Hasta La Creative!

Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new and trending TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, a company that catalogs, tags and measures activity around TV ads in real time. The New Releases here ran on TV for the first time over the weekend. The Most Engaging ads are showing sustained social heat, ranked by SpotShare scores reflecting the percent of digital activity associated with each one over the past week. See the methodology here.

With tomorow’s highly anticipated launch of Apple Music, the tech giant released “Beats 1 Worldwide,” a promo for the 24/7 radio service within Apple’s new music-streaming service. Featuring users in a subway car to an in-flight helicopter, the spot highlights how people can come together and listen to Pharrell’s new song “Freedom” from all parts of the globe.

Meanwhile, Samsung pinpoints the daily struggles we face when trying to take a selfie. From becoming “human sardines” to carrying around sticks, Samsung thinks there’s a better way to take a selfie. The spot “Change The Way You Take a Selfie” reveals the secret — buying a Samsung Galaxy S, of course. And following the SCOTUS rule on Friday, Tylenol’s “How We Family” returns to the Most Engaging chart at No. 2. The spot reminds us that families should not be defined by who is loved but instead by how much.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

NBC said in a statement that it was ending its business relationship with the billionaire real estate and media mogul after Mr. Trump referred to immigrants as “rapists” and “murderers.”

TBWAChiatDay New York launched its first campaign for Travelers Insurance since winning lead creative duties for the Hartford-based company back in February.

The campaign is made up of three spots, with the 60-second “Growing Up” (featured above) as its centerpiece. “Growing Up” shows a father’s relationship with his daughter as she cries through various growing pains, then leaves for college and gets married in the backyard. It’s the kind of emotional plea more typical for a brand like Subaru, but TBWAChiatDay New York ties it to the brand fairly well with the line, “You make it a home, we help you protect it.” The other spots trade in emotion as well, with the 45-second “Charging Station” showing a girl calling her worried parents thanks to a Travelers charging station after a disaster and “Bakery” showing a community bakery recovering from catastrophe. Each of the ads ends with the tagline, “It’s better under the umbrella.”

“The campaign targets existing and prospective customers, independent insurance agents, and employees,” Lisa Caputo, executive vice president and chief marketing and communications officer at The Travelers Companies, Inc. explained to MediaPost. “We want to reinforce that Travelers is there to help people protect the things they care most about.”

“The convention in the insurance category is to use humor to gain awareness,” added TBWAChiatDay New York CEO Rob Schwartz. “We went in a different direction and delivered emotion. Travelers is a company that truly cares about its customers, so we tried to frame that feeling.”

Arthur Sadoun, CEO of Publicis Groupe’s namesake agency, will now oversee MSLGroup.

The holding company said MSL and Publicis will continue to operate as their own entities, though both will now be controlled by Mr. Sadoun. Olivier Fleurot, CEO at MSL, will join the Publicis Groups as senior VP in September, heading communications, corporate social responsibility, real estate, insurance and cross-disciplinary programs such as Altar, according to a statement from the holding company.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

4 boat convey, “the Marianne of Gothenburg”, “Rachel”, “Vittorio”, “Juliano II”, carrying 47 people from 17 countries fail to break Gaza blockade.

At 4am on June 27th 2015 Freedom Flotilla III set sail from various points of departure throughout Europe. As an example of nonviolent resistance, they intended to challenge the blockade of the Gaza Strip, which has made life unbearable for 1.8 million Palestinians. Four boats initially set sail and one of the four, the Marianne of Gothenburg, was intercepted in International Waters at 5:11AM (GMT +3) by the Israeli Navy and redirected to the Israeli Port of Ashdod. The three remaining boats have returned to their origin ports.

On board the vessel Marianne are 18 people, including human rights activists, journalists, artists, and political figures from 10 nations. This direct action was intended to reach Gaza City harbour, deliver supplies of solar panels (to help with electrical grid problems in Gaza), and medical equipment, and then return to origin ports throughout Europe with products created by local Palestinian residents of Gaza to be sold in Europe as a way to offer economic support and maintain visibility.

Over 100 European Parliamentarians have signed a letter to the EU’s High Representative, Federica Mogherini, in support of the Freedom Flotilla. The letter calls for an immediate end to the Gaza Blockade. Freedom Flotilla Coalition intends to continue such Freedom Flotillas until the illegal blockade of Gaza ends and the port is reopened.

Freedom Flotilla Coalition: https://www.freedomflotilla.org/

Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GazaFFlotilla

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Today Maurice Levy made a couple of changes atop two of his holding company’s biggest properties: Publicis Worldwide and the massive global PR monster known as MSLGroup.

Arthur Sadoun, who manages to combine “charm charisma and arrogance in a single package” (not our words) will add oversight of the MSL organization to his current role as President of the Publicis Worldwide Network. After earning the promotion to president in late 2013, he also succeeded Jean-Yves Naouri, formerly COO of Publicis Groupe, in the same shakeup that merged Razorfish and Rosetta in 2014. (Sadoun spent several years within the TBWA organization before joining Levy’s company in 2006 to run Publicis Conseil.)

The other big change in this announcement: Olivier Fleurot, global CEO of MSLGroup, will now serve as SVP of Publicis Groupe, handling “communications, corporate social responsibility, real estate, insurance and cross-disciplinary programs.”

From Fleurot’s internal memo:

“Today I want to share two important and exciting pieces of news with you. Maurice Lévy has decided to ask Arthur Sadoun, who has been President of Publicis Worldwide for the last 18 months, to also take responsibility for MSLGROUP’s future development.  Additionally, he has asked me to move to a corporate role, as Senior Vice President, Communication and Administration, at Publicis Groupe.  I will take care of Communication, Corporate Social Responsibility, Insurance, Real Estate and the Altair project.”

“Notoriously press-shy” Sadoun is generally seen to be the man who will replace Levy when he steps down in 2017. He recently explained the agency’s biggest challenges to Digiday, saying:

“We don’t have a problem today with recruiting. But it’s with retaining. They’re all going to platforms. The young generation doesn’t want to wait five years before being in charge.”

We don’t see that fact changing anytime soon.

Both MSLGroup and Publicis Worldwide will now report to Mr Sadoun. No word at the moment on who will replace Fleurot, who spent several years as executive chairman of Publicis Worldwide in the late 90’s.

Here’s a nugget we almost missed last week amidst all the rose liquor and self-congratulations: an artist sued Starbucks and 72andSunny for allegedly ripping off her work.

The New York Post, of all places, first broke news of Maya Hayuk’s plans to take the coffee brand to court for co-opting her artwork in the packaging of its new mini-frappucino product.

The lawsuit filed by Saunders & Silverstein (full doc shared here via Animal New York) names both Starbucks and 72andSunny. Hayuk told The Post that a rep from the agency contacted her last October, writing “we love your work,” but the artist declined to collaborate with the company after the parties involved spent several days trying to negotiate a deal.

Several months later, Hayuk noticed a resemblance between her own murals (image via her Facebook page):

…and the rainbow-colored imagery Starbucks used on the product’s packaging when it launched:

Get your hands on one RT @frappuccino: Ta-dahhh! Meet the Mini Frappuccino! pic.twitter.com/W8vnqB9IU9

— Starbucks Coffee (@Starbucks) May 11, 2015

More specifically, Hayuk told the Post that the image on the cups was very close to that of five specific paintings that she recently completed.

Here is a side-by-side comparison via Artnet (images taken by Hayuk herself):

As the suit puts it, “Hayuk has a unique and distinctive style that is very recognizable” and does not resemble the work of Jordan Kay, the artist credited with creating the Starbucks packaging (portfolio here).

You may be reminded of a case from 2012 in which the band Beach House was approached by Volkswagen and DDB regarding a song the company wanted to use in one of its UK ads. The band said no, so the agency got the music production studio involved in the subsequent campaign to create a song so similar that fans started emailing the video to Beach House’s Alex Scally, who later told The New York Times that the whole ordeal felt “very invasive.”

In this case as in that one, the accuser will probably not win in court because the ad does not appear to be a direct copy of one of her pieces. (As noted by Artnet, Hayuk has sued various parties in the past for using her work in promo campaigns without receiving permission to do so.)

In other news regarding agencies taking credit for work they didn’t create, Geometry Global Dubai was forced to return its Cannes Grand Prix for product design after various parties noted that no one at the agency actually played an active role in designing the winning product. They just promoted it.

Good to know that the ad industry continues to respect the creative process above all other things.