Hasta La Creative!

The U.S. Hispanic market will have a judge after all this year at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity as LatinWorks’ Sergio Alcocer was named this week to the film jury.

Mr. Alcocer, president and chief creative officer of the Austin-based U.S. Hispanic shop, was a Cannes judge in 2011 on the print jury.

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(TrendHunter.com) Cavernous and modern, the Stonescape by Kengo Kuma installation showcases a modern take on Japanese zen gardens.

The piece incorporates undulating stone patterns around the space with pools of…

CMOs are increasingly concerned that tight budgets and the lack of a clear digital strategy across the enterprise are hurting their company’s ability to compete in the digital age. They are being squeezed by the need to support major corporate objectives — profitable growth and operational efficiency — while maintaining a loyal customer base and increasing sales amidst stiffer competition and higher customer expectations.

Despite huge investments in the tools, technologies and resources to better connect with customers, four in 10 of the executives surveyed — over 400 senior marketers in 10 countries — say that they are still not prepared to meet their marketing objectives. Considering that 65 percent of the CMOs reported that consumers’ expectations for relevant, targeted experiences are having the greatest long-term impact on marketing strategy, the road to success will depend on the ability to drive digital technology beyond marketing and into the enterprise as a whole.

Based on the survey’s key findings, there are four broad steps that marketers need to take if they hope to meet customer demands and grow market share. ?

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Well, Team Detroit has been its usual uncommunicative self, but after hearing about it through the Spy line for nearly a week, the proof’s now in the punch that Brad Audet has moved from said Detroit-based, Ford-focused agency to fellow WPP-owned shop, Garage Team Mazda. Audet has now assumed the role of EVP/general manager at the Irvine, CA-based GTM (or TheGarage as the kids are calling it nowadays), which was set up three years ago and has lured over the likes of fellow JWT alum Harvey Marco as its creative chief since its inception.

Audet spent nearly five years at Team Detroit, where he initially signed on as new biz head before moving up to both EVP/managing director and co-president of its small-mid-sized client-focused unit, Pulse. Once again, we’re checking with Team Detroit to see if there’s a replacement in the works, but as usual, we’re hitting a wall. Anyhow, during his career, Audet has held senior account positions at the likes of the aforementioned JWT (on Ford, natch) as well as Mullen and McCann.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Election time is near and Italian politicians, the most aged in Europe, never miss an opportunity to show their distance from young people and their needs. For a bureaucratic obstacle, thousands of students who live outside the country (e.g. for the Erasmus program) will not be able to vote from abroad. Despite the calls of the European Union and the students’ protest, no one can solve the problem. Ceres, one of the most popular beers in Italy, decides to prove that these guys are better than those who represent them in parliament.
Our goals were to boost the brand awareness becoming the main supporters of the movement and to bring the problem to the attention of everyone, inspiring the conversation about the right to vote and the sense of responsibility of young Italians. We knew that it would have also improved the reputation of Ceres, a beer with a high alcohol content: we wanted to show everyone that the guys who love Ceres are responsible and mature people, that care for themselves and for their country’s future.
Ceres is a strong beer. It believes it’s always worth to take a position, to stand, even if it means making difficult or inconvenient choices. Even if maybe you won’t win. This is the essence of the brand, it is called “Inglorious Heroism”, and it is summed up by the pay-off “The town needs heroes.”Students in Erasmus are real heroes in the midst of their quest to discover the world. These young heroes had been wronged and Ceres decided to help them to vote anyway. Italy is an old, tired country that needs the energy of young people. As the slogan of this operation says, “Italy needs of Heroes.
We contacted representatives of the students in major European cities. We told them we wanted to organize symbolic elections to make them vote anyway. We launched the twitter hash tag #iovotolostesso (#ivoteanyway), we sent groups in each city a kit with everything they needed to run and publicize the symbolic elections: facsimile ballots, ballot boxes, flyers and posters. We also sent them a few packs of beer to celebrate at the end. The kit also contained instructions on how to create video appeals that students would send us and would become part of a collective promo video. The video was posted on the web, the students used it to spread the word and we sent it to mainstream media.
More groups spontaneously joined in. The symbolic elections took place in 26 European cities on the same days of the Italian real elections. We sent the symbolic results to the media a few hours before the close of official polling stations.
Results:
For the cause:
Thousands of students from 26 European cities joined the initiative. The protest achieved unprecedented visibility on all the national media: TV, newspapers magazines, radios, social media, news website and blogs. The operation opened a debate all around the country. #ivoteanyway became a tweet trend with more than 10.000 tweets in 10 days.
For the brand:
Brand search frequency on google: +470% in 10 days. Ceres was the most cited brand during the election week. People reached: 20 millions, one third of the italian population. Media investment: less than € 5,000.

Advertising Agency: Bcube, Milan, Italy
Executive Creative Director: Francesco Bozza
Creative Director: Sergio Spaccavento, Andrea Stanich
Creatives: Sergio Spaccavento, Andrea Stanch, Alessandro Sciarpelletti, Silvia Savoia
Edit: Danilo Carlani, Alessio Dogana

A year or two from now, Foursquare users may not have to take their phones out and manually check in to each location they visit, co-founder Dennis Crowley said in the latest “#AFewGoodMinutes” interview from Allen & Gerritsen. Foursquare may check them in automatically.

But won’t that raise a few privacy concerns? Should we really tell corporations everywhere we go, as we go there?

“Whenever you’re kind of inventing the future this happens,” Mr. Crowley said. “I can think of the number of people who were like, ‘I will never get a cellphone because I don’t want people calling me all the time. And I will never get on Facebook because I don’t want to share that stuff with people. And Twitter, that’s not for me.’ And this is just the natural progression of things.”

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Loyalty programs have become all about earn and burn: customers spend money, earn points and then redeem them. It’s time to rethink this concept.

From the customer’s perspective, there’s something not quite right about loyalty to a brand being equated with rewards and aligned with programs. That’s what we heard from customers in designing an approach for a major international hotel chain. To these customers, loyalty defines a relationship and feeling of mutual trust that is built over time. It’s not something tangible that can be bought with points.

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Audi has selected Huge to handle social media following a pitch.

“Huge demonstrated outstanding creativity, strategic thinking, technical expertise, integrated capabilities and a solid understanding of our mission,” said Drew Elliott, a social media specialist at Audi of America. He noted the agency will be responsible for supporting the Volkswagen -owned luxury auto brand’s long-term goal to “connect consumers in bold new ways and break through the traditional approach to social media platforms.”

For the day-to-day scope of work, the Interpublic Group of Cos.-owned agency will focus on improving the brand’s community network, content generation and internal processes, he added. The shop will support all of the brand’s social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

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