The annual Lighthouse Company Illuminations event was held in central London last week, where the results of the headhunter’s New World Talent survey revealed some key industry trends among media’s senior leaders.
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BabySitter
Babysitter Diapers: Parents of calm babies enjoy themselves more
Advertising Agency:Publicis, Tel Aviv, Israel
Creative Director:Dror Nachumi
Art Director:Alon Zaid
Copywriter:Shuki Berg
Photographer:Dror Nachumi
Retouch:Yaron Tsarfati
Account Supervisor:Michal Naim
Account Manager:Omri Ben Barak
Dog bones and jelly might seem like an odd combination. But not according to executives at J.M. Smucker Co., which this week detailed their rationale for buying the maker of iconic pet-food brands like Milk-Bone, Meow Mix and Kibbles ‘n Bits.
The $5.8 billion deal to acquire Big Heart Pet Brands, which was announced earlier this month, marks the largest acquisition in Smucker’s history. So why did they do it?
“It fits extremely well with our purpose of bringing families together to share memorable meals and moments. And one of the key parts of the family nowadays, and probably has been historically, is your family pet,” CEO Richard Smucker said Tuesday during a presentation at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York annual meeting in Florida.
(TrendHunter.com) Launching in North America on March 19th, the H&M Loves Coachella collection will appeal to young concert goers who are fans of festival fashion. The range was created in partnership with…
Old Navy spokeswoman Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who took over for Amy Poehler in December, promotes the brand’s line of “boyfriend jeans” in a new spot kicking off a spring campaign from lead agency Chandelier.
The spot casts the Veep star as a couples counselor dealing with a jealous boyfriend who saw a text with the word “boyfriend” on his girlfriend’s phone. Of course, she was actually referring to her new boyfriend jeans from Old Navy. When she informs Louis-Dreyfus that they’re only $15, she says “That’s insane…not clinically, of course” and soon they’re off, following up on the “breakthrough” and headed to Old Navy. Despite Louis-Dreyfus’ talent, the spot never really finds its comedic voice. Both the tone and the timing seem just a tad off and the tacked-on running out of the shot to get to Old Navy ending feels painfully forced (as it has in past spots).
As has become the norm with these types of ads, the outtakes (featured below) are actually more entertaining than the spot itself. So far, however, Louis-Dreyfus’ outtakes have failed to attract the same attention as those from Poehler’s ads. While the latter regularly received upwards of 500,000 views on YouTube, outtakes from Old Navy’s December campaign sit well under the 100,000 view mark. The campaign also includes a social effort, handled by AKQA, featuring Emily Current and Meritt Elliott.
“They’re different sides of the same coin,” Chandelier Founder Richard Christiansen told AdAge, speaking of the two spokeswomen. He explained that Poehler was very spontaneous, while Louis-Dreyfus brings more of a “trained” approach to the ads. “For Julia, we’re still improvising, but a lot of that stuff is a little bit more planned,” he added. “She’s studied. She’s controlled. She’s got a lot of great structure.”
Today we learned that cruise line Royal Caribbean will soon launch a review of its global creative account.
Royal Caribbean signed J. Walter Thompson as its global AOR and Mindshare as its media agency in December 2007, when the account was valued at $90 million; the WPP shops beat out a group of competitors from Publicis and IPG along with incumbent Arnold Worldwide.
The company’s decision to revisit the account does not seem to be based on business performance as income and earnings have increased consistently over the past several years. Media spending did drop recently, however: when Royal retained Mindshare as its new media marketing agency in 2011, Kantar reported the value of the deal, which included all subsidiary brands, to be $50-60 million; subsequent coverage noted that Royal’s total ad buy went from $69 million in 2011 to $59 million in 2012.
Economic factors aside, recent changes in the company’s leadership appear to have spurred the move. Longtime Royal Caribbean International chief Adam Goldstein was promoted to president/COO of parent company Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. in April 2014, and he began his tenure with a media tour designed to counteract bad press before initiating a round of executive promotions and layoffs. Last December, Goldstein named the former chief executive of Royal brand Celebrity Cruises as his replacement and said goodbye to SVP of marketing Carol Schuster after approximately 18 months; her position remains unfilled at present.
(Interesting side note: before launching her own consultancy and joining Royal Caribbean, Schuster spent nearly nine years with the Ogilvy organization, rising to the position of worldwide managing director/global brand management.)
While the client did not offer a comment after more than 24 hours of inquiries, a spokesperson responded with a statement minutes after this post went live:
“Royal Caribbean International will be conducting a review of its advertising agency partner relationships. As the world’s largest global cruise line, our success in building our business and our brand is dependent on staying ahead of the curve and continuing to drive innovation. We are conducting a comprehensive review of our brand marketing resources to meet the needs of the ever-changing marketing landscape.
The search is being handled internally and no additional agencies will be invited to participate at this time. The incumbent consumer brand agency, JWT, New York has been invited to participate in the review which is expected to conclude by May 2015.”
This move marks only the latest stage of Royal Caribbean’s “refresh”: back in June of 2014, the client announced a review of its UK-based digital/social media, and in October it chose Holler to run that account. JWT London officially remains UK creative AOR after winning the business in 2012, but that may change soon as the client also announced a UK creative review less than two weeks ago.
JWT’s New York office has consistently produced work for the client: a 2010 campaign won coverage on AdFreak while OOH promoting the “technologically advanced” Quantum of the Seas ship began running in Times Square and elsewhere several months ago. A 2013 campaign starring Kristin Chenoweth and other celebrities, however, was attributed to Mindshare and visual effects house Brewster Parsons.
It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for—the 2015 .GIFYS.
What are the .GIFYS, you might say? They are, obviously, an award show for the best animated GIFs on the internet—as nominated by a panel of GIF experts, insofar as such people exist—and ultimately decided by you, the public.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Los Angeles is the organizer. And now, in the competition’s second year, GIF search engine Giphy has joined as co-host.
There are awards for animal GIFs, and cat GIFs—a separate category, of course—and art, and music, and politics, and film and television. There are awards for GIFs that will hypnotize you (“Can’t Look Away”), and make you nostalgic (“Throwback”), and just kind of creep you out (“Weird”).
Some of the 55 nominees are excellent, like baby goats doing backflips off other baby goats, and a Roy Lichtenstein cartoon man swiping the face of a Roy Lichtenstein cartoon woman like an iPad, and a Nick Offerman head bouncing through a field gobbling bacon.
The judges who picked the nominees include writers and visual artists for news sites like Mashable, The Huffington Post, New York magazine, and, naturally, BuzzFeed, as well as execs from companies like Daily Motion and Reddit. Internet-famous cat Lil Bub is also somehow a judge, which seems perplexing, given cats thankfully don’t have thumbs.
If you like wasting your time looking at GIFs, it’s worth a gander at the full collection. Voting ends Feb. 22, and your voice could help decide which mini works of circular clip art earn the highly questionable honor of becoming “permanent fixtures in an Internet hall of fame.”
But you also know that when an ad agency creates, as a means of self-promotion, a crowdsourced competition celebrating snippets of self-referential web culture, that the award show glut truly has imploded into a black hole.
NBC’s Parks and Recreation will soon come to an end, and the writers of the heartwarming, droll comedy have been knocking it out of the … well, park.
The first of last night’s two episodes featured Chris Pratt’s character Andy Dwyer saying goodbye to his kids’ program, Johnny Karate’s Super Awesome Musical Explosion Show. By using the bottle episode format, we got a glimpse at what fictional Indiana town Pawnee’s advertising might look like.
Because this season of the show takes place in the near future, 2017, they can satirize what American companies Verizon, Chipotle and Exxon might be doing.
But the earnest, well-intentioned messaging of the combined companies—one of “America’s eight companies”—is just the beginning.
Fast-food chain Paunch Burger—a stand-in for the McDonald’s, Burger King, Carl’s Jr. and Wendy’s of the world—practically bullies its customers into eating.
Of course, we also got an ad from the Wamapoke Tribe, which shameless uses its heritage to get people to its casino.
And we got to see Nick Offerman’s, er, Ron Swanson’s version of advertising, too, which you can probably guess is minimal and straight to the point.
L’artiste Katokami a mis au point toute une collection de kits DIY prêts à être transformés en origamis de papier. Avec des patrons pré-découpés, la seule chose dont l’utilisateur a besoin est d’une bonne dose de colle afin de fixer le tout. De manière ludique, on peut ainsi confectionner soi-même un joli pot de fleurs ou des cornets de glaces. À découvrir en images.
Adidas has shot to the top of our weekly Viral Video Chart, which tracks views of campaigns in the week ending each Sunday, as compiled by Visible Measures. The Adidas “Take It” push was helped by star turns from athletes including Messi, Derrick Rose and Caroline Wozniacki, and it crushed any other online campaign within sight.
But Google also made a respectable showing with traditional internet ammo: animals being cute.
And the Super Bowl continued to leave a mark on web video, with Super Bowl-related clips from Nissan, Bud and McDonald’s taking up three slots.
Cinema is having a purple patch in 2015, and Karen Stacey, the interim chief executive of Digital Cinema Media, says it provides great opportunities for brands.
From worrying to jargon, email to sit-down meetings, adland dishes the dirt on what they are giving up for Lent.
All Over It is a web comedy starring Kate Dearing, Alex Malaos, Chris O’Brien, Nadia Quinn, and Jim Santangeli. It also stars Ben Sinclair, and the reason I would watch it: H. Jon Benjamin guest stars. MTV alums Ted Pauly and Melissa Silverman created it.
Recently, Google and Twitter confirmed their plans to once again integrate tweets in Google search pages as real-time results. This is a great win-win for both parties. Google gets a great new feature — real-time content — while Twitter will most likely receive a massive uptick in activity and traffic.
As exciting as this is for the platforms, there are several things brands need to keep in mind in this new, integrated search and social world. Here are five tips:
1. Search and intent-based optimization is crucial
(TrendHunter.com) The V-Lodge by Reiulf Ramstad Architecture is a year round mountain lodge tucked away in Buskerud, Norway. A large all-year cabin, the lodge is located in a region that features cross-country skiing…
Parents who are perpetually late in dropping their kids off at school, take note. This new Famous Footwear video shows you how to arrive on time and in style.
It shows stuntwoman Shauna Duggins tearing through quiet suburban streets in her minivan—which happens to be customized with a 550-horsepower engine—to get her kids to a Famous Footwear store. It’s not just fast driving: She performs donuts in cul-de-sacs and weaves between recycling bins to complete her mission.
The video, created by digital shop Shareability, is called “Momkhana”—a parody of the intense driving style “gymkhana,” which was popularized by rally car driver Ken Block. (It’s not totally clear what any of this has to do with footwear, but then again, Block’s videos were sponsored by his own D.C. Shoes brand also.)
While the children in the video aren’t actually hers (and were replaced by mannequins for the especially dangerous stunts), Duggins was selected because she actually is a mother. It also helps that she’s got impressive driving skills and apparently no fear of high speeds. (If you want to see how the video was pulled off, check out the behind-the-scenes video below.)
Needless to say, you shouldn’t start tearing through your own neighborhood like this. But if you see Duggins in your rear view mirror, you might want to pull over and let her pass.
Le photographe américain Travis Jensen s’inspire de la rue pour la plupart de ses travaux. Voici une sélection d’une série réalisée à San Francisco : des photos prises sur le vif qui rendent compte de l’effervescence, la bizarrerie et la beauté de cette ville. Des images en noir et blanc de gratte-ciels, de passants, de voitures et de skateurs, à découvrir.
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Gráfica Regente
Art conducted with the perfection and harmony of all colors.
Advertising Agency:Jump Comunicação, Maringa, Brazil
Director:Walter Korneiczuk
Executive Creative Director:Mauricio Borges
Creative Director:Leandro Correia
Art Director:Bruno Gazzoni
Copywriter:Filipe Oliveira
Illustrator:Lizzi Gonçalves
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Allianz
Have your car replaced in less than 1 hour.
Advertising Agency:Ogilvy & Mather, Paris, France
Executive Creative Director:Baptiste Clinet
Creative Director:Nicolas Lautier
Art Director:Clara Noguier, Jeremy Bouchet
Copywriter:Olivier Le Lostec
Art Buying:Laurence Nahmias
Integrated Producer:François Phan
Strategic Planner:Ivan Pejcic
Account Director:Batoul Hassoun, Aurore Clinet
Account Supervisor:Jean Pousson-Ribis
Director:Loïc Paillard
As Wendy’s VP-digital and social media, Brandon Rhoten has spent the past decade trying to move the fast-food chain’s TV ad budget online. It hasn’t been easy.
“Moving dollars from traditional advertising to digital is not as effective because you can’t guarantee the impression,” Mr. Rhoten said. He added, “It’s a hard sell to move from traditional to digital. It hurts our case when you have headlines reading 25% or 50% of impressions are never actually seen.”
If a brand like Wendy’s finds digital advertising to be a tough sell, that’s a problem for major ad-supported digital media companies like Facebook that are counting on TV advertisers bringing their budgets online — not to mention to mobile, where users are migrating far more quickly than marketers.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
