Imbalanced Breakfast

This new campaign for MilkBites, the latest concoction of processed balanced-breakfast-hand-food to come from Kraft, introduces a snackbar rife with issues. It doesn't know if it's milk or granola, leading to a paralyzing identity crisis. While I found this poor little character funny (I'm a huge fan of couch-comics like Richard Lewis), the big question is how appetizing will people find these nauseating emotions? Do we really want to feel the pain of our breakfast food right now? Eggs were bad enough. Via Ad Age

How to get a head in Super Bowl advertising.

Even now, In the digital age, big advertisers in the big game don't release their spots ahead of time. They'll maybe tease them, like VW did two weeks ago with the "Bark Side" (nearly 10 million views as of this post).
However, relatively smaller companies that are spending a large portion of their annual ad media budget on one or two spots want to get a couple of big bangs for their bucks. Enter Cars.com (Ad agency: DDB Chicago), an advertiser in the last five Super Bowls.
This year, the auto classified site's creative linchpin is...a soul-singing second head.
Ho-kay then.
Older ad peeps will immediately think of Richard Grant and his growing alter-ego boil from "How To Get Ahead In Advertising". Cars.com president Mitch Golub should probably not NetFlix that flick.

Somebody Please Stop Go Daddy's Commercials.

So the domain company famous for T&A TV spots just "leaked" their upcoming big game commercial to the web.

Whoa. This is a colossal waste of SuperBowl $. Even if you put the sizable misogynism aside, which is hard to do, this spot is amateurish. Overbaked women wearing too much makeup over bad complexions. The least they could do is spend a few bucks in production making these actors look beautiful. There's nothing interesting, charming, sexy or intriguing about it. This brand needs an agency that will be honest with them and show them how to take their name awareness and attributes and turn them into something more consumers can appreciate, while not walking away from their heritage. Jeez… Via AdFreak.

The most beautiful domestic violence ads you'll ever see.

The ads are via the city government of Diadema, Brazil, denouncing violence against women (click them to enlarge). First, the headline translations: L—"It is hard to go home and realize you are safer outside" R—"Some women look for the man of their dreams but end up finding their worst nightmare."
Brazilian art directors are known for their lavish—sometimes too lavish to the point of incomprehension—print layouts. Now, Ad Challenger does appreciate that Paz (the São Paulo ad agency behind this work) didn't show the usual battered woman photos you've seen in so many anti-domestic violence ads. And we kinda of get the "feel" and the drama the creatives were going for by making violence look so beautiful. But the concept is not paid off by the copy at all. Maybe something is lost in the translation from Portuguese, but we doubt it.
Related: the most powerful domestic violence commercial Ad Challenger has ever seen (click here).

LeBron James takes a sheet on the ad world.

James is the co-founder of Sheets Energy Strips—tagline: Take A Sheet. Not as in, Take A She-it? Yep. Sheets, like more and more brands, decided to hold a crowdsourced commercial contest. And, apparently to make it apparent that any idiot with a copy of Final Cut Pro and an "idea" could submit a video, King James wrote, directed, and starred in his own entry.
Is it complete sheet? You tell Ad Challenger.
Most serious baller fans will tell you that LeBron really sheet the bed against the Dallas Mavericks last year. Or as one YouTube commenter put it: "Maybe James should have taken one of these every time the fourth quarter of the NBA finals came around."

So, what was the best holiday commercial this year?

The consensus of many media sources was that this diabolically heartwarming short story via John Lewis, a UK department store chain, topped the tree; though, diehard Smiths fans probably moped hard over the use of the band's mope anthem. (Sorry Smithies, the Moz gave permission.)
The video has nearly four millions views on YouTube, and was a resounding success for the retailer. However, the jaded amongst us ad reviewers weren't so enamored. The best piss-take was written by the Guardian's hilarious Charlie Brooker. An excerpt:
"Take the John Lewis commercial....reports reached me of people blubbing in front of their televisions, so moved were they by this simple tale....Given the fuss they were making, the tears they shed, you'd think they were watching footage of shoeless orphans being kicked face-first into a propeller.
An advert for a shop. That's all the John Lewis thing is....Anyone who cries at this creepy bullshit is literally sobbing IQ points out of their body....A commercial has only made me feel genuinely sad on one occasion – 25 January 1990, when a falling billboard nearly killed 'Allo 'Allo star Gorden Kaye."
If you are likewise world-weary, you really should read the whole article.
Happy New Year, from Ad Challenger.

If you can find a more insane bread campaign...

...burn it! With fire!
Princesa is a brand in Brazil. These are ads for their light bread. With us so far? OK. Now, click on the ads, and take in the scenes. The evil zombie SpongeBob SquareBread looking creature represents fattening high-carb bread (we think). The brains represent "you" (we think). And the train and the saw represent your "guilt" about eating said evil bread (we think).
Question: why does the evil bread look like healthy bread? At first, we thought he(?) was the Princesa bread. We're still not completely sure. What we are sure of is that we now have no appetite for any bread, or any other food. Wonderful illustrations, though. Ad agency: Staff, Brazil. Ads via Ads of the World.

When was the last time you were entertained by a laundry detergent commercial?

In 20 seconds, you get branding, benefits, and a smile.
Bonux is an inexpensive Procter & Gamble detergent launched in Egypt in 2006 (not available in US stores, that we can find). This is the latest campaign for the product, just launched by Leo Burnett Brussels in several languages. The mocking of cliched ad set-ups is certainly not a new strategy, but it works very well here in this staid category. The clean, all-white set motif is simple and smart. One nit (hey, we're the Ad Challenger): The voice talent is a smidgen too smug. Second spot below. See three more here.

The Boy Scouts will turn your son into a Grizzly Adams.

They grow up (and become hirsute) so fast! New print ads (click to enlarge) out of Ogilvy Atlanta for the local council of the 100-year-old youth organization. Exactly how long is my baby boy going to be out in the wild, scout leader? Ad Challenger thinks these ads are adorable—well 90% adorable and 10% creepy. Maybe 70-30 if you catch us on another day. But hey, we were a boy this age once, and boys this age are obsessed with growing hair on, uh, certain body parts. No doubt though, the campaign is wild. Perhaps a hair too wild.

Exercise bike-powered neon male stripper building projection sells mineral water.

Sorry for the complex post headline, but this is quite a complex set-up to sell a branded bottle of French water (Contrex, tagline: "The French woman's secret to a healthy lifestyle.")
So: obviously it's a fake stunt, with volunteers/hired models hopping on the pink (for women!) bikes. But the fakeness is not the point. This spectacle was created in the hope that the video would go viral, which it has: the French version has over 8 million views in 5 weeks.
Building projections are becoming the new Flash Mob of online ads. This is the first one ever powered by exercise bikes, we're guessing. Anyway, it's certainly entertaining (Gyms should consider installing this technology to motivate spinning class participants.), and very importantly, not too long. Ad Challenger does wonder how many of the millions of viewers don't remember—or don't care—what it's selling. Bah, we'll just shut-up, and enjoy the show.
Ad agency: Marcel, Paris.