Blueplus, ‘The Cute Phenomenon’

Created by CJ WORX Thailand, this engaging tale urges everyone to claim all their reward points, or risk making a fuzzy blue creature very sad.

Jack Link’s, ‘For the Real Hero’

Brand New Agency goes full anime in this vibrant effort. Backed by a catchy soundtrack, our hero Jack is all about saving the world with thicker, meatier jerky!

AAMI, ‘Lucky You’re With AAMI’

This fun spot created by Ogilvy Melbourne shows that when young athletes are inspired by world events, they train hard. When their aspirations exceed their skills, however, it’s a good thing their parents have great insurance.

Coca-Cola, ‘Family Gathering’

Wunderman Thompson and Hogarth Worldwide showcase real Coca-Cola stories during the annual Kabagabo family reunion.

Domino’s, ‘Naked Pizza’

In a nod to Icelandic midsummer traditions, PiparTBWA and TBWANordic present the Naked Pizza. What else would you eat after rolling nude in the dew-soaked grass?

Santa Casa Hospital, ‘Dream’

Filadelfia in Brazil created this heartfelt salute for the hospital’s 125th anniversary. Be sure to watch until the end to find out what happened to these real people.

Tangerine, ‘Jumping Through Hoops’

This visually dynamic, lighthearted dystopian vision from Rethink positions Tangerine bank as an enlightened financial services company focused on customer service.

Play Alberta, ‘Go All In on Excitement’

Here, we meet a storm chaser, a wrestling referee and a rodeo clown whose once-thrilling professions have slid into boredom. Play Alberta offers them some stimulation.

Kruger, ‘Love Can Be Messier’

Broken Heart Love Affair casts personal relationships in stark relief. Passion, acrimony, reconciliation … at times it’s all such a mess. But most folks wouldn’t have it any other way.

Government of Quebec, ‘The Wick’

In its first campaign dedicated to suicide awareness and prevention, Quebec and LG2 encourage viewers to assist people in crisis by talking, listening and defusing.

Domino’s Pizza, ‘Slang’

LG2 also crafted the humorous spot below, in which Domino’s ensures that pizza orders don’t get lost in translation.

St. Bonaventure’s College, ‘What Did You Learn Today?’

The school, serving grades K-12, focuses on compassion, curiosity and critical thinking to help foster a sense of community and artistic engagement.

Welcome to this week’s Eurovisions. We have a confession: There aren’t any hot cross buns in here, just cinnamon rolls. But they’re also kinda pretending to be something they’re not. In Åkestam Holst’s work for Swedish convenience store Pressbyrån, cinnamon buns (or “kanelbulle” in Swedish) are punted like luxury perfume. “Needless to say, we are not that good at French,” says the agency’s Henrik Billing.

Fun facts: Cinnamon rolls are Sweden’s fave pastry. They even have their own special day. Apparently much of the collateral for this work’s been stolen throughout major cities. Is it the weird French? The love of cinnamon rolls? The sparkly lady? We’ll never know, but the brand and agency call it “equally confusing and flattering.”

Last kiss goodbye from Paris Fashion Week: Christian Dior accompanies actress Souheila Yacoub ahead of her red carpet appearance for the Venice International Film Festival. She’s wearing a princessy but punk dress by the fashion house’s Maria Grazia Chiuri. This is mostly an indulgent view of Venice’s historic canals, which have become slightly less accessible.

Self-effacing, or self-defacing? Ikea Norway’s “Life is Not a Catalog” spent the past month making waves in its home country, and is doing victory laps through English-speaking ad publications. The work depicts aesthetic homescapes sullied by pee, vomit and parties. (Kinda feels like a documentary.) A nice reminder that Ikea products are backdrops and supports for life, which takes precedence. Ikea’s spent years honing that message. Below is “Puke.”

Netflix France and agency Jellyfish promote the return of Lupin, a series about a gentleman burglar, with out-of-home ads that look like luxury jewelry promotions. Except all the jewelry is missing.

Meta tapped BETC Paris to create an ad for the 2023 Rugby World Cup in France. “Passion Is Meant to Be Shared” leverages cartoony social network representations of every country, like a wallaby for Australia and a shamrock for Ireland. France’s is a rooster, which you’ll see plenty of in this work. 

More from BETC Paris: For a client called Morning, which rethinks corporate spaces with collaboration at the center, the agency revisited stock imagery of offices.

To plug Icelandair’s stopover offering—where people can book stops in Iceland between European and North American destinations—agencies Kubbco and Hvíta Húsið conceived “The Polite Tourist Bouncer.” The premise is that the stopover thing is so popular that people aren’t catching their connecting flights, so a bouncer is needed. Imagine if ICE were just one guy and a cute dog, and all those naughty “overstayers” weren’t treated like potential illegal immigrants, and Europe weren’t in the middle of a migrant crisis. Fun! Absolutely no notes.

With help from VCCP London, Domino’s revels in tearing loved ones apart. Sidenote: Apparently pizza boxes are awful? We are not experts on this topic.

BBH London supersized women for the new season of Barclay’s Women’s Super League. 

Responding to EU scrutiny around data gathering and sales (which is becoming an existential issue), Meta’s proposed charging EU citizens something like $17 a month for Facebook and Instagram experiences that don’t sell data. That’s pricier than your average OTT, and doesn’t even include linked accounts. (Of note: EU residents never even got access to the short-lived Threads because it failed to comply with data protection laws, indicating policymakers are increasingly confident that unfettered access to social networks is less important to people than once believed. Many EU countries have banned Google Analytics, unthinkable a handful of years ago.)

We’ll wrap with something weird, in the spirit of everything being weird now. Prettybird’s Sophie Muller recently directed the music video for “Mosquito” by PinkPantheress. It’s opulent and pretty, an escapist story about girlfriends going no-holds-barred shopping in London. Commercial catnip, very Gossip Girl, lots of brand-dropping. Amidst it all, PinkPantheress persists in carrying what appears to be a clay pigeon. (A Nikola Tesla reference? Probably not.)

CPB creative director D’Arcy O’Neill made this fun 30-second Domino’s commercial at home in Boulder, Colo., with help from his three daughters—ages 12, 10 and 7—who appear in the spot and decorated some of the props:

Watch out, Lilly, Charlotte and Audrey—ginormous teddy bears always grab the last slice! Nice foot-powered delivery vehicle, btw. Who needs a high-falutin DXP?

A small professional crew shot the commercial with an iPhone during a single day in May. The ad promotes Domino’s $5.99 Mix-and-Match Meal Deals and runs on national TV through August. With so many families trapped at home for so long, the DIY approach will surely resonate.

Lilly narrates this behind-the-scenes clip:

The spot reminds us of this cute pet-care PSA director Kiran Koshy shot in his backyard a few months ago, though the Domino’s commercial triples the number of daughters and substitutes Mr. Hungry Bear for Nigel the dog.

“The first spark of the idea came during early quarantine when we were trying to think of unique ways to produce work,” proud papa O’Neill tells Muse. “We had done a few Zoom spots, but needed more options. In the past, I worked on projects where we filmed ourselves for various reasons, and that got me thinking of what we could pull off with limited resources.”

So, O’Neill and the girls made costumes and shot some footage on his phone. “It was a great activity to break up the lockdown routine,” he recalls. “The girls had fun, and the test film worked. So we started to look at how to pull this off with a little more professional approach.”

After a week of prep, shooting began. “I was impressed at how quickly they got into it,” O’Neill says. “There was a little nervousness, for sure, but being in their own house with a small crew they already knew helped put my girls at ease. Plus, they loved the chance to try acting and had been begging me be in a commercial. So the excitement won out.”

The strangest part of the experience, he says, was that “for the first time in my career I had two responsibilities on shoot day. I needed to make sure my kids were going to have a good day—and that we were going to get the shoot done.”

“I cannot act at all, and was worried I might have passed along the gene,” he says. “But Dylan Cymo from CPB was great at directing, and the girls seemed to not have taken after me at all. It turned out to be a really fun experience in the middle of a very unpleasant time.”

Which, come to think of it, could also describe pizza delivery during lockdown. Especially for whoever gets the last slice. (Or trade in that pie for some Popeyes.)

CREDITS

Agency – Crispin Porter + Bogusky
Creative Directors: Kelly McCormick, D’Arcy O’Neill
Copywriter/Director: Dylan Cimo
Art Director/Production Designer: Jake Roberts
Head of Production: Dan Corken
Senior Producer/Line Producer: Rachel Noonan
Director of Photography/Senior Integrated Producer: Jake Johnson
Director of Photography/Producer: Mystie Pineda
Group Account Director: Jacqueline Redmond
Management Supervisor: Josh Norris
Account Supervisor: Allison Landrum
Account Manager: Tori Berels
Business Affairs Manager: Kelly Lenthe
Group Director Strategy: Courtney Loveman
Strategy Director: Kelly Thompson Rowntree
VP/Studio Director: Cathy Dickinson
Studio Designer: Courtney Sterkel
Studio Designer Kailey Staiano

Post Production
Editorial Company & City: Wild Manor, Boulder
Editor: James Bedford
Assistant Editor: Ricky Baylis
Executive Producer : Lennon Barnica
Producer: Kate Swenson
Mix and Sound Design Company & City: Lime Studios, Santa Monica

Executive Producer: Susie Boyajan
Producer: Kayla Mashburn
Engineer & Sound Designer: Matt Miller
Assistant Engineer: Ian Connie
Post Production & Telecine & VFX Company & City: ArtJail Studios, NY
Owner/Creative Director: Steve Mottershead
Colorist: Clinton Homuth
Color Assist: Kevin Wu
Color Assist : Shay Koshy
Color Producer: Allison Maxwell
2D Lead: Sam Caine
Compositor: Molly Intersimone
VFX Producer: Michael Brown

Domino’s franchisees place an order order for full- and part-time workers in a new commercial shot entirely on Zoom.

Devised by CPB and shot in Domino’s shops across the country, “We’re Hiring” required an especially quick turnaround, going from brief to scripts to filming over the course of a single weekend:

“Making anything, quickly, while doing our part to flatten the curve, has become the new creative problem to solve,” CPB associate creative director Aaron Fisher tells Muse. “Using Zoom allowed us to shoot with franchisees across the country in a matter of hours.”

“Not only are Zoom calls the fastest and safest way to shoot something given social distancing, but seeing faces speaking from the heart on a screen—whether it’s your family’s or your co-workers—is something virtually everyone can relate to at this moment,” adds Ari Levi, also an agency ACD, who co-directed the spot with Fisher.

During the calls, which took a about an hour to complete, the CPB team prompted each franchisee to read from a script, but also had them talk off-the-cuff about the current crisis.

Creative staffers, account team members and client reps participated in each call, and “we also had a text chain going between a group of us to communicate things in real time—like getting an extra take, a new line or adjusting the framing,” Levi recalls. “It felt a lot like how you’d normally communicate on set between a video village and the director’s monitors, only everyone was in their own homes all across the country, and the only craft services were in your kitchen.”

“Zoom worked well for this,” he adds. “Even the lower-resolution quality was something that everyone out there right now video chatting with friends and family can relate to. It’s by no means a replacement for the immense talent and teamwork that goes into a regular production, nor will it work for everything at this crazy time. But when it can be used, it’s an amazing asset.”

With Zoom’s suddenly ubiquitous video-conferencing software assisting millions as they WFH, it feels appropriate that the platform’s big debut as an ad-hoc production studio comes in a help-wanted appeal.

In addition to filling 10,000 posts nationwide, the chain plans to donate about 10 million slices of pizza within local communities.

CPB took just four days to craft a second, more conventional touting Domino’s contactless delivery:

To win, be the first to find a box, post a photo of it on Instagram and tag @dominospizzabrasil using the hashtag #saymyname. 

“As we are also fans of this masterpiece, we decided to bring one of the most iconic scenes to real life, with a year of free pizza for those who play,” says Edwin Junior, marketing director of Domino’s Brazil.  

“The most important thing for a brand is to be part of culture,” adds Bruno Brux, executive creative director at GUT São Paulo. “This doesn’t mean it needs to engage in absolutely every conversation, but in conversations that have to do with the brand itself. And that’s exactly what we’ve been trying to do with Domino’s.” 

And yes, there’s a reference to the old pizza scene in El Camino itself (spoilers).

CREDITS

Client: Domino’s Pizza Brazil 
Agency: GUT São Paulo   
Founder CCO: Anselmo Ramos    
ECD: Bruno Brux  
Art Director: Laís Lira   
Copywriter: Julia Mota   
Managing Director: Valeria Barone   
Account Director: Camila Prado   
Account Manager: Raphaela Guile   
Head of Production: Mariane Goebel  
Domino’s Marketing Director: Edwin Junior  
Domino’s Marketing Manager: Patrícia Faria