Coca-Cola apparently doesn’t hold a grudge against famed director Ridley Scott. The perennial Best Global Brand's logo appeared in his 1982 film, Blade Runner, and then the brand suffered the so-called "Blade Runner curse" with the disastrous introduction of New Coke in 1985. That "curse" saw other brands that popped up in the film (Atari, Bell, Pan-Am) suffer serious financial difficulties soon after the movie debuted.

Since those days, Coke and Scott, who got his directing start in London's advertising world in the early ’70s before decamping to Hollywood, have paired up a few times. In 1986, he directed the brand's famed Max Headroom commercials. Now, the beverage giant has released a short film about its iconic Polar Bears that was directed by Scott and produced by him and his recently deceased brother, Tony Scott.

"The Polar Bears," as the short is called (watch it below), tells the story of the bear family that has appeared in Coke commercials since the company’s “Always Coca-Cola” campaign kicked off in 1993. While polar bears have been part of the print-advertising mix for Coke since 1922, the campaign put the polar bears front and center in consumers’ eyes. Now those who have been curious about just who these bears are will finally have their questions answered.Continue reading...

British animator Nick Park brought his Academy Award-winning Wallace and Gromit to Bristol studio Aardman Animation, and forever changed the world of animation and commercial production. Now Google+ is tapping the stop motion animated duo for a holiday campaign to promote the social network’s Hangouts social video interactive platform.

“We are thrilled to see Wallace and Gromit use a Google+ Hangout to join the rest of the Aardman family for the very first time,” commented Cristian Cussen, Head of Marketing, Google+, Europe, Middle East & Africa. “We would love for families and friends everywhere to easily connect over the holidays. For those who can’t make it home this year, they can still spend the holidays together through Google+ Hangouts.”Continue reading...

Started by a woman in a time when women didn't start companies. Governed for nineteen generations, not by a corporate policy, but by a family philosophy. Brewed naturally by master craftsmen the same way today as it has been for almost four hundred years. Passing on old traditions while making new ones, takes time.

That's the pitch that Kikkoman US is hoping will bring viewers and distributors to Make Haste Slowly: The Kikkoman Story — a 24-minute commissioned film on the Japanese brand's almost 400-year history — with the hopes it picked up by a TV network as a non-fiction program. “Audiences want authenticity,” said the short's Academy Award-nominated director Lucy Walker to Adweek. “Nobody’s going to watch 24 minutes of phony stuff.” Check out another clip below.Continue reading...

More and more TV viewers are turning to the web for their audio-visual pleasures, streaming shows and movies from such places as Hulu, Netflix, and AppleTV, among a growing list of others. 

YouTube, of course, is the grandpa of the online video-entertainment biz and is refusing to take a backseat to all the Johnny-come-latelys that are making their moves now. In the past year, YouTube owner Google has invested more than $100 million in 100 original channels to invite brands and professional producers create original high-quality content for the site. Even though viewership numbers weren’t particularly high, the site is shelling out some big bucks again, but this time to only 30 or 40 of those content creators, according to AllThingsD.com.

The metric of most interest to YouTube (and parent Google) execs is “the total ‘watch time’ a channel has generated” as well as cost, AllThingsD reports. The site’s top 25 channels averaged more than a million views a week, Ad Age reports, and “the top 33 have more than 100,000 subscribers, a key indicator of repeat viewing.”Continue reading...

"Don’t leave home without it" is becoming "Don’t leave home at all." Or, at least, "just yet." American Express is kicking the tires on interactive television and branded content with its own video-on-demand channel, participating in a year-long test with interactive TV provider BrightLine and the Mindshare agency to launch what's being called the largest advanced TV campaign to date.

The AMEX Channel, which quietly launched in September, is available in more than 50 million households through five pay TV service providers — AT&T's U-verse service, Cablevision, DirecTV, Dish and Verizon FiOs —and through smart TV platforms, namely Internet-connected TV sets sold by LG and Samsung.

The advanced television ad test is being trialed on TV as the primary screen, with apps for tablets and smartphones as second screens. Viewers can access the channel via interactive banners, channel guide listings and overlays that appear next to American Express commercials, using BrightLine-based technology. The video-on-demand channel offers video clips, games and information and promotions like AmEx's annual Small Business Saturday shopping day after Black Friday.Continue reading...

Deutsche Telekom's Cannes Lions-winning film project called "Move On," described as "a road movie like no other, because it is inspired by film fans from all over Europe" has made its big screen debut, premiering last night in Berlin. The branded entertainment project, which started unfolding online in May as part of its "Life is for Sharing" banner, was directed by Asger Leth and features actor Mads Mikkelsen (who starred in Casino Royale, The Three Musketeers, Monsters vs. Aliens and Clash of the Titans) on a secret mission in eight episodes, each taking place in a different European country and incorporating fans. Samsung and Volkswagen also supported the project, which you can check out at move-on-film.com.

Four musical icons, Gloria Estefan, Joe Jonas, John Rich and Nelly, have 72 hours to turn average folks into superstars on The Next, The CW network’s newest music reality show. It's premiering this Thursday with Queen Latifah on-board as a producer — and sponsorship by pre-paid mobile carrier Cricket's Muve Music, marking its first branded entertainment TV partnership.

As a ‘challenger brand,’ Cricket is the seventh largest wireless telecommunications network in the U.S., serving seven million plus customers and differentiating its brand by relying on music and entertainment to stand out in the pre-paid space. This new partnership with The Next is the brand’s pre-emptive move as the turf battle for wireless customers heats up.Continue reading...

Louis Vuitton pays tribute to "The Greatest," boxer Muhammad Ali, with the digital experience The Greatest Words.  In two short films, "Float" and "Life," spoken word artist Yasiin Bey and calligrapher Niels Shoe Meulman revisit the words of Mohammad Ali, with a helping hand from rapper/actor Mos Def.Continue reading...