(TrendHunter.com) Ferme En Ville is a contemporary incarnation of the traditional farmer’s market. The charming, colorful “farmer’s shop” is designed to resemble something in between…
Vox Media on Thursday hosted an “upfront” presentation in New York, where the company revealed another way it plans to make money: to not only create branded videos and articles for advertisers, but also offer them the services of the content management system its journalists use to publish.
The digital-only publisher wants to lure brands with a product called Chorus for Advertisers — Chorus is the name of Vox’s content management system — which “enables the creation, distribution and measurement” of branded content and provides “detailed data to ensure this content reaches the right audiences, in the right formats, at the right time,” according to the company.
DigitasLBi has signed on to give its clients access to Chorus, Vox CEO Jim Bankoff said during the pitch, which came during the official Digital Content NewFronts but was not a sanctioned part of them.
In case you thought that creative stunts don’t lead to jobs (or “jobs”)…
Last week, AdFreak posted on a project created by Miami Ad School New York students Aditya Hariharan and Joshua Namdar, who reimagined all the major agencies as ice cream flavors.
The “Agency Scoops” tumblr used each agency’s work to cast it as a Ben & Jerry’s-style pint, and the students even managed to engage in a little good-natured ribbing.
For example, they described Droga5 as “no rules, no-nonsense creativity in a rich, wholesome environment” and DDB as “a slow-churned classic agency with a hint of forward thinking” (emphasis ours).
Today we learned that quite a few people in ad land noticed the work. The Droga organization was so interested, in fact, that it gave the pair Summer internships.
From the students themselves:
“The response from the ad community has been overwhelming…
As a result, we managed to secure an internship at Droga5 for the summer.”
No word on whether they’ve learned the first rule of the ad industry: never read the comments on your own AgencySpy post.
CP+B found an unusual way to promote Fruit of the Loom’s No Ride-Up Boxer Briefs: plastic pants.
The agency introduced the idea with a 30-second broadcast spot featuring guys wearing see-through plastic pants jumping around to prove the “no ride up” claim. But CP+B decided to extend the campaign in stealthy fashion. They created a fake fashion line called Plastique, which appeared in a large billboard in SoHo. Fruit of the Loom’s branding appears in the model’s underwear, and more subtly in the Plastique logo. The agency even went so far as to create a fake designer for Plastique, Frank La Rant, giving the character his own Twitter handle, website, an extensive backstory and even a documentary.
“We deliberately made it high-end fashion but with a question mark,” CP+B associate creative director Mona Hasan told Digiday.”We wanted people to say, ‘It’s plastic pants; could this actually be real?’”
We all know that the NewFronts, the annual ritual in which media companies gather in Manhattan to show off their shiniest new toys to advertisers, often leans toward the surreal and/or ridiculous.
We also know that DigitasLBi has indulged in this sort of thing before even months after NewFronts is over.
You may, for example, recall that the agency announced its new unicorn logo back in August 2013 by dragging a sad, confused pony onto a stage of sorts along with North American CEO Tony Weisman (note the horn):
That said, we don’t quite know what’s going on here at today’s Digitas NewFronts event:
Getting our gospel on #NewFrontspic.twitter.com/sZL875rAY1
— DigitasLBi U.S. (@Digitas) April 30, 2015
Would that be neo-gospel or classic? Kirk Franklin or Paul Robeson?
In actual news, before the event started Digitas announced a new partnership with Vox Media that will give it “first rights to…Chorus for Advertisers,” which is “a content-amplification machine” for paid sponsors.
Praise be to God, native advertising is real!
If the name Michael Kenneth Williams doesn’t ring a bell, perhaps you know him best as Omar from HBO’s seminal series The Wire or as Chalky White on Boardwalk Empire.
Now, the actor switches gears to continue 1800 Tequila’s “Enough Said” campaign, which previously starred other former gangsters Ray Liotta and The Sopranos alum Michael Imperioli.
In this latest installment for the tequila brand courtesy of Portland, Maine’s own VIA Agency, Williams goes into a lengthy tale about his upbringings in the East Flatbush neighborhood in Brooklyn.
It’s a nice detour from the “tough guy” Liotta spots, sporting confession over confrontation. Williams himself says in a statement:
“1800 Tequila champions an aura of uncompromising toughness – something I couldn’t have grown up without on the streets of Brooklyn. As an actor I’m ecstatic to be shooting back in my neighborhood and telling my real story to 1800 Tequila fans.”
After this ad, MKW might as well take on a second career reading every audio book around.
Police brutality doesn’t just affect its victims. It affects the moms of the cops who inflict it. And it’s their responsibility to speak out against it, argues this hard-to-swallow new PSA.
At the beginning of the one-minute clip, the hashtag appears: #AsAMotherSpeakOut. Viewers might naturally assume the grieving woman is the mother of an unarmed teen killed by a cop. But as the story progresses, it turns out she’s actually the mother of the police officer who pulled the trigger.
It’s easy to imagine the knot of emotions a person might feel in such a scenario—sorrow and regret over the dead teenager; compassion and protectiveness toward her son; disgust with the violence he’s perpetrated; shame for indirectly bringing it to bear on the world; and in the ad’s key point, a moral obligation decry it.
Here, that denunciation takes the form of writing to a congressman, questioning the legal standard that defers to the police’s perspective when they use lethal force (part of the Justice Department’s reasoning in not prosecuting former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for killing Michael Brown).
The general idea—that in the end, all the parties involved, and their families, suffer as a result of police brutality—is worth considering. But the ad’s broader, well-intentioned purpose—calling on the public to participate in seeking a collective solution to a systemic problem—suffers to some degree at the hands of its own tricky execution, and the complexity of the issues at hand.
Sure, the cop has a mother whom he loves—but his face as he decides to pull the trigger seems a picture of rage, more than anything else. And while the camera doesn’t show the kid’s very final second (perhaps a subtle reference to the Brown case, or just the generally perceived difficulty in parsing the truth in many police shootings), it would take a particularly generous reading of the ad to find it suggesting that the cop saw a reasonable, immediate threat (something that, despite the circumstances of the Walter Scott shooting in South Carolina, the legal standard for police using deadly force on fleeing suspects requires).
So, the PSA—created by Shape History, a creative studio for social impact—casts the cop as a clear-cut murderer, and asks sympathy for his mother, but falls short of her explicitly saying he’s escaped justice due to a flawed system. Meanwhile, another generous reading might find the spot suggesting that the lethal force standard engenders a malicious-at-worst, careless-at-best, shoot-to-kill policing culture. But it fails to get into the details of how systemic issues might have fostered a tragic act of violence, and instead emphasizes dramatizing the act itself, and the remorse of the killer’s mother—effectively lamenting an aspect of the aftermath that’s generally overshadowed, as it should be, by greater focus on the greater injustice, the victim.
Sadly, the real instances of police brutality—and the havoc they wreak on communities—are clear enough evidence that the system is flawed, already.
Le designer français Frédéric Hamerlak a créé un escalier au design malin et audacieux. Grâce à des LEDs interchangeables, les marches, semblables à des plaques transparentes disposées en zig-zag, ainsi que la rampe, sont illuminées comme des néons pour un résultat du plus bel effet. À découvrir en images.
Hey, brands: Public radio is ready to partner with you. That was a big takeaway from yesterday’s “Hearing is Believing” upfront hosted by stations NPR, WBEZ and WNYC.
“My hope is that we can move away from a model of asking listeners for money and join the free market,” said WBEZ’s “This American Life” host Ira Glass said after speaking on stage with “Serial” senior producer Julie Snyder. “I think we’re ready for capitalism which made this country so great. Public radio is ready for capitalism,” Mr. Glass said.
Speakers at the event included “Snap Judgment” host and exec producer Glynn Washington; “Radiolab” host Jad Abumrad and “TED Radio Hour” host Guy Raz; Mr. Glass and Ms. Snyder. Announcements included a national radio program and podcast from WNYC and The New Yorker.
For all the chatter in the system about data-enhanced network TV sales, the potential for seismic change may very well lie with the cable operators rather than the programmers.
Those who control the set-top box control the world, and no operator has done more with its STB data than Cablevision. Now, the Long Island-based cable company is about to lead the charge into next-gen addressability with the launch of its Total Audience Application, or TAPP, a proprietary software product that allows agencies to make more targeted, impressions-based TV buys.
Without getting too deep into the propellerhead side of things, suffice it to say that TAPP lets buyers, er, tap into Cablevision’s census-level audience data, which is derived from set-tops deployed in some 3 million subscribers homes. (The user data is anonymized.) With just a few jabs at an iPad screen, the TAPP interface allows buyers to target customers in specific high-density zip codes throughout the New York DMA who also happen to be in the market for a new car or a set of golf clubs.
Dun and Bradstreet may be 173 years old, but when it came time for a massive rebrand, the business data firm was anything but stodgy. The company, founded in 1841, worked with Droga5, a creative agency that’s better known for its eye-catching work for consumer brands including Under Armour and Newcastle Brown Ale.
Dun and Bradstreet’s rebranding efforts, launched in March, reflect a broader trend among consumer and business data firms that have shifted direction to navigate the ebbs and flows of client needs as all facets of business become reliant on data. In the past year, Epsilon and Transunion, both of which enhanced their offerings mainly via acquisition in recent years, also underwent brand overhauls.
Data is at the core of what Dun and Bradstreet does. In a nutshell, the firm gathers regularly-updated information on the health of businesses from around 35,000 sources, many of them clients that divulge accounts receivable data. However, the company’s CMO is adamant that its brand story is about much more.
After getting much media attention, bomb threats, protests and creative vandalism, Protein World’s ad is now being spoofed by other advertisers as well. Some say the Beach Body protesters are missing the point, like Ella Woodward who says “I feel the reaction is a little extreme – I agree it’s not promoting a positive message – but we should be looking at the product, not the girl herself. If we’re talking about body shaming, then we shouldn’t be criticising the girl in the poster either.”
Yes! Taking back the tube one poster at a time. #EachBodysReady pic.twitter.com/UBYQKV9pdm— Niamh Walsh (@NiamhAWalsh) April 29, 2015
Carlsberg has hijacked the campaign by placing their posters in close proximity to the Protein World billboards in the London underground. Is this “probably the best response in the world”? I’m not convinced, the yellow bikini on the bottle actually bothers me, that could have been omitted in my opinion. I won’t think they mean “beer belly” with the “beer body” line, but it feels a little off-tone for Carlsberg’s revamped #Probably campaign.
Dharmesh Rana, senior brand manager at Carlsberg UK, said:
“At Carlsberg, we’re not bothered about beer drinkers being beach body ready, our priority is ensuring they’re able to enjoy a nice, cold Carlsberg without worrying about their appearance. That’s why we’ve decided to remind the public at major commuter spots across London that it’s not about the way you look, or having probably the best body this summer, its about enjoying a Carlsberg whether you’re on the beach or at your local.”
Protein World took it in stride, and as a compliment.
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| THE ORIGINAL? AMC – The Walking Dead “Days left until it’s back” – 2013 Source : AdForum, Kinsale Shark Awards SILVER Agency : Leo Burnett Toronto (Canada) |
LESS ORIGINAL HBO Game-of-Thrones – 2015 Source : Adsoftheworld Agency : Seligemig (Denmark) |
(TrendHunter.com) Lang Architecture’s Hudson Woods residence is a sustainable cabin that is made from locally sourced and reclaimed materials. The home will appeal to fans of the great outdoors and connects its…
Chinese tech company Letv is getting a lot of mileage out of a video bashing Apple by parodying Apple’s own iconic “1984” Super Bowl ad, all in service of introducing a smartphone called “Le Superphone.”
Letv has already been positioning its phone as David to the iPhone’s Goliath: Letv CEO Jia Yueting even likened Apple to Hitler in March, then apologized a stunt that some saw as a cynical way to get the company’s name out there.
Letv’s video shows a young guy in a hoodie racing through a crowd of zombies in white jumpsuits who are worshipping an apple (an actual apple, a Granny Smith). The young hero outruns his pursuers, snatches the fruit and takes a bite out of it. The text in Chinese reads: “Times are changing, roles have changed, the spirit remains the same. Le Superphone: Breathtakingly beautiful.”
Can’t wait until Friday to get your Avengers’ fix? Samsung Mobile has teamed with Marvel to create a virtual reality experience that throws you into the heart of an epic Avengers battle.
To promote the new Galaxy S6 phone and Samsung’s tie-up with the upcoming Avengers: Age of Ultron film, which hits theaters tomorrow, Samsung and Marvel worked with 72andSunny to create a film and mobile campaign that also happens to promote the electronics giant’s Gear VR headset.
It begins with “Assemble,” a pair of online “recruitment” films directed by The Amazing Spider-Man’s Marc Webb. They show a young boy, a female engineer and pro athletes — surfer John John Florence, soccer star Lionel Messi, Green Bay Packers running back Eddie Lacy and cyclist Fabian Cancellara — receiving mysterious suitcases that match each to an Avenger and send them to a secret hideout. There, they train to become the heroes with the help of the Galaxy S6 and Gear VR headset. The mission later broadens out to the wider audience of Avengers fans and then invites them to partake in a 360-degree viewing experience on an Android device or through the Gear VR headset via an app available in the Oculus VR store today.
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