Planet Fitness gives you a pat on the back

Planet Fitness is all about making you feel good about yourself, without all the hard-core B.S. of traditional gyms. That attitude is central to the brand’s new ad campaign from Red Tettemer + Partners, based around the good old-fashioned pat on the back, or “POTB,” a “gesture of respect and encouragement” that embodies the brand promise. The campaign includes a manifesto print ad, an online spot and a Facebook app called the POTB Generator, which lets you dole out pats-on-the-back for just about anything. Now, the agency is taking things into galactic territory with a humorous open letter to NASA, in which it gives Pluto, that onetime planet and current dwarf planet/loser, a much-needed POTB. The whole letter is quite funny, although the Red Tettemer writers get a +1 for getting the phrase “playing dodgeball with Uranus” in there. NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is already on its way to Pluto;  it left in 2006 and is expected to reach the distant hunk of ice and rock sometime in the summer of 2015. But Planet Fitness wants NASA to send another rocket, one that won’t scientifically observe Pluto so much as emotionally empower it—a POTB “from one planet to another.”

 

 

 

 

#firstworldproblems

Devising a high-impact humanitarian campaign is a first-world problem that DDB New York solves in stirring fashion on behalf of WaterIsLife. With close to 1 million YouTube views in a week, the “First World Problems” anthem is generating plenty of conversation, along with some consternation and lots of visibility for the cause—providing clean water to third-world countries. In the 60-second spot, against the backdrop of their earthquake- and poverty-ravaged homeland, Haitians, many of them orphans, read actual tweets that people jokingly marked with the #FirstWorldProblems hashtag. The tweets catalog non-problems of the well-fed, such as wonky WiFi, misplaced remote controls and the frustration of a botched lunch order (“I tell them no pickles and they still give me pickles”). The best scene is the kid perched on cracked cement steps who informs us that he hates “when I have to write my maid a check, but I forget her last name.” Other videos feature responses to specific tweets. When someone moans, “There really isn’t anything worse than leaving your headphones at home,” the kid on the steps sweetly responds, “If I was there, I’d get them for you.” Sure, the campaign is guilt-inducing and manipulative in the extreme—note the Hollywood-style framing of the ruined structure, with the sunlight streaming in as if from another world. Even so, it manages to steer clear of overkill or self-parody, and packs significant punch. (These are, after all, real people who are struggling mightily to survive against stiff odds every day.) Some say it’s disingenuous to reference #FirstWorldProblems at all, as messages so tagged are intended as ironic (one would hope). DDB counters that even parody can have a desensitizing effect, and that the work is intended at the very least to make folks think before they tweet. I’m struck by the media-centric, meta nature of the entire project. Harnessing a spoof hashtag in PSAs to drum up press coverage, popular support and donations—how first world can you get?

iPods Bouncing for Joy

Welcome back, iPod advertising. You remember iPod ads, right? They had energy and fun colors and other things that weren’t fingers sliding lazily across iPhone screens. All the old iPod energy is back in spades with the new spot, “Bounce,” from TBWA\Media Arts Lab and the animators at Psyop, pushing the seventh-gen Nano and fifth iteration of the iPod Touch. Apple debuted the ad at a September media event, but it hit YouTube and TV on Wednesday to correspond with the first shipments of the new Touch. The track is “Yeah Yeah” by New Zealand artist Willy Moon.

 

Nike asks kids

Want to hear something horribly depressing? (No? Too bad.) For the first time ever, the current generation of children is expected to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. (Told you it was depressing.) Five years shorter, to be exact.

So, what gives? To state the obvious, we’re getting lazier. According to Nike’s Designed to Move campaign, there’s been a massive drop in physical activity among kids in recent years. In the U.S. alone, physical activity has declined 32 percent in a single generation.

To bring attention to the issue, Nike partnered with Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Ore., to produce this short video, which recently premiered at the annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting in New York. The (unbranded) spot asks kids what they would do with five extra years (you know, the years they’re not going to have because they’re all going to die young). Their responses range from ambitious (“Build a time machine,” “Go looking for dark matter”) to tear-jerking (“Make medicine for the sick,” “Bring my uncle back”) to curiously rodent-related (“Get more hamsters,” “Be the boss of all the chipmunks”).

And then the spot finishes with its coup de grace: Set against photos of these kids standing in abandoned athletic fields, text appears that says: “For the first time in history, this generation is expected to die 5 years younger than their parents due to lack of physical activity.” Because even if it’s too late to get your average adult to go for a run, there’s nothing like juxtaposing a really cute kid with the possibility of death to scare any parent straight.

So, tell your children to go play outside. Or at least get them a mini treadmill. They make those.

 

Do What You’ve Never Done Before

Sometimes you have to ignore the brief, says renowned designer and artist Paula Scher. With a dry wit, Scher takes us behind-the-scenes on four landmark projects — from revamping MoMA’s identity to reinvigorating a Pittsburgh neighborhood through design — to illustrate how asking questions, pushing into uncharted territory, and doing something you’ve never done before leads to great work.

VIVA creativity

Virgin Active Brand Team at the Loeries. 

 

A Taller Change

Much has been made of the bigger screen space on the new iPhone 5—and it’s a product feature that’s been particularly easy to spoof, as we’ve seen a number of print mockups over the past week that make the phone look several feet high. (It’s reminiscent of the parody ads for 10-bladed razors.) Now, here’s a pretty well-made video version of the same joke. Humorously, FaceTime has become BodyTime, and the lengthy phone also proves useful in measuring wall space, taking panoramic photos (which is actually a new feature, just not as presented here) and firing up your LightSaber. All in all, it’s a whole lot more impressive than the real iPhone 5 ads, whose non-parody ads you can watch here.

Ster Kinekor – Intersection

 

This TVC for Ster-Kinekor launched on the 10th of September but we’ll have to wait until this Friday to see the (literally) explosive ending. And it’ll only be shown at Ster-Kinekor cinemas.

Taking a hint from the pay-off line which reads, “Some things can only be experienced on the Big Screen”, we’ll have to get to the movies from the 21st of September to see what happens when a kerosene tanker, a truck carrying fireworks, a bakkie loaded with tanks of glitter and a lorry filled with parachuting snakes collide.

Nelson Mandela Banknotes

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/49437964″>South African National Reserve Bank</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user3990414″>Am I Collective</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

 

This TV ad by The Jupiter Drawing Room with animation, illustration and direction by Am I Collective introduces the beautiful new Nelson Mandela banknotes that the South African Reserve Bank will bring into circulation before the end of the year.

The banknotes each feature a key moment in Madiba’s life etched onto the paper. The illustrations in the TVC were made to interpret these scenes.

Volkswagen: Amarok – Marvellous Machine

An entire museum set, modelled on Washington’s famous Smithsonian, was built inside Cape Town Film Studios for this TV ad by Ogilvy Cape Town for the VW Amarok bakkie.

Production company Velocity Films created a planetary backdrop and five diaramas – showing dinosaurs, early mankind, the first flight, the moon landings and a robotic future – from scratch. They imported 130 tonnes of sand and 26 tonnes of rock to create the interior terrain for the exhibits and very detailed post-production work over five weeks delivered the credible museum look and feel.