Work of the Week: 04/10/24
It’s been a busy week with the start of a new quarter. Take a moment to pause – and make sure you didn’t miss anything major – with a look back at the best work of the last seven days from around the world.
Each of these top picks will make you stop in your tracks for a different reason. We’ve got a surreal FX frenzy in spots from Squarespace, conjuring up doughy croissant missiles, shockingly swole grandmothers, and a dreamy underwater apartment. The ancient art of hair embroidery meets modern haircare technology in Pantene China’s stunning campaign from Grey Hong Kong with master artist Zhou Yinghua. Meanwhile, Kodak’s new AI-powered tool has initiated a major breakthrough in photo reminiscence therapy for dementia patients.
Down under, Oxfam Australia and Bullfrog highlight the staggering fact that our hair is better fed than the millions of people going hungry around the globe, and in the UK, Nurofen and McCann London’s towering pill pack installation demands we pay attention to medical sexism. Ecover and Uncommon then turn the spotlight on the planet we call home, with a stunt celebrating the hidden sustainability of that laundry chair.
Be warned – those of you who make it to the bottom will come face to face with a malevolent clown in a horrifying short film from Six Flags’ new creative agency, TMA. It is spooky season, after all.
Catch the work while it's hot below.
Squarespace - Change Your World
Standing out this week is Squarespace, which has brought businesses to life in the most fun, chaotic, and surreal way with a trio of practical effects-heavy ads. Created in-house and produced by Iconoclast, three entrepreneurs transform their surroundings as they choose their website domains. Water spurts from sockets and floods a man’s apartment in ‘Scuba’, grandmothers get hench in ‘Muscles’, while croissants slam against walls in ‘Bakery’. As the spots point out, “A website makes it real.”
Get the behind the scenes scoop from Squarespace’s creative director, Mathieu Zarbatany, and LBB's Ben Conway, here.
Pantene China - Hair Embroidery
This campaign from Pantene China and Grey Hong Kong is a stunner. It incorporates damaged hair treated by the brand’s 3 Minute Miracle conditioner into the ancient Chinese art of hair embroidery – usually only performed using the strongest, healthiest strands – to prove the product’s restorative capabilities. The result is a breathtaking canvas painstakingly embroidered by master artist Zhou Yinghua – and not a split end in sight!
Kodak - Memory Shots
In Belgium, Kodak’s been helping dementia patients hold onto memories never caught on film in a major breakthrough for photo reminiscence therapy. Memory Shots – an AI-powered tool conceived and developed by creative agency Happiness – inputs patients’ descriptions of moments in their lives and outputs photorealistic images of them that appear to have been shot by a Kodak camera from that time period.
Financed by Kodak Images in Belgium, Memory Shots is free for all dementia treatment centres in the country, with over 70% of them already using it to improve the lives of patients.
Oxfam Australia - ONLY SHAMPOO
Oxfam Australia’s ‘ONLY SHAMPOO’ campaign from Bullfrog achieves the difficult task of making the familiar seem new. Waking us up again to the issue of world hunger, it points out a staggering fact: thanks to shampoos containing ingredients like pineapple extract and milk proteins, our hair has greater access to nutrients than the millions around the world who won’t eat today. Dead cells, better fed than people in need.
The campaign launched on National Hair Day, running across OOH, social, and digital. It was accompanied by a limited run of actual ONLY SHAMPOO for influencers, activists, and media personalities, and a takeover of popular subReddit r/showerthoughts to get Aussies talking about the crisis.
Nurofen - See My Pain
One in six women experience severe pain daily, yet one in two feel their pain has been ignored or dismissed because of their gender, according to Nurofen’s Gender Pain Gap Index Report. As part of its ‘See My Pain’ platform, the pharmaceutical brand and McCann London are raising awareness of the issue with a larger-than-life installation forcing passers-by to pay attention.
A 13x22 foot pill pack landed in the heart of Newcastle, branded with real-life dismissals women in pain have been met with, including “Toughen up, your pain is normal.” Helpful. Women in the street were also invited to share their own experiences of medical sexism. May they never be ignored again.
Ecover - The Rewear Chair
Are you (like me) one of those messy individuals who dodges the laundry hamper and tosses clothes onto the back of a chair instead? Well, turns out, we’ve been sustainable revolutionaries all along: overwashing is bad for the planet.
To inspire greener laundry habits, Ecover and Uncommon Creative Studio have pulled off a stunt making the sustainable choice the stylish choice. They’ve created ‘The Rewear Chair’ – a beautifully crafted, collapsible and adaptable chair made with 100% sustainable materials, infused with cedar oil to deodorise worn clothes. Sadly, it seems to be one of a kind, but you can catch it at Dutch Design Week later in the month.
Six Flags - Tick. Tick. Tick.
I was genuinely frightened watching Six Flags’ Halloween campaign. Without spoiling it, the amusement park’s first ever short film sees a malevolent clown (an awful pair of words) terrorise four housemates with a grim warning: “Don’t leave fear waiting.”
Titled ‘Tick. Tick. Tick.’, the horror short was created and produced by the company’s new creative agency, TMA. Watch at your own risk.
