Hasta La Creative!

Earlier in the month we let you know that Jon Hamm would be leaving his chief creative/innovation officer position at Momentum Worldwide to move back to his hometown of London — and now we know why.

Starting in November, he will occupy the newly created role of CCO at Geometry Global in the UK just over one year after the agency came to life via the G2/Ogilvy Action merger.

Some background: Hamm assumed the global CCO role at Momentum in 2009, one year after his own agency Greenroom Digital was purchased by IPG/Momentum (clients included Sony PlayStation, Nestle, TopShop, and Twentieth Century Fox). In his own words, he moved to New York “to transform an ‘analogue’ agency” by both directing creative for clients like AmEx, Coca Cola, Nestle, Sony and by leading new divisions like Momentum Entertainment Group.

No word on the sort of work Hamm will be doing in London, though he will report directly to Geometry’s Global CEO Steve Harding.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Le photographe écossais Richard Gaston, âgé de 23 ans, immortalise sa vie et celle de ses amis. Il prend des clichés de lacs, de forêts, de montagnes et de ses réveils dans la nature avec un sentiment de liberté et une lumière douce. Plus d’images dans la galerie et sur son compte Flickr.

Monster Energy had a viral hit in 2013 with “Recoil,” a seven-minute video in which extreme driver “Ballistic” BJ Baldwin drove his 850-horsepower trophy truck across the Mojave Desert at 150 miles an hour, doing all sorts of stunts in the process.

Now, it’s time for the sequel—this time in a city environment.

Ben Conrad directed these seven testosterone-drenched minutes of truck hyperactivity through production house Logan & Sons. The new spot was filmed in Ensenada, Mexico, near the site of the Baja 1000 race, which Baldwin won in each of the past two years in the cars and trucks division. Hoonigan, Toyo Tires and Monster Energy are the sponsors.

“Instead of the hilly terrain he’s used to, we took him out of that comfort zone and threw him into a small town,” says Conrad (a bone fide auteur of extreme brand films, having directed viral hits like “Gymkhana 5” with Ken Block and “Footkhana” with soccer phenom Neymar‚. “Nothing like power lines and tight turns to test your reflexes as a driver.”

Power lines make everything more special, I always say.

“Recoil 2,” which has more than 4 million views since it posted on YouTube last week, opens with “Cry of the Valkyries,” so you just know something big is going down. And “Ballistic” BJ delivers. From cameras mounted on, above, around and beneath the vehicle, you get footage of: the truck jumping across dusty roads; a cute dog wearing a radio headset; BJ’s intense, manly stare; the truck jumping across dusty roads again, but this time in slow motion; bikini babes on a beach and in a helicopter, their presence not even slightly gratuitous. And dig those hyper-visible sponsor logos!

This clip screams America, even though it was shot in Mexico.

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 here 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 releases, United Airlines pays homage to international landmarks — from the Chrysler Building to the Eiffel Tower, all shot from an unusual perspective — in a spot titled “Globe Surfing.” And speaking of flying, Diet Coke wants you to “get a taste of what life would be like if it tasted as good as Diet Coke” — and it turns out it’s exactly like an A-list party in the first-class cabin.

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

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The ad industry rarely finds common ground on much of anything, but two particularly contentious topics do seem to have long shelf lives: gender imbalance and the “digital vs. analog” divide.

We spoke to Selina Petosa, founder and chief creative strategist of Seattle-based digital agency Rational Interaction, to get her take on these subjects.

First, here’s some work Rational created for client Microsoft in 2012 (other major clients include Sony, Amazon, AT&T, Expedia and Cisco).

Q&A below.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

La designer américaine Lily Clark a créé un kit ophtalmologique intitulé « Play Optics » en s’inspirant de l’art optique de Josef Albers. Aidée par le studio Dan Blackman, elle a imprimé des posters de tests optométriques, des cartes de visite, des cartes postales et un lookbook, le tout dans des couleurs pastel. Un design conçu pour pouvoir anticiper nos problèmes de vue.