeding, YouTube pre rolls, social media activity and PR and also targets animal lovers, to help spread the word to tourists and enlighten as many people as possible.

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David Beckham Introduces Haig Club to the World - Promoting Single Grain Whisky as The Next Big Thing

Single grain whisky is being predicted by experts as the next trend in whisky and with David Beckham as brand ambassador Haig Club aim to win great shares of the expected growth in the category.

Beckham is adding Haig Club whisky to his already substantial marketing empire, which includes among other things branded fragrances and underwear. Haig Club is his first alcohol brand as his retirement as a professional footballer last year now have made him able to promote such products.

Haig Club officially launched last week with a great fancy party and the release of the global film, 'Welcome', which is created by Adam & Eve/DDB, shot by director Guy Ritchie and of course features David Beckham himself.

The film weaves together a series of epic journeys made between a group of friends through the Highlands, as they head towards a Scottish estate for a rendezvous - This is Scotland luxe