3D billboards in NYC’s Times Square famously hype movies, cars, video games and what all with maximum flash and action. Such approaches are far from restful.

Ikea takes the opposite approach in its latest video installation from Ogilvy U.S. We get a 15-second bedroom scene, on a continuous loop, suspended 30 feet in the air.

For those outside Manhattan, there’s a :30, perfect for viewing in bed:

Venezuelan artist Yarge provides the poppy soundtrack. England and Spanish versions of the commercial will run across TV, digital and social media. 

Ikea says the work, dubbed “The Place to Be,” taps into feelings of JOMO (the joy of missing out).

Here, Ikea empathizes with folks who long to burrow beneath the covers for a revitalizing respite from our overstimulating world.

U.S. communications manager Christine Whitehawk describes the initiative as a lifestyle play (familiar territory for the brand).

“We are on a mission to create a better everyday life for the many people, and quality sleep has a key impact on our physical and mental wellness,” Whitehawk says. “We want to focus on how we can help people furnish their homes for better sleep through our six Ikea Sleep Essentials: comfort, light, temperature, sound, air quality and decluttering.”

“Our sleep campaign showcases how Ikea can be your ultimate destination for creating a restful, stylish and budget-friendly space.”

Director Alan Bibby and VFX studio Mathematic helped develop the billboard. Joshua Kissi directed the commercial.

Just call him Michel CeraVe from now on. And remember: Human skin is his passion.

Arrested Development and Superbad actor Michael Cera scaled cliffs with lotioned hands, gave himself a freaky massage and won the hearts of Super Bowl LVIII viewers in a satirical spot that capped off a brilliant brand campaign.

Dubbed “Michael CeraVe” and preceded by an impressive teaser blitz from the skincare company, the :30 netted the Super Clio from the Clio Awards, which recognizes the Big Game’s most creative commercial.

Ogilvy North America developed the initiative; Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim directed.

“Let my cream hydrate you,” Cera enthuses in the spot, which takes the form of a pitch from Michael, as he tries to convince CeraVe that his name offers “a perfect crossover opportunity.”

Indeed it did! The push provides meta commentary without seeming heavy-handed or forced. CeraVe built enviable anticipation for the 1st-quarter drop—and delivered. 

“It gets harder and harder to capture consumers’ attention each year, but viewership for live sports, especially NFL football, continues to grow,” says Clio Awards CEO Nicole Purcell. “An audience as large as the Super Bowl is rare, so brands and advertisers are under a lot of pressure to deliver a spot that has a cultural impact and generates buzz.”

Cera’s outing accomplished that mission, enjoying copious coverage leading into SBLVIII and enthusiastic social chatter when the ad broke.

Ultimately, CeraVe accomplished what most Super Bowl brands set out to do these days. It crafted an event of its own, extending the hype funnel beyond an in-game buy and stoking consumer conversations in fab fashion.

“Everyone is putting forth their best work in the same arena, and with the Super Clio, we celebrate the people taking bold creative risk,” says Purcell. “This award signifies that their peers and the leaders at the top of their industry saw their idea as the best of the best. It’s an incredible honor to be recognized this way and we love to share in the excitement of such an accomplishment.”

WPP Global CCO Rob Reilly has served as the Super Clio’s non-voting jury commissioner since the special award launched a decade ago.

Here’s the full list of 2024 jurors:

• Bianca Guimaraes, Partner & Executive Creative Director, Mischief
• Danilo Boer, Global Creative Partner, FCB Global
• David Kolbusz, CCO, Orchard
• Esi Eggleston Bracey, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer, Unilever
• Greg Harrison, Chief Creative Officer, MOCEAN
• Islam ElDessouky, Global Vice President Creative for Coca-Cola, The Coca-Cola Company
• Jason Campbell, CCO, Translation
• Jason LaFlore, Creative Director, 72andSunny
• Keith Cartwright, Founder & Chief Creative Officer, Cartwright
• Kerstin Emhoff, CEO, PRETTYBIRD
• Kristin McHugh, SVP & Chief Brand Officer, Verizon
• Margaret Johnson, Chief Creative Officer and Partner, Goodby Silverstein & Partners
• Myra Nussbaum, CCO & President, Havas Chicago
• Rafa Rizuto, Chief Creative Officer US-Hispanic LATAM, Dentsu Creative
• Samira Ansari, Chief Creative Officer, New York, Ogilvy
• Shannon Washington, Global CCO, gotham
• Walter Geer, Chief Creative Officer, Innovation North America, VML

CLICK HERE to watch all of this year’s Super Bowl commercials. 

Tony Hale co-stars in the kooky romp, developed with Ogilvy.

Beyoncé displays awesome charisma and comic flair throughout. And we’re treated to great gags and Easter eggs as she works so hard yet fails to take Verizon offline.

There’s a bit with a lemonade stand, a Beyonc-AI creation and a faux flick called BarBey, which just might refer to a certain Hollywood blockbuster from last summer.

She even runs for the office of “Beyoncé of the United States.” Why bother? She’s already the Queen!

What’s more, the commercial teases the artist’s next album, set to drop on March 29. Maybe she’ll break Verizon then. Go get ’em, Bey!

CLICK HERE to watch all of this year’s Super Bowl commercials. 

“For all its connectivity, the online world can make us feel awfully disconnected from each other,” says Sakshi Choudhary, Ogilvy global group creative director. “We wanted to bring humanity back to the fore, to make virtual hate as visceral to the viewer as possible.”

Griffin Senvisky brings authenticity and nuance to the role of Theo without uttering a word of dialogue. The story is told through moody visuals of the character’s everyday life and snippets of social posts. 

Dialogue was planned at one point, but the film’s creators believe their quiet approach bridges the digital and IRL realms for maximum impact.

Theo’s Story was shot primarily at a house in Pasadena, Calif., using natural light to impressive effect. “I wanted to have the actors just be in the space and have moments come out of that as opposed to having it feel too acted,” Dektor explains.

The video clocks in at close to five minutes, which feels just right. “I was shooting a three-minute film,” Dektor says. But after he and agency creatives looked at the first cut, they decided additional scenes were needed to flesh out the story.

“I live in Santa Barbara, and I ran around with three people grabbing those shots on the beach and at the record store and the restaurant,” Dektor says. “I’m definitely at this point in my career where I’m not wanting to do just anything. This was something that I felt strongly about.”

Making Theo’s Story was a meaningful experience for Choudhary, too. “Having seen a close friend go through a similar experience, it felt like my personal responsibility to see this project to fruition in a truthful and compelling way,” she says

CREDITS

Production company: Noble600
Director: Paul Dektor
Cinematographer: David Wilson
Executive producer: Mark Medernach
Producer: Brad English
Production Designer: David Stone

Agency: Ogilvy
Deputy chief creative officer: Joe Sciarrotta
Executive creative director: Issac Pagan Munoz 
Group creative director: Sakshi Choudhary
Associate creative director: Summers Ford
Art director: Charlotte Lantz
Copywriter: Hannah Lavaca
Account director: Rachel Passman
Executive group director: Joshua Goodman
Executive producer: Mike Diedrich
Director of business affairs: Heather Weissman
Production business manager: Georgia Zalk

Client: Pernod Ricard
Chief Executive Officer of Pernod Ricard North America: Ann Mukherjee
Senior Director, External Communications, Pernod Ricard: Krista Drew

ANA
Executive Vice President, Initiative Lead, Engage Responsibly: Anita McGorty
Vice President & Global CMO Growth Council, Engage Responsibly: Jeni Neiswonger

Post production: Optimus
Editor: Randy Palmer
Executive producer: Brian Hrastar 

Color: Company 3
Colorist: Tyler Roth

Design: Sarofsky
Executive creative director: Erin Sarofsky 
Executive producer: Steven Anderson 

Music: JSM Music

Camilla has over a decade of experience in the ad industry. After a number of years working on television spots, print and radio campaigns, she found her way into the more experimental and innovative side of advertising, focusing on behavior change with creative solutions at their core. Clients include Toyota RAV4, Carling Black Label and Castle Lager.

We spent two minutes with Camilla to learn more about her background, her creative inspirations and recent work she’s admired.

Camilla, tell us … 

Where you grew up, and where you live now. 

I was born and raised in Cape Town. I still live here. Let’s just say it’s a pretty hard place to leave.

How you first realized you were creative. 

The realization hit a little later than most. But when I saw the light, it was obvious. I love to write. I love to tell stories (the weirder the better). I love to make people feel things. And I battle getting to work on time. I mean, all the signs were there. 

A person you idolized creatively early on. 

Colleen DeCourcy, because how can you not?

A moment from high school or college that changed your life. 

I was “asked to leave” university after about six unsuccessful years of trying to become an accountant. 

A visual artist or band/musician you admire. 

Juliet Harding and her band, GoodLuck. This girl was in my class at school and from the age of 11, knew what she wanted, and went for it.

A book, movie, TV show or podcast you recently found inspiring. 

The Deepest Breath. I’m not crying, you’re crying!

Your favorite fictional character. 

Fleabag—she’s vulnerable, open and always working on herself. She’s a work in progress. I get her.

Someone or something worth following in social media. 

Ahmed Tilly for advertising truths. And Rob Anderson. He’s currently analyzing ’90s TV shows and movies.

One of your favorite creative projects you’ve ever worked on. 

This was an incredibly meaningful and hugely emotional project to work on. Using hundreds of real stories of abuse in marriage, we created the dress we wish we never had to make. Our “Bride Armour” hijacked the runway in South Africa Fashion Week, sharing a story no one could ignore.

A recent project you’re proud of. 

This piece took several years to make. A lot of experimentation, a lot of hard work, a lot of patience. But it was well worth it: A high-protein bread made from the byproducts of the beer brewing process, distributed across South Africa to those who need it. 

Someone else’s work that inspired you years ago. 

This piece still inspires me:

Someone else’s work you admired lately. 

I’m going to call out another South African agency: Promise, for their piece “Finding the Forgotten Graduate.” A beautiful campaign, great insight and wonderful craft. 

Your main strength as a creative person. 

To see an opportunity, a way in, to help those small green shoots quickly grow.

Your biggest weakness. 

Letting go. I can hold onto an idea or a theory way too long.

What you’d be doing if you weren’t in advertising. 

I would be writing an epic comedy series. And if I wasn’t in advertising or writing, I’d have to marry rich. Nothing else would satisfy me.

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.

This tongue-in-cheeky vibe paints its protagonist as something of a James Bond-vivant (sans sex and killing, but heavy on the slapstick). 

Actually, forget 007. This kind of humor we’d expect from Mel Brooks or a ’60s sitcom. Think Gilligan’s Island, but with a truly woeful Skipper. (Did he nip some Jameson’s before casting off?)

Visually vibrant but not ridiculously OTT, it succeeds without breaking new ground.

“Each spot we’ve painstakingly created is an uplifting and engaging piece of narrative, essentially mini-films designed to make the world stop and take notice of Jameson in the best sort of way,” Buckley says.

The push launches this week in the U.S. across TV, audio, social OOH and streaming channels, with a global rollout to follow.  

Phones are such a big part of our lives, and there are countless ways for mobile providers to wiggle into the Christmas ad gauntlet. In France, Bouygues and BETC Paris have proven pretty good at finding emotionally resonant avenues.

Here, Vodafone U.K. and Ogilvy choose a different adventure: video surveillance.

Big Brother anxieties aside, what kid doesn’t want to catch Santa in the act? Such a scenario unfolds in “Feel the Connection.”

This is perhaps neither surprising nor all that sinister, given that it hails from the country of CCTV. Directed by Vince Squibb, the action revolves around Lily, who sets up a poorly-hidden nanny cam. The rig is nestled right in front of an elf, a wink to the contagious paranoia that Elf on the Shelf inspires in the U.S.

The trap otherwise involves the usual milk and treats, as well as a whole carrot. (For the reindeer?) On Christmas morning, finding her bait taken, Lily dashes upstairs to check her parents’ phone. Santa waves at the camera without showing his face. Behind Lily, the parents look comedically distressed: Oh, har har, they’re not in on the joke. An actual magical stranger entered their home last night. Belly laughs all around! 

Weird anxiety overtones aside, the ad follows research which found that a lot of people are trimming back holiday spending owing to economic difficulties. Almost half want Christmas campaigns that remind them of better times.

“In today’s cultural climate we have listened to the customer and understood their desire to have something optimistic and light hearted during this festive season,” says Maria Koutsoudakis, Vodafone U.K.’s head of brand. “As a brand we know the important role our connectivity plays in family life, and wanted to celebrate this through the eyes of a tech savvy little girl who gives a whole new twist to the elf on the shelf. Our little elf gives us a creative vehicle to symbolize connectivity, and allows us to stretch the idea and the positive feel-good factor, across all our touch points.” 

The ad went live during Channel 4’s Stand Up to Cancer programming.

CREDITS

ECD: Sam Cartmell
Creative Team: Holly Henderson & Georgia Horrocks
Producer: Jeremy Dunn
Assistant Producer: Paolo Alberto Neri 
Client Lead: Justin Cox
Client Partner: Lucy Nebel 
Account Director: Karolina Dovgialo 
Strategy Partner – Gareth Ellis 
Junior Strategist – Julia Manstead
Director:  Vince Squibb
Production Co: Academy
Editor: Paul Watts
Editors: The Quarry
Post Production: GPS
Music: “I Found You” by Sub Focus
Agency: Ogilvy U.K.

Just in time for Halloween, Ikea’s dropped “Monsters Not Included” by Ogilvy’s Berlin and U.K. offices. It’s unfussy, making good use of lighting—and the anxiety-inducing absence of illumination—not to mention the tweaky or eerily hollow instrumentals that lead to jump scares.

The first ad in the set is a promo for the Släkt bedframe … though we wouldn’t mind copping one of those soothing bubble lamps, too:

The spot second is for the Småstad wardrobe:

We like the comedic tension here, assuaging fears even as it stokes them. As a responsible company, Ikea can pretty much only promise that monsters don’t come with the furniture. Once it’s at your house, though…

Just keep a nightlight handy. 

“Monsters Not Included” went live in Germany and the U.K. this month. The films are supported by outdoor and print. One of the latter, for Majgull curtains, appears below.

CREDITS

Chief Creative Officer (EMEA): Dr. Stephan Vogel
Chief Creative Officer (Germany): Dora Osinde
Global Executive Creative Director (UK): Daniel Fisher
Executive Creative Director (Germany): Felipe Galiano, Matt Longstaff
Global Creative Director (UK): Juliana Paracencio
Senior Copywriter (Germany): Rafael Quintal
Senior Art Director (Germany): Cheryl Lee
Senior Designer (UK): Laurence Blake
Senior Arabic Writer (UAE): Karim Sherif
Client Service Director (Germany): Melina Boelen
Hogarth Post Production Executive Producer (Germany): Meike Sinemus
Video Editor (Germany): Dominik Bull

Production Company: Flying Eye Studio
Director: Marcello Amora

Music: DaHouse
Music Supervisor: Wonder Bettin, Lucas Mayer, Silvio Erne
SFX: Wonder Bettin
Executive Producer: Cassiano Derenji

Color Grading: Basis Berlin
Colorist: Pippo Color

Next, Balvin grows to gigantic proportions and handsets float down from the clouds as part of an AR game called “Catch My iPhone.” You can dig his latest single, “Dainties” (with Usher and DJ Khaled), on the soundtrack.

Here’s a behind-the-scenes clip:

Finally, though Balvin doesn’t scale the heights in the Spanish-language ad below, he does change his hair color. Good for him!

All components boast canny ties to pop culture. Bateman and Hayes’ chemistry cooks, as usual. It’s an effective quickie that doesn’t overstay its welcome or get OTT foolish.

Meanwhile, Balvin exudes considerable charm at his normal size, while Jodzilla politely refrains from chewing the scenery—literally—in the AR scenario.

Ogilvy developed the Bateman/Hayes spot. R/GA and The Community worked with Balvin on his tall tale and new do, respectively.