Out to Launch
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
How much visible chest hair is too much? Color a memory. Let's launch!
  • Talk about fighting dirty. This might be a bigger rivalry than between the Jets and the Sharks: the battle between regular clothes and delicates. In an ad for LG Twin Wash that debuted during Sunday night's telecast of the Golden Globes, the rival clothing take to the streets to settle their differences for good. Delicates and regular clothes meet under a streetlamp, looking like headless human shapes, and fight to the death. In the case of dirty laundry, death equates to one lone pile of combined clothes in the middle of the street. The ad shifts from the streets to a house, where a woman washes her delicates and regular clothes together in a Twin Wash machine that keeps the clothes separate yet together. See the ad here, created by Hill Holiday.

  • Available only on YouTube and Vimeo, Valio, a Finnish dairy company, launched a tribute ad to Ian "Lemmy" Klimster, lead singer for Motorhead. Lemmy shot a milk commercial for the company just one month before his death. Rather than air the ad, hasan&partners flipped the script and used an outtake from Lemmy's shoot to recreate the ad as a tribute. The 40-second video is a remake of an iconic 20-year-old commercial that featured a rough-looking character who exits a seedy bar and states "I have never drunk milk, and never will." Without spoiling anything, let's just say that Lemmy's version is a bit more colorful. The ad was filmed in Maunula, Finland, close to Hartwall Arena, where Motorhead performed shortly after the shoot.

  • Forget hangry, have you ever felt "Confulish" or "Dimpatient?" Snickers is banking on it, and launched a new snack to combat such feelings. A pair of ads for Snickers Crisper debuted during Sunday's telecast of the Golden Globes. Each spot shows someone who isn't thinking clearly due to hunger issues. Take, for instance, the man in the first ad. He's a new model posing for an advanced figure drawing class. Or so he thinks. In reality, he's confusing students in a chemistry class. The man is confulish -- a combination of confused and foolish. See it here. In the next ad, a young man shows off his social media skills during a job interview by highlighting the poor decisions he's made in the past, like his mugshot from an epic vacation. This guy was dimpatient -- both dim and impatient. Watch it here. BBDO New York created the campaign.

  • Specsavers launched an amusing 60-second spot with John Cleese resurrecting Basil Fawlty, the angry hotelier from the 1970s show "Fawlty Towers." Fast-forward 35 years and Fawlty is having a bit of car trouble. His car won't start and his smart car is giving him instructions that aren't working. His patience tested, Fawlty gets out of the car, grabs a branch and gives his car a good thrashing with a pitiful branch. There's only one problem: Fawlty is thrashing a cop car, not his own vehicle. Someone needs their eyes checked. "Should have gone to Specsavers" closes the ad, as Fawlty bolts the scene. Watch it here, created by Specsavers Creative and directed by Tim Bullock of Blink.

  • How much visible chest hair is too much? Apparel company Johnnie-O has the answer in "The Right Amount of Wolf," the brand's first ad campaign. The ad features Arielle Vandenberg, who is big on Vine, checking out guys in a bar. One man is unbuttoned way too low, one man is buttoned way too high -- and then there's the man with just the right amount of wolf showing. That perfect balance comes from the Tweener Button, which hides in the placket between the second and third buttons so skin is shown, but not too much. See the ad here, created by Ignited.

  • BEHR paint launched a great user-generated campaign that gives people the chance to take a favorite picture and rename the colors found in said photo. To date, almost 6,000 people have participated in ColorAMemory.com, and nearly half of them will receive physical paint samples named for their color memory. At the end of the campaign, one person will receive $4,500 to help relive their memory or create a new one. There's still time to upload a photo and name the colors on the Color A Memory site. Take a look at the current entries and clever paint names. Specially named cans of paint won't be sold in Home Depot, but this marks the first time BEHR has opened up the opportunity for people to suggest color names. Never say never? Olson created the campaign.

  • No matter how many times I watch this ad, I still laugh out loud. "Woodchipper" is part of Chevrolet's "Real People, Not Actors" campaign and illustrates how attached everyone has become to their phones. To promote the Chevy Cruze and its built-in 4G LTE WiFi, phones are collected from participants, so they won't blab on social media. The project head then instructs folks to put on safety goggles as he puts all phones through a woodchipper.

    The reactions are priceless. One woman has chest pains, another tries to stop her phone from going through the chipper, and a few men sit calmly, knowing they are thisclose to exploding. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief when they get their phones back and watch a sneak peek of the highly connected 2016 Cruze. Watch it here, created by Commonwealth//McCann.

  • Get ready to add new words to your brocabulary after watching Geico's latest spot, "Flextacular." In it, two gym newbies pumping iron with their shirts off have a typical gym conversation about car insurance. While one man raves about saving money on all his insurance needs, a couple of things happen. First, each guy makes up a new word that starts with bro, like brofessor, brotato chip, brotein shake and Teddy Brosevelt. Second, the man who saves bundles gets more and more ripped by the time the 30-second ad concludes, not to mention more fake-tanned. See it here, created by The Martin Agency.

  • Random iPhone App of the week:Bojangles' Restaurants launched the Bojangles' Emoji Keyboard app that features 61 symbols and one Bomoji. The restaurant chain made its own custom emoji, with a quirky name. Of the 61 symbols, more than two-thirds depict things you might think or say about Bojangles'. Think: "I propose we share a Bo Big Box," "Where's my Bojangles' Sweet Tea Helmet when Ineed it?" and "It's Bo Time." BooneOakley created the app, available for free in the App Store. Download it here.