Hasta La Creative!

« Mother Book » est un calendrier de grossesse conçu par l’agence de publicité japonaise Dentsu Nagoya pour promouvoir l’entreprise pharmaceutique Bell-Net Obstetrics. Ce livre détaille semaine par semaine l’évolution de la grossesse par des visuels et des sculptures en papier montrant le ventre et la poitrine de la mère qui prennent en relief au fil des pages. La campagne encourage les mères à écrire leurs sentiments personnels durant les 40 semaines et à offrir le livre à l’enfant.

Winner of the Grand Prix in the Health and Wellness category at the Cannes Health Lions, 2014.

Poo-Pourri made waves last year with the viral “Girls Don’t Poop” video introducing its toilet deodorizer with pun-filled toilet humor that went on to garner over 30 million views on YouTube. While the follow-up, “Second Hand Stink,” didn’t draw quite as much attention, the brand’s latest, “Even Santa Poops” has the potential to attract attention to the brand once more with the holiday season right around the corner.

Written and directed by Pete Marquis and Jamie McClelland, who worked on HelloFlo’s “Camp Gyno” and “First Moon Party,” in collaboration with copywriter Joel Ackerman, who was behind the original “Girls Don’t Poop” spot for Poo-Pourri, “Even Santa Poops” should prove a success. The setup is new: Santa is delivering gifts when all the cookies and milk catch up with him and he has to retreat to the toilet for relief. His stench wakes three British sisters, who attempt to blackmail him for extra gifts and inform him of the Poo-Pourri which he should be using to mask his odor. Otherwise the formula is familiar: plenty of poo puns and a quick introduction of the product as a solution. Mostly the puns are pretty clever and while some may object to the premise, others will be all too happy to gleefully share this with friends and the timing of the release works to promote Poo-Pourri as a holiday (gag) gift while people are shopping for the season.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

FCB South Africa is running an idea up the flagpole. A really big idea. In fact, the idea is ginormous. And its main component is a South African flag so large, it will be visible from space, 30 miles above the Earth.

The Giant Flag project was put in motion last month by Guy Lieberman, the agency’s head of green and social new business development. The initiative is ultimately designed to foster national pride, improve the lives of people in need and make a lasting impact on South Africa’s economy and environment.

“Yes, it is big. And it is wild,” Lieberman tells AdFreak. “It’s both an unreasonable project—in the good sense of the term—as well as a practical one.”

So, how big and wild are we talking?

The proposed flag will measure 66 hectares—that’s nearly 165 acres, about the size of 66 soccer fields. Its red, green, blue and gold sections will consist of millions of cacti and succulent plants that can thrive in the semi-arid Karoo region, offsetting some 90,000 tons of carbon emissions annually. Solar panels designed to power the equivalent of 4,000 homes will make up the flag’s triangular black patch. (They will also “harvest” rainwater to feed the flag’s living components.) The white areas will be access roads.

The project will provide more than 700 jobs in Camdeboo Municipality, where the unemployment runs over 40 percent, and support tourism, hospitality and various enterprises over the long haul. Moreover, Lieberman says, it will serve as a symbol of hope, cooperation and sustainable growth for South Africa and beyond.

But … where did the whole giant-flag idea come from?

Lieberman drew his inspiration from the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, noting “the nation’s huge emotional response to our flag.” After the World Cup, FCB launched the much-praised “Keep Flying” campaign to encourage the nation to maintain its momentum. “The CEO of FCB South Africa [John Dixon, since succeeded by Brett Morris] called me into his office,” Lieberman recalls, “and said that while the [“Keep Flying”] campaign was amazing, it was fleeting and we needed to look for a legacy project on the flag, something that could live on. And so the Giant Flag idea was born.”

Of course, a 66-hectare flag can’t be built on the cheap. What’s the price tag, and who’s footing the bill?

Crowdfunding and corporate efforts are under way. All told, it will cost about $20 million, with $2 million being the threshold to begin the massive germination project, followed by clearing the land, fencing off the site, building roads and constructing the solar field. “There has been half a million dollars sunk to date,” says Lieberman, “and a variety of commitments, soft to definitive, of around $6.5 million.”

Individuals can donate $10 to sponsor a plant, $100 for a section of road and $250 for a solar panel. What’s more, South Africa’s Department of Environmental Affairs is lending its support, and corporate sponsors such as Google and Toyota “have come on board because they see the value this will have on the nation, as well as on their brand,” Lieberman says. “It also speaks to their commitment to game-changing initiatives, and in this sense the Giant Flag is not tied to any one nation—it is global.” (Google is providing a monthly $10,000 AdWords grant to promote the project, as well as cloud services for the Giant Flag app.)

In a way, the initiative represents the confluence and expansion of two industry trends—agencies launching intellectual property efforts and creating installations designed to have a broader social impact. Many such projects have succeeded (including FCB’s own fascinating billboards in Peru), but they have been far less ambitious, and staged on a more manageable scale.

So, how does Lieberman respond to critics who say the Giant Flag is a grand idea, and great PR for FCB, that will probably never fly, owing to its cost, complexity and all manner of potential pitfalls?

“I understand why they would say that,” he says. “It’s unlike anything that has come before—there is no easy framework for them to grasp on to. How could they possibly see it happening? But that’s OK. The Giant Flag will happen. … There are too many people who can already feel it in the landscape.”

Toshiba Corp., a $63 billion Japanese company best known for laptops and consumer electronics products, next month will roll out a global integrated campaign to raise awareness of its b-to-b solutions, which account for 84% of total sales.

The campaign, called “Bring It Forward,” was created by Gyro San Francisco and promotes Toshiba’s Smart Community business, which provides technology for electric buses, wind power, solar energy, water and environmental solutions.

“Throughout its long history, Toshiba has been mainly known as a b-to-c brand, with its consumer-based electronics, appliances and technology,” said Takafumi Arai, chief specialist, marketing division at Toshiba, based in Tokyo. “But in fact, since the company was founded in 1875, Toshiba has always developed and offered a wide range of innovative products and services for the b-to-b market.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Programmatic has been criticized for killing the creative strategy aspect of advertising, which is more than likely why you got into the ad agency business anyway, right? But that conclusion is too simplistic.

At one point or another, everyone in the advertising industry has probably wished their days were a bit more like Don Draper’slounging in sofas for inspiration or writing brilliant ideas on cocktail napkins. But what was rarely emphasized in “Mad Men” was the books of research that Don went through before delivering “the big pitch.” The genius conclusion to market men’s deodorant to women because they shop for men, for example, was based on none other than market research.

Yes, good old market research fueled by surveys and focus groups that has now evolved into real-time insight with the help of the digital era. Or, as Mark O’Brien of DDB Worldwide said at Advertising Week, helping agencies “get the right message to the right people in the right place at the right time.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

L’artiste australienne Kendal Murray utilise des objets du quotidien pour créer de minuscules sculptures avec des figurines miniatures qu’elle intègre dans des scènes et situations amusantes. Ces petits mondes proviennent de nos états de rêve et nous montrent comment nous sommes capables de jouer avec notre propre identité dans ces états de rêve. A découvrir dans la suite.

YouTube is bringing back its YouTube Music Awards for a second go. But unlike last year’s event, the sophomore outing won’t be a live awards show. It won’t be an awards show at all.

Instead of putting on an elaborate show wrangling diverse performers in a big space on Manhattan’s East River — last year’s model — this time, on an unspecified day in March, YouTube will stream a bunch of music videos that YouTube viewers will be able to help create in some way. Vice — which last week announced an upcoming digital music site with Live Nation — will be producing the content, and Kia has signed on to return as the event’s sponsor.

A representative from YouTube’s external PR agency confirmed that there will be no live event and that more details of YouTube’s plans will be made available in January.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Traffic fraud costs marketers billions of dollars in wasted ad spend annually. Ever since it emerged out of the pay-per-click model in the late 1990s, traffic fraud has evolved into a constant game of cat and mouse — creating real and expensive problems for advertisers, agencies, intermediaries and publishers.

Traffic fraud has changed a lot over the last 20 years. Originally, fraudsters hired actual humans to click on search and display ads (remember click farms?), but it was expensive to scale so they began building scripts that simulated humans clicking on ads. Today, the fake-impressions business has grown more sophisticated, with hidden and laundered impressions being sold to unsuspecting advertisers through a number of sophisticated technologies.

Originating with search ads, and making its way to display, ad fraud has matured and bled its way into the highly lucrative online video ad landscape — and for good reason. The sheer volume of budgets flowing into digital video — U.S. marketers will spend nearly $6 billion on video ads this year and nearly $13 billion in 2018 — has made it a key target for traffic fraud perpetrators. Fraudulent bot traffic (i.e., fake visits to websites from computer bots) was reported to drive 36% of all online traffic, according to the IAB.

Continue reading at AdAge.com