Things that caught my eye this month
Creative inspiration for the advertising professional | November 2020
This holiday brand film from Burberry
This brain-melting Spotify-meets-Netflix-meets-Silicon-Valley running-tracker thingy from BBH that blurs all sorts of lines
These holiday-office-party sculptures for Miller Lite
This paper-craft animation ode to classic video games
This not-all-all dystopian story about a girl paying her way through college by naming Chinese babies 🤦🏻♂️
This alt take on the new G-Suite icons (which I have trouble distinguishing, too)
This author who hid a short story in signed copies of his book
This interview with animator and director Anna Matzaris
This reminder that advertising isn’t really competing against advertising
These drones that made the world’s largest billboard
This new campaign that skewers and celebrates commercial “best practices” as the same time
This boneheaded move of firing your viral TikTok star
That monolith in Utah that everybody’s talking about has disappeared (but at least Southwest got a good tweet out of it and this artist got a pretty savage editorial cartoon)
This (hopeful?) take that brands are increasingly seeking indie shops
The annual John Lewis Christmas spot features a variety of different animation styles (including Anna Mantzaris, whose interview appears above)
This design-a-Herman-Miller-chair-out-of-a-champagne-cork contest
This Beats by Dre brand film asks, “you love Black culture, but do you love me?” plus these follow up spots that extend the campaign
This look at how McDonalds is leaning into “purpose”
These “Covid Surge Black Friday Deals” gifs
This shape-shifting dance film
This new (eyebrow pun FTW!) Dan Levy campaign for Verizon
These goofy social posts for Nike
This Hasselhoff infomercial
This late-night-show TikTok inspired Thanksgiving musical (for you musical theater nerds out there)
This Louis Vuittton outdoor in NYC
This Pixar-esque campaign for overweight pets
These gorgeous Thanksgiving dishes
This doppeldrinker cardboard cutout idea for Jose Cuervo
This new holiday ad with Tierra Whack from Apple
This interview with embroidery artist Danielle Clough
This Allbirds demo that reminds us that product demos can still be great
This designer who spent two hours making iPhone icons and made himself $100K in six days
This reminder from an ad legend that broadcast advertising is still incredibly important to what our industry is supposed to deliver for our clients
This holiday ad from Xfnity featuring Steve Carell as Santa
This thread (read the replies) of movie theater moments where the audience went nuts
This New Yorker cover
This new campaign for Covered California from my DC colleagues
This look at why age-gender demos survive when much of the marketing world wants to move on
This new site from Oreo that lets you customize your cookie
This gibberish song from the 1970s that I’d never heard before but I love the story and the video (Update: my friend Scott actually put it on a spot a few years ago!)
Previous things that caught my eye: Early 2019 | Late 2019 | Early 2020| June 2020 | July 2020 | August 2020 | September 2020 | October 2020
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Kovacevich is a creative director in San Francisco. He publishes a weekly newsletter with bits of creative inspiration, just like the stuff above. You can see the newsletter here and subscribe if you’d like.
