Hasta La Creative!

Two recent ad school graduates — Mimi Chan and Utsavi Jhaveri — were lucky enough to travel to many different cities during their time at Miami Ad School. During their travels they learned that all these cities had one thing in common: tourists taking shitty photos. So they decided to do something about.

Chan and Jhaveri traversed the streets of New York and San Francisco, looking for all the usual tourist destinations. They then found the best spots and positions for photographing the cities’ tourist landmarks, and spraypainted footprints at the photo destinations. Now, although tourists’ photography skills still may be questionable, they’ll at least have the vantage point to snap that photo of the Golden Gate Bridge. This will ensure increased photo quality from tourists in both these cities, hopefully making the team’s #noshittyphotos hashtag a reality and tourist-y Instagram feeds a tad better. Thanks guys, this is really a service to everyone.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

IFC just released the key art for Season 4 of Portlandia, and the photos are fantastic. Not only did the network get the great young photographer Alex Prager on board—she decided to shoot the ads in the style of her "Face in the Crowd" photos (many of which are on display through March 9 at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and at Lehmann Maupin in New York through Feb. 22). It's almost like getting a couple of non-advertising Prager originals as gift.

AdFreak spoke on Thursday with Blake Callaway, IFC's svp of marketing, about how Prager got involved, and how the two photos will be used differently in the media buy.

How did Alex get involved with this?
We always collaborate early on in the creative process for each new season with Fred [Armisen] and Carrie [Brownstein]. In the ads for past seasons, we've always focused solely on them. And so much of the show is about the community of Portlandia and their observations about the bigger world. So we thought, Let's put them in the bigger world. And then it became a fun conversation about who could do that in a unique way. We at IFC had always been a fan of Alex, Fred and Carrie had been a fan of Alex, and we just reached out. She's a hot artist right now, and she was a fan of the show and said she'd love to do it.

The ads are just like her "Face in the Crowd" photos. That's pretty special.
So much of it is directly from the work she's putting out there right now. We just said, Alex, what do you want to do? It was Fred and Carrie and Alex working through some ideas, and it's just pure Prager. Some of her same extras are in these photos. Her sister's in there; her mother's in there. And we have nine Portlandia extras that she actually cast into this world as well. And so they're sprinkled throughout. Portlandia fans will be able to pick out, Oh that's the girl from the thrift shop. Or that's someone I've seen in the feminist bookstore. So it works on a couple of different levels.

I suppose if any TV show is going to reference high art in its advertising, it would be Portlandia.
I always kind of get excited when we get coverage off of the TV page, when we're in the arts and culture section. And I agree, I think we sort of have permission to play in that space. And the reason it works is because so many people in that world are also fans of the show. Portlandia gently sends up that world as well, and Fred and Carrie's projects beyond Portlandia cross-pollinate with that world.

Creatively, we like to look not just at what's going on at other networks but what's going on in pop culture, or art references, or other things we can be inspired by. And for this project, all the stars aligned. And the more time you spend with it, you see different little elements in each picture. There's just a lot to take in.

Was it always the idea to have two photos? One seems a bit more dressed-up than the other.
Alex wanted to get two different shots. And we thought maybe at one point we'd pick a favorite. But we think they're both pretty interesting. What you'll probably see is the one we're calling "Going to Work" (below); you may see that on midtown subway platforms. And then we may put the other one in a different environment that's maybe a little less office focused. We've also tried to pick media placements that are bigger, like Interview magazine, The Hollywood Reporter—things that are bigger scale, so you can see the art.

I see—because it reads better at a bigger size.
Yeah. We decided this isn't the thing you put on the side of a bus as it zooms past you.

In Starburst's "Miniminneapolis" spot, a construction worker tries to explain the robust fruit flavor of the candy's new Minis by theorizing that the candy gets shrunk down in a miniature factory. The cutaway scenes of factory workers bonking their heads on low ceilings, struggling with miniature controls and stooping to get through tiny doorways are pretty funny, as is the exasperated question of "Why is this factory so small?" It's not unlike watching Calvin's dad explain that the sun is actually the size of a quarter, and it crumbles under scrutiny with the same charm.

Time Warner Inc. said it plans to move to a new 80-story skyscraper on the Far West Side of Manhattan, and will sell its existing headquarters for $1.3 billion.

(TrendHunter.com) This two-headed art is both creepy and strangely compelling. Photographer Samuel Pettersson turns himself in a two-headed monster and puts himself in various locations and poses.

The glory of…

Rosetta chairman and founder Chris Kuenne is stepping down two years after selling his digital agency to Publicis Groupe.

Mr. Kuenne founded Rosetta in 1998 and served as CEO until April 2013. His departure is part of a buy-out plan related to Publicis’ acquisition of the firm in 2011, according to an executive familiar with the matter.

“Through vision and passion, Chris was able to build and scale a truly unique agency model,’ Publicis Groupe Chairman and CEO Maurice Levy said in a statement. “Chris had already been non-executive Chairman for a while and thanks to a good succession plan and an excellent hand over to Tom Adamski, CEO, Rosetta will continue to grow and develop innovative strategy. I wish Chris the very best.”

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