Aug
31
Feature: Making House: Notes on Domesticity
Posted in: UncategorizedA home is something both looked at and lived in, but that duality can be difficult to reconcile.
Aug
31
Ryanair's Michael O'Leary: Irish government should tell EU to "f*ck off" over Apple tax ruling
Posted in: UncategorizedRyanair’s outspoken chief executive Michael O’Leary has described the EU’s €13bn (£11bn) tax bill on Apple in Ireland as “bizarre”, and says it would never stand in court.
Aug
31
McDonald's Win Is Only the Beginning for Wendy Clark and Omnicom
Posted in: Uncategorized
Wendy Clark was almost speechless. Almost. And only for a minute.
But according to the DDB North America CEO, she and Omnicom staffers who’d been working on the pitch for the McDonald’s creative review had arrived for a Monday morning meeting with the “understanding it was going to be a commercial terms discussion.”
Instead, they were greeted by McDonald’s U.S. Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl and “Ronald McDonald with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of Champagne.”
Aug
31
Flatpack Portable Shelters – These Shelters Were Designed for Emergency Situations (GALLERY)
Posted in: Uncategorized
(TrendHunter.com) This portable shelter concept was created in response to the worsening natural disasters and conflicts that have resulted in the mass displacement of human beings around the world.
The shelters…
Aug
31
From the Classroom to the Office: Where Expectation Meets Reality
Posted in: Uncategorized
Every year around this time, college grads have settled into their new positions in agencies and corporate workplaces, but the process of adjusting to work life may take a bit longer.
Recently I had the opportunity to query some young professionals who are about a year into their careers, asking them about their perceptions and expectations as they approached graduation and after they entered the communications and marketing professions.
These young pros — all now in agency settings, both big and small and from all regions of the country — made some surprising comments about the transition from the classroom to the office. Their comments may be hiding some insight into the way that universities and employers can do a better job of preparing and onboarding these new professionals.
Aug
31
McDonald's Win Is Only the Beginning for Wendy Clark and Omnicom
Posted in: Uncategorized
Wendy Clark was almost speechless. Almost. And only for a minute.
But according to the DDB North America CEO, she and Omnicom staffers who’d been working on the pitch for the McDonald’s creative review had arrived for a Monday morning meeting with the “understanding it was going to be a commercial terms discussion.”
Instead, they were greeted by McDonald’s U.S. Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl and “Ronald McDonald with a bouquet of flowers and a bottle of Champagne.”
Aug
31
Diageo U.K. Spot Banned For Implying Alcohol Boosts Confidence
Posted in: Uncategorized
A TV ad for Diageo’s Captain Morgan rum has been banned in the U.K. for suggesting that alcohol boosts confidence.
The “Go Full Captain” spot, by Anomaly London, takes place at a party on board a ship, and is set to a cover of Chic’s “Le Freak,” sung in Mandarin. The main character has the face of Captain Morgan, taken from the rum’s brand logo, superimposed over his own face.
The “Captain” is shown dancing with friends, tipping up a sofa, and using a rope to swing form one deck to another.
Aug
31
A Responsible Dad Makes Catastrophic Choice in AT&T's Shocking New Safety Film
Posted in: Uncategorized
Last year, AT&T and BBDO New York shocked viewers with the “Close to Home” ad, which depicted how one caring mother’s simple moment of distraction devastated many. A gripping new film, “The Unseen,” continues to promote mobile users’ safe behavior through the eyes of a typically responsible father who mindlessly lets his guard down while alone on the road, leading to harrowing consequences.
The three-minute plus video captures a day-in-the-life of a loving family. Dad drives his three daughters to the local pool, while Mom is at home, where she discovers the family dog Muffin has once again disappeared. In the car, the kids make their noisy merriment, as kids do, and the father tries to stay focused while enjoying their company. His wife, concerned about Muffin, keeps ringing and texting, but good papa that he is, he consciously lets those go since the little ones are in the car.
According to Ms. Howard, the new ad takes the next step to encourage more action along with that awareness, and get the remaining two-thirds of viewers to change their ways too.
Aug
31
Customized Miniature Cabins – These Cabins Could Function as Quirky Guest Houses (GALLERY)
Posted in: Uncategorized
(TrendHunter.com) ‘The Little Cabin Company’ in British Columbia, Canada is able to build miniature cabins that suit the needs of those seeking a unique hideaway.
The tiny abodes offer asymmetrical…
Aug
31
Smoky Restaurant Interiors – The Rhoda Restaurant's Aesthetics are Inspired By Coal &Burning Visuals (GALLERY)
Posted in: Uncategorized
(TrendHunter.com) Restaurant interior design is often an excellent way to metaphorically represent the culinary leanings of the chef, and that is exactly the case when it comes to the Rhoda restaurant in Hong Kong….
Aug
31
Structural Slip-On Runners – These Adidas Sneakers are Both Unique and Functional in Design (GALLERY)
Posted in: Uncategorized
(TrendHunter.com) Adidas’ upcoming designs in its ‘Equipment ADV’ silhouette feature slip-on runners that have a unique, structural design.
The shoes come with two different color schemes…
Aug
31
Tina Fey Gets Into Flight Mode in New American Express Ad
Posted in: Uncategorized
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.
Among the new releases, Microsoft compares its Surface Pro 4 with an Apple MacBook as a musician sings that the “Mac is less useful, like a hat for your cat”; Slim Jim shows a real estate agent helping a man escape a future with kids; and Verizon celebrates America’s greatness (“we don’t strive to write the ‘so-so’ American novel”) in an ad introducing its next generation network LTE Advanced.
Subaru rolls out the emotional, serious spot of its new campaign that brings the safety message home in two very different ways.
Aug
31
Tuesday Odds and Ends
Posted in: Uncategorized–Spike Jonze directed this “My Mutant Brain” spot for new fragrance Kenzo World (video above).
–General Mills now says its creative review isn’t closed at all. It also named several of the competitors involved: McCann, Deutsch, 72andSunny, Mother and a Publicis “holding company solution” (but not Saatchi & Saatchi).
–Target’s CMO Jeff Jones has gone to Uber, where he will serve as president and work with Deutsch.
–Mondelez will not acquire Hershey, will continue being your absolute favorite client ever!
-Global marketing services network Engine Group hired Aaron Dus as vice president, strategy and innovation for Engine West.
-“Branding professor” Mark Ritson thinks the McDonald’s zero-margin Omnicom deal is a good thing for agencies … maybe because he doesn’t work at an agency.
–One of Facebook’s “news editors” tells Digiday that he/she knew the end was near.
-Adweek explains “How Brands Can Connect With College Students Throughout the School Year.”
Aug
31
Hershey Continues to Resist Acquisition as Mondelez Abandons Merger Talks
Posted in: Uncategorized
The latest failed acquisition of Hershey has renewed the chocolate maker’s reputation as a company that can’t be bought.
After Mondelez International abandoned merger discussions on Monday, Hershey shares suffered their worst decline in almost 14 years and left investors with a familiar taste. For years, Hershey has been the subject of takeover speculation. And for years, deal talks have sputtered and died.
The most recent rejection came after Mondelez proposed sweetening its offer to $115 a share, according to a person familiar with the situation. That was 18% higher than the stock’s price before deal talks were disclosed in June, but Hershey wanted to start the discussions at $125, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the negotiations were private. Turmoil at the Hershey Trust, the nonprofit organization that controls the company, also hampered merger talks.
Aug
30
Jayanta Jenkins Explains How He Will Help Turn Twitter Around
Posted in: UncategorizedBack in June we noted that Twitter was seeking a new creative agency partner after working with TBWAChiatDay L.A. on some campaigns, chiefly one promoting the service’s “Moments” feature.
Yesterday the social network announced another big change: it hired Jayanta Jenkins as its first in-house global group creative director. Jenkins was a global CD at TBWAChiatDay L.A. working on the Gatorade account before leaving last year to run in-house advertising at Beats by Dre. He is also part of the group of black creatives launched earlier this month to facilitate an ongoing conversation about race in America both within and beyond the ad industry.
The Twitter announcement came by way of an interview with VP of global brand strategy Joel Lunenfeld, who positions the Jenkins hire as a necessary injection of creativity for the organization.
Regarding ways in which brands can actually, you know, tell interesting stories, he says they need to “know what they stand for,” using Picasso, Prince and Apple as examples of parties that did know: “The world wants to know what Twitter stands for and it’s time to create that narrative.”
The thing is, Twitter’s founders and executives don’t really seem to know what it stands for right now. Multiple reports have stated that Evan Williams was a First Amendment absolutist, but that becomes problematic when a company wants to monetize a product often used to harass and abuse people between endless variations of jokes on trending topics.
When asked for examples of things that brands can do on Twitter, he mentions the Old Spice guy answering tweets in real time and the Grammy’s “Sing My Tweet,” adding that he wants the in-house Creative Studio to come up with more such ideas — presumably in collaboration with their agencies.
Regarding his job, he says, “This a defining moment in time at Twitter for our brand voice and future engagement,” which we read to mean that Twitter wants brands to be active rather than just posting 30-second spots and paying to make them show up in your feed.
Will that approach work for Twitter? We can only say this: we use the network often. We never respond to brands and we question the value of sponsored tweets. We do not see how Twitter can do a better job of showing users the sort of (revenue-producing) material that they want without compromising the completely unruly, unpredictable structure the network built for itself over the past decade. And yeah, it absolutely must be more responsive to the very valid concerns of its users, given the shocking number of racists and radicals who use it to spread their messages. But that’s obviously beyond what the creative team will be doing.
Maybe the answer is giving more “influencers” a chance to make money. But we somehow doubt it.
All that said, Twitter is an invaluable service and we do hope that Jenkins and whichever agency it chooses to work with moving forward can turn it into a more reliably profitable business. There’s a long way to go and very little time to get there.
Aug
30
Nike Gives Paralympian Scout Bassett the Final Word in its ‘Unlimited’ Campaign
Posted in: UncategorizedW+K Portland signed off on Nike’s “Unlimited” campaign with “Unlimited Will,” starring Kyle Maynard, earlier this month, but paralympian Scout Bassett has the final word in the campaign in a new spot Nike made with production company Dirty Robber.
Like its predecessor “Unlimited Pursuit,” the spot skips the meta voiceover approach that characterized each of W+K’s efforts, instead letting the 27-year-old, 4’9? paralympian tell her story in her own words. And it’s a pretty impressive story. When Bassett finished dead last when she attempted to make her first U.S. team four years ago, the only thing she gave up was her job. A year later, after devoting herself full-time to training, she not only made the team, she won the 100 meter race at the U.S. trials.
Now the female T42 Paralympic American record holder in the 100 and 200 meters and the world record holder in the 400 meters, Bassett claims “The only person that’s going to have power over me, is me.”
The spot arrives ahead of the Paralympic Games in Rio next week, where Bassett hopes to take home two gold medals. It’s a fitting end to the campaign, with Bassett exemplifying the philosophy behind “Unlimited.” The pacing and tone are mostly on, with the ad feeling like it tells Scout’s story fairly economically without overstaying its welcome, (it clocks in a little over two minutes) even while sharing some of the same footage as “Unlimited Pursuit.”
Credits:
Nike Creative Director: Tad Greenough
Production Company/Agency: Dirty Robber
Exec Prod: Jason Puris
Exec Prod: Chris Uettwiller
Director: Martin Desmond Roe
Director of Photography: Dustin Lane
Creative director: Martin Desmond Roe & Nick Frew
Post production Company: Coyote Post
Post production supervisor: Carlos Gonzalez
Aug
30
General Mills Opens Up About Its 'Closed Review' and Its Five Finalists
Posted in: Uncategorized
General Mills’ U.S. creative review isn’t closed as previously believed — in fact, the marketer is proceeding with some shops not currently on its roster, including Deutsch and Mother.
The other agencies going through to the second round are incumbents 72andsunny, McCann and, rather than Saatchi, a holding company solution from Publicis Groupe.
In another rather unusual twist, General Mills is requiring that participating agencies are staffed with at least 50% women and 20% people of color within the creative department.
Aug
30
PepsiCo Introduces Organic Gatorade
Posted in: Uncategorized
PepsiCo is introducing a version of Gatorade that’s certified organic by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, testing whether a product created in a lab with artificial flavors and colors can adapt to America’s growing natural-food movement.
After two years of research, the company is now selling strawberry, lemon and mixed berry G Organic in some Kroger supermarkets, said Brett O’Brien, Gatorade’s senior VP and general manager. It plans to expand the rollout to select grocery, natural and convenience stores over the next few weeks. The suggested retail price for the new drinks is $1.69 for a 16.9-ounce bottle, 50 cents more than for Gatorade Thirst Quencher, the nonorganic equivalent.
Gatorade, which controls 70% of the sports-drink market, is facing increasing pressure from new challengers like coconut water as consumers are focused more than ever on ingredients. Organic food industry sales in the U.S. reached $43.3 billion in 2015, up 11% from the year before, while broader food sales gained 3%, according to the Organic Trade Association.
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