DSM: Unsung Heroes of Science

Production Company: 1Camera, Amsterdam, Netherlands
Creative Director: Jasper Claus
Director: Hugo Keijzer
Art Director: Marijn Molenaar
Director of Photography: Adam Scarth / Lux Artists
Additional credits: Ellen Utrecht / MikeTeeVee
Published: June 2015

A Force For Good: Positive change

Production Company: Humble
President / Executive Producer: Eric Berkowitz
Vice President / Executive Producer: Persis Koch
Executive Producers: Sam Stephens, Andrea Theodore
Executive Creative Director: Sam Stephens
Creative Director: Chris Wolfgang Mauch
Copywriters: Sam Stephens, Chris Wolfgang Mauch, Sasha Levinson
?The Mother? Director: Sasha Levinson
?A Broken Jar? Directors: Sam Stephens, Chris Wolfgang Mauch
?The Driver? Director: Rudi Schwab
?Plastic Beach? Director: Samuel + Gunnar
New York Crew:
Head of Production: Elizabeth Durkee
Producers: Scott Gracheff, Chelsea Conklin
Production Coordinator: Audrey Crowell
1st AD: Jeffrey Lazar, John M. Tyson
Director of Photography: Kate Arizmendi, Rudi Schwab
Casting: Jodi Kipperman
Editor: Jane Keller
Assistant Editors: Vance Tucker, Julie Tarrab, Shelby Cotton
Music: Matt Nakoa, Michael Hewett, Samuel Kim
Audio and Mix Master: Joseph Miuccio / Pure Sound
Color: Alex Bickel / Color Collective
Iceland Crew:
Executive Producer: Jonbi Gudmundsson
Line Producer: Eidur Birgisson
Director of Photography: Elli Cassata
Casting: Iceland Casting
Production Company: Storveldid
Color: Alex Bickel / Color Collective
End Card Design / Animation: Susan Armstrong
Behind The Scenes: Jason McConville

McDonald's: Lonely Hearts

Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, UK
Creatives: Mark Franklin, Rob Tenconi
Creative Directors: Matt Lee, Pete Heyes
Executive Creative Director: Justin Tindall
Agency Producer: Lou Pegg
Media Agency: OMD
Planner: Chloe Grainger
Director: Sean Meehan
Lighting Cameraman: Sean Meehan
Production Company: Bold
Producers: Dave Knox, Sam McGarry
Editor: Sam Gunn / Whitehouse Post
Post-production: MPC
Post Producer: Daffyd Upsdell
Telecine: Jean Clement Soret
Flame: Marcus Moffat
Audio post-production: Wave
Sound Engineer: Tony Rapaccoili
Music Composition: MPM London

The American Academy of Periodontology: The Takeover

Advertising Agency: Weber Shandwick, Chicago, USA
Executive Creative Director: Jim Paul
Creative Director: Dan Jividen
Associate Creative Director / Art Director: Alex Manosalvas
Copywriter: Burke Boggio-Hair
Executive Integrated Producer: Kim Mohan
Production Company: Pet Gorilla
Director: Bobby Lewis
Published: June 2015

Mi Planeta Éxito: Let them breathe, 1

Mi Planeta Éxito: Let them breathe, 2

Mi Planeta Éxito: Let them breathe, 3

Maxis Telecommunications / Waze: Safe mode

Advertising Agency: Ensemble Worldwide, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Creative Directors: Chan Woei Hern, Mun Tuck Wai
Art Directors: Mun Tuck Wai, Norman Tang, Yves Wan
Copywriters: Chan Woei Hern, Chung Ru Zen
Project Team: Sean Wong, Chong Jia Ling, Chang Min Fung, Lim Jia Yang
Production House: SixtyMac Production
Published: June 2015

Abrinq Foundation: João

Write a new story in the lives of those who need it.

Advertising Agency: Monumenta, Brasilia, Brazil
Creative Directors: Ézio de Castro, Raphael Pontual
Art Directors: Anselmo Ferreira, Gustavo Frazão
Copywriter: Flávio Galvão
Photographer: Vini Goulart / Magneto Fotografia
CGI / Retouch: Magneto Fotografia
Published: June 2015

Abrinq Foundation: Maria

Write a new story in the lives of those who need it.

Advertising Agency: Monumenta, Brasilia, Brazil
Creative Directors: Ézio de Castro, Raphael Pontual
Art Directors: Anselmo Ferreira, Gustavo Frazão
Copywriter: Flávio Galvão
Photographer: Vini Goulart / Magneto Fotografia
CGI / Retouch: Magneto Fotografia
Published: June 2015

Abrinq Foundation: Gabriel

Write a new story in the lives of those who need it.

Advertising Agency: Monumenta, Brasilia, Brazil
Creative Directors: Ézio de Castro, Raphael Pontual
Art Directors: Anselmo Ferreira, Gustavo Frazão
Copywriter: Flávio Galvão
Photographer: Vini Goulart / Magneto Fotografia
CGI / Retouch: Magneto Fotografia
Published: June 2015

Brands Must Be Transparent on Data Tracking: Study


Connected gadgets, appliances, vehicles and physical retail spaces are gathering massive amounts of consumer data. Companies from Diageo to Lord & Taylor are investing in technologies and resources to help them determine how their products and businesses can be enhanced through this Internet of Things.

But many of those companies — aware of concerns over data privacy — have been reluctant to explain to consumers why they’re using mobile beacons and other sensors to harvest data. New research, however, suggests this is a lost opportunity for brands to present themselves as privacy conscious.

“It’s almost impossible to get brands to talk about this, but in actuality there’s an opportunity here,” said Jessica Groopman, industry analyst at Altimeter Group, which published its “Consumer Perceptions of Privacy in the Internet of Things” report this morning.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

TBWA Names Chris Garbutt Global Creative President


TBWA is making yet another senior executive change, this time recruiting Chris Garbutt from Ogilvy & Mather to be the agency’s global creative president and chief creative officer of TBWA’s New York office.

Mr. Garbutt comes to TBWA from his role as chief creative officer of Ogilvy & Mather New York/East Coast, a role he took in early 2014 after serving as Ogilvy’s chief creative officer in France. The global creative president role has been vacant since Rob Schwartz was named CEO of TBWA/Chiat/Day New York in January.

The chief creative officer role in New York had been open since Mark Figliulo left in July 2013 to form his own shop, though executive creative director Matt Ian, who joined the agency the same month Mr. Figliulo left, had largely been overseeing creative in the office as executive creative director.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Disney Names Its First Female Chief Financial Officer

Christine M. McCarthy, who has most recently been Disney’s treasurer, will succeed James A. Rasulo, who stepped down in early June.


Buzzfeed knows everything about you thanks to Google, Facebook & Quizzes

Have you ever used the Ghostery add on? You install it in your browser of choice, and it’ll show you a list of each ad tracking script or widget on the web page that watches you. Go install it right now, I’ll wait. Check out Adland in comparison to your other bookmarked advertising news sites or newspapers, just for fun. Now check out Buzzfeed. You’ll soon be familiar with all the big names, Doubleclick, Google analytics, Facebook, Brightcove, Yume, Moat, New Relic, Pointroll, Optimizely, and so on.

This is what most web sites look like when using Ghostery pic.twitter.com/Nyz4eDBnLB— Adland (@adland) June 26, 2015

Now, what can all these things see when used properly? Dan Barker has picked apart strings over at Buzzfeed and notes in “BuzzFeed is Watching You” that each quiz you do – while signed into your facebook and tracked by Google analytics – reveals a lot about you specifically and can be tied to your digital footprint.

In other words, if I had access to the BuzzFeed Google Analytics data, I could query data for people who got to the end of the quiz & indicated – by not checking that particular answer – that they have had an eating disorder. Or that they have tried to change their gender. Or I could run a query along the following lines if I wished:

“Show me all the data for anyone who answered the “Check Your Privilege” quiz but did not check “I have never taken medication for my mental health”.

In BuzzFeed’s defense, I’m sure when they set up the tracking in the first place they didn’t foresee that they’d be recording data from quizzes of this personal depth. This is just a single example, but I suspect this particular quiz would have had less than 2 million views if everyone completing it realised every click was being recorded & could potentially be reported on later – whether that data is fully identifiable back to individual users, or pseudonymous, or even totally anonymous.

It’s not just Buzzfeed who can do this, each time you click on that Facebook link your friends shared, to read that article, do that Quiz, watch that film, you’re leaving digital crumbs of your privacy all over the place. A Buzzfeed employee was quick to jump in the comments there and clarify they don’t know it’s you, you.

….we do not in fact record that it is “you” browsing the site. The string sent to GA is not your username but an anonymized string that is not linked in any way to your account, email address or other personally identifiable information. Also, about 99% our readers are not even logged in.
We are only interested in data in the aggregate form. Who a specific user is and what he or she is doing on the site is actually a useless piece of information for us. We know how many people got Paris or prefer espresso in the Which city would you live in? quiz, but we don’t know who they are or any of their PII.

If the data is “anonymized” why is there a unique string on it? That unique string seems like it would be useful when looking at “stuff this visitor also looked at on Buzzfeed” at the very least. So now they know you like quizzes and posts about puppies. No big deal. But, you know how Facebok and Google can now recognize you without even seeing your face in photos? The small stuff paints big pictures.
Now Facebook can find you in any photo with 97% accuracy, that’s even better than the FBI’s own Next Generation Identification system. This is what uploading all the photos in the world to Flickr, Facebook and Google brought us – teaching computers to find things like “delicious”, “red”, bicycle” and you in photographs. Even when you have your back turned and are wearing a hoodie, because they know all your recognisable traits now such as build and visible tattoos. And users rejoice, because it’s so practical when the computers labels all your pictures for you, forgetting the creepy that comes with this gift.

Buzzfeed says the strings they are are anonymized, but lets be honest, it takes up literally no additional space to make a user ID that can be linked back to personally identifiable information in a database. And what if that link to your real name is created by someone else snooping on the page, say a government entity, hackers, or any one of the groups who have their cookies following you around the web that you see using Ghostery: Facebook, Google, etc. The world was outraged at the thought of NSA’s PRISM, but leave all this information willingly to silicon valley hip corporations, worldwide.

You can’t, on the one hand recoil at the idea of NSA seeing metadata, hollering about privacy, while simultaneously giving it away to various tech corporations on the web, whose terms of service you never bothered to actually read. It’s only a matter of time before this data can be used in courts all over the world. Data brokers have the FTC issuing new regulations and demanding transparancy but the FTC can barely keep up.

But what does it matter what you answer on a quiz? Or if you change your profile picture to a rainbow image, which facebook then tracks, just like they did when they tracked your mood and your social influence and political mobilization.

I used to joke – and I’m sure I’ve written it somewhere in an article on Adland years ago – that with all this social web tracking happening, it’ll become suspect to not have a digital footprint. Looking for the “bad guys” will be a simple matter of looking for “black holes” of no data. When I shut down my Facebook profile (again, my first Facebook infocide was in 2007) last week, my friends didn’t raise an eyebrow. But as one of my other friends followed suit, the reactions to his leaving ranged from shocked to bewilderment, and required those left behind in the walled garden to come and explain his absence. Like shutting down a facebook page is abnormal.

Considering how many sites use Facebook comments, Disqus comments, Google comments on their sites, which in turn brings the sites extra traffic from the social networks in question, it does seem drastic to shut down a facebook profile. If you’ve ever used it as a login you may even lock yourself out from lots of accounts that you want to keep. All of these entities keep track of your name and your IP number, over several devices.

Perhaps that’s why I find it just a little ironic that a sites old-fashioned comment-box, that doesn’t use a hundred tracking cookies & your usual Facebook/Disqus/G+ comment system is deemed “unsafe” by those who would apparently rather be shadowed by digital corporations across social media than just have a discussion in more than 140 chars. The microwave mentality of not thinking about this has shrunk our vast wild west internet into a handful of corporations who see all that we do and own our data.

@adland @CurriculumVeto Mmmm. Smells like clickbait! It IS more important that people look at your page than feel safe on twitter.— Claireknucklefight (@illusClaire) August 16, 2014

FYI: If you comment here, I, as the site’s webmaster, can see your current IP. That’s it.

Vimby Crafts Canine Tearjerker for Kleenex

VSA Partners teamed up with Vimby/Facebook Creative Shop for the latest in its “Someone Needs One” campaign for Kleenex, which it launched earlier this month. Vimby created the “Unlikely Best Friends” spot, along with other online videos in the campaign, with its roster of documentary filmmakers.

“Unlikely Best Friends” tells the story of the lovable Chance, a dog who lost his rear legs after being hit by a car and left for dead at the side of the road. San Antonio Pets Alive found the dog and decided to give him a second chance at life, thus the name. Chance, who now gets around with the help of a wheelchair, was adopted by a man named Michael, who is also bound to a wheelchair. “I deal with the same struggles that he deals with,” Michael says in the spot, adding that they’re best friends and “do everything together.” The spot’s charm is pretty impossible to resist and the touching friendship has clearly stuck a chord with viewers on Facebook, where it has been viewed over 23 million times.

Credits:

Client: Kleenex
Agency: VIMBY/Facebook Creative Shop
Media Agency: Mindshare
Kleenex AOR: VSA
Executive Creative Director: Adam Reno
Producer: Carrie Stett
Director of Photography: Ed Wu
Production Company: VIMBY
Editor: David Rowe, VIMBY

Camera Lens Flippers – The Clip and Lens Flipper System

(TrendHunter.com) The Clip and Lens Flipper is a simple but amazingly effective system, developed by GoWing, that makes it easier than ever for photographers to change the lenses on their camera, whilst also giving…

LGBT Ads Strike a Chord with Brands and Viewers


The inclusion of LGBT themes in advertising is at an all-time high and will likely increase with the recent historic Supreme Court ruling on marriage equality, as brands see the value in promoting diversity and acceptance in their messaging.

The month leading up to the ruling was Pride Month, when the LGBT community honors the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots with various parades, events and celebrations. Over the course of the month, several advertisers chose to participate in their own way with ads strongly supporting the LGBT community, as well as the issue of marriage equality, as part of their brand positioning.

The results, according to iSpot.tv data, were not only some of the most digitally engaging ads of the month, but also the most effective and engaging ad campaigns of the year by the brands conducting them. The three most notable campaigns were Wells Fargo’s “Learning Sign Language” spot, Tylenol’s “How We Family” ad, and Chobani’s “Love This Life” spot.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Huffington Post Said To Break Even on $146 Million in Revenue Last Year


The Huffington Post generated $146 million in revenue last year, according to a report in The New York Times Magazine. And yet the site failed to turn a profit, according to the story’s author David Segal, who reports that it broke even.

That’s a worrisome sign for digital-media startups, which, like The Huffington Post, rely almost entirely on digital advertising for revenue. The amount brands are willing to pay for digital display ads face constant downward pressure because there’s a near limitless amount of supply.

So if The Huffington Post — which is 10-years-old, hauls in more than 200 million unique visitors a month and cranks out roughly 1,200 posts daily on the backs of reportedly poorly paid or unpaid writers — can’t turn a profit on $146 million in revenue, then how are the other, venture-capital fueled sites with smaller audiences and fewer relationships with advertisers supposed to achieve profitability?

Continue reading at AdAge.com

ConAgra's New Plan Includes 'Surgical' Increase in Marketing


The new CEO of ConAgra Foods on Tuesday promised big changes for the packaged-food company, including investing more in marketing for some brands as it divests its struggling private-label business.

In his first extensive public comments since taking the helm, Sean Connolly said that while ConAgra will aggressively target cost savings, it will also pour more money behind its most promising brands.

ConAgra — whose brands include Marie Callender’s, Healthy Choice, Slim Jim and Orville Redenbacher’s — has “historically underinvested in the branded side of the portfolio, so we plan to invest more in marketing as the brands can handle it,” Mr. Connolly told investment analysts. But as it spends more, the company will be “surgical and extremely disciplined,” he added. “The notion of dramatically jacking up spending levels for the sake of getting back on the horse does not make sense, and that’s not the kind of play you will see us run,” he said.

Continue reading at AdAge.com