Morning Update: Jason Statham is every man for LG; April Fool’s Hamburger rap album; Buzzfeed’s news plan; Google drops mic
https://youtu.be/tOpsnNf9Wj0
Ad Age: Jason Statham Stars in LG’s G5 Ad
LG’s newest phone, the G5, becomes available today, and along with it, the South Korean company is launching a new brand push starting with an ad that stars Jason Statham.
LG has been running some product-specific online ads recently, and while the ads launching today promote the G5, the new campaign, created by Omnicom’s EnergyBBDO, focuses on making a larger brand platform for LG’s mobile unit.
The marketing includes a new tagline that plays off of LG’s well known “Life’s Good” slogan: “Life’s Good When You Play More.”
Ad Week: Hamburger Helper Dropped an Entire Rap Album for April Fools’, and It’s Shockingly Good
If you run down a list of brands that understand, appreciate and contribute to the hip-hop community, Hamburger Helper probably wouldn’t make the cut.
And that’s probably why the brand just dropped a surprisingly good rap album about food for April Fools’.
It’s a perfectly confusing stunt to pull. If you listen to the five tracks, which have names like “Feed the Streets” and “In Love With the Glove,” it’d be easy to forget that this comes from Hamburger Helper.
Digiday: Inside BuzzFeed’s mobile plans for breaking-news domination
BuzzFeed wants to be the leader in breaking news on mobile globally, and it’s hoping its newly upgraded international news app will get it to the top.
The digital media publisher extended its U.S.-based news app to include the U.K., Australia, and Canada this week. The app features BuzzFeed original stories, along with third-party aggregated content from around the world. Localized push notifications will notify users when big stories break, both domestically and globally. The news feed includes videos and features embedded Vines. Around 20 pieces of content will feature in the app each day.
Google has reversed one of its April Fools’ Day pranks after it caused a number Gmail users to unwittingly insert GIFs into business emails and other important communications.
The U.S. internet giant is usually celebrated for its creative April Fools gags — some of its others last week are funny — but the Big G’s attempt to inject humor into email via a ‘Mic Drop’ button that inserts a Minions GIF in Gmail messages backfired.
https://youtu.be/E-xfAy-LK4k
Ad Week: Mexico Surprises U.S. Workaholics With Versions of Themselves Who Actually Take a Holiday
The Lapiz agency’s “Doppelgänger Tourists” campaign shames workaholics Mike and Ann into taking vacations … by introducing them to their dopplegängers, who have been living it up in Mexico. Oh, yeah: The campaign is promoting vacations. In Mexico.
After establishing that both sets of Mikes and Anns find themselves attractive, the dopplegängers show the originals footage from their Mexico vacations, heavy on swimming and Mayan ruins, and effectively poke their FOMO glands with sharpened sticks.
Wired: Slack Raises $200 Million, Is Now A … Quadricorn?
A LOT OF people seem to think Slack is killing it as one of the best providers of productivity software out there—at least the kind of people who can afford to invest another $200 million in the company, at a brand new eye-popping valuation of $3.8 billion. It’s now almost a … quadricorn.
The windfall represents about 40 percent of the company’s total funding—$540 million. Slack raised its last round a year ago, raking in $160 million for a post-money valuation of $2.8 billion. This time around, the funding was led by Thrive Capital (a VC firm focused on media and internet investments), and included new investments from Accel, Social Capital, Spark Growth, and Comcast Ventures.
Mumbrella Asia: Dentsu Aegis to acquire Malaysian independent Merdeka LHS
Dentsu Aegis is to acquire one of Malaysia’s top independent creative agency brands Merdeka LHS, Mumbrella can reveal.
The agency formed by industry heavyweights Tony Savarimuthu, Huang Ean Hwa and Szu H. Lee just over three years ago is to become part of the Dentsu Aegis Network family that includes agency brands Dentsu, Dentsu Utama, Carat, iProspect and Isobar.
