Boots at hand

Boots UK finds a surreal way to tell its customers that they’re never too far from medical advice.

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Wishes are medicine

Make-A-Wish Canada has a new campaign that features self-recorded videos by sick kids, showing off their prescriptions with innocent charm.  But what really elevates those videos is what is written on the prescriptions.  To quote the people behind the campaign, “wishes are not just a nice-to-have; they’re an essential part of treatment”.

Links to videos:

   -Alice
   -Millie
   -Kian

Brad Pitt gets ‘directed’ to drink coffee

From Italy: espresso machine brand De’Longhi has released ‘Chapter 3’ of its intriguing commercials starring Brad Pitt and directed by Oscar-nominated/ winning directors.  This one’s directed by Taika Waititi. This might explain why, unlike ‘Chapter 1’ (dir: Damien Chazelle) and ‘Chapter 2’ (dir: Bennett Miller), it’s mildly amusing (in a good way). It’s certainly less of a head-scratcher.

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Not made by Gordon Ramsay

Burger King has roped in the celebrity chef to endorse its new burger but with a sly twist—he has to admit that he had no hand in creating the burger, and that he wishes that he had.

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Loopy layoff insights

From Denmark: A&Til takes an unexpectedly amusing approach to promoting unemployment insurance.

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Take Your Sweet Time

The urge to do financial transactions fast, makes us more vulnerable to scammers.  To counter this, Bank of New Zealand is encouraging customers to slow down via a marvellously visualised new spot.

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Optionally Better?

A new spot for CBOE Global—the company behind the Chicago Board Options Exchange—indulges in what some would consider to be duplicity.

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Kung Fries

From Taiwan: McDonald’s has a new campaign that promotes kung-fu techniques to defend one’s packet of fries.  At its heart is a spectacularly choreographed 3 minute action short that lists five moves that the protagonist uses to protect her fries. Instructional videos for the moves have been posted on social media, and every McDonald’s Taiwan meal is being served with a tutorial printed on the tray mats. Customers who share their own tales of defending their fries stand a chance to win a fry made of real gold.

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When plants play on a band

A Manchester band, Bionic and the Wired, is in the news for a performance that featured a mushroom and two plants, each equipped with bionic arms, playing together. 

Getting plants to individually play musical instruments has been at the heart of their efforts for some time now.  In their words, “their art explores the intelligence and responsiveness of the natural world by transforming bio-electrical signals into artistic expressions”.  The latest staging was, as they put it, “the largest ensemble of fungi and flora ever to perform live” using their bionic technology.

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RIP Graham Greene

To quote from one tribute:

He used his body and voice to inhabit the characters and roles he was playing, almost disappearing within them to create someone (or something) wholly original and unseen before. Yet that classic Greene presence remained, with long hair cascading past his shoulders, and a grin so infatuating that it was hard to look away from.

Here’s some of what the man himself had to say about his early impressions of being an actor (after having worked as an audio technician):

I changed into the costume, and they put me in the shade in a nice chair. They brought me food and water. Yeah, not bad. Then somebody came and got me and walked me over to an X on the ground, and I stood there and said what they told me to say. Then they took me back to the chair in the shade and gave me more food, more water. And I thought, geez, I'm living the life of a dog. This is great. I don't have to carry anybody's amplifiers anymore. I don't have to do lights. I don't have to drive halfway across the country for nothing.

With Mel Gibson in Maverick (1994)

Trunk Trucker

The latest in Virgin Media’s ads of animals on the move is probably the most compelling in the series.

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