Hasta La Creative!

Well, this was the tip that we received verbatim yesterday afternoon that pretty much nailed it: “gary pascoe – ECD at Team Detroit.. or was. he’s gone. Left on his own. Leading up some other DET shop.” And yes, the McCann camp has announced that Pascoe is indeed leading another Detroit shop, namely its Chevy-focused, IPG-owned unit Commonwealth. Pascoe is joining as agency as chief creative officer, North America. Most recently, the creative exec spent three-and-a-half years as ECD at JWT/Team Detroit, serving as ECD on not only various Ford accounts, but others including Sports Authority and Etch-a-Sketch.

In a statement, Linus Karlsson, chief creative officer for global brands at Commonwealth overseer McCann Worldgroup, says, “Gary is an incredible talent who is going to bring the kind of creative passion and leadership that will help define Commonwealth moving forward and build on the momentum we have seen over the last few months. He is behind some of the best work in the category and we are incredibly happy to have him join the team and help us tell the Chevrolet brand story in exciting new ways.”

While we reported about cuts last week at Commonwealth, our sources mentioned that the agency was also hiring aplenty and Pascoe is actually just one of several additions to the creative team. Along with the new CCO, the agency has also brought on Bob Guisgand, Duffy Patten and Erika Kayuk as creative directors. Prior to joining Commonwealth, Guisgand and Patten served as CD/art director and CD/copywriter, respectively, at Fallon while Kayuk, who will focus on Chevy.com, arrives from Organic.

As for Pascoe, the newly minted CCO also spent several years as a senior creative at the likes of BBDO Detroit/NYC as well as TBWA\Chiat\Day L.A., the latter of which he worked on past and present clients including Nissan, PlayStation and Taco Bell.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Does the world need another upfront?

On the heels of its successful “Newfront” for online video, AOL is launching yet another “upfront” for ad-tech this fall, betting that just like TV, advertisers will commit budgets to machine-traded advertising ahead of time — if they can get a better deal by doing so.

TV’s upfront market and online’s programmatic advertising marketplaces are contradictory ways of selling advertising. In one, advertisers bid for valuable, scarce ad space for the coming year on TV. In the other, advertisers buy audiences across the web — with little regard to the content — as cheaply as possible and generally at the last minute.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Focus sur le nouveau projet de l’illustrateur et artiste allemand Andreas Preis qui a eu l’opportunité de peindre et customiser cette chaise pour le collectif « Werkstatttraum » à Berlin. Cette création sera bientôt mise aux enchères, et elle est à découvrir dès maintenant en images dans la suite de l’article.

From time to time, we cover side projects on the site from ad folks who like to do things with their creative skills outside of the office. I’ve written about a number of short films myself, but “The Pixel Painter,” an 8:28 documentary about Hal Lasko, a 97 year-old man who has vision problems and uses Microsoft Paint to create impressive pixelated works of art, is definitively the best short movie I’ve covered for AgencySpy. You should watch it.

Most side-job short films that make it on the site are clever but lacking any sort of gravity. “The Pixel Painter” fills plenty of gravitational force into eight and a half minutes and sets up an interesting comparison between the new and the old, specifically when it comes to the intersection of art and technology. Most of us look at MS Paint as an outdated program built during the dinosaur age of computers, but Hal Lasko has used it to create legitimate works of art. One could even say Lasko is obsessed with MS Paint, and the documentary focuses in on his passion, something viewers may not typically associate with nonagenarians.

The movie was directed by Josh Bogdan (senior copywriter at Bay Area shop Muhtayzik Hoffer) and Ryan Lasko (Hal’s grandson).

Credits after the jump.

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

O WTC, localizado na avenida Nações Unidas, em São Paulo, é um ambiente frequentado por executivos. Ternos, semblantes sérias, cafézinhos nos intervalos das reuniões, problemas de gente grande. A constante foi interrompida por uma horda de fanáticos por “League of Legends” a fim de assistir o campeonato brasileiro – ou CBLoL, na sigla oficial –  do jogo criado e desenvolvido pela Riot Games.

Com seu próprio linguajar, um ocasional lanche do McDonald’s como acessório e muito fôlego na hora de torcer, o público se mostrou disposto na hora de gritar pelas equipes do torneio, que se estendeu da sexta-feira (19) até domingo (21). Os times que formaram as chaves do campeonato são compostos por figuras já conhecidas na cena de “LoL” e, de maneira bem impressionante, a tendência é que todos sejam bem jovens – talvez um reflexo da própria idade do jogo, lançado em 2009 pela Riot.

Entre as equipes Keyd BenQ, RMA Ozone, PlayArt, Nex Impetus, CNB HyperX, Pain Razer, PeesPlay EVGA e ActioN Gigabyte, a disputa final ficou por conta das equipes CNB e Pain, deixando de fora o time da Keyd, que se mantinha em primeira nos rankings de qualificatórias. O palco equipado com três telões e cabines coloridas deu aos jogadores uma estrutura grandiosa, equiparável com os investimentos feitos pela Riot no País.

O patrocínio dos garotos é uma das provas de que jogar profissionalmente é um investimento sério no Brasil

Durante a coletiva de imprensa, os jogadores da Pain, o time campeão, revelaram que todos os integrantes deixaram seus cursos de faculdade ou especializações técnicas de lado para apostar na vida de jogadores profissionais.

Após a vitória, que rendeu um prêmio de US$ 30 mil (durante a temporada, a Riot distribuiu um total de US$ 100 mil para os jogadores), os integrantes da equipe vão para o Torneio de Novas Regiões na Gamescon, na Alemanha, no qual irão competir contra times da Turquia, Rússia, Oceânia e América Latina por uma vaga no Torneio Mundial, que acontece Los Angeles. O patrocínio dos garotos, feito em grande parte pela marca Razer (que também patrocina outros grandes jogadores internacionais) é uma das provas de que jogar profissionalmente é um investimento sério no Brasil.

Jogar “LoL” tende a ser muito complexo para quem está totalmente alheio a videogames ou até mesmo RTS’s em geral. A hora para começar a acompanhar, porém, não poderia ser mais propícia. Campeonatos de “StarCraft” e afins rolam há bastante tempo em lugares como a China e a Coreia, onde a popularidade dos jogos já atingiu uma base estabelecida. Por lá, os times e os jogadores existem em maiores quantidades, mas a cena atual do Brasil, se depender dos fãs de “LoL” e da ação da Riot, não deve demorar para atingir um patamar semelhante.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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Lynx, the cheeky hygiene brand owned by Unilever, has created a humorous way to engage young males through a holiday dating app.

Net-a-Porter is hitting back at a campaign by retailers including Sainsbury’s, Morrisons and Topshop to introduce an online sales tax, by declaring its opposition to the proposals.

Notonthehighstreet.com, the online retailer, is holding a review of its media planning and buying account ahead of ramping up its marketing efforts.

CBS Outdoor UK has launched a follow-up to its ‘Look for longer’ puzzle, with a game asking commuters to name past Tube advertisers to celebrate 150 years of advertising on the London Underground.

One of Popeyes’ biggest product launches this year drew its inspiration from the West Coast — a departure for the chain that likes to tout its Louisiana roots.

The limited-time Chicken Waffle Tenders — boneless chicken strips with a waffle batter, served with a honey maple dipping sauce — were inspired by the dietary habits of jazz musicians in Los Angeles during 1940s and 50s.

Dick Lynch, chief global brand officer at Popeyes, explained that players finished so late that if they wanted a meal, restaurants and diners would still have fried chicken available while prepping waffle batter. The combination of chicken and waffles has tough-to-trace origins, but this part of its history resonated with Popeyes. And the pairing is apparently experiencing a revival.

Continue reading at AdAge.com