Welcome To Friday Fives, Vol. 289
This week, we’re McLovin a new skincare campaign, breaking the bank for Super Bowl ads, getting Meta about AI, parting ways with the eco-unfriendly, and getting lucky with Year of the Dragon packaging.
We’re also loving that Cherries, our company passion project, was featured in an It’s Nice That article about creative agencies starting brick-and-mortar businesses. Plus, Jolene Delisle was interviewed for a Design by Women article about the birth of TWA. Read to learn how she brought the agency to life.
No, your eyes are not deceiving you. That was offbeat actor and sometimes musician Michael Cera toting bags of CeraVe around the streets of NYC. But despite what viral chitchat would have you believe, he is not the founder of the skincare brand. He’s just the new beauty ambassador. CeraVe took advantage of the likeness of names and created a campaign full of tongue-in-cheek seriousness and wholesome fun. Claiming Cera’s propriety of CeraVe’s skincare formula made for a perfect balance of confusion and curiosity among consumers which gave the brand a chance to clarify that, indeed, their formulas were created by actual dermatologists — not the actor of Superbad fame.
It’s the Name (and Price) of the Game
You paid what for a Super Bowl ad? It seems that year after year the price for ads during the big game grows larger, while the length gets smaller. Seven figures for 30 seconds? Sounds about right. Despite that number, and the decreasing amount of network TV watchers, most brands are finding their place among the live TV sector as a way to guarantee eyeballs stuck to the screens, and ultimately, onto their product. In fact, it’s a stiff competition to get a chance to spend $7 million on a Super Bowl ad. But with bigger and bolder commercials, plus beauty brands making an advertising comeback in the world of sports this year thanks to Swelce madness, they’re making it worth every single penny.
It’s time to get real about the un-real. As AI becomes more and more eerily realistic, the demand for transparency when it comes to posts on social media is skyrocketing, especially when related to political affairs. Meta is establishing some serious cyber boundaries on the usage of AI on Instagram, Threads, and Facebook. “Imagined with AI” is the phrase now being watermarked across all AI-made media on Meta platforms. But while some media may have been “imagined with AI,” not everyone discloses that information. The goal? To catch the man-made-content fakers in the act.
It’s not you, it’s the brand. According to a study by OnePoll, 55% of Americans said they would “break up” with a brand if it failed to be eco-friendly. The survey gave a glimpse into what’s becoming most important to consumers in 2024 when they look for products: sustainable business practices. Audiences are truly putting their money where their morals are, as the study also predicts more being spent on green products this year compared to last year. Products need to be emotionally worth investing in and ethically conscious for consumers. One thing is for sure: Dawn’s dish soap cleaning off baby duckies after an oil spill will never fail to make us weep.
There’s a lot to look forward to after February 10 since the Year of the Dragon predicts new transformations, challenges, and possibilities — one of those possibilities being limited edition packaging for the Lunar New Year. Some brands, like Penfolds Wine and Davidoff Cigars, went with a traditional red and gold design, reminiscent of “hongbao” or red gift envelopes. Other brands forged their own unique design path like Johnnie Walker’s blue phantasmic dragon packaging or Ray-Ban’s subdued Lunar NY eyeglasses. Sunkist’s vintage-esque Year of the Dragon carton is an especially fitting combo as oranges are a symbol of luck. From what we can see this Lunar New Year, limited-edition labels and Y2K babies are both getting a chance to shine.
