Hasta La Creative!

New York City is converting obsolete payphones into a mega-fast municipal Wi-Fi network — and ads are funding the whole thing.

City officials joined representatives from tech firms Titan, Control Group and Qualcomm today to announce the LinkNYC program, which will transform up to 10,000 payphones into what was called “the fastest and largest free municipal Wi-Fi deployment in the world.” The new link could offer speeds of up to 200 times faster than some LTE connections, to millions of people every day without charges or data limits.

“It will revolutionize how advertising is delivered in the most important market,” said Scott Goldsmith, chief commercial officer at Titan, an an out-of-home advertising firm. “This program will change the lives of all New Yorkers.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Anna Kendrick returns to the advertising world following her role in Newcastle’s “(Non-) Super Bowl Commercial” at the beginning of the year.

This time, Kendrick appears in an online ad for Kate Spade in which she has locked herself out of her apartment. Stranded on her stoop, Kendrick drinks champagne, chats on her cell phone, models her Kate Spade finds for her dog and loudly sings the Christmas carol “Good King Wenceslas” while waiting for the locksmith to show up. Finally. she hatches a plan to reach her fire escape and get into the apartment, then opening the door to let her dog in. Kendrick brings her usual charm to the ad, directed by Michael Mohan, and keeps things amusing enough, even if it’s more cute than funny.

The video is also available in an interactive format, allowing viewers to “click on the items throughout to view behind the scenes footage and shop all of the Kate Spade looks featured.” Stick around for the interactive version, along with credits, after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today Rosetta confirmed that it will announce some big changes in its leadership later this week. The move is not unexpected given the September announcement that now-former CEO Tom Adamski would lead the new Razorfish Global network, a group “comprised of the Razorfish, Rosetta, LEVEL Studios and Denuo brands” as well as “portions of the Groupe’s latest acquisition, Nurun.”

Talk amongst various offices hints at a “big reorg” coming. We were told that we would have to wait for the press release for confirmation on details, but the digital grapevine does claim knowledge of some changes:

• “Several managing partners” have already left the agency
• The entire lineup will be “streamlined”

The only individual name we hear among the alleged departures is that of Lars Bastholm, who joined Rosetta as its first-ever global CCO almost exactly one year ago after spending time in top creative roles at Cheil USA and AKQA and serving as digital chief at Ogilvy North America. While we can’t confirm that Bastholm is among those leaving the agency, we expect the news to include both hirings and firings.

You may remember that a string of changes preceded this pending shakeup: over the summer, Rosetta lost a COO and a CFO while gaining an ECD and a managing partner. That move followed an April round of reductions affecting approximately five percent of North American staffers as well as the February departure of ECD McClain.

Updates when we receive them…in the form of a press release.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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 over the weekend. 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, J.C. Penney wants you to “give a gift that lights up a room” — presumably you can find one at its current Bring on the Jingle Sale — while Motown crooner Kevin Ross sings “Peace on Earth” to promote Glade’s holiday scent, Sparkling Spruce. And Lacoste serves up a fresh 30-second broadcast cut of its romantic “The Big Leap” spot that’s racked up more than 3 million views on YouTube since its initial release in February.

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

Jake Silverstein, editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine, and Andy Wright, its publisher, have visited 10 cities in the last two months to tell CMOs and agency execs about the changes they’re bringing to the magazine.

“Depending on the city,” Mr. Silverstein said, “we say we’re either Starsky and Hutch, Bonnie and Clyde or — “

“Jake and Elwood,” Mr. Wright interjected, referring to the Blues Brothers.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The soft TV ad market this year is extending even to Super Bowl XLIX, where NBC said in November ad sales were moving along slightly more slowly than in prior years. Automakers, too, aren’t crowding the field as much as they have lately, without as many new models that the game is well-timed to promote.

Still, there will be about a dozen new advertisers in the 2015 game, especially in digital commerce and technology, said Seth Winter, exec VP-sales and sales marketing, NBC Sports Group and NBC Universal News Group.

NBC will air the game on Feb. 1, 2015; Ad Age will chart every advertiser here as soon as we have it confirmed. And already there are some surprises among the regular stalwarts.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Here’s a unique twist on the classic anti-drunk driving PSA from AMV BBDO in the UK.

It’s the government’s way of celebrating the success of its 50-year-old Think! campaign in reducing the number of drunk driving deaths in the Kingdom by setting the usual rescue scenes to what may be the least appropriate music available: Jersey City’s own Kool & the Gang.

The numbers tell a story that’s somehow both encouraging and pessimistic as the end of the spot shows us exactly why the campaign matters. And of course the whole thing is set to a song best fit for roller rinks and the dentist’s office.

UK press has called the ad “shocking“; if an American group ran it, we’re fairly certain that scandal would follow.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Kmart and Joe Boxer’s “Show Your Joe” ad (rechristened “Jingle Balls” by some) was one of the big hit of 2013’s holiday season—to the tune of 18 million YouTube views.

Now, here’s the sequel.

The musical body parts have changed a bit, but fans of last year’s spot will appreciate the surprise ending here. Plus, it looks like the original “Jingle Joes” will soon be returning—at least to this website, where you personally will be able to “give them a jingle.”

The new spot, like last year’s, was made by FCB Chicago and directed by Christian Weber. It begins airing on TV tonight.