Hasta La Creative!

Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new and trending TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, a company that catalogs, tags and measures activity around TV ads in real time. The New Releases ran on TV for the first time yesterday. The Most Engaging ads are showing sustained social heat, ranked by SpotShare scores reflecting the percent of digital activity associated with each one over the past week. See the methodology here.

Among the new commercials, McDonald’s wants to make absolutely sure you’re aware of its current breakfast promo (see McD’s previous ad in this series in yesterday’s batch of Hot Spots, and Ad Age’s full report on the free-coffee blitz here), Chuck Liddell shows just how tough he and AutoZone’s Duralast car batteries are, and Budweiser invokes Babe Ruth and baseball history to make you thirsty. Plus, here’s some background on the grouchy grandpa in the “One Liners” spot: “Oscar Mayer Plugs New ‘Bold’ Flavors By Attacking Deli Case.”

As always, you can find out more about the making of the best commercials on TV at Ad Age’s sister publication Creativity.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The reorganization displaces Barry Weiss, the former Sony executive who was brought in three years ago to run Universal’s East Coast operations.

Two books – one new, one newly in paperback – provide equally valuable looks at branding from two very different perspectives.

I’ve always liked Steve McKee’s columns on BloombergBusinessweek.com, and he’s taken the best of them (I like that idea too!) and weaved them into Power Branding: Leveraging the Success of the World’s Great Brands. Each section is three pages at most, and little lessons from dozens of marketers are included. McKee keeps it simple, and touches upon many subjects facing marketers today. It’s easy to browse and quite valuable for everyone who needs a refresher in the basics that are so easily forgotten.

Douglas Van Praet’s Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (And Inspire) Marketing goes deeper but provides a lot of great insight into the way our minds work, and how brands fit in to our thought processes. Van Praet served as Group Planning Director for Deutsch LA so we get a look at the agency’s successes for clients like Volkswagen. He lays out a step-by-step plan to change behavior, but whether or not you try to implement them for your brand, Unconscious Branding is a great read. Rooted in science, psychology, and sociology, it’s still quite accessible for everyone, especially those of us on the creative side of the building.

Special thanks to Palgrave Macmillan for providing me with review copies.

The post Power Branding and Unconscious Branding Provide Two Great Viewpoints appeared first on AdPulp.

Industry awards shows — meaningless bling, or a genuine way to jump-start your creative career? The Art Directors Club is taking a step to ensure the latter with the introduction of an Artists-in-Residence program as part of its annual Young Guns awards, which celebrates up and coming talents in the commercial arts. For the YG’s 12th year, the ADC is partnering with artist-representation agency Levine/Leavitt on the program, which will grant up to five Young Guns 12 winners close career guidance for one year through Levine/Leavitt and an Artist-in-Residence Board of Advisors.

Levine/Leavitt, which represents top photographers such as Danny Clinch, known for his music-industry portraiture and film, Dimitiri Daniloff, who’s made a name for himself capturing surreal, award-winning images, as well as designers/illustrators such as former Young Guns Alex Trochut and Sean Freeman.

According to Menno Kluin, ECD and head of art at Deutsch New York and the chair of Young Guns 12, the idea came about as a way to do “something meaningful for the winners,” he said. “There are so many awards shows and awards in a year. Some have lost their appeal and impact. Winning an award is one thing, but being able to then accelerate your career with representation by a prestigious talent agency is beyond valuable.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

(TrendHunter.com) These infinitesimal steampunk sculptures are made from the guts and frames of re-purposed pocket watches. The metal gizmos are shaped by New Jersey artist Sue Beatrice, who uses sprockets, gizmos,…

General Mills still isn’t as far as Chief Marketing Officer Mark Addicks would like in its journey from TV dependency to content focus, but in a keynote speech at the Ad Age Digital Conference today he said that about 50% of marketing executives’ time at General Mills is spent creating content.

Not surprisingly, what anchors all that activity is “brand purpose,” the topic of the decade at marketing conferences. But while purpose serves as the anchor keeping General Mills brands from getting lost in the currents of the digital age, Mr. Addicks said the company is also making waves in other ways. He cited a Lucky Charms collaboration with YouTube’s Machinima channel that produced a mashup of classic TV ads and a 42% sales lift in a week; and digital recipe collaborations with consumers that have helped raise sales for Pillsbury Grands by 9% the past year.

“We used to think we were great at TV,” Mr. Addicks said. “We’re going to have to be great at content.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Forget about kids and teens, how to do cats feel about watching other felines online?

In a bit of branded self-satire, YouTube megaproducers The Fine Bros. partnered with Friskies to create Cats React to Viral Videos, an April Fools' version of their highly popular Kids React, YouTubers React and Elders React Web series. But, instead of naive kids and teens talking about pop culture events, the duo interviewed kittens, cats and some fellow YouTube stars in cat costumes about famous cat videos. 

(Apparently, cats don't love the clips as much as their human servants do.)

"The Friskies team has been a great collaborative partner," Benny and Rafi Fine tell AdFreak in an email. "Our fans have always been asking us to make a spinoff of our popular React franchise, but with cats instead."

The Fine Bros. have a history of working with brands, so the spoof didn’t feel unnatural.

"The Fine Bros are some of the top video creators in the world today and have never integrated a brand partner into their 'React' franchise before. With a video like ‘Cats React,’ however, it felt like the perfect opportunity for Friskies and the Fine Brothers to collaborate,” Shaun Belongie, senior brand manager for Friskies, said in an email.

The product that Friskies is trying to promote, Friskies SauceSations, isn't featured heavily in the video. It only appears in a few small scenes and in the title card at the end of the video.

Reach Entertainment's head of digital, Marc Hustvedt, whose agency produced the ad, explained that in order for a video to go viral, it needs to feel organic. Brand sponsors can't litter the ad with their logos, or people will be turned off and won't feel the need to share it.