Chipotle Mexican Grill is going Hollywood to shed light on the importance of a sustainable food eco-system as seen in the above video, “Back to the Start.”

Featuring a moving cover of Coldplay's The Scientist by music legend Willie Nelson, the two-minute stop-motion animated short follows a farmer who turns his family business into an industrial animal factory, reaping disastrous results before coming to his senses and choosing a more sustainable future. 

The film by Irish animator Johnny Kelly and the soundtrack were commissioned by Chipotle in their first foray into branded entertainment, and will be shown in 5,700 theaters across the United States starting in September.

The video also supports the brand's increased commitment to promoting sustainability via a new foundation and a first-of-its-kind event.Continue reading...

Taiwan, remember that place? Wildly significant both economically and politically through the last half of the 20th century, the island nation that maybe kind of isn't a nation at all has been feeling a pinch in significance as the People's Republic next door continues to grow in importance.

So while recent reports about Taiwan's economic future vary (manufacturing drops and global talent flees but investment pours in), the island's tourism bureau is taking measures to sell interest in the destination via a new tourism campaign, "My Beautiful Island."

It was only a few months ago that Taiwan launched a new tourism campaign with the tagline, "Taiwan: The Heart of Asia." Now, its new tourism campaign insists, it's "Time for Taiwan."Continue reading...

Madres y Comadres is an eight-part original Spanish-language miniseries from Kmart targeting Hispanic mothers and the unique challenges they encounter raising a family in America and remaining true to their Hispanic heritage, as seen above, housed on a dedicated YouTube channel.

With Hispanics now the largest minority in the U.S., the webisodes are humorous and sensitive to the prevalence of extended families in the culture, hence the title: 'Madre' meaning mother, and 'Comadre,' her female confidantes.

Evocative of a 'telenovela,' the scripted episodes tackle issues such as a heartbroken mom who discovers her son is trading homemade tamales for tuna sandwiches at school; a son from a Spanish-speaking home who gets a ‘C’ in Spanish and an ‘A’ in Chinese; a mother whose daughter really wants a sleepover, a practice not popular with Hispanic moms.Continue reading...

What's better than filming one of the worlds smallest stop motion animated videos on your Nokia N8 — and setting a Guinness World Record? Setting a news World Record for the BIGGEST stop animation film on your Nokia N8.

Posted yesterday, and already attracting more than 100,000 views in its first 24 hours, is the record breaking largest stop animation movie to date — all filmed with just a Nokia N8 smartphone.

The video, above, was shot on location at Pendine Beach in South Wales. Boasting a 12 megapixel camera and Carl Zeiss optics, the N8 sets the record of "the largest stop-motion animation set" with the largest scene stretching over 11,000 square feet. "Gulp," the film's title, was animated by Sumo Science at Aardman, the same animators who did the smaller animation, and sand artists from Sand in Your Eye.Continue reading...

Since he was introduced in a viral campaign back in March, "Focus Doug" has shown his true colors (other than orange) as an egotistical and shamelessly self-promotional spokespuppet. But the only reason that Ford marketers still put up with this fuzzy little blowhard – and, indeed, keep giving him online-only video exposure on YouTube – is that he’s helping to sell the new, 2012 Focus compact cars he’s supposed to be touting instead of himself.

“Doug has gotten Focus before hundreds of thousands of people,” Robert Parker, a group marketing manager for Ford, told brandchannel. “It’s too early to tell how many sales have resulted, but on the awareness curve – people who were aware there is a new Focus pre-Doug, versus the number of people aware post-Doug – has gone way up.”Continue reading...

Zazum is a small start-up with a big promise: making television shows and movies instantly shoppable via its mobile app.

It’s a new kind of affinity marketing that puts brands in the sweet spot of impulse buying in the moment, as viewers spot and want to buy what they see.

“Unlike television shopping channels that are a string of promotional spots for products—nothing more than long ads—Shoppable Shorts are entertainment in their own right. They are definitely not commercials,” says Zazum founder and CEO Susan Rits.Continue reading...

Inside, a branded entertainment project starring Emmy Rossum and co-funded by Intel and Toshiba, debuts today at 2pm EST. As we noted earlier this month, the tech brands have joined forces for The Inside Experience, a crowdsourced hybrid of film and social media that riffs on the iconic "Intel Inside" tagline — collaborating not only with each, but with the audience.

The plot: A young woman, Christina, played by Rossum is trapped in a room with only a Toshiba Satellite P775 laptop - powered by a second-generation Intel chip, and an undetectable Internet connection. The character must rely on her social network to deduce her location and plan her escape. That's where the social web kicks in, starting today.Continue reading...

Meet Gayle Evans, an American Family Insurance agent in Maple Grove, Anytown, U.S.A. She's also the star of a digital series produced by NBCU Digital titled, In Gayle We Trust.

The character has been featured in two seasons of webisodes on NBC.com (final episodes will continue through this fall), and was introduced last year as part of NBC's ramped up branded entertainment push — an initiative that NBCU's new owners at Comcast recently killed off in lieu of producing webisodes tied to NBC's current on-air programming, not brands' characters and storylines.Continue reading...