Chrysler Unveils New Spots to Follow ‘Halftime in America’

A quartet of new 60-second spots from the Chrysler/Fiat group, all the work of Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, launching this weekend comprises the next installment of the automaker’s campaign that began famously during the Super Bowl with the two-minute “Halftime in America” commercial. Or, as Chrysler terms it, this is “the second half.”

The new spots, each aimed at a different company brand, are themed to the same “hope and encouragement” message delivered by Clint Eastwood in the campaign’s first incarnation and continue the spirit of the “Imported from Detroit” motto.

The spots will air on a number of network TV sporting events, including the NCAA men’s basketball semifinals Saturday and finals on Monday. They are also slated to run during the American Country Music Awards on Sunday on CBS, and on “Mad Men” on the AMC cable network.

Clips are scheduled to be on Chrysler’s YouTube channel starting today at 9 a.m. (www.adage.com)

Inside Nissan’s Epic Bollywood Adventure

Now this is how you sell a car.

Nissan India and AKQA launch a five-minute film starring Bollywood actor Ranbir Kapoor, 100 Nissan Micra vehicles and a live elephant in rollicking Bollywood style.

With plenty of color and music, the film tells the story of two star-crossed lovers and how the world of Nissan conspires to bring them together.

The co-stars in the film were selected through a massive social-media contest that asked fans to upload a video of them dancing. The top 100 contestants were selected through public voting, then whittled down to 20 by Kapoor and the creative team. (www.adage.com)

Mercedes Lights Up YouTube With LED-Wrapped Car

The high-profile entry into this week’s chart from Mercedes-Benz, called “Invisible,” is more about social responsibly and respecting the environment than about “driving pleasure,” which was Volkswagen’s pitch from the nineties.

The 90-second spot, created by the Jung von Matt agency in Hamburg, Germany, is a rather fascinating road trip through Deutschland aboard a Mercedes experimental compact called the F-Cell Hydrogen vehicle.

One side of the car is layered with sheets of LEDs that reportedly cost about $250,000 to make, and there’s a high-end Canon digital camera mounted on the other side. The camera captures images that are then “mirrored” in lights via the LEDs. It’s like a moving billboard…only more immediate. The images are somewhat grainy, especially when the car is in motion, but the instant-gratification factor for participating spectators is especially high.

The flag that the German brand is waving with this spot is the zero-emissions technology allowed by the fuel cell, which produces no toxic output, only water vapor after burning hydrogen as fuel. But hydrogen is exceptionally expensive to package as fuel, and the mass-marketing of such an advanced power source for automobiles is still at least three years away. But the ad, promoting a car “invisible to the environment,” makes it seem user-friendly, if only for 90 seconds. (www.adage.com)

Die Hard Reboots Iconic Battery Spot

In 1975, Sears created a now-famous TV commercial in which it parked a car atop a frozen Minnesota lake, left it there for the winter and then miraculously got the engine to start. The spot was for DieHard, and it helped to make it the No. 1 auto-battery brand in the U.S. Now, nearly 40 years later, that ad is back. (www.adweek.com)

Tied Together in Aisle 5: Country Acts and a Cause

But as consumers have increasingly migrated online to buy digital downloads and CDs, and chains like Tower Records and Borders have closed their stores, those opportunities have dwindled.

Now Big Machine Label Group, which owns three country labels in Nashville (Big Machine Records, the Valory Music Company and Republic Nashville), is about to embark on major in-store marketing effort, but with a twist. Musicians will be promoted in supermarkets, where the drumsticks are attached to chickens.

In a new campaign, called Outnumber Hunger, several of the labels’ popular country acts will be featured on General Mills’ products as part of a charitable effort to raise more than $2 million for Feeding America, a hunger-relief charity. Acts including Rascal Flatts, Martina McBride, the Band Perry and Reba McEntire will appear on dozens of products from General Mills, including those for brands like Cheerios, Lucky Charms, Bisquick, Green Giant and Betty Crocker. In all, the labels’ artists will appear on more than 60 million packages.

General Mills has long supported Feeding America, donating food valued at more than $200 million over the last decade.

In the new effort, which will continue through February 2013, consumers go to the Outnumber Hunger Web site and enter a numeric code found on packages. For every code entered, General Mills will donate 65 cents, which Feeding America says is enough to secure five meals for food banks. After entering the code, participants can choose a free song from a Big Machine artist to download. (www.nytimes.com)

Wal-Mart Reapportions $1 Billion To Keep Prices Low, New Ads Reflect Push

Wal-Mart plans to aggressively keep prices down and continue that effort as a centerpiece of its marketing efforts, some of which is tied to its 50th anniversary and heritage as a low-price retailer. En route, new Nielsen data will help its efforts to stay below competitors on price levels, a top executive said this week.

The company says it will reapportion $1 billion in its current fiscal year to keep the prices at low levels in the food and consumable businesses. It will then try to use the traffic that generates higher sales in the rest of the store.

After five years, Wal-Mart has begun working with Nielsen again, allowing the measurement company to merge its sales data into its databases.

But Nielsen data will also give Wal-Mart a sense of competitors’ item-by-item pricing in varying markets to ensure “we will have price leadership and price separation across our categories and across the United States … it’s the heritage of how we do business,” said Duncan Mac Naughton, chief merchandising and marketing officer for Wal-Mart in the U.S. (www.mediapost.com)

Comedian Jason Jones Endorses Edge Shave Gel

Edge shave gel is enlisting comedian Jason Jones as the new face of the “Edge Men” campaign.

Jones, best known as a correspondent on “The Daily Show,” will give away thousands of “micro-grants” to men in need of an Edge.

The program will introduce a group of everyman heroes who will give men the tools they need to get their edge in life, spearheaded by Jones as Edge “Fund Manager.” In partnership with the brand, Jones will dole out Edge Endowments via social media to arm men with whatever they need to achieve success.

Jones will identify people, via social media, who aren’t quite as well-endowed as he is, and will distribute cash “micro-grants” to get them ready to do whatever it is they want to do. (www.mediapost.com)

Dunkin’ Launches Multi-Platform Hispanic Campaign

Dunkin’ Donuts’ new, all-Spanish-language Hispanic campaign marks the first use of its long-time tagline in Spanish: “América se Mueve con Dunkin’ (America Moves With Dunkin’).”

The theme of the campaign — Qué estás tomando? (What are you drinkin’?) — parallels that of Dunkin’s multimillion-dollar general-market campaign, launched early last year.

In the general-market ads, “average Joes” are shown answering the question with: “I’m drinkin’ Dunkin.’”

The Hispanic campaign, from Accentmarketing, Dunkin’s Hispanic agency of record, uses a documentary style, featuring Hispanic Dunkin’coffee drinkers in their communities, where they were “discovered” and recruited to do the ads. (www.mediapost.com)