November is an important month for Activision— on the fifth, Call of Duty: Ghosts lands with video gamers. But it's also the day Eminem's MMLP2 (short for The Marshall Mathers LP 2) comes out, and now that release is tied to the Call of Duty franchise. Both releases are big swings for their respective publishers—Activision and Interscope—and since both appeal to a young male demographic, the companies decided to sync up parts of their campaigns to make Eminem's presence in Activision's marketing more than a traditional celebrity endorsement.

Call of Duty has a long history of using big names to help boost the franchise in the run-up to the latest iteration's street date; last year saw no less a movie star than Robert Downey, Jr. promoting Black Ops 2. But this year's campaign is a bit different, in that it makes strategic sense for two totally different media properties launching on the same day. As Activision CMO Tim Ellis puts it, "You don't want to feel the money changing hands."

"There's no doubt that Eminem and his team are benefiting Call of Duty, and there's no doubt that Call of Duty is benefiting Eminem," Ellis said. Gamers, he observed, are not a terribly forgiving bunch when it comes to marketing campaigns. "They would have shredded this partnership if it didn't feel organic and true," he said, but Eminem worked with the company in 2009 for Modern Warfare 2, and again the next year for Black Ops, so it's unsurprising that the rapper's song Survival was featured in an ad for the game last month. It's clearly a partnership that has worked in the past for the franchise, and now it's one that will make the hip-hop star a primary voice for the new game. There's plenty of crossover between Eminem fans and COD fans, and enough folks familiar with the one but not the other to make the partnership worthwhile.

The integration is beginning in earnest today. Activision is announcing that, if you pre-order Call of Duty: Ghosts through gaming retail juggernaut Gamestop, you'll get a download code for a discounted copy of MMLP2 with a bonus track on it. During the game itself, Ellis said, you'll hear music from the new album. (Activision wouldn't tell Adweek how the music would be used, just that it would be in there.) And there's more on the music side, too. "We are shooting a special video for the song we're working on with Call of Duty—Survival—and it's going to be unique content put together with Activision and their team," Interscope's Steve Berman said. Berman wouldn't say whether the COD-branded video would get airtime on the major music video channels—Activision has long-standing relationships at Viacom—but Ellis said that it would definitely be the only official music video for the track.

"We were always targeting for the album to be in the November timeframe, and when we were fortunate enough to get into a relationship with Activision around Call of Duty, the timing really synced up," Berman said. "Call of Duty is such a loud franchise in the marketplace." It's an important year for COD, too—the new game will be the first in the series on the new generation of gaming hardware (the PS4 and the XBox One).

Eminem's campaign for the new record has already grabbed attention, and not just with for its presence in Call of Duty. Interscope put 30 seconds' worth of the first single, Berzerk, in a spot during the VMAs. Beats Electronics, a company run by Dr. Dre and Interscope-Geffen-A&M Records chairman Jimmy Iovine, has incorporated plenty of its (and other Universal Music) artists into its ads, notably Nicki Minaj and Robin Thicke, and animated versions of its latest product are voiced by hip-hop artists including Eminem himself. There's an upcoming integration with ESPN, too.

For Activision, Eminem's (and Universal/Interscope's) presence in the music world is an invaluable tool for reaching both consumers and media that don't necessarily cover video games. "He's definitely helped us cross over into verticals in the music industry we'd never have reached without him," said Ellis. "Without Marshall [Mathers, aka Eminem], we would never have gotten into Spin, Pitchfork, The Source."

(Of course, forced synergies sometimes backfire. Eminem's peculiar appearance during ESPN's coverage of the Notre Dame-Michigan game Saturday may have left football fans wondering who was that slack-jawed yokel being interviewed by Brent Musburger and Kirk Herbstreit.)

Eminem, Ellis said, offered "shared interest, not borrowed interest" with a large fanbase. "We often have partners in most of our launches, and we're very careful in how we choose most of those partners," he said. "First day and first week is incredibly important to us in terms of our product launch." And Activision has usually been very successful by any measure with those first few days—last year, COD made $1 billion in 15 days.

At New York's Capitale, Dove's Grand Brand Genius Fernando Machado, Activision's Tim Ellis, Southern Comfort's Mark Bacon, Samsung's Todd Pendleton, Beats by Dre's Omar Johnson and the Warby Parker duo Neil Blumenthal and David Gilboa are among those explaining what it means to be a Brand Genius.

Some of the world’s largest brands are squaring off today in a high-stakes game of ... Monopoly. Well, kinda.

To promote its new, brand-centric game, Monopoly Empire, Hasbro is hosting a Facebook “Battle of the Brands” featuring several of the companies featured in the game. The goal is to see which brand can get 5,000 Likes on its #BattleoftheBrands Facebook post first. Participating are Carnival Cruise Lines, Transformers, Chevrolet, Fender Guitar, Nestlé, Beats by Dre, eBay, X Games, Nerf, Ducati, Electronic Arts, JetBlue, Coca-Cola and Yahoo.

As of this writing, Carnival had already blown past the 5,000-Like mark in a mere two hours, despite having just 2.2 million fans, a mere fraction of Coca-Cola’s 73.6 million. A few brands, namely Beats by Dre, JetBlue and Chevrolet, were past 2,000 Likes, while poor eBay and EA apparently forgot to participate altogether—or at least hadn’t posted anything two hours into the competition. Perhaps even sadder, Nestlé and Yahoo did participate but hadn't broken 200 Likes yet.

While it may not be a true test of brand potency, today's challenge sure is a telling reminder that there's a big difference between having a lot of fans and knowing how to put them to use. After the jump, check out a fun gallery of branded images Monopoly created to tease the contest.

Jimmy Fallon and the Roots join Cyrus for an a capella version of 'We Cant Stop.'

Like it or not, Hannah Montana is dead and gone. For better or worse, fans are now stuck with the new, rebellious Miley Cyrus—the one who’s shed the bear suit and brought twerking to the world. Cyrus’ skin-tight, butt-bouncing metamorphosis has scored more media buzz than the government shutdown, generating its heat in the form of controversy. “This is getting more attention more than anything else because she was the Hannah Montana,” said David Johnson, CEO of public relations strategy firm Strategic Vision. “You don't expect this from Disney stars.”

Generally not. But that hasn’t stopped the suddenly grown-up Cyrus from appearing virtually nude in Terry Richardson's blog, and then almost immediately releasing her controversial "Wrecking Ball" video (directed by Richardson), which has garnered more than 205 million views. Most recently, during a New York media blitz, Cyrus left Matt Lauer somewhat speechless with her frank comments about sex. And this all led up to the release of her new feature project, "Bangerz." (Gee, what could that mean?)

Shocked? You shouldn’t be. Not only is the new Cyrus the result of a carefully orchestrated strategy (“There's definitely a certain measure of calculation behind-the-scenes to ensure [Cyrus] stays top of mind,” ventures Desmond Marzette, creative strategist at Zambezi L.A.)—it’s a rebranding act we’ve seen many times before. Cyrus is only the latest teen icon to face the enormous gulf that separates them from adult stardom. And, as many before have learned, a proven way to make the leap is with the bad-boy/bad-girl makeover.

Take Justin Timberlake. He started as a Disney Mousketeer, then became a teen pop icon as lead singer of N'Sync. But Timberlake’s leap to being the actor/singer/songwriter he is today required him to scrap the boy-next-door purity in favor of shedding his shirt and showing off his new muscles and tattoos—which is pretty much exactly what that other Justin (Bieber, now 19) is now doing. A generation ago, Janet Jackson went from being a young, playful sweetheart to launching her 1986 hit "Control," whose lyrics included “now I’m all grown up.” Just in case audiences didn’t get the message, Herb Ritts shot Jackson showing plenty of skin and cleavage.

If there’s a difference in the route that Cyrus is taking, it seems to be that she’s leaving nothing to chance—going not just for a sexy remake, but pure shock value. “She's aiming to be this generation's Madonna," Johnson said. “Miley's doing outrageous stuff. Stuff that moms and dads are up-in-arms about—but Madonna did that, too.”

Of course, dressing up and playing whore is no guarantee of adult stardom, either. Back in the 1970s, bubblegum star David Cassidy tried to get an adult following by posing nude for Rolling Stone. Years later, pop-singer Tiffany showed up without her clothes in Playboy. Neither striptease managed to sustain those careers. But teen stars face a difficult choice once their 20s start to loom: If they don’t try to grow up, they’ll be stuck as a dated archetype. “If [a child] becomes famous and they don't understand who they were yet, the fame becomes the thing that defines them," said Robert Passikoff, president of Brand Keys, a loyalty and engagement site. At its core, the teen-star rebrand is a cold lesson in the realities of the media age: Adapt or die.

And for now, that’s what Cyrus is trying to do—and it’s a gamble, given how deeply she has buried her Hannah Montana image. No doubt, brands that might have courted the younger Cyrus won’t want to touch her now, but Marzette says that doesn’t mean product endorsements are off the table. Unlike Taylor Swift, who can still reach young girls because of her relatively clean-cut persona, Cyrus is now speaking exclusively to an older demographic. “If you’re going to use Miley now, you can't overtly talk to that same audience," said Marzette. "But if you're marketing a product for a young woman, then Miley's right there.” In fact, look closely at those recent videos, and you’ll see the new Pill wireless speaker from Beats by Dr. Dre. Will other brands follow? Marzette certainly doesn’t rule it out.

“She turns 21 in November. I wouldn't be surprised to see an alcoholic beverage approach her,” he said.
 

"Hear what you want" is the theme of this intense, nearly three-minute Beats by Dre spot starring Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Garnett, who's shown using the brand's wireless studio headphones to cancel out angry, often ugly catcalls from fans on game day. Haters viciously taunt him for being too old, at 37, to lead the team to a championship, and the racist epithet from a red-capped rowdy around the 55-second mark—he calls the power forward a "gorilla motherfucker"—is especially jarring. Aloe Blacc's uplifting, anthemic track "The Man" works well as a counterpoint, and the fact that Garnett and the Nets have stumbled badly out of the gate this season adds power and poignance. I'll be rooting for K.G. to tune out the static and make some noise the rest of the way.

UPDATE: R/GA did the creative on this, with Prettybird doing the production.

CREDITS
Client: Beats by Dre
Agency: R/GA
Production Company: Prettybird
Editorial: Rock Paper Scissors
Editor: Damion Clayton

This is the kind of timing that professional media planners dream of pulling off. On Sunday, the same day that Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman drew national attention for his post-game trash talk, Beats by Dre also released an ad in which Sherman is grilled by reporters for his "reputation as a thug."

As has since been pointed out by several commentators, most notably Deadspin founding editor Will Leitch, Sherman is likely one of the most intelligent and philanthropic young players in the NFL. But his 4.2 high school GPA, degree from Stanford and charity leadership are often overshadowed by his bombastic demeanor, such as on Sunday, when he called San Francisco 49er Michael Crabtree a "sorry receiver" and "mediocre."

Sherman's ad for Beats by Dre may not be as intense as the previous installment starring Kevin Garnett, but it does convey his frustration with the oversimplified sound bites that the sports media seem to want from him. And that same frustration is likely what boiled over Sunday night, when he decided to stop playing by the unwritten rules of post-game interviews. Or maybe he just felt like bragging. Coincidentally, Beats by Dre has also been airing a commercial starring Colin Kaepernick, whose 49ers were vanquished by Sherman's Seahawks on Sunday.

Knowing that he's only going to become more of a focus for public debate in the lead-up to the Super Bowl, Sherman seems to be saying, "If I'm going to get a reputation, I might as well own my reputation."

Check out the ad below, followed by a clip of Sherman's adrenaline-fueled interview with Erin Andrews on Sunday.

This week's matchup of the best commercials pits an uplifting Honda spot against comedy and real-life controversy, plus the Governator dons a disguise for a good cause and Dove's "Real Beauty" campaign seeks to redefine the selfie.

Which was the best? Vote below. And if your favorite isn't here, tell us in the comments.

UPDATE: Congrats to Subaru, this week's big winner!

Since his stellar defense helped put his team in the Super Bowl and his amped-up post-game interview put him at the center of a media storm, Seattle Seahawks defensive back Richard Sherman has been everywhere. And starring in this spot for Beats by Dre has only dialed up the hype. Brilliant? Premeditated?

Regardless, Sherman couldn't beat the Weiner.

Oscar Mayer Weiner, that is. Last week the hot dog icon saw its car-ad spoof take the top spot on the VideoWatch/VidIQ branded content ranker, generating more than 2 million views on YouTube. That just topped Beats by Dre's Sherman spot, proving the only thing that can cover hot dogs is mustard.

Check out the full ranking here:NOTE: Adweek’s VideoWatch Chart, powered by VidIQ, reveals the Top 10 Branded Web Videos on YouTube every week. The chart tracks more than just pure views, as VidIQ incorporates sharing data from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, among other data sources in an effort to measure true engagement. Every video is also ranked with VidIQ's proprietary Score which helps judge the likelihood of a video being promoted in YouTube Related Videos, Search and Recommended Videos.

Horizon Media has just inked a $100 million upfront deal—with a radio company?

Well, yes and no.

The media agency has just signed a multiyear, cross-platform pact with Clear Channel, best known for its 840 radio stations in 150 markets. One might wonder, in this era of intense competition from the likes or Pandora, Spotify and now Beats by Dre, if anybody needs to lock up radio GRPs ahead of time?

Well in this case, the deal is as much about Clear Channel’s artist relationships, its growing digital business and its ability to crank out research on specific markets, all of which enticed Horizon to make such a commitment. As part of the unique pact, Horizon gets first look at specific Clear Channel events, and will also develop special events for its clients tapping into the full range of talent Clear Channel has to offer. Think customized shows at Clear Channel’s iHeartRadio Theaters in New York and Los Angeles, as well as specific artist-led marketing programs.

A big part of the deal will be a psychographic targeting system developed between the two partners, which will meld Clear Channel’s consumer research with Horizon’s custom tools and client data.

Horizon president and CEO Bill Koenigsberg said that his agency agreed to the commitment without any specific client signoffs—at least none yet.

“Based on our volume as an agency in general, we feel comfortable we can meet this,” said Koenigsberg. “But this offers unique groundbreaking ownership positions for clients. These programs are not the kind of things that any brand can slap their name on. We feel they’re going to be innovative. We’re going to have clients clamoring.”

If clients are clamoring, it will be because of the rich array of offerings included in the deal, coupled with Clear Channel’s promise to help Horizon prove the agreement’s ROI. Per Koenigsberg, besides events, research and radio, the partnership includes a heavy dose of out of home, broadcast, mobile and digital. “We don’t think of them as a radio company anymore,” he added.

That’s of course the message that Clear Channel CEO Bob Pittman has been pounding ever since he assumed the role. In other words, stop calling Clear Channel a radio company. “We do have this massive reach vehicle [in radio],” he said. “But the truth is, we have a limited supply of the most valuable and limited stuff. Think of a local radio event in Jackson, Mississippi, or an exclusive event with Justin Timberlake and Target."

“This kind of thing is not really done in radio and outdoor," Pittman added. "It’s done in TV and some in digital. And you can do this kind of deal with everybody. But this is probably a sign of things to come.”

Fans of first kisses may want to check out Lacoste’s Big Leap ad. The 30-second spot likens that heartstopping moment to the thrill of jumping off a building.

Taco Bell’s brilliant Ronald McDonald breakfast ad still remains extremely popular. While it’s not the first chain to try and take on the golden arches, it does have the distinction of actually getting a clever response back from the fast food empire.

If you missed SXSW or simply want to revisit this year’s festival, check out the Doritos #BoldStage video for a recap of highlights from the performances.

Take a peek at the top 10 videos from brands:

NOTE: Adweek’s VideoWatch Chart, powered by VidIQ, reveals the Top 10 Branded Web Videos on YouTube every week. The chart tracks more than just pure views, as VidIQ incorporates sharing data from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, among other data sources in an effort to measure true engagement. Every video is also ranked with VidIQ’s proprietary Score which helps judge the likelihood of a video being promoted in YouTube Related Videos, Search and Recommended Videos.

IDEA: People listen to music before playing sports to find rhythm, focus, inspiration. But elite athletes do so for more complicated reasons—not just to connect to positive influences, but to escape negative ones.

"As much as it's about their favorite songs, it's also about the noise they block out—from rival fans, other players, from the media," said Beats by Dre evp-marketing Omar Johnson.

With that in mind, Beats by Dre has advertised its premium pair of noise-cancelling headphones, Beats Studio Wireless, in three darkly compelling ads starring U.S. athletes Kevin Garnett, Colin Kaepernick and Richard Sherman—who escape external pressures by just slipping on the headphones, entering a world of stylized serenity.

Now, the fourth spot heads to Spain and an even more intense sports culture: the El Clásico rivalry between F.C. Barcelona and Real Madrid. The ad, starring Barcelona's Cesc Fàbregas, is a homecoming of sorts for the campaign (the original idea came from European soccer) and in some ways its riskiest spot yet.

"You see a lot of brands with an real insight, but they're afraid of putting it out there," said Johnson. "We're not afraid of that risk, if the message is authentic."

COPYWRITING: Against an overhead view of Madrid at dusk, a Spanish radio voice, subtitled in English, talks of "the match that will decide Spanish glory." Suddenly we're at street level, seeing Madrid fans prowl the street.

Fàbregas leaves his hotel and boards a bus, under police escort, watching intently as the crowds swell, their chants grow louder, and the tension seems poised to become violent. Indeed, one fan throws a red flare at the bus. But Fàbregas calmly slips on his Beats, as Aloe Blacc's "The Man" starts to play.

The spot shifts to slow motion, and the tension gives way to a heroic calm that carries the player all the way to the stadium, through a crowded tunnel and into a quiet locker room. The tagline, "Hear what you want" (a line Johnson said came directly from an athlete), appears on screen, followed by a product shot.

The ad's feeling of menace is real: Athletes often do feel under threat. "The most intense stories are the ones where it gets really close, where it almost feels like physical danger," Johnson said.

ART DIRECTION/FILMING: Director Max Malkin constructs a darkly chaotic vision. The whole campaign has been filmed with anamorphic lenses (which the brand can finally afford.) "It needed to be shot cinematically to bring you into the emotion of the athletes," said Johnson.

Malkin told Fàbregas to just be himself, Johnson recalled, telling him, "Think about the rivalry, think about those fans, think about the venom they spit at you."

TALENT: Garnett, Kaepernick, Sherman and Fàbregas were all chosen for their key roles in a momentous rivalry. Fàbregas grew up near Barcelona, and thus was perfect. "He has experienced El Clásico not only as a player but as a fan," Johnson explained.

SOUND: Johnson and Beats co-founder Jimmy Iovine usually consider five or six tracks for any spot. This time, there was no debate. Aloe Blacc's "The Man," used on all four ads, "was the first and only song we ever played with the picture," said Johnson. "The ads go to a dramatic place, and that song brings them back to the light."

MEDIA: The Fàbregas ad broke March 23 to coincide with the latest El Clásico match. Barcelona's president tried to get it banned, fearing it sent the wrong message about hooliganism, leading Beats to reply that the events in the ad are "purely fictional."

THE SPOT:

PREVIOUS SPOTS IN THE SERIES:

CREDITS
Client: Beats by Dre
Evp of Marketing: Omar Johnson
Spot: "Beats by Dre x Cesc Fabregas: Hear What You Want"
Agency: R/GA, London and Los Angeles
Executive Creative Director: Rodrigo Sobral, R/GA London
Head of Film Production: Kat Friis, R/GA LA
Senior Producer: Diego de la Maza, R/GA LA
Associate Creative Director: Dan Maxwell, R/GA LA
Associate Creative Director: Stuart Parkinson, R/GA LA
Jr. Copywriter: Tyree Harris, R/GA LA
Jr. Art Director: James Beke, R/GA LA
Production Company: Prettybird
Director: Max Malkin

With Apple reportedly buying his music brand, Dr. Dre is ready for the billionaire title, or as R&B singer Tyrese Gibson said in a video posted online, "The Forbes list just changed in a big way." The video from last night of the rap producer in a celebratory mood suggests that the West Coast record mogul believes a $3.2 billion sale of Beats Electronics to Apple is imminent.

The video shows Gibson playing hype man for Dr. Dre, who says he's about to be "the first billionaire in hip-hop."

The rapper, who helped launch the careers of Eminem and 50 Cent, founded Beats Electronics, which makes high-price headsets. Beats would be Apple's biggest purchase ever, and a number of close Apple watchers are struggling to see the point.

Apple would bring a visionary music executive, Jimmy Iovine, who owns a large stake in Beats, into its ranks to help respark iTunes. But hiring-based acquisition is hard to justify at that billion dollar price tag, Apple observers say.

In fact, Wall Street hopes this deal scratches like a bad record. Here are the concerns:

1. Beats headset sales are about $1 billion a year, according to a recent International Federation of the Phonographic Industry report, which would be a small boost to Apple's $180 billion business.
2. Beats streaming service, a monthly subscription model for all-you-can-listen music, may not transfer industry licensing agreements in a sale. It's unclear whether the music rights, attained by Beats, could be utilized by Apple.
3. Apple, which upended the music industry with iTunes in 2003, has been slow to reinvent its music offering while the rest of the music world has moved toward subscription and free streaming models. "Apple needs to get in the game, but do they need to spend $3 billion to buy Beats?" analyst Colin Gillis of BGC Partners said.
4. If Apple is going to pay big bucks, why not buy Spotify? In fact, that streaming-subscription company is based in Stockholm, Sweden, which means Apple could use its foreign cash that wouldn't be taxed by Uncle Sam thanks to loopholes.
5. Apple has never run a separate brand. If it buys Beats Music service, Gillis asks, "Will Apple do the right thing?" Will the subscriptions be available on Android or Windows phones? "That would be an interesting change of culture," he said. Apple has reportedly considered expanding iTunes to rival platforms.
6. Apple has other pressing needs and could buy any company, some on the wish list for investors: Yelp, the payments company Square, Twitter, or even Yahoo, analyst Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray said.
7. The perception of Apple is that its most creative days are behind it, and buying innovation has never been part of the strategy. A Beats acquisition plays into the narrative that Apple is no longer capable of homegrown hits like iPods, iPhones and iPads.

Meanwhile, check out the aforementioned video.

Apple has confirmed to the The New York Times that it will purchase Beats Electronics for $3 billion. 

Rumors had begun to swirl about an acquisition in early May when the Financial Times reported the two empires were in talks to align forces. The official deal will be broken down into a $2.6 billion cash payment and $400 million of the tech company's stock.

Before the deal was formally announced, analysts balked at the price tag, saying that Apple had better options when it came to acquiring existing streaming services—or it could just build its own service. That said, there are upsides that could be gleaned from potential applications in the wearable tech industry, considering that Beats premium headphones have become a youth fashion staple. However, many said it still wasn't worth the hefty cost. 

According to the Times, what piqued the Cupertino, Calif.-based company's interest the most was the music expansion opportunities that Beats Music could offer. While Apple will continue its iTunes store and streaming radio service, it will add the Beats streaming music service and its premium headphones.

Gian LaVecchia, North American managing partner of digital content marketing at media agency MEC, explained that buying Beats Electronics jump-starts Apple's foray into streaming music services, a growing industry. It's also a sign that iTunes Radio hasn't exactly caught on with the masses, he added. "I do see it as a fairly aggressive move to outpace the competition, like Spotify," he said. 

In addition, experts cited the addition of Beats executives Jimmy Iovine, who co-founded Interscope Records, and famed rap producer Dr. Dre as the biggest bonuses of the deal. Both men will report to Apple's svp of Internet software and services Eddy Cue. 

Iovine and Dre bring the know-how and understanding on how to market music to an audience that demands cool, said Jon Keidan, co-founder of digital men's publication InsideHook and a former music manager. Iovine is "the most competent music insider you can get," Keidan added. 

The streaming music space is full of complicated deals with musicians and labels that demand payment for their services. So, having someone like Iovine who knows the ins and outs of the industry is key, said Ryan Ford, evp and chief creative officer at the Cashmere Agency and former executive editor of The Source magazine.

Ford also noted that while Apple has had success with iTunes, it's primarily a tech company. Adding Iovine and Dre to the roster gives them legitimacy in the music space, as both titans have been able to find success from both the creative and publishing sides. With younger generations moving to streaming music as their main source instead of buying purchased tracks that clog up space on devices, Apple can now get on track with younger generations.

"That's something you can't really buy into, how to really impact these young people in a really authentic way. Apple has done that for 10-plus years, but this is about the next 10 years," Ford said. 

This isn't the first time Apple has acquired a music service. In late 2009, the company bought online music store Lala for about $17 million. The online portal let users share customized digital playlists that played streaming music.

LaVecchia said with all positives combined, the Beats deal could be considered a great deal as it "allows Apple to buy a lifestyle brand."

"To be totally honest it's probably a bargain if the Beats platform evolves past what it is today," he said.

Good lord, Beats by Dre is getting great at sports commercials.

We wrote at length last month about how the music company and ad agency R/GA have teamed up to make some of the year's best sports ads—with Kevin Garnett, Colin Kaepernick, Richard Sherman and Cesc Fabregas. But nothing could prepare us for this five-minute World Cup extravaganza. It's about pregame rituals, yes, but Beats is proving to be surprisingly adept at all aspects of the sports ad game—which at times like these is supposed to be the purview of Nike and Adidas.

The top star in "The Game Before the Game," fittingly for this World Cup, is Brazil's Neymar Jr. His pregame ritual involves talking to his father, whose pep talks are so inspiring, you'd think an agency copywriter wrote them (well, yeah). Among the other stars featured here: Spain's Fabregas, who kisses the ring his girlfriend gave him exactly four times; Uruguay's Luis Suarez, who kisses the tattoo on his wrist of his son and daughter's names; and Mexico's Javier "Chicharito" Hernandez, who prays on his knees as his father taught him. (Elsewhere you'll see Bacaray Sagna, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Blaise Matudi, Daniel Sturridge, Jozy Altidore, Mario Gotze and Robin Van Persie.)

There are also many, many cameos by nonsoccer players—everyone from LeBron James to Lil Wayne to Nicki Minaj to Serena Williams—which lends a very Nike-ish vibe. The latter's grand World Cup spot this year sneaks in Kobe Bryant, Jon Jones, Anderson Silva, Irina Shayk and even the Incredible Hulk.



Being a music company, Beats can also get away with making its ad basically a giant music video. The stars just slip their headphones on, and away we go. (Indeed, the director here, Nabil Elderkin, is known for his music videos.) Jimmy Iovine is known to handpick the tracks for the Beats ads, and here we get the thematically apt and swagger-filled "Jungle" by Jamie N Commons & The X Ambassadors.

The concept precludes in-game footage, but you don't really miss it. It could do with a dose of humor, maybe. But throw in some risqué moments (girl on top at 3:02!) and some globe-trotting glimpses of obsessive fan antics (love the British woman's 1966 tattoo), and you have an impressive smorgasbord of hype, hysteria and hero worship.

Back in 2010, Nike claimed to be writing the future. But who knew the future would include such a determined usurper as Beats?

Credits below, along with some great movie-style posters from the campaign.

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CREDITS
Client: Beats Electronics
Agency: R/GA
Production Company: The Sword Fight
Director: Nabil Elderkin
Starring: Neymar Da Silva Santos, Jr.
Featuring: Bacaray Sagna, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Blaise Matudi, Cesc Fabrigas, Daniel Sturridge, Chicharito, Jozy Altidore, Luis Suarez, Mario Gotze, Robin Van Persie
Special Appearances: Lebron James, Lil Wayne, Nicki Minaj, Rafaella Beckran, Rio Ferdinand, Serena Williams, Sydney Leroux, Stuart Scott, Thierry Henry, Neymar Da Silva Sr.
Original Music: "Jungle" by Jamie N Commons & The X Ambassadors
Editing: Rock Paper Scissors
Creative Director: Angus Wall
Lead Editor: Damion Clayton
Editor: Austyn Daines
Assistant Editors: Eric Alexander-Hughes, Ryan Seegers
Executive Producer: Carol Lynn Weaver
Producer: Lauren Wilson

If you haven't yet contracted a case of World Cup fever yet, you will by the time you finish watching this week's best ads.

Neymar Jr. and a host of other stars immerse themselves in pre-game rituals for Beats by Dre; a certain famous group of Chilean miners talk about beating the odds in a spot for Banco de Chile; and a series of soccer stunts for McDonald's are so amazing that viewers questioned whether they're really CGI.

Also this week, we've got a follow-up to that Mother's Day #worldstoughestjob viral video, but this time honoring dads; and Laphroaig embraces the negative with hilarious results by welcoming all opinions on the taste of its scotch. 

Take a look at the picks below, and help us decide which commercial was the best this week. And if your favorite isn't here, tell us in the comments.

Since the moon landing 45 years ago, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a fairly stellar track record for creating buzz from outer space through broadcast channels. Since its astronauts first tweeted from the International Space Station in 2010, it's also enjoyed moments of success with digital media.

Add Instagram to its celestial triumphs, while building an audience of 1.3 million followers on the photo-sharing mobile app. And thanks to World Cup-inspired work, the space exploration agency is making its first appearance in the Adweek/Shareablee Top 10 Brands Using Instagram Video Weekly Chart.

Coming in at No. 8, NASA released a 15-second video of American and German cosmonauts having a little fútbol fun 230 miles above Earth while taking a break from their collaborative research. Of course, the United States and Germany are in the same FIFA World Cup group, so Instagram legions quickly showed a ton of love. (The U.S. and Germany, both currently 1-0 in the Cup, go head-to-head on June 26.)

Each side's national pride—combined with the biggest sporting event on the planet—made for a social media match made in heaven. Kudos to NASA's marketing team for the timeliness.

Meanwhile, sport marketers continue to do extremely well on our Instagram rankings. But now that the National Basketball Association has wrapped up its season, it will be intriguing to see whether the pro league's social staffers can continue to keep it atop our weekly chart.

Check out NASA and the NBA's work below, as well as the full rankings with our multimedia infographic, which lets viewers watch last week’s top Instagram videos while seeing what kind of organic reach the brands created.

With the World Cup in full swing, fans can't get enough of soccer-themed content.

Nike'sThe Last Game ad—which features animated versions of Spain's Cristiano Ronaldo, Brazil's Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior and England's Wayne Rooney—has scored an impressive more than 50.5 million views on YouTube since it was uploaded on the global Nike Football channel June 9. But, the ad's viral nature is so pervasive that it also collected another almost 5 million views on the Nike Soccer channel, which boasts the Americanized name for the sport.

In fact, eight out of the top 10 videos on this week's branded chart all embrace World Cup fever. Notable exceptions include Oreo's Transformers 4 campaign and Beats by Dre's ad featuring Ed Sheeran, coming in at eight and tenth place respectively.

Check what's leading the branded video chart this week:

NOTE: Adweek's VideoWatch Chart, powered by VidIQ, reveals the Top 10 Branded Web Videos on YouTube every week. The chart tracks more than just pure views, as VidIQ incorporates sharing data from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, among other data sources, in an effort to measure true engagement. Every video is also ranked with VidIQ’s proprietary Score, which helps judge the likelihood of a video being promoted in YouTube Related Videos, Search and Recommended Videos.
 

If your sports business friends don't know that the typical athletics-focused consumer seems to love Instagram video, do them a favor and tell them. United States Soccer is the latest league to take advantage of that digital marketing reality, placing third on the Adweek/Shareable weekly chart of the top 10 brands using the social-video platform.

Mimicking a slideshow effort by the National Basketball Association a few weeks ago, U.S. Soccer employed numerous "quick pics" of the USMNT's 2-1 win over Ghana on June 18 for its video, garnering 27,000 likes. Coming in near the top is fairly impressive for U.S. Soccer, as it has only 375,000 followers—or 2 million less than the NBA.

The NBA, once again, tops the chart—this time with a video following the San Antonio Spurs' championship victory over LeBron James' Miami Heat. It will be intriguing to see whether the NBA's social staffers can continue to keep the league atop our weekly chart now that basketball season is finally in the rearview miror.

Meanwhile, NatGeo, which has consistently made our 10-week-old Instagram video chart, also employed a soccer-themed clip—as well as a couple of fútbol-loving youngsters—to rank No. 2 this week.

Check out U.S. Soccer, the NBA and NatGeo's work below, as well as the full rankings with our multimedia infographic, which lets viewers watch last week’s top Instagram videos while seeing what kind of organic reach the brands created.

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The slide was always meant to be provocative, but it wasn't originally intended to be quite so vulgar.

"When I first saw it, it had 'F*** Briefs,' " recalled Nick Law, the global creative chief at R/GA. "And I said, 'Just spell it out.' "

The result was a slide that may have sparked more conversation among Cannes Lions attendees than any other, which is especially impressive considering that, beyond the R/GA logo, it had only two words.

Part of a presentation by R/GA London managing director James Temple and Beats by Dre marketing evp Omar Johnson, the slide was meant to be a rallying cry for agencies and clients to collaborate closely and constantly, rather than relying on the longstanding process of creating strategic marketing briefs.

Temple and Johnson described their teams' relationship as one so interwoven on a daily basis that the idea of creating a strategic brief in advance of a campaign seems archaic and pointlessly bureaucratic—a lingering relic of a bygone era.

Nick Law

"The reaction I expected," said Law, who designed the presentation, "was a lot of planners getting angry."

That's largely what came to pass. For days after the presentation at last week's Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, everyone from strategy chiefs to social media managers to brand architects debated the slide and its larger message that strategic briefs have outlived their usefulness.

"When you had smaller teams, and before client organizations became so complicated, then a brief would be a significant moment in that process," Law told Adweek. "But the process wasn't as engorged as it's become, so it didn't represent all that numbing consensus that it does now."

In the days following R/GA's presentation with Beats, we tracked down several of the industry leaders at Cannes and asked what they thought of the merit and meaning behind "Fuck Briefs." Here are their responses:

Andrew Robertson, CEO, BBDO Worldwide:

Andrew Robertson  

"Precisely because you want to be able to move in real time, you have to have had a really crisp, well-thought-through, well-articulated strategy. If everything just becomes an impulse, instead of creating a stronger wall, you're just going to end up with a pile of rubble.

"You don't restart every time you start another piece of work, because you know what you're working with. You take Snickers—'You're not you when you're hungry' is so precisely defined, we could, right now, write a Snickers ad set at this table in this location, we could write a tweet, etc., because the idea is so crisply defined.

"When you've got that, then you don't have to keep starting over. Without that, you run the risk of just adding to noise."

José Mollá, founder and chief creative officer, La Comunidad:

José Mollá

"There are two kinds of briefs: the brief that inspires you, and the brief that is used in the corporate world as a safety net so you can say, 'Hey, it's in the brief.'

"I think people forget about the meaning of the word 'brief.' It's supposed to go to the essence of something, of the problem. And that's inspiring because it simplifies it. But that's not the case all the time. It's loaded with stuff.

"Sometimes you spend a month to get to the right brief and then you have 10 days left to come up with ideas, and you're like, 'Seriously?'"

Daz McColl, global chief brand strategy officer, SapientNitro:

Daz McColl

"I just thought they missed the point. If that's an issue for them, then they don't get it, because it should never be about the brief. Even though I'm the guy who helps frame it and make sure everyone does a brief, it's never about the brief. It's actually about the briefing. It's about the conversation.

"The way [R/GA and Beats] used it was to say, 'Hey, we don't have these things because they get in our way.' Whereas I would say, 'We have these things because they're a small tool, but it's the conversation that's most important.'

"To me, a brief should inspire, and it should actually speed the process up because a group of people have actually had meaningful discussions about how we're going to focus our efforts rather than being random."

Matt Jarvis, chief strategy officer, 72andSunny:

Matt Jarvis  

"You can't use speed as an excuse to not be strategic. That's letting yourself off the hook way too easily. You just have to be strategic faster.

"You have to be comfortable with the fact you can make a damn good decision very quickly with 80 percent of the data, or you can wait forever for 100 percent of the data. What you give up in getting that complete knowledge you lose in the fact that that complete knowledge might not be relevant anymore.

"At 72andSunny, our strategic function operates in real time. We have ongoing tracking of all our brands, all the analytics, everything that's going on. So no one ever has to hit pause and say, 'We need a data analysis.' We believe strongly in briefs. We just believe in doing them a lot faster."

Photos of Nick Law, Andrew Robertson and Matt Jarvis by Alfred Maskeroni. Presentation photo courtesy of Engin Gedick. 

Really, you wonder if the Parents Television Council is secretly letting MTV write its press releases. Nicki Minaj's butt-heavy video for her new single Anaconda (why, yes, it does sample Sir Mix-A-Lot) dropped today, and the hip-hop artist's outfits and dance moves already have the PTC outraged about the VMAs, despite the fact that the broadcast is several days away.

"Given the explicit video," said a statement from the group, which included a helpful link to a site hosting the video, "the Parents Television Council said that if her performance at the VMAs is anything like her new video, then the show must be rated TV-MA."

The VMAs will probably be rated TV-14, as usual. MTV had no comment.

The rating of the VMAs is a particular bee in the PTC's collective bonnet this year. Earlier this week Tim Winter issued a statement demanding that MTV "commit publicly" to a pledge authored by the PTC saying it wouldn't show "explicit sexual content," apparently as defined in relationship to Miley Cyrus's much-discussed twerking performance last year, in addition to agreeing not to violate its own standards, as the PTC claims it did in '13.

So why is the PTC getting bent out of shape over this? Well, it could be because the organization has logged something of a precipitous decline in donations over the last few years. The most recent form 990 available has the organization bringing in $2.7 million for 2012, with a little more than $2.5 million coming from donations. As recently as 2008, the organization was seeing about $4 million in donations, and the thing that keeps watchdog groups funded is presence in the public eye.

Here's our prediction: If you watch the Anaconda video (see below, or really, just look at Tumblr any time in the next two weeks for GIFs of the jiggliest parts), you will notice the presence of a Beats Pill, one of the many endorsements Minaj has logged over a barely five-year career bursting with sponsors, legitimate and otherwise, lining up to be associated with her music and her persona. Minaj, like many of the artists at the VMAs, is on a Universal Music label (three Universal Music labels, in fact). Jimmy Iovine, co-founder and chairman of the big kahuna of Universal labels, Interscope, just sold Beats by Dre to Apple earlier this year, and more or less every Universal artist appearing at the VMAs last year got teased by computer-generated Beats Pills being, well, pills about whatever it was they were doing on stage during the awards. 

So we suspect that not only are you probably going to see Minaj perform a rough approximation of her sexy video, you're probably going to see a Beats integration during the A pod when the network cuts to commercial because if the VMAs are about one thing, it's commercial synergy. Minaj's album drops in Q4, and that is also when Apple expects the Beats deal to close.

It's too early to say what exactly Apple will do with the Beats purchase, but their headphones sure do suck and it's hard for a brand to shake that association. Beats is likely to help with that, and Minaj is likely to boost the Beats brand yet further, especially after everyone gets an eyeful on Sunday. Sorry, PTC, the free market isn't on your side on this one.

And now, butts.