Hasta La Creative!

CP+B created a PSA campaign for Mission 22, an initiative the agency created to deal with the issue of veteran suicide, whose name refers to the sad statistic that 22 veterans commit suicide in America every day.

“War At Home” aims to deliver the message that “Suicide, not war, is now the leading cause of death in the military” through an online video and a series of print ads running in magazines including Esquire, Fortune and Money. For the project, CP+B collaborated with veteran war photographer David Guttenfelder, who took photos of the homes where veterans committed suicide, with messages like “Ryan Clapper died on this battlefield six thousand miles from Iraq.” The campaign drives traffic to the Mission 22 website, which aims not just to raise awareness but to provide a list of resources for veterans who need help. It’s an arresting campaign that can hopefully not only bring the issue to light in an attention-grabbing way, but help veterans find the proper channels to deal with the lingering mental health issues caused by combat. The video above provides more of a look at Guttenfelder and the creation of the campaign, and head over to Adweek for a more in-depth look at the print ads.

Category: Beyond Madison Avenue
Summary: We are approaching the end of our semester here in our school, and our marketing students are quickly coming to realize how much (or, worst case, how little) they have retained in the course. As we review, the most common concept our young minds struggle with is marketing information.

That Lord and Taylor app will not only remind shoppers of a deal in the men’s shoe department; it might help retailers find out which entrance consumers used to get into the mall or what route they took to the Cinnabon.

Lots of companies have been experimenting with mobile tracking beacons to determine where shoppers go and what they do in their stores. Now, through a proliferation of third-party technologies and partnerships among retailers, shopping centers and mobile tracking firms, they have access to more data than ever about what consumers did before they got there.

Mobiquity is among those at the forefront of the trend. The tech firm owns and operates beacons — small devices that pick up on signals from mobile phones — in 240 malls owned by Simon Property Group. The company expects to expand its presence to 290 malls by July as a result of signing with shopping center owner Macerich to become its exclusive common area beacon provider earlier this month.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Will the Brooklyn Film Festival ever go Hollywood? Fuggedaboutit!

Four short, simple animations by TBWAChiatDay deliver the message that the borough and its festival of independent films, which runs from May 29 through June 7, are “3,000 miles from Hollywood”—in mind-set as well as distance.

The cartoon vignettes run between 15 and 25 seconds, comically contrasting celluloid styles from each location. For example, on the soundstages of Los Angeles, intricately choreographed fight scenes are performed by highly skilled stunt professionals suspended like marionettes on wires. In Brooklyn, you just get a knuckle sandwich. Similarly, we learn that Left Coast love triangles are overplayed soap operas, while in Brooklyn, everybody gets a piece of the action.

Animator/illustrator Seokmin Hong’s no-frills approach effectively positions Brooklyn as gritty and unpretentious in counterpoint to the razzle-dazzle opulence of Hollywood. “Other film festivals ultimately become ‘Hollywood,’ ” says Matt Ian, executive creative director at TBWA. “This campaign highlights the fact that Brooklyn—its culture, its people, its art, its attitude—remains as far away from Hollywood as you can get.”

Hmm, the L train hipster does bear a striking resemblance to a Spielbergian space alien. But that’s true of pretty much everyone in Williamsburg these days.

TBWA takes the differentiation concept a step further than BBDO’s recent Tribeca Film Festival ads with Jason Sudeikis, in which tourists on the street gave the Hollywood star “directions.” In Brooklyn, of course, plenty of folks would be happy to tell you where to go!

CREDITS
Client: Brooklyn Film Festival
Agency: TBWAChiatDay, New York
Executive Creative Director: Matt Ian
Creative Director: Deniz Marlali
ACD/Writer: Steve Skibba
Animation/Illustration: Seokmin Hong
Print Design: Sarah Romanoff
Executive Producer: Chad Hopenwasser
Sound Design: Roman Zeitlin
Director of Digital and Content Strategy: Aki Spicer
Account Director: Ed Rogers
Strategy: Damasia Merbilhaa
Social Media Team: Ryan Jin, Kiyotaka Sumiyoshi
Original Music by Elias
Composer: Eric Ronick

Whether or not KFC’s resurrection of Colonel Sanders achieves its goal of putting a sales dent in potent rivals like Chick-fil-A, the campaign is at least reminding America what a peculiar and fascinating life Harland Sanders actually led. 

As part of the campaign led by Wieden + Kennedy, KFC has launched a digital version of an animatronic museum called The Hall of Colonels, where robotic simulacra of Sanders will regale you with songs and stories about his life.

It’s surprisingly entertaining and educational, actually. Here are a few of our favorite gleanings:

1. He shot someone who vandalized his ad.

During his time as a Shell gas station owner in the late 1920s, Sanders got into an increasingly tense rivalry with a competitor, and the whole thing escalated into a shootout. 

When Sanders posted an ad next to a highway near his Corbin, Kentucky, business, rival service station owner Matt Stewart painted over the sign. Sanders threatened retaliation, but Stewart vandalized the sign again, just as Sanders was meeting with two Shell representatives.

The three grabbed firearms and went down to confront Stewart, who promptly shot and killed one of the Shell reps. Sanders shot Stewart in the shoulder, ending the firefight. Stewart went to prison, and Sanders avoided jail time after his rival was determined to have instigated the fight.

2. He learned to cook after his father’s early death.

At age 6, Sanders lost his father and had to learn to cook to help feed his rural Indiana family. The boy dropped out of school in the sixth grade (“because I didn’t like math”). He worked odd jobs in his youth, such as being a farmhand for $2 a month, and then, as a 16-year-old in 1906, lied about his age to join the Army. Despite his enjoyment of cooking, it would be another 24 years before he would start serving food for money.

3. He worked some truly odd and occasionally terrible jobs.

Here’s a sample (though admittedly we had to pull some details from other Google-able sources):

• Mule minder for the U.S. Army at age 16
• Lawyer, briefly, until he got in a courtroom brawl
• Ash pan cleaner for the Northern Alabama Railroad
• Michelin tire salesman (from which he was fired for his temper)
• “Helpful but technically unlicensed” obstetrician, delivering babies with rudimentary supplies like lard and Vaseline
• Owner of a ferry boat called the Froman M. Coots, which replaced an even more awesomely named ferry, The Old Asthma
• Founder of an acetylene lamp business, launched with his ferry boat profits. It failed due to the development of an affordable electric lamp.

4. He “didn’t want to be the richest man in the cemetery.”

Before his death in 1980, Sanders created the Colonel Harland Sanders Trust and Colonel Harland Sanders Charitable Organization to donate much of his wealth to charities, schools and hospitals.

Learn more for yourself from the Hall of Colonels microsite. Or if you’re feeling abundantly curious, you could always check out his 1974 autobiography, “Life As I Have Known It Has Been Finger Lickin’ Good.”

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