Ad of the Day: Ask Ordinary New Yorkers to Make a Phone Ad, and You Get This Lunacy

Asus spot has a T-Rex, aliens and oh so much more

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To help launch the Asus ZenFone 3, ad agency SuperHeroes dispatched Matt Rubano and Betsy Kenney, members of improv troupe Upright Citizens Brigade, to ask random people on the streets of Manhattan to contribute concepts for a commercial.

The resulting ad was not actually shot using the phone, though it does appear in the narrative, which is stitched together from dozens of disparate ideas. The film below combines that tale, which stars Rubano and Kenney (plus invading aliens and a funky T-Rex), with footage of the pair collecting ideas from on-the-street New Yorkers:

The whole "streetsourced" gimmick is designed to show the phone "empowering people to do anything they want," says Rogier Vijverberg, executive creative director of SuperHeroes, the Amsterdam-based agency best known for its viral stunts involving the general public.

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