Playful Anti-Stressors, Lush Loubi Live, and a Righteous Rage Redux from Samuel L. Jackson

Samuel L. Jackson makes everything better. We’ve cherished his capacity to own the last word on any topic since Pulp Fiction, where his character quits the gangster life to be “like Cain in Kung Fu, walking place to place” so he can “meet people and get in adventures.” We believe this quote also single-handedly inspired the Pokémon trainer lifestyle. Anyway, Warburtons Toastie Loaf hired Jackson to impersonate their chairman and appear in full hell-hath-no-fury mode in “Mad About the Bread,” where he defends the product’s honor to some rando on the internet.

We hate people who are wrong on the internet. So does Sam LJ, and apparently so does Warburtons, which clearly struggles to admit that out loud on its own for some reason. Ad by Joyful & Triumphant.

The Lego Group released the fall installment of its “Find Your Flow” campaign. It features a woman coming home after a crap day and building a Lego wildflower set. As she works, she reimagines the day’s stressors as Lego blocks that undo themselves in a most satisfying manner. The ad, itself an anti-stressor, makes good use of ASMR-tingling block sounds, and builds on a year-long effort to attract adult builders through mindfulness. It’s very “take me back to the confinement days.” Accompanying work with musicians/influencers can be found here and here. (We’ll pop the latter in under this para in case you’re in a “chill beats” mood.)

In ongoing anti-stressors, Candy Crush is launching a trio of “immersive” ads that break the fourth wall, using as many real-world effects as possible. F/X experts were consulted to convey the candy explosions realistically. Each ad promotes a different aspect adults love about the game: “excitement, sweet victory and relaxation.” (Don’t scoff; one way to combat PTSD is to play Tetris, or similar games, directly after a traumatic event.) Created by BBH London with the in-house creative team at King. Here’s one ad, which seems like it’s going to go a different kind of relaxing way, but maybe that’s because we just finished binging Sex Education (we’re easily influenced by rhetorical questions).

Prada now has a beauty line, Prada Beauty, representing the biggest L’Oréal Luxe launch in five years. It plans to differentiate itself by claiming to be both technologically and creatively driven. For the ad, BETC Paris squeezed in numerous allusions to facial scanning, android-esque porelessness, and what looks like code coursing through pigments. We’re reminded of The Matrix’s Merovingian, who pops that naughty program in a woman’s dessert.

Goings-on: Last night for Paris Fashion Week, Christian Louboutin livestreamed its fourth edition of #TheLoubiShow, a hypnotic combo of fashion, surprising performances that shouldn’t go together but do, and virtual effects. See the replay below. It’s the most aesthetically pleasing hour we’ve ever spent on LinkedIn. When we close our eyes, we still see red, which handily evokes Louboutin soles.

As Prada showed up top, the tech and creative professions are increasingly blurred. That’s why we suggest keeping an eye on The Europas on Nov. 13 in Lisbon. Launched by TechCrunch editor Mike Butcher 15 years ago, the event’s got its figurative finger on startups that become tomorrow’s big-banner brands (e.g. Spotify, Wise, Farfetch, Depop). Think of it as a different kind of fashion show.

There are few creative environments we admire more than Amsterdam, where agencies are known for collabs and cooperations of all kinds (they notably pitch in together for space at Cannes Lions, under the banner The Dutch Embassy of Creativity). To see the magic for yourself, Oct. 13 marks the AdNight festival, a nighttime open house of different participating agencies. There’s also an afterparty, so post-office-hopping, you can see everybody all together doing what they do best: making ruckus.