Hasta La Creative!

The first lesson of Digital Political Campaigning 101 is to lock down your domain names. This prevents people who do not like you — and in politics, you must assume there are lots of them — from doing something that makes you look not only bad, but also foolish enough for not securing those domains. The very least you should do is make sure yourname.com, yourname.org and yourname.biz aren’t being held hostage. And if they are, pay the ransom.

Carly Fiorina, who announced her candidacy for president this morning, failed to do this for carlyfiorina.org. Instead, someone who was unhappy with her tenure as CEO of HP has control of it and has used it to post 30,000 sad-face emoticons. Above the sea of sadness are the following words:

Carly Fiorina failed to register this domain.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

McDonald France a dévoilé une série de prints publicitaires originaux, représentant des éléments phares de leurs menus par des illustrations ludiques et colorées constituées d’emojis en forme de coeurs, de smileys et de notes de musique. Une gamme de produits dérivés, composés de vêtements notamment, a également été développée avec les mêmes graphismes. Un concept signé TBWA / Paris.

(TrendHunter.com) The May 2015 fashion trends range from masculine makeup editorials to curvy blogger collections that are designed for the full-figured consumer. After a steady focus on minimalism, the fashion…

Vice Media has rung up a series of impressive deals in the past year or so, lining up a $250 million investment from A&E Networks, securing another $250 million from Silicon Valley’s Technology Crossover Ventures, signing a pact with HBO to take its news show to 35 episodes a year from 14, forging a Vice TV network in Canada with Rogers Communications and now realizing its dream of a U.S. TV network with a planned takeover of A&E Networks’ History Channel spinoff H2. (You can see why Vice CEO Shane Smith felt flush enough to spend $300,000 on one Las Vegas feast.)

But there’s one more deal of note, for commercial time in the nascent Vice TV network, as Mr. Smith told The New York Times:

… Vice has effectively presold all of the ad spots to two of the biggest advertising agencies for the first three years, Mr. Smith said.

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It is easy to feel like marketing is in a no-win situation. Caught between trying to delight customers with amazing experiences and trying to dazzle business with amazing results, CMOs and marketers around the world must appeal to and appease two very distinct sets of demands to succeed in today’s business world.

Stuck in this perceived Catch-22, many of us default to addressing one constituency at the expense of the other. In the process, we fail to live up to our full potential on either front at a time when the stakes are high and there’s no more middle groundbrands are either disruptors or the disrupted, growing or shrinking.

Takin’ It to the Streets

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As money and talent pour into the San Francisco Bay Area and prospectors look to join the high-tech Gold Rush, agencies and marketers are thick among the crowd.

Everything from the iPhone and Google search to Uber and Airbnb can be traced back to the region. And as technology becomes more and more integrated into daily life, adland needs Silicon Valley more than it ever has. “San Francisco is a place where you feel like a lot of things that are going to define our business are happening around us,” said Derek Robson, managing partner at Omnicom’s Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

A high-tech house proves to be far from a “smart home” when two burglars arrive in “Welcome,” the latest amusing spot from Tribal DDB in Amsterdam for insurance company Centraal Beheer. The long-running comic campaign is tagged “Just call Apeldoorn,” the Dutch city where the client is located.

This minute-long ad is more subtle than previous installments like “Speedboat” and “Self-Driving Car,” which relied heavily on slapstick and noisy effects to deliver the message. Still, one key theme—technophobia—is carried over from past work, and once again viewers are promised a nasty future shock if we don’t take proper precautions (like buying insurance from Centraal Beheer).

The humor is pleasantly subdued, and the perfectly paced build-up leaves us slightly off balance until the satisfying payoff (not payout, however, unless you have Centraal Beheer).

You’ve gotta love those final scenes, with a cocksure, sweaty Silicon Valley-type hyping his home-control gizmo in a packed auditorium. Good luck with that IPO, Einstein!

(TrendHunter.com) These May 2015 furniture products are designed with sustainability in mind. They range from rustic, one-armed chairs to layered lumber desks that are crafted out of local and reclaimed materials….