Conforama is known as a more traditional furniture chain in France. But with 48% of furniture buyers in France under age 35, Conforama wanted to shift perceptions and appeal to the sensibilities of this younger consumer. The “Neighbours” campaign, launched in 2009, does just that. “Mon drôle de voisin” (My Dear Neighbors) uses a nude dancing scene to motivate a couple to invest in blinds for their apartment. Two further commercials, “Back to Work”, and “Fiery Breakfast”, play on the discomfort that comes from having one’s life (or the neighbours) on display.

Click on the image below to play the Dance video in YouTube (HD)

Music is “My Patch” by Jim Black.

Click on the image below to play the Back to Work video in YouTube (HD)

Click on the image below to play the Fiery Breakfast video in YouTube (HD)

Credits

The Neighbours campaign was developed at Draft FCB Paris.

Act on CO2, a communication channel of the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), has had two of its print advertisements banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The ads, “Jack and Jill”, and “Three Men in a Tub” are part of a set of four print ads and two outdoor posters warning people of the dangers of climate change. The ASA has ruled that the claims made in the newspaper adverts were not supported by solid science and must not be published again. The “You end the Story” TV campaign, which also provoked a barrage of complaints, is also under consideration.

Rub a dub dub, three men in a tub – a necessary course of action due to flash flooding caused by climate change. Climate change is happening. Temperature and sea levels are rising. Extreme weather events such as storms, floods and heat waves will become more frequent and intense. If we carry on at this rate, life in 25 years could be very different.

Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water. There was none as extreme weather due to climate change had caused a drought. Extreme weather conditions such as flooding, heat waves and storms will become more frequent and intense.

Hey Diddle Diddle the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon on discovering how easy it was to reduce our carbon emissions.

Twinkle twinkle little star, how I wonder what you are, up above the world so high, looking down at dangerously high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.

No one wants climate change, least of all snowmen.

If our climate changes our landscape changes.

Credits

The Act on CO2 campaign was developed at AMV BBDO, London.

The Fairy Tale print ads were designed by Bob Venables via Good Illustration.

French Connection UK is running “For Man” and “For Woman”, parallel advertising campaigns designed to attract the attention of each gender. The “Man” campaign, online at manifesto.frenchconnection.com, draws on classic gender stereotypes associated with old fashioned French cinema, backed up with Twitter and Facebook. The “Woman” campaign has its own Facebook and Twitter presence but no specific microsite.

Men have lost the ungentle art of manliness. The man in the street doesn’t know what to bring to a knife fight. He gets nervous around large fish. He can’t tie a full Windsor. It’s time to man up. He is handsome. Naturally, he is handsome. He’s powerful. Perhaps as powerful as a bullock. But do not let him daunt you. He knows about warp and weft, about women. His love for his beard is fierce and raw. He knows that a beard is a poem. Do not touch his beard. If you do not know so much about the beard, The Man can help you. He’s the face of spring 2010 and he wears French Connection. This is him……

Click on the image below to play the Man video in YouTube (HD)

Look. She stands. She sits. She… reclines. Meet the woman for a second. But be careful. She is charming. She is beautiful. She will make your mind wander. She is coquettish, coy, a botherer of boys. That’s enough of her for the moment. We’ll leave her be to the woman’s site where she can be a lady of leisure. Maybe we’ll look for her again another night… Introducing the woman for French Connection Spring/Summer 2010.

Click on the image below to play the Woman video in YouTube (HD)

The Manifesto site, a manly man’s blog, features contests and instructions on the art of man, compiled by an editorial team hailing from Vice, The Face and The Juke. One of the first challenges featured dares men to charm women on ChatRoulette contest, promising them an FCUK voucher worth 250 pounds if they succeed. In homage to all super powerless heroes, French Connection has launched a range of limited edition Kick-Ass T-shirts to coincide with the launch of the new movie. Visitors to the site are invited to track down the guy who’s stolen the T-shirts, using the clues released on Facebook.

Credits

The For Man and Woman campaign was developed at Fallon London, by executive creative directors Richard Flintham, Dirk van Dooren, art director Selena MacKenzie, copywriter Toby Moore, and agency producer Gemma Knight.

Filming and photography was shot by directors Leila and Damien de Blinkk via One Six 7 Productions, London, with producer Abi Hodson and director of photography Tariel Meliava.

Editor was Ben Campbell at Cut & Run. Post production was done at The Moving Picture Company.

The Manifesto site was developed at Poke London.

Rhapsody, the online music service run by MTV and Real Music, featured Seattle blogger Dave Knight in “Rhapsody Moments”, an advertising campaign launched in December 2009. A Rhapsody moment is when a song ties in to a certain place/time/event in your life, and you’ll forever associate the two. Dave, as Rhapsody user since 2006, responded to a talent scan run through the Rhapsody Facebook Fan page and Twitter channel. A film crew followed Dave for a day, catching him making breakfast (My Morning Jacket, The Way That He Sings), cycling through the city (The Temper Trap, Sweet Disposition), catching the sunset at South Lake Union Park (The XX, Islands), working late at the office (Thievery Corporation, Lebanese Blonde), and hanging out with friends (Passion Pit, Smile Upon Me). When provided with a track from Lamb of God Dave thought of Heavy Metal, the guy who works in his local corner store.

Click on the image below to play the Sweet Disposition Cycling video in YouTube (HD)

Click on the image below to play the Lamb of God video in YouTube (HD)

Credits

Filming was shot by Brennan Stasiewicz.

via Dave’s Faves and Real Network Blog.

LG has launched a television advertising campaign for the LG Infinia television, combining footage from the Thailand jungle and sea with photoreal CG animals. “Butterflies” shows us a single cocoon releasinig tens of thousands of CG butterflies. An elephant, with the help of CG magic, learns to climb a tree. Lure sees a CG fishing lure find its freedom whilst following a playmate in the deep blue sea. What if something amazing became infinitely amazing?

Click on the image below to play the three videos in YouTube (HD)

Credits

The LG campaign was developed at Y&R New York by agency producer Robert Beck.

FIlming was shot by director Dante Ariola via MJZ, Los Angeles, with producer Nathalie Richardson-Hill.

VFX and telecine were produced at Framestore by VFX CG supervisor Diarmid Harrison Murray, VFX 2D supervisor Alex Thomas and producer Sarah Hiddlestone.

Framestore provide their commentary on their side of the work….

In Butterflies, the main challenge was to create thousands of butterflies that looked real as a swarm, whilst retaining the intrinsic beauty that these fascinating insects possess, particularly during flight. The 3D team had to find the right balance between naturally chaotic flying and choreographed flying that could neatly tell the ad’s story of ‘infinite flow’. Caution was taken to ensure the butterflies didn’t become too stylised and bird-like, especially in the more crowded shots. The opening hero butterflies were hand animated for a smooth and organic feel, but the wider shots used a particle system to disperse the insects when they begin to number in the thousands. Range of colour and attention to detail were crucial, so the team created unique butterfly designs and added touches like rendering a fine layer of fur to avoid a plastic or solid look. Meanwhile, the 2D team painstakingly rotoscoped around the foliage so the butterflies could ‘fly’ behind some of the leaves. The 2D brief required a delicate hand to enhance the film’s magical lighting in Flame with subtle effects like lens flares and volumetric light.

Although Elephant’s eponymous animal seems to be climbing skillfully, it maintains an arduous sense of weight. Alex Thomas and Diarmid Harrison-Murray worked closely with Dante Ariola on set, shooting a variety of setups with real elephants, so that as often as possible, the real animal could be used, even if the background had to be rebuilt. At times the final shot is a combination of real elephant and CG. Considering the elephant’s climb was entirely unnatural, it was given amazingly authentic-looking movement through careful 3D animation and convincing 2D compositing. Given the intense schedule, raw CG renders of the elephant struggled in extreme close up, so tight shots were enhanced with 2½D projections of the real elephant. The 3D team also worked on augmenting the tree to make it appear more climbable and generated the tree trunk base to replace the elephant’s live action step. The jungle canopy needed to be closed in selectively in 2D and soaring CG parrots were added to draw attention to this sole opening. The final vista was built as a labour of love in Flame using location stills as a base. Flame was also used to create quiet but enriching visual effects like leaves that fall as the elephant strikes the tree.

Lure sees a fishing lure meets its doppelganger and so had the strongest narrative requirements. The animation challenge was in conveying a seemingly inanimate object being propelled by underwater currents, without it coming across as cute Pixar-esque character. Both the lure and the fish were designed in CG, with iridescent colour being a client priority. The underwater footage provided no tracking markers and few lighting references. Fortunately, though, a solid track wasn’t appropriate due to the fluid environment. In the absence of HDRs, fish and lure reflections were based on procedural HDRs generated by creating an artificial environment that emulated underwater colours and movements. The shoal required a delicate balance between natural movement and narrative choreography and the light that comes through it was built using shaders to create a sense of light travelling through the fishes’ bodies. CG elements were degraded in Flame to mimic the backplate’s natural imperfections. For example, a chromatic aberration effect -- where the channel splits at the edge of frame in underwater footage -- was applied as a blue blur to the edges of the fish and lure.

Volkswagen’s “Like a Golf” has won a Gold award in cars category at the British Television Advertising Awards. The television commercial, launched in August 2009, was designed to position the Volkswagen Golf as the top of the hatchback car class. From a witness to a road traffic incident to a woman renting a hire car, the public are seen using the word ‘Golf’ as a descriptor for a hatchback car that isn’t actually a Golf.

Click on the image below to play the video in YouTube (HD)

Credits

The Like a Golf campaign was developed at DDB London by executive creative director Jeremy Craigen, copywriters/art directors Feargal Ballance and Dylan Harrison, and agency producer Lucy Westmore, with account planner Georgia Challis, business directors Jonathan Hill and Paul Billingsley, and account director Paul Mitcheson.

Filming was shot by director Seb Edwards via Academy Films, London, with producer Juliet Harris.

Post production was done at Framestore, London.

BMW has hit paydirt with the most watched BMW YouTube video ever (1.6 million views since March 5) in “Dinner for Double R”, a promotional video for the S 1000 RR superbike. Most of us have seen the oldest trick in the book, removing a table cloth from a table and leaving wine glasses and plates in place. Would it be possible to pull of the same trick on a large banquet table using a BMW S 1000 RR bike going from zero to 100 km/h in just 2.9 seconds? The video provides links to Planet Power, BMW TV (bmw.tv), and the BMW Motorrad Facebook fan page.

Click on the image below to play the video in YouTube (HD)

Compare.com’s 2009 Meerkat campaign has won Gold at the 2010 British Television Advertising Awards, earning recognition for Jingles, Sergei, Puppets, Jacuzzi, The Sun Interview, Aleksandr Bloopers, and Sergei Bloopers. Aleksandr Orlov, Russian mascot for the “Compare the Market” campaign, uses his own YouTube channel to remind viewers not to confuse his “Compare the Meerkat” site and comparethemarket.com, which is for humans searching for cheap deals on their car insurance. Also check out the Facebook page, Twitter channel.

Click on the image below to play the first advertisement in YouTube (HD)

Click on the image below to play the Jingles video in YouTube (HD)

Click on the image below to play the Sergei video in YouTube (HD)

Click on the image below to play the Puppets video in YouTube (HD)

Click on the image below to play the Jacuzzi video in YouTube (HD)

Click on the image below to play The Sun Interview video in YouTube (HD)

Click on the image below to play the Aleksandr Bloopers video in YouTube (HD)

Click on the image below to play the Sergei Bloopers video in YouTube (HD)

Credits

The Compare the Meerkat campaign was developed at VCCP, London, by creative directors Steve Vranakis and Darren Bailes, copywriters Rich Connell and Matt Lloyd, art director Clem Woodward, agency producers Olly Claverley and Carly Parris.

Filming was shot by director Darren Walsh via Passion Pictures with director of photography Olivier Cariou and editor Jamie Foord.

Audio post-production was done at Wave Studios.

Jingle won three Gold awards for Best 10-20 Second Commercial, Financial and New Creative Team, and a Silver award for Direct Response. Sergei won a Silver for Financial. The campaign won a Gold award.

Pedigree Petfood Canada has launched “Catch”, a multimedia advertising campaign featuring the efforts of dogs to catch Healthy Pocket pieces of Pedigree Vitality. Muscles are tensed. Tongues are let loose. Saliva drips. Bodies are launched. Some are not. Canine expressions of all sorts are captured at 1000 frames per second to take 3 seconds of action into 30 seconds of anticipation. All inspired by “Birds”, the Vitalic music video produced by French digital production house Pleix.

Click on the image below to play the Pedigree Catch video in YouTube (HD)

Credits

The Pedigree campaign was developed at TBWA\Toronto, by creative director/copywriter Mark Biernacki, creative director/art director Steph Mackie, and agency producer Margaret John.

Filming was shot on a Phantom camera by director Bob Purman via Imported Artists Film Company, Toronto.

Sound was produced by Joey Serlin. Editor was Chris Parkins. Flame artist was Mike Bishop.

Music is “Lower Your Eyelids to Die With The Sun” from the M83 (Anthony Gonzalez) album, Before The Dawn Heals Us.

Purman was initially charged with shooting two spots, a “Catch” and a “Jump” execution. Purman tells us how the two spots ended up as one.

“The ‘Catch’ spot was to be a series of shots of dogs looking with anticipation as a piece of dog food is flying through the air towards them. We shot close-ups of the dogs at 1000 fps. The result was really wonderfully anthropomorphic. The super slow motion really captured this intense sense of desire in the dogs’ eyes. To me it was equal parts awe inspiring and hilarious to see so rich a palate of personality in a dog’s facial expressions. A few days after the shoot I started to get emails from Mark, Steph and the editor Chris Parkins with the different iterations of the spots cut to different music selections, all of them interesting for different reasons. But then they put footage from the two spots together to form this new greater whole that really exploits the dynamics of the dogs’ athleticism and their emotive personality in slowed time.”

Vitalic Birds

Here’s the film that inspired the Pedigree Catch campaign. Click on the image below to play the video in YouTube (HD)

Hewlett Packard has launched a $40 million dollar advertising campaign this weekend, “Let’s Do Amazing”, featuring hip hop producer Dr Dre, New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby (Flight of the Conchords), and photographer Annie Leibovitz. The eight week campaign, online at HP, Twitter and YouTube, includes TV, print, online and radio. The goal of the campaign is to demonstrate HP’s collaboration with and HP capability, putting a “lense” on what HP has done to help customers excel.

Click on the image below to play the Introductory video in YouTube (HD)

Dr. Dre’s commercial features the Aftermath Entertainment CEO in his recording studio expounding on the benefits of the HP Beats computing system. The producer’s HP ENVY 15 Beats limited edition notebook PC is a collaboration between Dr. Dre, Jimmy Iovine of Interscope and HP’s engineers. “The laptop is the new stereo for a lot of people and that’s why we’re putting out this computer with incredible sound,” Dr. Dre said of his new notebook PC. Click on the image below to play the Dr Dre video in YouTube (HD)

Rhys Darby talks to the director of IT at The Venetian, Las Vegas. “I basically run a city. HP built us this rock-solid network that runs everything you see here.” Click on the image below to play the Venetian Guy video in YouTube (HD)

Darby asks a guy at UPS what’s happened to his arm. “Its a system we developed with HP to get packages on the trucks fastersaves a couple million pounds of paper a year.” Click on the image below to play the UPS video in YouTube (HD)

Click on the image below to play the Rhys Darby Interview video in YouTube (HD)

Click on the image below to play the Michael Mendenhall, CMO Campaign Background video in YouTube (HD)