Hasta La Creative!

-Danny Trejo tells viewers to “#TakeBackTV” in a new campaign for Sling TV (video above).

-IPG’s network appears to be down today. Don’t panic!

-Droga5 London launched its first campaign for clothing brand Belstaff, entitled “Here Be Dragons.”

–LBB’s Laura Swinton writes about the “meritocracy delusion that’s holding the industry back.”

-Rockport appointed Bushwick-based agency Madwell as its creative agency of record.

–Circus Marketing welcomed Federico Durán as executive creative director of its Los Angeles office. 

-Branding and design firm Landor hired Michael Khoury as strategy director of its New York office. 

-VML launched a fellowship program to bring together its U.S. and China offices.

Meanwhile, an EA spokesman said it would update its recently released video game Madden 2017 with commentary from Brandon Gaudin and Charles Davis to acknowledge Mr. Kapernick’s action. When asked if EA would still include the QB in future commercials, the spokesman declined to comment.

“As far as Madden, that one is a little tricker,” Mr. Smith said. “They are probably discussing whether to drop him and I would say it is 50/50.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

An ad for Playboy lingerie from Australian retailer Bras N Things has been deemed by the country’s ad watchdog to be too risqué to be shown on digital billboards. But the model in the spot has some choice words for critics who called the ad “vulgar” and likened it to “amateur porn.” 

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(TrendHunter.com) Following exciting social posts featuring rainbow root hairstyles, hidden rainbow hair is the latest multi-hued look to come out of London. Located in the British capital in the heart of Brick Lane,…

BBDO’s ongoing anti-texting and driving campaign for AT&T takes an even more tragically macabre turn in “The Unseen,” the latest chapter in the 6-year-old “It Can Wait” project.

At first, this one resembles past spots with a 40-something suburban family. In fact, the BBDO team seems to be leading us to think that it will end in a less devastating way than 2015’s “Close to Home.”

For one thing, Mr. Dad is the only one driving. And he’s very careful not to get distracted by his phone, even though past efforts have turned this work into the advertising equivalent of a horror movie that inspires a rush every time someone goes up the stairs to the attic … or, in this case, every time he gets a notification.

Things take a turn toward the surreal or even fantastic around the 1:45 mark as an unexpected character appears.

Damn. Like the star of this ad, we didn’t see that coming until it was too late. 

The release notes that this spot launched before the Labor Day weekend because it happens to be the most travel-heavy holiday in the United States, and “more cars on the road means there is more risk of accidents.”

Even more importantly, people like our protagonist are twice as likely to use their phones while driving if they happen to be alone in the car. 

This is a pretty big conceptual leap for AT&T that closely resembles a modern day Twilight Zone scenario. “Close to Home” director Frederic Planchon also helmed this spot, and they’re very stylistically similar, but the twist does make all the difference. We knew something was coming, but we really didn’t expect it to go all supernatural like that.

The narrative loses much of its power in the :30 version, which cuts out all the buildup and a good deal of context along with it.

A related blog post by AT&T senior EVP and global marketing officer Lori Lee notes that the campaign will also include print, radio, social and digital components and that the company will work with some behavioral economists to “uncover new insights and test them in field trials” in its effort to decrease texting-while-driving accidents.

Given the client’s recent decision to consolidate its business with Omnicom, we can expect a good bit more work on this account from BBDO moving forward as well.

Now, are we horrible people for hoping the dog found his way home?

Also, Brightcove is the absolute worst.

Credits

Agency: BBDO New York
Client: AT&T
Title: The Unseen

Chief Creative Officer, Worldwide: David Lubars
Chief Creative Officer, New York: Greg Hahn
Executive Creative Director: Matt MacDonald
Creative Director/Copywriter: Rick Williams
Creative Director/Art Director: Marcel Yunes

Director of Integrated Production: David Rolfe
Group Executive Producer: Julie Collins
Executive Producer: Dan Blaney

Managing Director: Mark Cadman
Senior Director: Mark Tillinghast
Account Director: Matt Mason
Account Manager: Johnny Wardell
Account Executive: Erin Sheehan

Planning Director: James Lou
Engagement Planning Director: Charles Baker
Senior Planner: Simonas Piepalius

Business Affairs Manager: Nancy Espinal

Production Company: Anonymous Content
Director: Frederic Planchon
Managing Director/EP: Eric Stern
Executive/Production: Sue Ellen Clair
Head of Production: Kerry Haynie
Producer: Erin Wile
Production Supervisor: Donald Cager
DP: Jody Lee Lipes

Editorial: WORK Editorial
Editor: Rich Orrick – RICH ORRICK
Executive Producer: Erica Thompson
Producer: Jamie Perritt
Assistant Editors: Christopher Fetsch/evelina gokinayeva

Visual Effects: The Mill
Shoot Supervisor: Gavin Wellsman

Colorist: Fergus McCall

2d Lead Artist : Krissy Nordella
2d Artist: Gavin Wellsman, Heather Kennedy, Alex Miller, Nicolette Picardo, Alex Wysota, Kevin Donahue
3d Artist: Sandor Toledo, Peter Karnik, Alex Allain
Design: Yuanbo Chen

Senior Producer: Nirad “Bugs” Russell
Executive Producer: Sean Costelloe

Mix studio: Heard City
Sound Mixer: Phil Loeb
Sound Designer: Brian Emrich
Music track: Villa Del Refugio
Music artist: This Will Destroy You
//

No single decade in recent memory has a monopoly on style. Or questionable exercise methods.

A new video, “The History of Exercise,” stars Nick Offerman and Michelle Obama looking back on past—and present—contraptions for working out, as a way to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition.

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As the centennial of Mr. Dahl’s birth approaches, the estate of the “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” author is developing at least 23 projects based on his works.

Today Shareen Pathak of Digiday ran a rather unflattering portrait of The Barbarian Group, taking a look inside its recent “meltdown.”

The Group has seen something of a leadership exodus in recent months, changing CEOs for the second time in less than a year last week. Back in December, Sophie Kelly left the agency to be replaced by Peter Kim, who has since been succeded by interim CEO Aaron Lau. In March, co-founder and chairman Benjamin Palmer left the agency after 14 years, with chief strategy officer Ian Daly part of a wave of executive departures two months later. Owner/CXO Keith Butters, CCO Edu Pou, head of talent/HR Michelle Prota and head of account management Sherri Chambers also left the agency in May. 

“The fact that it’s still around at all is a testament to its heritage, since right now it is literally being run into the ground,” Barbarian co-founder Rick Webb told Digiday. 

The publication pointed Barbarian’s relationship with Korean holding company Cheil Worldwide, “a company with a culture at odds with its own.” For example, one veteran of The Barbarian Group told us that Cheil didn’t want to pay full price for its in-house talent, especially on the technical side of things.

This party also pointed to clients not knowing quite what to make of the organization, saying, “We were in limbo between production shop and full-service agency. And while the middle was interesting, a lot of clients didn’t know how to engage.” At a certain point, Barbarian spent significant amounts of money pitching new business alongside more traditional shops — and this investment largely failed to pay off.

Agency veterans also claim that certain members of the leadership team “checked out” well ahead of Cheil firing Kelly.

“When they fired [Kelly], an account person, who personally owned the relationships with every major client, out of the blue without telling the clients in advance, the fate was sealed,” Webb told Digiday. “They’ve been play-acting since December, and they never had a chance.”

Lau, currently serving as interim CEO says finding permanent CEO for the agency is his next order of business. “I’m not here to change history,” he told the publication, “I’m here to shape the future.”

It would seem that certain media outlets also got a little overexcited about The SuperDesk, which would turn out to be a symbol of Barbarian’s ambitions despite the fact that — according to our sources, at least — most employees liked it.

A human just beat McCann Erickson Japan’s AI creative director in a challenge for the most effective campaign. Still, there’s bad news for creatives worried computers might one day replace them: The race was pretty close.

Back in June, the agency created two commercials for Mondelez brand Clorets Mint Tab and asked ordinary people to vote online on which one communicated the product message better.

One ad was dreamed up by Mitsuru Kuramoto, a creative director who is also a TV writer. The other was suggested by AI-CD , a project conceived by millennials who work at the agency. The human won 54%-46%.

Continue reading at AdAge.com