Hasta La Creative!

State Farm has been running the “Magic Jingle” advertising campaign for a while, in which customers are able to summon their agents out of thin air in times of crisis by singing the famous jingle: “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.”

What’s been left unspoken—until now—is how weird the scene must be back in the State Farm offices, with agents constantly disappearing while chatting with colleagues.

This new spot from Translation looks at the campaign from the latter angle, comically checking in on disappearing agents in State Farm offices across the country. The spot was directed by Roman Coppola, with longtime David Fincher cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth handling DP duties.

“There really are endless jokes to make and directions to explore with the concept of teleportation,” Translation creative director Nick Sonderup tells AdFreak.

“We knew the spot worked because there were just so many ways to execute it. On the surface, the idea that a State Farm agent will be there no matter when you need them is only one part of the story. When you consider what those agents might be in the middle of when you sing the jingle, and they’re summoned to your side—that’s when it clicked and we knew things could get really fun.”

“It’s also a response to the way the ‘Magic Jingle’ campaign has become part of culture,” adds Patty Morris, State Farm marketing director of brand content. (Indeed, just look at all the “Magic Jingle” parodies on Vine.)

“We’ve seen so many terrific user-generated parodies and creative ways of approaching the idea. We took the opportunity to re-think it ourselves, and the result was a completely fresh piece of creative that stays true to our original strategy.”

CREDITS
Brand/Client: State Farm
Campaign Title: State Farm Magic Jingle
Spot Title: “Magic Jingle Disappearing Agents”
First Air Date: 1/10/15

Agency: Translation   
Founder & CEO: Steve Stoute
Chief Creative Officer: John Norman
Creative Director: Nick Sonderup
Creative Director: Andy Grant
Art Director: Allison Bulow
Copywriter: Jameson Rossi
Partner, Strategy: John McBride
Director of Content Production: Miriam Franklin
Director of Business Management: Thalia Tsouros
VP Account Director: Susanna Swartley
Account Supervisor: Sara Daino
Assistant Account Executive: Jake Thorndike
Producer: Andy Murillo
Junior Producer: Kristen Cooler

Production: The Directors Bureau
Director: Roman Coppola
DP: Jeff Cronenweth
Managing Director/Executive Producer: Lisa Margulis
Executive Producer/Head of Production: Elizabeth Minzes
Producer: Mary Livingston

Editorial Company: Rock Paper Scissors NY
Editor: Carlos Arias
Assistant Editor: Alexandra Debricon
Post Executive Producer:  Eve Kornblum
Post Producer: Lisa Barnable

VFX Company:  The Mill
VFX Artist: Gavin Wellsman, Jeff Butler
VFX Executive Producer: Boo Wong
VFX Producer: Colin Moneymaker

Audio Post: Heard City
Mixer: Keith Reynaud, Mike Vitacco
Executive Producer: Gloria Pitagorsky
Producer: Sasha Awn

Sound Design: Henryboy
Sound Designer: Bill Chesley
Executive Producer: Kate Gibson

Original Music: Beacon Street
Composers:  Andrew Feltenstein and John Nau
Executive Producers: Adrea Lavezzoli and Leslie Dilullo

Media: OMD

State Farm Marketing Director, Brand Content: Patty Morris
State Farm Advertising Manager: Troy Johnson
State Farm Marketing Analyst, Mass Media Brand Content: Christine Williams
State Farm Marketing Analyst, Mass Media Brand Content: Jeff Greeneberg

La boite de production barcelonaise Tàndem Entertainment a voulu rendre hommage au « méta-cinéma », à cette jolie mise en abyme qu’est « le cinéma dans le cinéma », à travers un montage vidéo intitulé « 120 Years Watching Movies Together ». Des larmes aux rires, du noir et blanc à la couleur, cette compilation retrace et célèbre 120 ans de cinéma, depuis les frères Lumière. Qui, mieux que le cinéma, rend hommage au cinéma ?

Verizon, the nation’s largest wireless carrier, has tapped Wieden & Kennedy for brand work, Ad Age has learned.

According to people familiar with the matter, the marketer is enlisting Wieden to handle creative and strategy work for the Verizon brand and its network. Products and services are excluded from the brief, they said.

Verizon spokesman James Gerace confirmed that the company has tapped Wieden, but declined to provide more detail. He added that McGarryBowen remains agency of record for the wireless business and that Interpublic’s McCann remains AOR for its Fios business.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

A spokesperson for Verizon confirmed today that Wieden+Kennedy will be the latest member of its extensive agency roster.

Details unfortunately remain scant due to the company’s unwillingness to reveal too much of its marketing strategy to its competitors (who obviously read this blog), but we can confirm a few things:

• Despite any claims to the contrary, mcgarrybowen will continue to serve as AOR for the company’s wireless business, a role it has held since winning the account from McCann in April 2010.
• Similarly, McCann will retain the FiOS portion of Verizon’s business.

Here’s the official word from corporate:

“We are happy to say we recently added Wieden+Kennedy to our roster of agencies, which number about 40 at this point.”

The client refused to reveal which specific responsibilities it had assigned to W+K, and we cannot confirm which offices will handle the account (though Verizon’s headquarters is based in New York), but observers should expect to see some sort of creative attributed to Wieden+Kennedy within the next few months.

You may note that this news comes just over a week after a Bloomberg piece reported that the company recently approached AOL about a “takeover or joint venture.” That news, combined with November reports on a now-dead “native advertising” site produced by mcgarrybowen, imply that the client plans to dive deeply into the business of “content.”

Wieden+Kennedy offered no comment on the news, deferring to the client.

Le photographe Dustin Farrell a passé quatre années à perfectionner sa technique et voyager partout dans le monde pour capturer les plus belles défaillances, ces moments d’alchimies remarquables que la nature peut parfois produire lorsque que ses éléments se rencontrent.

(TrendHunter.com) French design studio hehe recently unveiled their latest project, a series of railroad surfing vehicles that they imagine will be used as transport in the future. While their project is still very…

We live in a pretty amazing time. We can inhale information and imagery to the point where the excess spills over and blows away as fast as it arrived. This is great and all, but if you’re a parent trying to raise kids in this torrent of data, you know how hard it is keeping them safe from the deluge of inappropriate content.

And then there’s teaching them how to manage their own data. How do you give your children the right tools to understand the viral age?

Well, Leo Burnett Change in London (which also did that chilling Cosmo cover for another social cause) and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children present this rather candid anecdote of the implications of sharing personal data virtually. In this case, it’s a boy named Alex who’s taken a photo of his, erm, willy—and who is shown the potentially terrible consequences of Snapchatting the pic to someone he trusts.

Take a look below. And thanks a lot, Carlos Danger.

Via Ads of the World.

CREDITS
Client: National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
Agency: Leo Burnett Change
Copywriter: Alison Steven
Art Director: Liam Bushby
Creative Director: Beri Cheetham
Executive Creative Director: Justin Tindall
Planner: Kit Altin
Agency Producers: Abby Jenkins, Bruce Macrae
Media Agency: OMD
Planner: Alexandra Gill
Production Company: Hornet
Directors: Dan & Jason  
Editor: Anita Chao
Executive Producer: Jan Stebbins
Producer: Cathy Kwan
Storyboard Artist: Carlos Laura Murphy
Lead Character Designer: Adrian Johnson
Designer: Anna Bron
Animation Director: Mike Luzzi
Animators: Angela DeVito, Jacob Kafka, Keelmy Carlo, Krystal Downs, Mike Luzzi, Mark Pecoraro, Natalie Labarre, Nivedita Sekar, Sean Lattrell
Lead Compositor: Ted Wiggin
Compositors: Richard Kim, Stephanie Andreou
Postproduction: Prodigious
Audio Postproduction: Nick Angell

KBS has lured Guy Hayward from Havas-owned BETC Worldwide to be its first global CEO, with a brief to drive growth for the agency’s embryonic international network.

The MDC Partners-owned agency has offices in New York, London, Los Angeles, Montreal, Toronto and Shanghai, but so far has only one global client — technology brand TE Connectivity — which it won in September.

Mr. Hayward said, “The global organization has been built. My job is to bring in global new business and to build relationships with existing clients.” Current KBS clients with a global footprint include American Express, AOL, BMW, Elizabeth Arden, and Puma.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Strategic and creative agency Matter Unlimited announced the additions of Alexandra Gordon as account managing director and Jake Kahana as creative director, design.

Gordon will be responsible for leading management, developing client relationships and overseeing the internal account team. She joins Matter Unlimited from mcgarrybowen, where she spent approximately the last three years as an account managing director and led several integrated campaigns for Marriott International. Prior to mcgarrybowen, Gordon spent over two years serving as an account director at DDB Sydney, where she worked on the McDonald’s Australia account. Prior to that she served as an account manager for M&C Saatchi.

As creative director, Kahana will manage creative output for all client work, acting as creative lead. He joins Matter Unlimited following over a decade as a freelance art director and designer. During this time his clients included Microsoft, Nestle, Unicef, HBO and President Bill Clinton. He has also worked as an art director for Deutsch LA, a lead designer at 72andSunny and an instructor at Otis College of Art and Design.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled to have these two rock stars joining the Matter Unlimited team,” said Rob Holzer, founder and CEO, Matter Unlimited, in a statement. “They both bring just the right mix of experience and passion to use their skills for positive social impact that make them perfect for our mission and the important work ahead of us.”