Which brand will take home the 2024 Super Clio for the best Super Bowl commercial? We’ll find out on Feb. 12.

What’s Bud Light’s biggest wish for the Super Bowl? That a gaudy, star-studded spot from Anomaly will help boost sliding sales and spur a comeback from lingering controversy.

A chill genie is unleashed from a bottle of Bud Light. He’s ready to grant a good time—plus he’s decked out in a sweet track suit!

As the tale unfolds, a balding man gets his sweet ’80s hair back, a woman receives riches and some dude gets a big bicep—but just one!

They take a DeLorean limo to karaoke, where the genie summons Peyton Manning, Post Malone and UFC prez Dana White. The spot ends at a house party, where Post’s performance is interrupted by his wish, a T-Rex.

“We created something truly epic and pretty damn funny together that I know the fans will love,” Malone says in press materials.

“We had a lot of fun making this commercial, and I’m sure a lot of people are going to be thinking through what they would wish for if they were lucky enough to meet the Bud Light Genie,” adds Manning.

The :60 will run in the third quarter.

CLICK HERE to watch all of this year’s Super Bowl commercials as they’re released. 

Did you ever watch or read The Little Prince? When he’s sad, he scrapes his chair across his tiny planet to watch an endless series of sunsets. Delsey Paris’ “Eternal Sunrise” by Fred & Farid New York is sort of like that, but with a first-streaks-of-day vibe. Also, you have influencers. (We would have been fine with just the chair.)

Milka’s “Giving the Greatest Gift” is brought to you by Ogilvy Germany as part of the WPP All Stars team for Mondelez. A boy becomes besties with his winking chocolate Santa bar. They do everything together. Then his sister gets sad about breaking the tree-topper, and he makes the ultimate sacrifice. This made us want to bite a candy Santa’s head off, so in that sense it works.

Another day, another opportunity to correct AI biases in advertising. It turns out that, whenever the French suburbs (la banlieue) are plugged into a Midjourney prompt, the tech produces racist, classist and dystopian imagery. Heetch, a ridesharing app popular with banlieue kids, worked with BETC Paris to create postcards that depict the diversity and vitality of actual suburban life. The cards, available in Heetch cars and in kiosks throughout Paris-bordering ‘burbs, were also sent to the 11 engineers who created Midjourney. They include a QR code designed to help correct the dataset.

We suspect the pitch for “Fancy a McDonald’s this Christmas?,” created by Leo Burnett U.K., went: “Imagine if every scene in Love Actually was shot simultaneously, but then everyone randomly walked off their sets and went to McD’s.” The ad even features a guy trying to pick somebody up by forcing them to read words on their doorstep, except he gets short shrift because everybody’s already started their exodus toward fast food Xanadu (itself reminiscent of the proposal scene in Portugal). It’s set to bits of Van Halen’s “Jump.”

Swedish music fest Way Out West was hurtin’ for people who couldn’t come. So, alongside BBDO Nordics, it made sure they could at least come. We give you “The Livebrator,” a sex toy whose vibrations synced to the music being performed on-site. From Gothenburg to genitals the world over! This would make a great tourism campaign. Created in partnership with Sweden’s Association of Sexual Education.

‘Tis the year of Anne Hathaway blossoming into a fashion icon, and it climaxes—heh, sorry—in “Let the Festivities Begin” for Bulgari by Anomaly in Italy. The ad is apparently inspired by “Rome’s architectural wonders,” but Hathaway is so strangely CGI’ed that she looks like those ‘toonish AI portraits everybody was using as profile pictures for awhile. In keeping with the uncanny valley vibe, she leaves this plane through a glowing golden box. Maybe she’s heading to the metaverse.

People are pissed about this Marks & Spencer Clothing & Home ad by Mother London. Set to a Ray BLK cover of Meatloaf’s “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That),” it features revelers going rogue at various stages of enforced holiday frolic. Last week, the brand was excoriated by a teacher who wrote, “When our nation is on its knees … this is not the time for you to encourage people to ignore the inspirational spirit of Christmas of self-sacrifice, gratitude, giving of one’s time and finances…” It goes on like that, and after awhile, we would have set a crème brûlée torch to anything within proximity. 

MediaPost reports that M&S also posted an outtake on Instagram, which included a closeup of red and green paper hats being burned. Forty people construed it as a potential attack on the Palestinian flag and complained to the U.K.’s ad watchdog group. We just can’t have nice things. This is why John Lewis gives us carnivore plants.

Airports aren’t just liminal spaces; you can store memories in them! With agency St. Luke’s, Heathrow reminds you that it, too, can be a place where you remember Grandpa (shown in “Keepsake,” below). Also see “Love,” about a young couple projecting onto an older one while strolling the duty free; and “Arrival,” in which a multi-generational family gets big news in a Gordon Ramsay’s Plane Food restaurant.

What will last of all our toils?

The things distant historians will “remember” about us are likely to be pretty random. So much of what we know of the past—or think we know, anyway—is based on stuff that happened to survive, despite time’s attempts to shave it away.

Your blog or well-curated social media? Unlikely to make the cut. Think more along the lines of Ikea dishes, car parts, lawn gnomes, Legos, Barbies … probably every piece of plastic you’ve ever touched that hasn’t been slowly broken down into plankton food.

Then there’s the statues: of General Custer, George Washington, that horrible gynecology man, various iterations of Medusa and Perseus, the Stock Market Bull, Fearless Girl. We take this habit—trying to chisel some aspect of ourselves, symbolically or otherwise, into stone, praying immortality meets us halfway—from the many civilizations that came before us. We don’t always know why they immortalized the people, stories or entities they did, but we know why we do it.

You know what posterity could use? Statues of ad people. Ad people doing ad things: Staring at computers, eating pizza, “brainstorming.” For its new global brand platform, “Ads That Work as Hard as You Do,” Amazon Ads and Anomaly have created the Museum of Modern Advertisers, a neoclassical attempt to immortalize “the hardworking heroes of marketing and the seemingly ordinary moments that lead to extraordinary work.”

See the gallery below:

Each likeness is flanked by an explanatory plaque. “David vs. 2024” depicts a media planner on a “Goliath annual planning call, balancing reach and frequency metrics as delicately as the phone pressed against his clavicle.” Meanwhile, in “Dante’s Entanglement,” we watch “a marketing manager embark on an epic journey to project his team’s media plan through an entangled labyrinth of remotes, dongles and technological torment.”

The gallery’s pièce de résistance is titled “The Last Run-Through,” which shows a group of marketers making last-minute changes to a pitch deck … probably minutes before the big meeting.

How a guy sitting at a café table, scribbling something “genius” on a napkin, escaped the exhibit we can’t quite say.

Anomaly was charged with developing the gallery and brand activation. Five statues debuted at unBoxed 2023, Amazon Ads’ flagship conference. The sculptures were accompanied by working laptops and speakers, which played soundbites to draw people in. Visitors were invited to “complete” the scenes by posing in them.

Here are a few videos of the action:

CREDITS

Brand: Amazon Ads
Carly Zipp: Director, Brand Marketing
Dipal Shah: Principal, Brand Strategy
Colin Kikcio: Senior Brand Strategist
Alex Andreadis: Brand Manager
Marcellus Neel: Senior Creative Director

Agency: Anomaly
Partner, Chief Innovation Officer: Natasha Jakubowski
Innovation Strategy Director: Justin Alsop
Senior Innovation Strategist Taylor Mclean

Founding Partner, Global Chief Creative Officer, Mike Byrne
Creative Director: Diego Fonseca
Creative Director: Giles Clayton
Art Director: Jessica Leonard
Copywriter: Kat Worrall

Head of Account Management: Elektra O’Malley
Business Director: Rachel Wintle
Account Supervisor: Rachel Zambernardi
Account Executive: Claudia Giblin

Executive Director, Production: Jordan Spielman
Freelance Producer: Neely Lisk

Production Company: Traction3D

Sound House: Sonic Union
Sound Designer & Mix Engineer: Rob DiFondi
Assistant Engineer: Graham Carpenter
Sound Producer: Mary Kate Valentino

Welcome to our first-ever EuroVisions, a weekly roundup of what’s happening creatively in the world of European advertising.

The pandemic confinements may be over, but our existential questions are just ramping up. This isn’t technically a Europe piece but it sets the stage: The U.S. collective of Sid Lee (also based in Paris), has released “Question Today” for Nasdaq. It’s hoping to turn those existential questions back in a direction that’s good for the economy. 

(Because that’s what I’ll be thinking about on my deathbed: Did I do enough for the economy?)

Heineken’s turning 150! And it’s celebrating the people, all over the world, who misspell its name—some purposely (like “wineken,” for when the beer’s served in a wine glass). This work hails from Boomerang, a subsidiary of Publicis Groupe. There’s limited-edition bottles, and a series of whiplash-inducing short vids on Instagram. You know, for the cool kids. So get you some Hoineken. Or Aineken. Or Heiny. Whateverken.

Also—probably because gamers don’t care about your Instagram—Publicis Groupe Italy made a Heineken Gaming Fridge, which is basically a PC tower that can also refrigerate beer. This has the added handy effect of keeping the actual tower cool … so the only thing staying hot is your temper when you find yourself matched up at gametime with a passel of sociopathic trolls.

While it’s all very nice to question everything and store beer in the same place you store your motherboard, what we really want in life are adult playgrounds. We don’t understand why they don’t exist. Luckily, it seems we’re not the only ones: For health insurance client Helan, FamousGrey in Belgium made our dream come true. This is, of course, functional (because we can never have anything just for fun): To help adults avoid losing muscle mass.

If, however, all those existential questions you’re asking cannot be sated by beer, the Nasdaq or seesaw benches, you can always go the classic route: Disappear into the void. Rimowa swears that’s progress, too. “Purposeful Journeys Towards Progress” kicks off a global campaign by Anomaly in London, and features Sir Lewis Hamilton, Rosé and Kylian Mbappé. Hans Zimmer set the score—a nice sonic way to wrap this week’s edition, yeah?

Would casting a buffalo with wings as the sassy spokescreature for Buffalo Wild Wings be too on the nose? Well, yes. But Anomaly did it anyway, through the miracle of CGI, in its first work for the venue tagged “Let’s Go Sports Bar.”

“And no I don’t love Bdubs just because I’m a buffalo with wings,” the critter quips in the :30 below. “Frankly, that’s offensive and reductionist.”

Bdubs is a nickname for the place. Ads teach us so much. Also, the buffalo’s name is Hank, and he’s voiced in every-bro/snarky style by SNL alum Beck Bennett.

The sight of that wooly bully strutting among the diners is … Memorable? Brilliant? Stoopid? Oh, it’s no fantasyland where everyone has hands for heads, like Anomaly’s work for Topgolf. Still, Hank should raise a few smiles.

“When a brief like this comes in it’s an easy yes,” says Khara Wagner, president of the agency’s L.A. office. “Everyone in the building has a memory with the brand. But everyone in the country just spent the last few years enjoying beer, wings and sports at home. The challenge was to bring them back again or bring them in for the first time by showcasing the experience you can only get at Buffalo Wild Wings.”

If that includes a brand-boosting bison who heckles games playing on the bar TV, count us in!

“Because of the nature of what was in camera (everything but the buffalo) and what wasn’t (the buffalo), we ended up with nearly infinite variations of each scene,” recalls Anomaly L.A. CCO and partner Josh Fell. “Dialogue from take 4 could be used on video from take 1 and on and on. So, we leaned into it.”

Narrator Beck was on set “so that he and the other actors could find the natural rhythm of the jokes,” Fell says. “With Beck’s SNL background, he’s an endless source of riffs and improv, and knew how to bring that out of others. And man does he commit. His performance in ‘Hank Song’ is one of my favorite earworms ever.”

“It’s incredible, the amount of comments you can give (and we did!) when every piece of the actor can be changed at all times” during the editing process, Fell says.

“It was crucial to [animation studio] Untold and to us that we kept it as realistic as possible. Like, he has no top teeth. Did you know buffalo don’t have top teeth? But at the same time, Hank had to perform shame and excitement and anger and joy. Untold were amazing and amazingly patient with us as we helped find the line.”

“At the end of the day, we have a new best friend in Hank and the foundation for what we know is going to be a long, ridiculous and ridiculously crafted story to tell,” he says.

CREDITS

Brand: Buffalo Wild Wings 
Brand President: John Bowie
CMO: Tristan Meline
VP, Category Management: Jeff Baker
VP, Integrated Marketing Communication: Jared Bradley
Director, Advertising: Kristen Bowman
Associate Manager, Advertising: Josh Chang
Associate Manager, Advertising: Hannah Bartle
Agency: Anomaly L.A. 
Managing Partner/President: Khara Wagner 
Partner/Chief Creative Officer: Josh Fell 
Partner/Chief Strategy Officer: Aisea Laungaue 
Creative Director: Daniel Chen 
Creative Director: Jimmy Burton 
Sr. Copywriter: Adam Crouch 
Sr. Art Director: Kyle Chin 
Copywriter: Kevin Broberg
Art Director: Sarah Redmond 
Head of Production: Erika Madison 
Executive Producer: Helena Miller 
Senior Producer: Christine Hurty 
Associate Producer: Chloe Hurckes 
Associate Producer: Laura Richey 
Head of Brand Strategy: Nika Rastakhiz
Head of Communications Strategy: Johnny Corpuz
Communications Strategy Director: Will Millar
Associate Strategy Director: Sarah Cartwright 
Brand Strategy Director: Justin Clagette 
Group Business Director: Kylie Wu 
Business Director: Meghan Miloradovic 
Account Director: Michael Gobo 
Account Supervisor: Monique Luster 
Head of Business Affairs: Jana Nauman 
Business Affairs Manager: Svetlana Minassian 
Head of Creative Resourcing and Project Management: Chris Greve 
Project Director: Michelle Yee 
Project Manager: Hannah Cartelli 

Production Company: Smuggler 
Director: Tony Yacenda 
Executive Producer: Patrick Milling-Smith 
Executive Producer: Brian Carmody 
Executive Producer: Sue Yeon Ahn 
Head of Production: Alex Hughes 
Producer: Benjamin Gilovitz 
DOP: Adam Bricker 
PD: Leigh Ann Reagan-Barnes 

Editorial: Arcade Edit 
Editor: Laura Sanford 
Assistant Editor: Paulo Miramontes 
Cutting Asst Editor for socials: Paulo Miramontes 
Producer: Wendy Umanzor 
Executive Producer: Crissy D’Simone 
HOP: Megan Dahlman 

Animation + VFX + Finishing: Untold Studios
VFX Studio: Untold Studios 
EP: Sophie Harrison, Carl Phillips 
Producer: Helen Tang 
Producer: Jordan Malonga 
Executive Creative Director: Dave Fleet 
Creative Director: Adam Droy 
VFX Supervisor: Alex Grey 
Character Supervisor: Chloe Dawe 
Head of Animation: Tim Van Hussen 
VFX Lead: Kanishk Chouhan, Gez Wright, Alex Doyle 

VFX Artists: Lewis Pickston, Andreu Lucio, Bhavesh Budhkar, Emma Lepuil, Florian Rigollet, Thomas Huizer, Burjis Shroff, Naren NV, Natasha Santiparp, Ria Banerjee, Rachel Bosc – Bierne, Amelia Sturdy, Murali Krishna, Gez Wright, Phillipe Moine, Antoine Mariez, Aniket Pitale, Liv Donlan, Vinay Sharma, Sauce Villas, Cloe Adenot, Rosie Ashforth, Loic Resplandy, Mala Lal, Andrea Lacedelli, Amanda Cheung, Cameron Johnson, Rebecca Clay, Paul Stirling, Emine Arkin, Kia Coates, Emre Samioglu, James Russel, Greg Zolnowski, Jack Bond, Abhishek Changkakoty, Carlo Carfora 

Online: Rich Harris, Dave Rose, James Pratt, Pete Hughes 

Mix + Sound Design: LIME 
Sound Designer: Peter Lapinski
Executive Producer: Susie Boyajan 
Associate Producer: Cassie Underwood 

Music: Consortium 
Track: Dustheads 
Composer: Seth Olinsky 
Music Post Producer: Maggie Flatley 
Music Editor: Justin Miller 

Color: Mom & Pop 
Digital Intermediate Colorist – Shane Reed 
MOM&POP Executive Producer – Ali Reed

The actors appearing in Topgolf’s latest ads probably weren’t clamoring for close-ups. Their faces don’t appear at all. Instead, golf-gloved hands replace every single head.

Why would the sports bar/entertainment center chain and its agency, Anomaly, do such a thing?

The client says it’s tapping into “the power of hand expressions, capturing the range of emotions players feel.” So, in a sense, this is a kooky live-action cartoon mirroring emoji culture, expanding details “from the anticipation felt with each crack of the knuckles to finger waggles between players after particularly good shots.”

Mostly, though, it’s an excuse for memorable oddness. And really, if this sort of OTT absurdity doesn’t differentiate your brand, what can?

That’s some of the year’s goofiest creative. Hands down.

Led by directors Alex Mavor and Ed Kaye (aka Sacred Egg), the team used a mix of CGI and headgear to achieve the convincing/ludicrous effects. It’s amusing and childish, but ever-so-slightly edgy and compelling, too. You keep expecting (praying for?) eyes, mouths, ears, noses and hair to appear. But that never happens. For a full surreal minute, the hands play through.

“The characters represent our belief in the power of play and the emotional resonance it makes you feel,” says chief brand officer Geoff Cottrill. “It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like. We all experience the same emotions and expressions, and you don’t need faces to understand what every character is experiencing.”

The work continues Topgolf’s “Come Play Around” campaign across social, OOH, OLV, CTV and print.

CREDITS

Agency: Anomaly, New York
Founding Partner / Global CCO: Mike Byrne
Creative Director: Craig Schlesinger
Creative Director: Stephen Mendonca
Managing Partner, Head of Design: Kevin Lyons
Design Director: Luca Bernardino
Designer: Keller Grimmer
Head of Production: Erika Madison
Executive Producer: Chad Utsch
Director of Music Production: Ben Dorenfeld
Head of Business Affairs: Julia Clark
Project Director: Kathleen Owen
Managing Partner, Co-Head of Account Management: Damien Reid
Account Director: Emily Dondero
Account Supervisor: Hana Trattner

Production Company: Riff Raff Films
Director: The Sacred Egg
Owner / Executive Producer: Matthew Fone
Executive Producer: Matthew Clyde
Producer: Jay Wintringer
Production Supervisor: Scott Passey
Director of Photography: Tom Sigel
Stylist: Jenny Haapala
Production Design: Alessandra Cadman

Editorial Company: Work Editorial, New York
Editor: Biff Butler
Assistant Editor: Chris Wronka
Founding Partner: Jane Dilworth
Managing Director: Erica Thompson
Executive Producer: Alejandra Alarcon
Head of Production: Chris Delarenal
Producer: Andrea Cantor

Post Company: The Mill, London
VFX Shoot Supervisor: Jessica Groom
Head of Production / Executive Producer: Louise Unwin
Senior VFX Producer(s): Saskia Delius & Polly Roberts
Production Assistant: Sam Ashby
2D Lead Artist: Adrian Monroy Diaz, Peter Hodsman
3D Lead Artist: Kiril Mirkov, Mike Little, Laurent Giaume
2D Artist: Mithun Jacob Alex, Giacomo Verri, Marko Perendija
3D Artist: Jean Grandgirard, Jack Enever, Elia Goettlicher, Clementine Supiot, Luke Dadley, Paolo Ceresa, Thomas Craig
Animation Director: David Bryan
Finish Artist: Lora Nikolaeva
Colorist: Peter Oppersdorff & Katie Dymmock
Executive Producer, Color: Saskia Delius
Resource Manager: Jemma Beaumont
Color Assist: Rory Leighton, Caitlin Donaldson, Henry White & Kennedy Dawson

Audio Post: Heard City, New York
Music Supervision: Ricall Music
Song: “Fun” by Kaskade, Brohug, & Mr. Tape feat. Madge
VO Talent: Hally Leadbetter

Has Bud Light signaled a return to safe, comforting advertising following the Dylan Mulvaney controversy? This week, after more than two years of silence, the beloved Bud Knight returned to Twitter with an animated GIF captioned: “Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back.”

Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back pic.twitter.com/7BsxfCuwUp

— Bud Knight (@TheBudKnight) June 26, 2023

Sir Knight hasn’t been active on social media since Feb. 7, 2021 when he tweeted, “It was really fun while it lasted, guys.”

The fave appeared in Super Bowl ads in 2018 and 2019, and the latter served as a tie-in to the final season of Game of Thrones. (Our tin-plated hero didn’t fare so well in that one.)

Todd Allen, VP of marketing at Bud parent Anheuser-Busch says, “Since inception, the Bud Knight has shown up to remind fans that the best moments are made better when celebrated with a Bud Light. The Bud Knight is an iconic character, and he’s coming back to delight fans on social media, reinforcing our message that Bud Light is Easy to Drink, Easy to Enjoy this summer.”

Prior to the character’s return, Bud Light launched a big campaign, “Easy to Summer,” with a relaxed approached focused on warm weather, friends, family, food and cold drinks.

“For over 40 years, Bud Light has been delivering great quality beer for our 21+ consumers that’s easy to drink and easy to enjoy,” says Allen in press materials. “We celebrate time with family and friends, whether through sports, music or small moments together, because that is what easy enjoyment is about. That’s where I’m taking inspiration for our summer campaign. It’s incredibly clear the amount of love and passion people have for Bud Light, and we care deeply about our consumers. And what I’ve heard over the past few weeks is that people want us to get back to what we do best: being the beer of easy enjoyment. This new work is really about reaffirming the role that Bud Light plays for our drinkers: celebrating a summer of fun and entertainment through music, backyard grilling, football, and easy enjoyment.”

Anomaly created the new TV spot and The Martin Agency handled Bud Knight’s social reboot.

Watch the snark, White, or no desert for you!

Consumers can enter online—or look for QR codes on special-edition 12 packs—to win a seat at the table. Those four celebs will host a glitzy get-together on Sept. 21, along with “tennis-star Frances Tiafoe and other global icons,” we’re told.

Pitch your movie ideas to Matt. He loves when people do that! Or you could maybe yak about art all night long.

Marcela Garcia, vice president of marketing at Stella, describes “Let’s Do Dinner” as a chance “to reinforce the brand’s role in driving authentic connection and conversation around meals. “Stella wants to make dinner an occasion to look forward to again.”

So, it’s not so much about the beer, or the meal, as the human experience. Classic theme, really. Probably even more resonant as the pandemic recedes. Stella’s AB InBev sibling Leffe recently explored similar territory, albeit with an entirely different creative approach.

The initiative also celebrates Stella’s partnership with Water.org, designed “to empower people in need around the world with access to safe water, giving them time back so they can connect over dinner.”
 

Like the product itself, this stuff’s mostly empty calories, a Big Game play that never develops beyond the premise of seeing celebs doing something they wouldn’t normally do. Look, it’s Ben serving coffee! Ooh, he’s handing out crullers! Now here’s J.Lo! Meh.

What? That appraisal sounds a tad … brusque? Even rude? Sorry, we’re from Massachusetts too, and it’s just our way. No matter what Sam Adams wants you to believe. 

Jack in the Box tried something similar last summer with Mark Hamill. That effort fared better because he had a chequered history with the place dating back to his pre-Skywalker days.