Hasta La Creative!

A 5 p.m. deadline bore down on New York Times employees considering whether to accept buyout packages, a bid for the newspaper publisher to trim costs.

The company has said there will be forced cuts if 100 jobs can’t be eliminated through voluntary buyouts.

Like many newspapers, the Times is trying transform itself into a digital newsroom as more readers get their news from the internet and as print circulation and advertising decline. The publisher said in a regulatory filing in October that the staff cuts “are necessary to control our costs and to allow us to continue to invest in the digital future of The New York Times.”

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A couple weeks ago FCB Chicago launched its “Jingle Bellies” holiday spot for Kmart and Joe Boxer, a follow-up to last year’s “Show Your Joe,” which was unofficially dubbed “Jingle Balls” and went on to score over 18 million views on YouTube. With “Jingle Bellies” now just past the one million view mark, the agency has unveiled a follow-up belly performance entitled “Santa Baby.” The twist? This time around it’s pregnant women dancing.

The women shake their posteriors to an upbeat rendition of the song “Santa Baby” (most famously sung by Eartha Kitt) and then turn around, exposing their pregnant bellies. The reveal comes early in the ad, with the pregnant women dancing for the remainder of the spot, in their pajamas, until they stop and one woman extolls the virtues of Kmart and Joe Boxer. So basically more of the same goofy humor FCB has been employing in its holiday efforts for Kmart and Joe Boxer since the original, although a slight departure from the “body parts as instruments” schtick. The ad comes as a bit of a surprise, however, as there was no immediate sequel to last year’s spot. With Sears Holdings’ Kmart account currently in review (Sears is also up for grabs), this could potentially be FCB’s last work for the struggling brand. Kmart, meanwhile, badly needs its holiday marketing efforts to drive sales to make up for a very tough year for the company. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

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Le photographe Jacopo Lorenzo Emiliani et l’agence italienne Apart Collective ont été commissionnés par la Monnaie de Paris pour rafraichir l’image de cette institution française. Dans un style pop, les photos et le set design jouent avec des euros de manière graphique. Une série à découvrir dans la galerie.

Credits :

Client: Monnaie de Paris
Agency: Apart Collective
Set designer: Silvia Spinetta
Stylist: Vanessa Rizzi
Make Up – Hair Stylist: Lorenzo Zavatta

When Arby’s received a friendly reminder in October that they had yet to release the second of their promised ads featuring Pepsi they realized they had a problem. The brand and its agency, Fallon, had already wrapped on their creative for the rest of the year.

Rob Lynch, chief marketing officer and brand president of Arby’s, explained to The Wall Street Journal that with the brand focusing on its revamped marketing, centered around the “We have the meats” tagline, the obligations to Pepsi simply got forgotten. Lynch did not look forward to breaking the news to Fallon. “Their ads are kind of like their babies. To go in after we shot them and shoehorn something in is like the worst client move you could ever make,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

But Fallon proved up to the challenge. The Minneapolis-based agency created a new, 30-second ad poking fun at the whole debacle. A tall glass of Pepsi stays on camera for the entire ad as the sonorous Ving Rhames explains the situation: “Arby’s has an agreement to feature their good friend Pepsi in two commercials a year…Well Arby’s messed up and forgot about the second commercial!” In a clever touch, the ad ends by replacing the usual “We have the meats” tagline with “We have Pepsi.” So what did Pepsi think of the approach?

“We applaud Arby’s unconventional approach to marketing and when they came to us with this idea, we thought it would be a fun, creative way to highlight our partnership,” Roberto Rios, chief marketing officer for PepsiCo’s food service division, told The Wall Street Journal in an emailed statement.

So it seems like everyone is happy with the situation. The spot will run from December 7th-13th in the Minneapolis, New York, and Los Angeles markets, fulfilling Arby’s end of their agreement with Pepsi to feature the beverage in two advertisements this year. Presumably the creative Fallon had to put on hold for the ad will run in the near future.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sony Corp. will see its holiday box office sales blunted after Brad Pitt’s “Fury” and the unreleased “Annie” were stolen by hackers and leaked online.

The World War II drama “Fury” was downloaded 500,000 times since the Nov. 25 cyberattack on Sony’s film-and-TV studio, according to the news site TorrentFreak. The leaks, which also include the upcoming “Still Alice,” and “Mr. Turner,” will draw viewers from unit that has been one of Sony’s most reliable profit-makers, with gross ticket revenue up 13% this year, according to Box Office Mojo.

“There will be an impact on Sony Picture’s box office revenue for this year due to hacking and the leaks,” said Hideki Yasuda, a Tokyo-based analyst for Ace Research Institute. “It will be a one-time impact and won’t drag on too long.”

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Commercials about financial institutions are notoriously snooze-worthy, but Nordnet has changed it up with a fun new campaign rich in meta-humor.

The Scandinavian financial institution, operating in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, released a series of short videos poking fun at typical characteristics of banking ads.

The spot getting the most traction on YouTube features lines like, “I’m an actor, and I’ve been paid $8,000 to tell you how great Nordnet is compared to other banks,” and, “I now walk in this modern office, where I have a cup of coffee with another actor whom I’ve never met before.”

The videos have been getting great feedback on YouTube, which is surprising simply because it’s YouTube.

I especially like the spot that seems to reference Cadillac’s much-debated Poolside spot. In Nordnet’s musings on the importance of hard work, the narrator closes with, “I just get paid to tell you that Nordnet is the greatest place to save and invest in the world,” and we hear the director off screen yelling, “No, you can’t say that! You have to say ONE – OF – THE – BEST.”