It is copywriting like this that gives me hope for the future of advertising. Warm and with a hint of playfulness, the narration for this McDonalds spot is simply beautiful. A tip of the hat goes out to creative-pair Tony Malcolm & Guy Moore from Leo Burnett London for dreaming up this piece.
Credits:
Agency: Leo Burnett, London
Client: McDonald’s
Creative Director: Jim Bolton
Copywriter: Tony Malcolm
Copywriter: Guy Moore
Art Director: Guy Moore
Art Director: Tony Malcolm
Agency TV Producer: Graeme Light
Production Company: Moxie Pictures
Director: Neil Gorringe
Editor: James Rosen
Editorial Company: Final Cut
Post Production: MPC
Audio Post Production: Wave
Skype just announced a new business spin-off of their popular VOIP service partnering with European Directories to offer free click-to-call services for their business listings (free to the consumer at least). Pretty much it takes your typical yellow pages a step further by allowing the user to connect directly to the service provider by clicking on a “Free Call” button attached to each listing. According to their press release, this will provide free consumer phone calls for up to 700,000 business across Europe. The most interesting part of this deal is that the Skype/European Directories partnership doesn’t end with just covering directory services. Skype plans on offering each company the ability to embed the “Free Call” button anywhere else on the web that their number is posted.
Is there a catch? Of course there is. In order for you to be able to use (or probably even see) the click-to-call button you will need to have both the latest version of Skype for Windows installed in addition to the latest Skype browser plug-ins. This now sounds more like a click-to-download promotion. Ouch.
I should point out that this isn’t even close to being a new idea, directories like Yext have been around since 2006 offering fully-loaded click-to-call advertising & directory services. Yext just recently was awarded $25 million dollars in funding after participating in the TechCrunch50 (they also broke this news story a few hours before the official Skype press release).
The marriage of VOIP & Online Advertising is something that will soon be taking over the current way we interact with online ads with companies like Twilio & Voxeo leading the way by providing inexpensive developer platforms for creating IVR/VoIP solutions (and of course, really cool web-apps!)
Hoping to see similar results to w+k’s Happiness Factory from last year, Ogilvy Argentina teamed up with London-based Passion Pictures to create this :60 animated masterpiece for Coke Zero. I know I’m not alone when I say that I’m a big fan of this style of commercial and I wonder if there are any plans to make a feature length version of the spot. Aptly titled Happy Kingdom, this piece was directed by Pete Candeland.
Credits:
Agency: Ogilvy Argentina
Executive Creative Director: Gastón Bigio
Head of Art: Jonathan Gurvit
Creative Directors: Javier Mentasti, Christian Camean
Agency Producer: Laura Passalacqua
Production Company: Passion Pictures, London
Director: Pete Candeland
Executive Producer: Hugo Sands, Michael Adamo
Producer: Debbie Crosscup
Head of CG: Jason Nicolas
VFX Supervisor: Neil Riley
Technical Direcor: Julian Hodgson
Directors Assistant: Giles Dill
Storyboarding: Kevin Dart, Kim Frederiksen
Character Design/Development: Ron Kurniawan, Pete Candeland, Dan Sumich, Mario Ucci
Production Coordinator: Crystal Crompton
Matte Painting/Backgrounds: Kim Frederiksen, Lukasz Pazera
CG Modelling: Mario Ucci, Ian Brown, Matthias Bjurstrom, Doug Lassance, Dan Sweeney, Craig Maden
Rigging: Chris Dawson, Francois Pons, Julian Hodgson
CG Animation Supervisor: Wes Coman
Animation CG: Cath Brooks, Chris Welsby, David Sigrist, Melanie Climent
Animation FX: Jamie Franks, Tommy Andersson
Art Director: Mario Ucci
Texture\Shading: Mario Ucci, Ian Brown, Sally Wilson, Rick Thiele, Matthias Bjurstrom, Melanie Climent, Craig Maden, Nico Domerego, Dan Sweeney, Doug Lassance
Lighting/Rendering: Quentin Vien, Guillaume Cassuto, Claire Michaud, Rick Thiele
Lead Compositing: Niamh Lines
Compositing: Johnny Still, John Taylor, Lee Gingold
Editor: Jamie Foord, Dan Greenway
Telecine: Rushes
Sound Mix: Toby Griffin @ The Jungle Group
Music: Power Solo
