Hyundai kicked some ass with that 3-D building projection in Malaysia recently, and now Lexus has done a similar thing in Hollywood. The stunning ad for the Lexus CT 200h hybrid unfolded in multi-dimensions on the side of the Roosevelt Hotel. Technically, it's dubbed a "3-D architectural projection mapping installation," which is a fancy name for a killer outdoor ad where a Lexus appears to drive all over the side of the historic building, flowers bloom on it, and water spews from it. The campaign, from Pearl Media, launched on Earth Day (well, Earth Night, so it would be visible) and joins the growing stable of out-of-home commercials that might actually stop you in your tracks. The 3-D ad is part of a full-court press going on now for the hybrid car, which is aimed at a younger, edgier buyer than the typical Lexus models. See some of the CGI-heavy spots, from Walton Isaacson in L.A., after the jump. 



Previously: Hyundai Wows With Stunning 3-D Projection

Social reading app Flipboard has struck a deal with Condé Nast to display full-page ads in several of the publisher’s titles. Starting today, readers of TheNew Yorker on Flipboard’s iPad app will begin seeing branded content from American Express throughout the virtual magazine. In October, a second round of ads from Lexus will appear in Bon Appétit, Wired, and TheNew Yorker, with additional mags to be added throughout 2011.

Using a revenue share model, Flipboard will manage inventory and Condé Nast will maintain its direct relationships with advertisers, according to a press release announcing the partnership. There will be a limited number of ad pages offered, and each will link to the brand’s website or Facebook page.

“In many cases, people often look to magazines for the advertising,” Flipboard CEO Mike McCue told paidContent. “That’s not the case with Web ads. It has a lot to do with the format of online ads. The fact that the ads are eating into the content, whether it’s a skyscraper or a pop-up. With our ads, it will have a similar look and feel to what’s in a magazine. In a lot of ways, it will be regarded simply as additional content.”

Josh Stinchcomb, vice president of digital sales for Condé Nast Media Group, also sees the app as a way to connect Condé’s digital and print editions. “We see the Flipboard ad program as an extra cross-marketing vehicle,” he told paidContent. “This is about being where our readers are and bringing our advertisers along with us. Flipboard’s advertising program represents a great chance to promote our paid digital edition apps. With one click, we can get users to subscribe to The New Yorker edition and eventually, our other magazines.”

In recent days, we've seen Honda and Acura unveil celebrity-heavy Super Bowl spots (well, extended versions of a pair of :60s) with Matthew Broderick, Jerry Seinfeld and Jay Leno. Now, Cadillac, Hyundai and Lexus have released their :30s online—minus the celebs—for what's shaping up to be another bumper-to-bumper auto-heavy broadcast.
     Cadillac's spot, called "Green Hell," created by Fallon for the 2013 ATS compact sport sedan, shows the car ripping around the Nordschleife, the older and more dangerous loop of the famed Nürburgring racing track near the village and medieval castle of Nürburg in the Eifel mountains.



The Lexus spot, by Attik, isn't too much more than the teaser. It simply shows the 2013 Lexus GS breaking out of its metal box.



The two Hyundai spots, by Innocean, have a bit more personality and a bit less sheet metal. The first spot, for the Veloster Turbo, shows a race between the vehicle and a cheetah—with one of the participants quickly bailing out. The second spot, for the Genesis Coupe R-spec, illustrates the unlikely ability of the car to perform CPR on your dying boss.




See Adweek's full Super Bowl coverage here.

Automobiles and women in skimpy clothing. They've been together probably since cavemen finished chiseling the first stone wheel. These days, it's not really acceptable for mainstream auto brands to just throw girls in bikinis into their advertising—but there are exceptions. You can go over the top and "ironic" (as Kia did with Adriana Lima in the Super Bowl). Or you can partner with that last bastion of semi-reputable, sanitized smut—the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Ford did a clever integration with this year's issue, buying print ads that featured a nonexistent model—Google searches for whom led straight to a Mustang website. Lexus and ad agency Team One, meanwhile, have gone quite a bit bigger—building an actual racetrack in the shape of SI swimsuit model Tori Praver's body.

No one was a bigger fan of this plan than Praver herself. "I thought it was so awesome when I found out that Lexus wanted to make a track around my body. I thought it was a really cool idea," the 25-year-old Californian exclaims in the mini-documentary below. Others might use words besides awesome. Women, in particular, could be uncomfortable with the metaphor here, which Lexus, far from side-stepping it, celebrates in this tweet to its 300,000 followers: "Can you handle the curves of Sports Illustrated model Tori Praver?"

Whether or not Praver's body is like a piece of road to be driven repeatedly for fun is almost beside the point. The funny thing here is that Praver doesn't even really have any curves. Her elbow, knee and hair provide the most circuitous terrain on the track. Like many models of her generation, if you really drew a proper line around Praver and built a track from it, you'd end up cruising down one long straightaway after another.

As a stunt, it's not a bad idea. It just doesn't really get out of second gear. And the accompanying interactive element—a camera app called Supermodeled, which allows you to place Praver into your own photos—feels a bit marginal, too. But all this is probably overthinking things. Men have been putting half-naked women in car ads for generations. If they can get away with it by blaming Sports Illustrated, they'll surely continue to do so.

Just don't expect too many women to hop in the driver's seat.







CREDITS
Client: Lexus
Agency: Team One, El Segundo, Calif.
Chief Creative Director: Chris Graves
Executive Creative Director, Digital:  Alastair Green
Group Creative Directors: Craig Crawford, Jason Stinsmuehlen
Creative Directors: David DeRoma, Eric Arnold
Copywriter: Scott Ivener
Art Director: Andrew McGuire
Agency Executive Producer: Sam Walsh
Agency Business Manager: David Peake
Director: Vic Huber (currently at Recommended Media), Jerad Sloan
Production Company: Bandito Brothers, Team One
Executive Producer: Jeff Rohrer
Producer: Beth Pearson
App Design and Development: Superfad, Culver City, CA; Tool of NA, Los Angeles, CA

It may be one of the hoariest clichés associated with a sport that’s already lousy with them, but it’s hard to find fault in the old saw that hope springs eternal during Major League Baseball’s spring training. For players and fans, it’s a time of promise—and for regional sports networks, it’s time to rake in some serious dough.

Not to dispel baseball’s Field of Dreams romanticism, but RSNs are serious business. The local sports chieftains have become so powerful that more than one high-ranking cable operator has griped about not being able to afford the cost of carrying them. Meanwhile, an improving advertising marketplace has dollars piling up on the other side of the ledger.

The shining exemplar of the RSN model is the 10-year-old YES Network. The most profitable RSN in the country, YES last year took in roughly $502.3 million in affiliate revenue alone. It also generated the highest ad sales tally—$68.7 million, according to SNL Kagan.

The cleanup hitter that powers the YES lineup is baseball’s most valuable franchise, the New York Yankees. Despite sharing the DMA with the Mets and SportsNet NY, YES’ 2011 Yankees broadcasts were the most-watched on any RSN, averaging 319,000 homes per game.

With three weeks to go before opening day, YES’ Yankees inventory is 60 percent sold out. “The market is really strong, and we’re seeing a huge response from automotive,” said Howard Levinson, svp of advertising sales at YES. “A lot of carmakers that raised their budgets in the wake of the tsunami have kept their spend just as high. And the companies that were directly affected by the disaster are back.”

Tri-State Ford is back as the presenting sponsor of YES’ pregame show, and Audi will again step up to the plate with Yankees Batting Practice Today. Other returning clients include W.B. Mason, Toyota, Lexus and Chevrolet. Rates are up in the low double digits versus last season’s performance.

Crosstown rival the Mets will this year celebrate its 50th anniversary, and while nostalgia may be a safer route than facing an uncertain present, the team’s RSN remains in top form.

In its sixth year of operation, SNY pulled in $40.5 million in ad sales revenue and $428.4 million in affiliate fees. While overall deliveries for Mets games were down 19 percent, SNY is enjoying a balmy spring, signing on new clients like Buffalo Wild Wings and landing W.B. Mason as its postgame sponsor.

“We’ve had a half-dozen new business hits so far, and we’re really happy with where we are,” said Brian Erdlen, chief revenue officer for the Mets and SportsNet NY.

While YES is unaffiliated with Yankee Stadium, SNY and Citi Field are joined at the hip. “We not only have the luxury of dipping into the New York spot market, but we also have a direct line to the Mets’ corporate sponsors,” Erdlen said. “It’s one-stop shopping—it’s not a situation where the rights holder and the team are competing with each other.”

USA is doubling down on its commitment to digital media this year, with a broad portfolio of ancillary projects—six, covering the network's slate of originals—to boost viewership, attract mega fans, and provide deeper ad integrations for the shows' partners while the series are running. This year, the company has not one but four major automotive sponsors (Ford, Toyota, Lincoln and Lexus) buying tie-in digital integrations, and Capital One on a fifth. 

Unscripted television is no stranger to these sorts of deals, but USA's collection of character-driven dramedies would seem to be a harder sell, not to advertisers, but to writers. But programming honcho Bill McGoldrick told Adweek that his writers have been using the integrations (created with companies like Ford and Capital One) to further flesh out corners of the worlds they've been creating that might otherwise go unexplored.

"A lot of our shows are closed-ended A stories," McGoldrick said (meaning the episode-long tale that drives a 42-minute narrative). "We usually have a personal B story, and what we have left over tends to be the C story, and that's the mythology. When you start dividing up the pie between the three, you're only left with so much for that C story," he said. The shows' writers, McGoldrick added, like the concept. "Left to their own devices, they'd probably want to tell more of the stories anyway," he said.

To that end, USA will devote what it's calling "social TV" to those mythologies. Covert Affairs will have a video-based "branching narrative" (think a simple role-playing game) generated in partnership with Capital One that follows secondary character Augie (Chris Gorham) through his first mission after being blinded. Gorham is the unofficial mascot of the digital integrations program—and everyone from McGoldrick to marketing and digital evp Alexandra Shapiro says that he devotes significant time to social media promotion of the shows. Covert Affairs gets a deeper backstory for Gorham's character, and Capital One gets an exotic locale in which to tout its services. "We were able to shoot this on location in Spain because the show was filming there," said Shapiro.

Ford is back for one of the longest-running integrations: Neal's Stash—a "treasure hunt" for White Collar, similar to last year's Mozzie's Mission, this time with a crowdsourcing component. Crystal Worthem, brand content and alliance manager for Ford, said that USA's focus on mega fans helped to sell them on the idea. "Ten, 11 years ago, we got involved in a lot of integration, with the biggest being American Idol, and we've found that it's very difficult to get a gauge of how engaged people actually are." With the incentive of further canonical information about their favorite series, though, Worthem said she's pleased with the level of attention, say, the new Taurus is getting from Collar-ites.

"Everybody from Marlboro to airlines understands the power of super-users," said Shapiro. "You have to cater to your rabid, core fans, because they wield a tremendous amount of power and influence, and if they're messaged properly, they have a tremendous ability to affect friends and friends of friends."

Burn Notice will get a third installment of its tie-in DC comic book (which provides pre-series backstory for central couple Michael and Fiona). Necessary Roughness will get a Lincoln-sponsored look into the case files of Nico, the "fixer" for the show's central football team. Toyota will back a Viggle integration that allows fans to look at behind-the-scenes video for Royal Pains, and Lexus will sponsor the first integration for Suits, entitled Suits Recruits.

The latter is a good indication of how quickly USA has to evolve in order to keep its digital components up to speed with rapidly developing tech. The game allows fans to join Suits law firm Pearson Hardman as either an assistant or a paralegal, and it will set up a Twitter/Facebook-style social feed on which fans can talk to each other about the progress of the story. Each set of fans gets proprietary information, and in order to get to the end of the story, each user has to find a different character class to share that info. The integrations are becoming longer and multi-phase to keep viewers hooked over the course of a full season. 

All of this, say McGoldrick and Shapiro, is designed not simply to give advertisers a chance to buy more comprehensive spots, but to create a world for fans to get lost in. Increasingly, especially as extremely narrow advertisers like Facebook prove themselves effective, fan service is seen as marketing to fans' friends, who value their pals' opinions or just watch an episode or two to know what a buddy is talking about.

"[Devoted fans] become your most important marketing assets, really," said McGoldrick. "In a lot of ways, more important than the traditional channels you and I grew up with. One of those fans is worth one billboard."

With the proliferation of media choices comes the natural evolution of media strategies. Here, Adweek singles out some of the most innovative and effective brand blueprints of the last year as determined by our staff—plans that moved the needle for clients like Chrysler, Samsung and Dunkin’ Donuts. In a world where ROI continues to be the ultimate goal, effective media planning—as our winners demonstrate—makes great creative powerful creative.

View the winners for Media Plan of the Year.

African-American consumers are more emotionally attached to brands than whites, especially when it comes to media companies, according to a study from NewMediaMetrics (NMM). On average, according to the New York-based marketing firm’s report, blacks are 7 percentage points more attached to broadcast and cable channels while showing 5 percentage points more affinity toward digital properties.

NMM conducted an online survey of more than 2,500 black and white adults in April and May, asking them questions designed to demonstrate emotional attachment to brands. The research involved 368 brands, 66 television properties, 150 websites, 94 magazines and about 40 events ranging from March Madness to The Grammys to The NAACP Image Awards.

Twenty-four percent of blacks surveyed said they were highly attached to TV channels, while the same was true for 17 percent of whites surveyed. For digital properties, 18 percent of blacks stated they were likely to be extremely brand loyal versus 13 percent for whites. 

NMM’s findings also involve data on individual brands, showing that Google and Apple products are popular across both segments.

Its study revealed the top five brands among blacks in this order: Lexus (64 percent); Google Search (62 percent); Mercedes-Benz (61 percent); Google (60 percent); iPod (59 percent); and iPhone (59 percent). Other brands that are more popular with African Americans than whites include General Motors, Slim Fast, Tide, Fidelity, Ragu, Walmart, Levi’s, Campbell's and Lowe’s. 

The report’s top five for white consumers were iPhone (59 percent); Disney Parks (58 percent); Google Search (55 percent); iPod (54 percent); and iPad (54 percent).

Gary Reisman, a former exec at media companies like Turner Broadcasting and CNN.com as well as ad agencies Y&R, Draftfcb and Wunderman, is one of NewMediaMetrics founders. Reisman suggested that breaking down consumer segments by ethnicity helps advertisers get better campaign results.

“Ethnic groups are critical market segments to understand and leverage,” he said. “Finding these individuals is critical to extracting revenue from money invested in marketing/media.”

Lexus hopes to draw a young adult audience by running its biggest mobile game ad integration today through Friday. Augmenting a larger campaign for the 2013 Lexus ES that began on Sept. 5, the automotive brand will appear via banner, interstitial and video ads on the Zynga-owned mobile game Draw Something, which has been downloaded 50 million times and entails legions of daily users.

"It allows us to really engage this game’s huge fan base," Teri Hill, media manager at Lexus, told Adweek. "It's a really good way for us to do something that’s more youthful. It goes in line with who we are trying to reach—hyper-connected, digital enthusiasts who are influencers."

Indeed, Lexus is taking aim at consumers under 45 years old with the Draw Something effort, which MediaBrix, a social/mobile gaming advertising vendor, and ad agency Team One helped put together.

For the uninitiated, the game is built on collaboration between two players—one draws a picture of a chosen word and the other guesses the word correctly before moving onto their turn to display their virtual drawing skills. Players receive rewards such as in-game coins and color shades when they guess a word correctly.

In terms of Lexus’ marketing purposes, it is the first automotive advertiser to employ brand-specific color schemes in Draw Something. Players will also be awarded in-game coins if they virtually draw Lexus-oriented items. And many of the drawings created on the mobile app will be uploaded onto the Draw Something Facebook page, where users will have a chance at being featured as the "Lexus Stunning Doodle of the Day." The "Stunning Doodle" theme appears in the mobile ads that will be served up to Draw Something users on iPhones, iPads and Android devices during the next several days.

Rosabel Chung, media supervisor at Team One, explained the short duration of the initiative. "We didn’t want it to be a long-tail approach," she said. "We wanted to ensure we’re hitting in a very high-impact way."

We've written before about print ads that don't just sit there looking pretty. Here's the latest one: a Lexus ad in the Oct. 15 Sports Illustrated that suddenly becomes animated—the engine revs, the headlights flash, the wheels spin and the background pulses with color, all to a blaring musical soundtrack—when you place the ad over an iPad that has the Web page Lexus.com/stunning loaded. (It also works with a special Lexus video inside the iPad edition of SI.) You can get an idea of the experience in the clip below, although the real thing is surely more impressive. Critics say it's just a glorified video, but it isn't—it's the play of the light through the printed page that's novel and delightful. In a way, it's almost like a print version of projection mapping, minus the 3-D aspect. Projecting light on (or in this case, through) a tangible surface creates an effect neither medium can accomplish on its own. The most impressive, and in many ways the simplest, example of this was the great solar-powered print ad from green-energy company Shikun & Binui Solaria—featuring a black-and-white sketch that, when held up to sunlight, blossomed into full color. (No iPad necessary!) In terms of bells and whistles, though, the Lexus ad more than delivers.
     Working with ad agency Team One, Lexus developed a special technology for this that it's calling "CinePrint." "Most traditional mashups feature print ads that redirect to a digital experience away from the printed page," the automaker says. "CinePrint technology flips that on its head, creating a tactile and visceral connection that brings one closer to the printed page with a multi-sensory experience that combines sight, sound and touch."
     Lexus is pretty into funky print ads, having utilized Near Field Communication technology in an ad for Wired's April issue that allowed users to transfer video and other content from the ad to their smartphones. On the publishing side, Time Inc. is consistently welcoming tech-friendly print ads, too, having already embedded a live Twitter feed for the CW in Entertainment Weekly.

EspnW is starting to gain some traction.

The female-sports-centric site, launched in December 2010, reached a new traffic zenith in August. The site pulled in 3 million unique users, per Omniture—driven in part by its Olympics coverage and the gold medal performance of the women's soccer team. 

According to espnW officials, the site has steadily added more users with each major women’s sporting event, such as the 2011 World Cup and the 40th anniversary of Title IX last year.

As the site has grown, espnW has contined to expand its ad base, according to officials, including lots of brands not normally associated with ESPN’s male-skewing audience. Gatorade, Nike, P&G (Secret & Venus) were launch partners. And last week the site pulled in several more major advertisers when it hosted the third annual espnW women and sports summit.

Lexus was the official sponsor of the event, which took place Oct. 1 through Oct. 3 in Tucson, Ariz. Under Armour, Oakley, Secret, Cover Girl, lululemon athletica and Colavita have also jumped on board.

In fact, at the summit, CoverGirl maintained a photo booth where attendees took pictures for their ID badges; users were also encouraged to share them across social platforms, including espnW's Facebook page.

Statistics and opinions almost equally vary about whether or not Facebook ads work. In the automotive realm, of course, there’s General Motors. The company has been a very public critic of the paid social ads, which have the ability to target consumers based on their "like" interests. But that hasn’t stopped Lincoln or Lexus from recently throwing serious coin Mark Zuckerberg's way.

Lexus, in fact, utilized Facebook's ads and apps in an attempt to win the day at the North American International Auto Show last week in Detroit. The Japanese firm debuted its 2014 Lexus IS and IS F Sport models with a 10-minute live stream on Facebook that was pushed using the site's Page Post and Sponsored Stories ad treatments, targeting the brand's fans on the social site as well as their friends.

Facebook users could watch the live stream in their News Feed. According to Brian Smith, Lexus marketing vp, 100,000 individuals watched it live and some 600,000 had viewed it online by Friday of last week. Smith said his company also tried a so-called "big reveal" strategy on Facebook last year, i.e., live streaming the unveiling of a new Lexus model on Facebook, but the results weren’t as appealing because the video didn’t appear in users' News Feeds.

"The News Feed is why we got so many people to see it live, and it was kind of a game changer," he said. "We loved it."

In addition to ads, the company began pushing the video stream on Jan. 14 via Facebook while offering an RSVP app on the brand's page. Facebook users who made an online reservation to watch the stream shared the activity in the News Feeds, exposing the promotional event to their friends.

Brian Bolain, Lexus marketing director, suggested that Facebook's potential as a video-marketing platform may be a largely untapped resource.

"Everyone is so familiar with YouTube as a video destination," he said. "This is putting a different spin on Facebook and what the expectations might be for consumers. I am not sure it's fair to make a comparison between YouTube and Facebook yet. But this is certainly a good start for the learning process."

Bolain added, "We have 1.8 million fans on Facebook. For us not to do this would be foregoing a great opportunity."

Moontoast, part of Facebook’s preferred marketing developer program, and Saatchi & Saatchi's Team One worked on the initiative for mutual client Lexus.

Meanwhile, Boston-based Moontoast last week secured $5 million in Series B funding. The four-year-old tech vendor previously raised $6 million and counts Universal Music Group, Procter & Gamble, Time Inc. and Simon & Schuster as clients.

Automakers seem to love the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue—probably because women wearing little clothing have been a staple of auto ads for generations. Last year we saw Ford sneak a fake swimsuit model into the issue, while Lexus built an entire racetrack in the shape of swimsuit model Tori Praver. Now, Lexus is back with a new interactive print ad from ad agency Team One in this year's swimsuit edition. The idea is this: The 2014 Lexus IS's bold new design makes it impossible to blend into the scenery. Likewise, swimsuit models have a tough time blending in. Still, the agency tried to camouflage them on the set—using body paint, high-contrast light and shadow effects, and stretched fabric. But they come to life when you scan a QR code on the page and place your phone in three different places on it. The video below shows it in action. The models don't really do much when they become animated, but anything more than a sway and a strut is probably asking too much. The interactive ad is part of a series of teasers ahead of a full campaign launch in June. On Wednesday night, the Lexus IS reveal video "Change Lanes" will be included as part of Sports Illustrated's first-ever 3-D projection mapping activation on the facade of Caesars resort in Las Vegas. See all four pages of the interactive print ad below.

CREDITS
Client: Lexus
Agency: Team One
Chief Creative Officer: Chris Graves
Group Creative Director: Craig Crawford
Associate Creative Director: Eric Arnold
Art Director: Dustin Arnold
Senior Art Producer: Jason Lau
Account Director: Kelly Stevens
Director of Technology: Eddie Stover
Senior interactive Producer: Chad Bauer
Technologist: Rob Edwards
Photography
Photographer, Director: Carlos Serrao
Executive Producer: Kim Johnson
Layering and Compositing: Terry Silberman, ArsenalFX

Volvo has launched a new campaign that paints the brand in a luxury light, taking on the likes of Mercedes, BMW, Lexus and in particular, the Audi A4.

In an initial TV ad from Arnold Worldwide, a trophy wife-type in a Mercedes stops at a traffic light alongside a mom in a Volvo S60. Each checks her look in the rear-view mirror with very different results. The voiceover explains: “Volvos aren’t for everyone, and we kinda like it that way.”

“There’s a certain segment of luxury car buyers who are very independent and eschew what is expected of them,” Arnold executive director Don Lane explained. “They have a different set of priorities. Going after a predictable luxury car is not for them.”

That sentiment sets the tone for other elements of the campaign. Outdoor ads use lines like “Pretense is so past tense” and are tailored to key auto markets like Los Angeles, where the Volvo S60 is described as “100 real. Can’t say that about everything around here.” Digital marketing includes Facebook posts such as one featuring tiny Chihuahua in a sweater that says, “If your dog has a wardrobe, the Volvo S60 probably isn’t for you.” In another post, the brand claims “If your second private island is named after your third ex-wife, the Volvo S60 probably isn’t for you.”

Arnold’s digital role on the brand is new. Previously, Volvo’s digital and social efforts were handled by sister shop Havas Digital.
 
Tassos Panas, vp of marketing and product development at Volvo Cars North America, said the new work represented a shift for the company which in recent campaigns touted technology in its marketing.

“We want to start talking about our brand again and get people connected with it,” Panas explained. “As we move forward, we have a new pipeline of exciting products and we want to put the brand in the best health possible to give the products the best chance.”

That said, Volvo isn’t straying from its safety brand heritage. Consumer research, however, found that Volvo buyers also appreciate luxury on their own terms, see it as an experience and not just a badge and view design as a personal taste, favoring a Scandinavian modern esthetic.

Volvo says the Audi A4 is the most cross-shopped competitor to the Volvo S60 sedan. As part of the new effort, the automaker created aggressive "S60 Challenge" promotion that compares the two vehicles and makes the case for why the S60 is the better buy. Volvo will offer to make the first car payment on an A4 to anyone who buys one after test-driving the S60.

There's nothing that car companies seem to love more than showing off their creativity by producing short films that have practically nothing to do with their actual products.

Such is the case with this new Lexus spot from CHI & Partners, the first in the automaker's "Amazing in Motion" series. Titled "Steps," it follows an 11-foot-tall metal puppet—and his five black-clad puppeteers—through darkened city streets, searching for something.

Sound odd? It is. But it's also strangely beautiful, from the slow-motion shots of the puppet walking down crowded sidewalks to the feeling of complete isolation and longing it manages to capture. The puppet lifts his head from his shoulders to peer through a window at a man sitting alone in an office. Later, he stands on the edge of a building, apparently conjuring thoughts of puppet suicide. Eventually, he finds what he was looking for—his (presumably) female counterpart, for whom he shows as much joy as a giant metal puppet is capable of displaying.

The ambition behind "Steps" makes quite a bit more sense when you consider that its director, Daniel Kleinman, is the man responsible for designing every James Bond opening title sequence since GoldenEye (with the exception of Quantum of Solace, which was pretty lackluster anyway). Kleinman was also Adweek's official choice as the best commercial director of the '00s for ads like Guinness's "Noitulove."

Given his talent for the dark, moody and fantastic, it's no surprise Kleinman was able to translate the tale of an enormous puppet—handlers in plain sight—into something so visually impactful. Slightly more surprising is that this is, ultimately, a spot for Lexus—not exactly the world's most out-there brand.

But if they're going for cool, hiring the man behind some of 007's most iconic scenes is a good place to start.

CREDITS
Client: Lexus

Agency: CHI & Partners
Creative Directors: Monty Verdi, Micky Tudor
Agency Producer: Rosie Evatt

Production Company: Rattling Stick
Director: Daniel Kleinman
Executive Producer: Johnnie Frankel
Producer: Chris Harrison

Editor: Steve Gandolfi @ Cut & Run

Effects: Glassworks
Flame: Duncan Malcolm, Iain Murray
Flame Assistants: Nina Mosand, Warren Gebhardt
3-D: Adrian Russell, Roman Polanski, Matt Lowery, Matt Fletcher, Krzysztof Klimczyk
Telecine: Ben Rogers
Producer: Kirsty Rutherford
Shoot Supervisor: Ruben Llusia

U.S. digital agency 360i is continuing its international push, leveraging parent network Dentsu to launch its second outpost abroad.

After testing in Canada in recent months, the agency today formally opened for business in Toronto. There, an initial staff of six will work on existing 360i clients like Scotts Miracle-Gro, while sitting in the larger office of 200-person sister agency DentsuBos. Earlier this year, 360i opened a London office, its first outside the U.S., which is similarly coupled with another Dentsu-owned digital shop, Steak.

360i has about 540 staff in all, spread across five offices. New York is its largest, with about 375, followed by Atlanta, with about 110, and Chicago with 30. While 360i Canada’s launch team is relatively small, 360i CEO and Dentsu North America chairman Bryan Wiener hopes to see it follow a similar trajectory to 360i's London shop, which has grown from five employees to 18 since opening in January.

360i has yet to acquire any new clients for its Canada office, but has already worked on projects in Canada for Scotts, as well as Lexus, a Dentsu and DentsuBos client, and Coca-Cola, a U.S. client of 360i’s since 2008. The agency has worked in the U.S. on digital for Scotts for a little more than a year. Dentsu handles the brand's traditional work.


“We’re only now announcing it when we have the level of confidence that we can really turbocharge the offering,” said Wiener.

360i’s Toronto shop will be led by DentsuBos Toronto president Claude Carrier, who will take on the additional role of president of 360i Canada and continue reporting to Wiener. "He really understands the market. He's spent a lot of time over the last year really absorbing how 360i approaches digital marketing," said Wiener. “[He’ll] really work on solidifying the partnership and go-to-market strategy.”

Devon MacDonald, meanwhile, a vp, client engagement at DentsuBos, will become managing director of 360i Canada, overseeing the agency's day to day and reporting to Carrier. Before joining DentsuBos six months ago, MacDonald was a senior strategist at BBDO Proximity.

Despite shared space, leadership and client work, Wiener said DentsuBos and 360i will still operate as separate offerings, and dismissed the notion that the overlap was part of a tightening relationship between 360i and other agencies owned by holding company Dentsu, which acquired the agency in 2010.

“I think…one of the real differences between Dentsu as a network and [the] Publicis and WPP and IPGs of the world is that [Dentsu] understands that entrepreneurial cultures thrive when given a lot of breathing room," he said. "That’s what we were promised when we were acquired almost three and a half years ago, and it’s exactly what they’ve delivered on… Up to now, our U.S. growth…is very much about just doing what we do and growing organically.”

So why partner abroad? "We have the ability to scale much faster because we have a full office infrastructure as well as other resources we can tap into in partnership with DentsuBos," said Wiener. "In partnership, we're really able to punch above our weight."

Adidas, E*Trade, Geico and Land Rover are a few of the brands that have made the biggest gains in terms of positive awareness among black teenagers and adults during the last year, per NewMediaMetrics (NMM).

NMM, which surveyed 3,400 African Americans ages 13 to 64 about brand-related "emotional attachment," found that Land Rover was the most popular brand across product categories while Lexus, Nike and Mercedes-Benz trailed closely behind as the luxury car niche showed well.

Honda and Toyota were the most popular economy car brands, while Hennessy (beer/alcohol), Walmart (retail), Starbucks (beverages), Clorox (households), Kelloggs (edible consumer-packaged goods), Aflac (insurance), Visa (credit cards), Charles Schwab (financial) and Joe's Crab Shack (restaurants) led their respective categories.

Overall, 35 brands improved their demo-focused NMM index scores by 15 points or more compared to last year, said Gary Reisman, CEO of the New York-based marketing and research firm. He said Kohls, Verizon, Oscar Mayer Lunchables, Hotels.com and Expedia are other examples.

While nonanalysts might be surprised that Converse beats more prolific shoe sellers like Reebok and New Balance when it comes to favorable awareness with African Americans, Reisman said that result jibed with what he's seen in the space. "Converse has done some fantastic product integrations and nontraditional marketing and advertising," he explained.

Brands losing their emotional connection to black consumers during the last 12 months, per NMM, include L'Oréal, Prudential, Farmers, Travelers, Nationwide, Droid and Vonage.

These aren't your grandparents' display ads.

AOL is getting ahead of the Advertising Week bustle by introducing four new premium ad formats today. The new products include a wallpaper/takeover unit that transforms as you scroll; a "loft" unit that travels down a Web page and opens up to display video or other multimedia elements; a multi-screen unit built with HTML 5; and a proprietary version of a IAB's Mobile Rising Stars unit.

These formats are in the spirit of the company's Project Devil initiative, introduced in 2010, which sought to emphasize big, beautiful display ads that can anchor a page.

"There's a lot that we're doing that is very innovative in terms of thinking about what formerly was 300x250 real estate," said Erika Nardini, chief marketing officer for AOL Advertising. "Brands who are looking to create connections with consumers and looking to drive impact are still hungry for this type of innovation and exploration around the ad format."

Kraft and Lexus have signed on as launch sponsors. Kraft is utilizing the loft, reactive wallpaper and cross-screen units for a Jello campaign on AOL's Kitchen Daily, as well as The Huffington Post's women, style, celebrity, entertainment and parents verticals. "We think all three are a great fit with our campaign," said Julie Fleischer, director of media and consumer engagement at Kraft Foods.

Lexus media manager Teri Hill said in a statement that the brand was the launch partner when AOL rolled out its original Devil unit, and today Lexus is utilizing the HTML 5 unit. "This new ad unit's focus on design and innovation mirrors Lexus's key brand attributes of performance and style, while also supporting the notion of Lexus as a more modern, youthful and emotionally-resonant brand," Hill said.

It seems brands still see the value in being the first to sign on to a new ad unit. "The phrase 'never been done before' [is] still super paramount in the digital marketing ecosystem," Nardini said.

AOL has made a big bet on programmatic advertising, but for the time being these formats will be sold on a case-by-case basis. And while the new ads will initially be available only on AOL's owned and operated sites, the goal is to eventually shop them out to other publishers, Nardini said.

Here's a screen shot of Kraft employing the loft unit on Kitchen Daily:

General Mills this afternoon will give out around 10,000 samples of its nine-month old product, BFast, at a free Bridgit Mendler concert in Los Angeles as part of the Pandora Presents series. The packaged-goods giant is ramping up its music-marketing game for the breakfast shake, which takes aim at millennials that skip their morning meal.

"Music is a huge part of all people's lives, particularly young adults," Betsy Frost, a senior marketing manager at General Mills, told Adweek. "All the consumer brands that have successfully come up in recent years—you've discovered them. There are certain channels of discovery, such as social media and friends' advocacy. But we also think of Pandora as one of those discovery channels."

There's also a cool social component to the push. An Instagram-enabled photo booth, dubbed Prinstagram, will be at the concert, which is being held on the grounds of Tinsel Town's Americana at Brand mall. With online and offline viral in mind, attendees will be able to print their Instagram pics using hashtag #PandoraPresents.

"Los Angeles is an area where there are lots of colleges and lots of people in General Mills' desired demo," said Tommy Page, Pandora's head of music partnerships (and notable 1990s pop singer). "We created a show that completely targets their audience through the artist and the activation's live experience. And through the Prinstagram booth, it can go global through the social graph."

Brand activations increasingly are becoming part of the ads packages of digital music services. TuneIn, which offers music, talk radio, sports and news programs, has helped Lexus and Levi's create branded stations on its service. (Oakland, Calif.-based Pandora offers a similar sponsorship platform.)

TuneIn's digital radio stations run across Web, mobile and connected devices such as "smart" refrigerators. An interesting data point from the San Francisco firm, which has 40 million users: 10 percent of its programming is transmitted via connected devices.

Here's more on the Lexus and Levi's programs:

• A content center called Up to Speed, Powered by Lexus, is running on TuneIn's platform, offering programs on art, culture, technology and other subjects. It's essentially a podcasts/radio hub where consumers can be exposed to the brand as part of the larger 2014 Lexus GX campaign. An even mix of audio and display ads are directing TuneIn users to the hub.
• Levi's has created a 1970s-themed TuneIn station for its Orange Tab vintage clothing line. It has a dedicated team of deejays spinning Stevie Wonder, Bee Gees and Black Sabbath for the station, called Orange Tab Radio. Can you dig it?

Trending on Tumblr: advertising.

Four months since its acquisition by Yahoo, the hip publishing platform continues to feel its way as many advertisers grapple with how and why they should tap into its 143 million network of blogs.

Tumblr’s next push will be to help brands “amplify” their presence in a variety of ways, sales chief Lee Brown told Adweek. Brown pointed to several areas on Tumblr still untouched by advertising that may soon be open for business. For instance, the “Trending” section on its mobile app, where users are directed to what’s hot on Tumblr, is ripe inventory. “You could certainly see how we could start to think about sponsored opportunities within that environment,” said Brown.

While serving such sponsored content may prove tricky with a sensitive user base prone to rebelling over ad intrusions, it helps that rivals like Twitter and Facebook already have cleared the way. Twitter serves Promoted Trends, and when Tumblr begins doing something similar, it likely won’t shock users.

“Playing in an established market is good for Tumblr,” noted Peter Minnium, head of brand initiatives at the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

But Tumblr has yet to prove itself as a marketing machine on par with rivals. In fact, several big brands and agencies say it’s not a priority for them, with several citing Tumblr’s perceived abundance of porn as one deterrent. “It’s not high on our list,” said one top agency exec.

To be fair, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer—upon inking the deal to buy David Karp’s New York-based startup for $1.1 billion—identified 2014 as the year the platform is expected to add real value to the company’s bottom line.

Automakers Ford, Lexus, Audi and Toyota are among those with a publishing presence on Tumblr.

Toyota’s Southeast regional arm, with its agency 22squared, recently created a Tumblr page for the 2014 Corolla and reached out to influencers on the network to help spread the word. Chris Tuff, director of emerging media at 22squared, said that to reach the coveted millennial demo “you absolutely need to be on Tumblr.”

What 22squared didn’t do was actually pay Tumblr to promote the campaign, turning instead to Facebook and Twitter, which unlike Tumblr can geotarget by region. Geotargeting would have been key for a regional campaign like Toyota’s.

Some industry watchers note that Tumblr is at the stage Facebook was a few years ago when companies like GM publicly said they didn’t need a paid presence on the social network.

“We look forward to testing Tumblr as a platform for creative showcase,” said Vik Kathuria, MediaCom/Group M’s managing director of digital investment, corporate strategy, “along with Yahoo’s personalization technology to help users discover relevant content.