Hasta La Creative!

Africa is consistently named Brazil’s most-admired ad agency, but perhaps because it rarely enters award shows and chose its name from another continent, it isn’t well known in the rest of the world.

It should be.

When Grupo ABC chairman Nizan Guanaes and four partners who had worked together at DDB Brasil started Africa a decade ago, they took a break from Brazil’s awards-obsessed agency culture and built a shop with a deliberately small number of big clients. Today they are doing some of the most offbeat — and wildly popular — digital work for Procter & Gamble brands you’ll see anywhere, creating new products for clients at Africa Lab, and revving up World Cup sponsorships for Brazil’s biggest marketers like AmBev and Banco Itau.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Carat could have been forgiven if it was a little distracted last year.

The media arm of British conglomerate Aegis was in the thick of work for its massive General Motors account. It pivoted in numerous directions to get up and running on other new accounts and it moved in with the parents — taking up office space at the headquarters of Japanese ad giant Dentsu following their big merger.

But Carat kept its focus, increasing revenue 20% in 2013 and reeling in new talent to stay on the cutting edge.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

“There’s no ethnicity flag on Twitter.”

So says Isaac Mizrahi, managing director of Omnicom-owned U.S. Hispanic agency Alma. It’s hard to tell whether English-language tweeters are Hispanic, or if Spanish-language tweeters are in the U.S. Hispanic market or somewhere in Latin America. So the shop developed the Social Media Lab to help marketers learn from Hispanics’ online conversations. The ambitious project is already paying off in new-business pitches and positions the agency to bring in more work from existing clients.

Alma has painstakingly assembled a database of about 20,000 U.S. Hispanics active on social-media networks, and analyzes their conversations from lifestyles to brand preferences to mine actionable insights. Alma’s winning pitch for University of Phoenix’s Hispanic business included insights from online conversations about higher education and career advancement, providing a bigger picture. And even when Alma came in second in a different pitch, the client later approached the agency to ask about subscribing to the Social Media Lab.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Whenever a new Apple product is released, people camp out for it. New Zealand’s Colenso BBDO came up with a clever, tech-savvy take on that phenomenon to promote the Samsung Galaxy S4 — a virtual product line, with people jumping ahead by plugging the brand on social media.

A huge outdoor LED screen broadcast their avatars standing in line. The digital customers even pulled out umbrellas when it rained. About 12,000 people queued up for two weeks and mentioned the campaign 85,000 times on social media.

Revenue in 2013 grew 23%. The agency picked up New Zealand business from brands including Volkswagen and Fonterra and global projects for Snickers, Pepsi, Mountain Dew and 7Up.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

R/GA is proving it’s not just about digital.

With U.S. client wins like Samsung, Victoria’s Secret, E-Trade and Moet Hennessy, the agency that made a name for itself with digital is diversifying with a new emphasis on TV work. “A traditional agency would have gone from TV to the internet to mobile and social,” said CEO Bob Greenberg. “R/GA is the first company to go the opposite way.”

The agency’s U.S. headcount grew slightly last year to 1,075, up from 995 on Jan. 1, 2013. The big growth came in its Los Angeles office, which swelled from three employees to 40. It’s there, in a 15,000-square-foot space in the Playa Vista neighborhood, and in the New York and London offices where much of the editing and creative work for TV production will take place.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Se alguém ainda tinha dúvidas de que a Budweiser levaria, mais uma vez, a liderança do Super Bowl AdMeter, realizado pelo USA Today, elas acabaram. Puppy Love, o fofíssimo comercial criado pela Anomaly e estrelado por um cãozinho e os cavalos Clydesdale, ficou em primeiro lugar no top 10, repetindo o feito de Brotherhood no ano passado. Foram 57 comerciais exibidos no jogo de ontem, três a mais do que em 2013.

Foi a consagração total da marca e da agência, mas também serviu para mostrar que é possível contar boas histórias sem precisar complicar, emocionar, sem ser piegas. Basicamente, o que a gente espera do maior embate do mercado publicitário: que realmente sejam os melhores entre os melhores.

Outro filme da Budweiser, Hero’s Welcome, que mostra uma cidade recepcionando um soldado que está voltando para casa, ficou em terceiro lugar.

Doritos também se deu bem mais uma vez, e dois comerciais do Crash the Super Bowl ficaram em segundo e quarto lugares – Cowboy Kid e Time Machine, respectivamente. A invasão dos personagens dos anos 1980 no comercial da RadioShack garantiu à rede a quinta colocação, enquanto a Hyundai ficou em sexto com Sixth Sense.

A fofíssima Gracie, de Cheerios, Technology, da Microsoft, e Going All the Way, da Coca-Cola, ficaram com a sétima, oitava e nona posição. Soundcheck, da Pepsi, encerra o top 10.

Post originalmente publicado no Brainstorm #9
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Depuis 2006, le directeur artistique basé à Paris, Alexander Jacques, a décidé de photographier les façades des architectures de grandes villes comme Paris, Brisbane et New York, afin d’en faire ressortir des motifs. Ce projet consiste à porter un nouveau regard porté sur l’architecture, vue d’un autre angle.

Paris, Tour Novotel.

Paris, Tour Ariane.

Paris, Tour Egée.

Paris, Tour Espace 2000.

Paris, Tour Mirabeau.

Paris, BNF.

Paris, BNF.

Paris, Arche de la Défense.

Paris, Coeur Défense.

Paris, Tours Adria.

Brisbane, Santos Place.

Brisbane Square.

New York Times Building.

New York, Two World Financial Center.

New York, One Liberty Plaza.

New York, Marriott Marquis.

New York, FBI Building.

New York, 1221 Avenue of the Americas.

New York, Socony Mobil Building.

New York, Marine Midland Building.