Hasta La Motion!

Nathan Love is up to its old tricks, yet again, in NBC Peacock. In collaboration with NBC Artworks, the studio has created an animated station ID that playfully adheres to the NBC brand while showcasing their mastery of character driven animation.

In exploring the origins of the famous NBC logo, Nathan pays homage to the famous peacock logo that has driven the stations branding for over 50 years. Heavily inspired by the 1993  NBC station ID’s created by John Kricfalusi of now defunct animation production studio, Spumco, Joe Burrascano, Nathan Love’s owner and creative director, elaborates:

“The brief was to create a stand-alone logo animation for NBC. The only guidelines were to make it our own, and of course, for it to be ‘the best logo ever.’”

Originally designed to promote NBC programming that was broadcast in color, Nathan has revisited the original mark and retrofitted it for today—bringing slapstick humor and personality to an iconic logo—while at the same time, making it their own.

For exclusive behind-the-scenes artwork on Nathan Love’s, NBC Peacock, see here.

For a multi-page, illustrated article on the history of the NBC peacock, see here.

Posted on Motionographer

Channeling the same rebel spirit as the recent Verizon adverts for the Motorola Droid, this viral for the Nokia N900 injects the nucleus of a narrative into what could be a fun campaign.

The turn to grittier aesthetics makes sense. Attempts to unseat the incumbent iPhone using the same glossy look as Apple only confuses customers; the trick is to differentiate the brands somehow. Trouble is, Nokia and Motorola have struck the same chord at more or less the same time.

The recently posted Droid “Stealth” spot directed by Rupert Sanders aims at creating the same sense of epic mystery as the Nokia N900 campaign, albeit with a much slicker production value. It’s the J.J. Abrams school of advertising, with phones instead of “mystery boxes.”

Who will win? At this point, it’s hard to say: but it seems that they’ll still be fighting for second place.

“Focus group” was directed by Jack Masters and conceived by agency Jack Morton. The Mill’s Bif (Fabrice Le Nezet, Jules Janaud and Francois Roisin) helmed the post-production efforts.

Thanks to Harm for the tip.

Posted on Motionographer

Two LED spots have been dropped off the back of another. The first one, for Samsung, from The Viral Factory (director James Rouse) in London can be seen below:

We grabbed this one a few weeks ago. Since then, it has racked up a decent 4.7 million hits on Youtube. For those who may have missed it, it follows approximately 300 sheep covered in LED lights, a cast of local shepherds and their sheepdogs. The film features sheep being herded into a series of ever more improbable shapes. “The Viral Factory will not be drawn on what was real and what has been achieved in post, but a YouTube debate is predicted.”

This next, more recent, Honda spot is brought to you by W+K Amsterdam and Erik Van Wyk of Bouffant in Capetown. In this spot, the headlights of Hondas become the matrix in which to create simple animations. Most importantly, this was all captured in-camera.

Aside from the creative merits of the Honda ‘Lights’ spot, I’d like to shift the focus to the accompanying making-of video. Unlike the purely viral-format of the Samsung spot, W+K extracted their viral from the TVC shoot. Not only do they get a ‘free’ spot from it all, but they humanize the brand and introduce people to the innovation that goes on under the hood of it’s spots. By keeping it all in-camera, a BTS becomes something interesting enough to watch. Ramp up the scale of the actual shoot and you can do the same to the ‘wow’ factor.

The increase in creating supplemental BTS films seems to have hit a spike during the massive success of the Bravia Color Campaign. The BTS for the ‘Balls’ spot from Fallon/Juan Cabral and Fugslig is one of the more memorable. In preparation for the roll out of ‘Paint,’ Sony’s micro-site hosted a BTS with a countdown to the commercial’s premiere. And who could forget ‘Bunnies‘ and the making-of?

The price of a potential viral hype machine and a chance to show off your in-camera craftiness may not be more than a hand-held second unit. As ad dollars drop, web-content distribution grows and consumers become more savvy (and critical) of advertising, this practice seems like a multi-pronged solution to a few of the ad worlds evolving needs.

Posted on Motionographer