Jacquemus x Nike (With Serena), McDonald's and More From Europe
Our week roundup of continental hits
Our Eurovisions Ad of the Week is Jacquemus’ in-house-created FW24 drop for its Nike collab. Ahead of the Olympic Games in Paris, it’s a breathless who’s-who set to the JXL Radio Edit Remix of Elvis Presley’s “A Little Less Conversation.” Here, Serena Williams strikes a pose. There, Lila Moss dances on a bâteau mouche. Ballerinas take selfies in a shop, boxers face off in a shallow pool. It culminates in giddy muscle-poses, then explodes all over again.
It’s sports culture meets Fashion Week, uncorking joie de vivre like victory champagne. It’s a study in codebreaking. The Games never felt more pop, and the runway never flexed like this. Mom, can we live in Jacquemus’ Paris?
In Sweden, for music festival Way Out West, Nord DDB created the “Future Fan Stage” to play select tracks for sperm and eggs in an IVF lab. In addition to tilting the unborn in their direction, studies show that music and vibrations improve IVF fertilization rates. Really, though, this elaborate shock-value thing is mostly to illustrate how important live music is to humans. The stage was designed by Love Hultén, and looks pricier than our childhood bedrooms.
For those of you following European politics, you probably know the U.K. has finally gone left again. But immigration remains a hot topic throughout the west, where a lot of angry and delusional people with microphones love talking about how migrants are criminals and terrorists. For the Migration Museum, and over the course of the Euro 2024 soccer tournament, Wonderhood Studios created “England Without Immigration,” which rhetorically wonders what the nation’s squad would look like without people from migrant backgrounds. You’d have to bench more than half of the players.
More stuff from Nord DDB, for Swedish intelligence platform Funnel. “Make Data Dance” takes the usual info pitch and filters it through different musical moments. “We make data playful and hard to resist,” a narrator sassily says in an ad titled “Like a ’90s Boy Band for Your Marketing Data.” A girl dances in her room, cluttered like so many data funnels. Also see “Like a Banjo in a Hoedown” and “Like a Shot of Tequila.”
Leo Burnett U.K. helps McDonald’s fête its 50th by breaking it down old-school. Here we are, at a 1980s birthday party, while a kid loses it to “Know How” by Young MC, who’s British born. The work ends with a montage of McD’s restaurants over time. The best part of this ad is the kids, but we like how McD’s is leaning into the nostalgia theme.
Since there’s so much music in this summery edition, we’ll wrap with something dance-worthy.
Chicken Neck Syndrome, Lip Syncosis, Lead Finger Disorder: All are symptoms caused by summer hits promoted by Spotify Italy. All appear in Dentsu Creative’s latest work, dreamily plugging the “Estate 2024” playlist (“estate” meaning “summer” in Italian, and not something most Millennials can’t afford). The lead song in the ad is “Pedro” by Jaxomy, Agatino Romero and Raffaella Carrà, which went big on TikTok (generating 6.2 billion views) and hit no. 1 on Spotify’s Viral 50 global charts.