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...

Earlier in the year, it appeared as through Chrysler might be abandoning its "Imported From Detroit" tagline. At least — in the wake of the controversial Clint Eastwood commercial during the 2012 Super Bowl, "It's Halftime in America," and with a spate of new TV advertising that didn't mention the Motor City — it seemed that way for a while.

But Chrysler's Motown sensibilities have returned through the course of 2012, and now they're back bigger than ever. First the gospel choir that co-starred with Eminem's iconic 2011 Super Bowl commercial for the auto brand popped up in Chrysler's current holiday campaign. And now, Chrysler is coming back with the ultimate tribute to its Motown home: a new campaign starring Berry Gordy.

In a new 60-second commercial titled "Who We Are," Chrysler showcases the new 2013 Chrysler Motown Edition by featuring the legendary Motown founder. As promised back in October, Gordy takes us through his humble beginnings in Detroit and ultimately to New York's Times Square and the home of the new Broadway show, Motown: The Musical.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...

Want to have your face on a Pepsi can? Well, first you need to sell more than a 100 million albums around the globe and win 16 Grammy awards. At least, that’s what it took for Beyonce to get her face etched into aluminum.

As already announced, Bey is starring in the Pepsi-sponsored Super Bowl XLVII halftime show in February as part of the brand's multimillion-dollar return to the Big Game after pulling out in 2010 to reallocate its funds for the social Pepsi Refresh crowdsourced philanthropy platform. Now

Now PepsiCo is expanding its Super Bowl deal with the performer beyond the half-time show into a full-blown partnership in a $50 million deal that will burnish the Pepsi brand and Brand Beyonce, including marketing support for her new album that's dropping next year.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...

P&G has released an exclusive music video starring Jewel, who's the brand ambassador for Pampers, and her toddler.

The song, "The Green Grass Grows All Around," is taken from her 2011 children's album, "The Merry Goes 'Round." According to Pampers, the song pays "homage to the beautiful morning moments shared between parents and their babies. From storytime and sing-alongs to feeding horses and spending time with daddy, the video captures Jewel's favorite beautiful morning moments with her son, Kase."

Check it out below, along with a recording of the brand's recent Facebook chat with the American singer/songwriter: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...

When the Los Angeles Auto Show holds its media preview on Wednesday, it'll become more apparent than ever that in the world of cars, as in some other things, California remains vastly disconnected from the rest of America.

That's because the nation's strictest emissions standards and laws mandating electric-vehicle sales put a premium for auto brands on showing the best side of their electrification efforts at the L.A. show. And so while EVs have continued to sell at a snail's pace across most of the rest of the United States, California has become a robust market for electric vehicles.

It's also America's hottest market for sexy cars, of course, which is why Jaguar USA is at the LA Auto Show. The brand hosted a pre-show event Tuesday night to unveil the all-new F-TYPE two-seater. It also unveiled the trailer for Desire, a short film being released next year, which stars Emmy Award-winning actor Damian Lewis, produced by Ridley Scott Associates with music by Lana Del Rey. Check it out below along with other previews at the LA Auto Show.Continue reading...