Stefan Hertmans uses his grandfather’s notebooks about World War I to create a harrowing account of war, poverty and despair, stoically endured.
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 yesterday. 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, U.S. Olympic team sponsor Folgers honors dedicated coaches who wake up early to train young athletes; Chevrolet’s newest spot showcases the Malibu along with its other award-winning cars; Citi explains why it sponsors the U.S. Paralympic team; and Kohl’s has Kohl’s Cash for back-to-school shoppers.
Finally, one woman is a big fan of both actress Brooke Burke-Charvet and her shoes in the latest Skechers spot.
The company has struggled for stability over the last several months as the mental capacity of its controlling shareholder, Sumner M. Redstone, is questioned.
When it comes to China’s multi-billion dollar fast food industry, Yum Brands and McDonald’s are living large, enjoying a combined 38% share of the market in 2015. Yum’s KFC restaurant chain and the Golden Arches have long enjoyed a run of super-sized growth as consumers craved a taste of Americana.
Now, as both these giants eye spinoffs of their mainland operations, analysts are wondering whether the glory days might be over. There are signs that both companies’ absolute dominance of a fast food industry they helped create is starting to slip away as consumers shift to healthier options and Chinese-style food chains — from huoguo (hot pot) to tangbao (steamed dumplings) — proliferate.
These headwinds may explain why investor interest in Yum’s and McDonald’s China operations has been tepid, at least so far. Yum’s plan to sell a minority stake to a Chinese partner seems on hold after bidders objected to the valuation and terms, while McDonald’s has seen a few potential bidders turned off by stringent deal conditions. Yum has reportedly valued a 20% stake in its China business, which it plans to list as a separate unit before the year’s end, at $2 billion. That’s the same price tag McDonald’s has reportedly put on its China franchise rights.
Today the New York offices of Publicis announced the hiring of Chris Van Oosterhout to lead creative on the Citi account.
Van Oosterhout was previously a GCD and senior partner at Ogilvy & Mather New York, where he played co-lead on the Nationwide account along with ECD/senior partner Steve Howard. Ogilvy parted with both creatives in February only a few days after the client decided to drop its former agency of record McKinney after 7 years.
As our tipsters predicted, Ogilvy later inherited the entirety of that account. Howard then went to MullenLowe Boston, where he is currently senior VP and creative director. (Howard and Van Oosterhout were co-creative leads on the Nationwide 2015 Super Bowl ad, which you may remember as somewhat controversial.)
Overall, Van Oosterhout spent nearly 7 years with Ogilvy, working on IBM, American Express and E*TRADE in addition to Nationwide.
Citi has worked with Publicis, which created the OneCitiGlobal unit to handle the client, for some time. The client also consolidated its media account with Publicis last year after a review in which we heard that Citi refused to “play nice.”
Here’s the internal memo from CCO Andy Bird.
Just a quick note to let you all know Chris Van Oosterhout has joined us as Executive Creative Director for Citi, overseeing all our work across all touchpoints.
Chris will be reporting into me, but also working closely with Jeff, Jim, Avery and the extended Publicis Citi creative team.
For me, and for all here at Publicis building the strongest Citi creative team is not only a privilege, but a responsibility I cherish. Creating this fully-dedicated creative leadership role is one of the steps we’re taking to guarantee you the best talent in the world, and a coherent and consistent voice enterprise wide.
I’m staying as involved as ever, we’re entering a hugely exciting period for Citi right now and Chris will help me fully leverage our people to take full advantage of talent toward every brief, from CRM to TVC to anything in between. He will be in the places I can’t always be, but we share the same vision, ambition and style of management.
I hope you welcome him as much as I am hugely thrilled to have him join.
Chris is no stranger to big brands, big challenges and big wins in the financial sector and outside. He brings a wealth of experience to our team. Most recently with Ogilvy, he helped bring to market stand-out work we all recognize for IBM Smarter Planet, E*Trade with Kevin Spacey, Nationwide (is on your side) and American Express to name a few. Above all, he’s hungry for the OneTeam experience and opportunity to take Citi to its next great place in the world.
I’m sure you’ll all meet Chris soon enough, but any questions in the meantime, drop me a line.
Best regards
Andy?
R/GA Los Angeles appointed Nicky Bell as senior vice president, managing director. In the role, she will be tasked with expanding R/GA’s west coast office, launching unnamed “new capabilities” while working with new and existing clients and reporting to R/GA U.S. president Sean Lyons.
“Nicky is a proven leader. She’s transformed cultures, refocused and realigned agency capabilities, and contributed to significant growth of client businesses,” Lyons said in a statement. “R/GA has big plans for its Los Angeles office and Nicky is exactly the right person to deliver on them.”
Bell joins R/GA from Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand, where she spent 6+ years as CEO.
Local trade press dubbed her “The Fixer” for helping to turn that office around by bringing its tech capabilities up to date. Her January resignation made headlines, leading StopPress to pen the truism “nothing is permanent in this industry.”
During her tenure, Saatchi NZ also won various new business pitches including ASB bank, Sanitarium, Coca-Cola, Air New Zealand and the New Zealand governments’ Commission for Financial Capability.
Prior to Saatchi, she spent 18 years with Ogilvy & Mather, the first seven with the agency’s Sydney office and then 11 in New York. While with Ogilvy & Mather New York she rose to the rank of senior partner, worldwide managing director, leading the agency’s global teams on its Dove, Kodak, Motorola, and Avon accounts.
“I am thrilled to be joining R/GA,” Bell said. “With technology changing consumer behavior faster than ever, the RG/A Los Angeles team is perfectly positioned to reimagine the role of technology in the art of storytelling. They are a hugely talented, progressive thinking team. It’s good to be here.”
GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s campaign has spent nothing since May on TV advertising and little on other media. But the real estate tycoon has backing from a PAC that spent millions in June and July to attack Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and convince voters that he will bolster the country’s military prowess.
Great America PAC spent $3.8 million on TV ads, phone and online voter contact and voter data in June and July, according to Ad Age analysis of Federal Election Commission filings submitted by the group last month.
Ads from the organization, which counts veteran GOP campaign lead Ed Rollins as its top strategist and LendingTree founder and CEO Doug Lebda as co-chair, support Mr. Trump’s promises to “Rebuild our military and make America respected in the world again,” “Defeat ISIS and radical Islam,” and “Stop the scourge of illegal immigration by securing our borders and building a wall that Mexico will pay for.”
NBC hit a new record for Olympic advertising securing $1.2 billion in national ad sales for the upcoming games in Rio.
“We surpassed what we thought was an unattainable threshold,” said Seth Winter, exec VP-advertising sales, NBC Sports Group.
This puts NBC about 20% ahead of ad sales for its 2012 London games.
In late 2014, fledgling entrepreneur Josh Tetrick persuaded investors to plow $90 million into his vegan food startup Hampton Creek. Mr. Tetrick had impressed leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms by getting his eggless Just Mayo product into Walmart, Kroger, Safeway and other top U.S. supermarkets within about three years of starting his company.
What Mr. Tetrick and his team neglected to mention is that the startup undertook a large-scale operation to buy back its own mayo, which made the product appear more popular than it really was. At least eight months before the funding round closed, Hampton Creek executives quietly launched a campaign to purchase mass quantities of Just Mayo from stores, according to five former workers and more than 250 receipts, expense reports, cash advances and emails reviewed by Bloomberg.
In addition to buying up hundreds of jars of the product across the U.S., contractors were told to call store managers pretending they were customers and ask about Just Mayo. Strong demand for a product typically prompts retailers to order more and stock it in additional stores.
Today TBWAMedia Arts Lab launched “The Human Family,” the latest in its “Shot on an iPhone” campaign for Apple.
The spot takes a different tone then past efforts in the campaign with narration Maya Angelou, who reads from her poem “Human Family.”
In its images as well as the words, the spot celebrates the similarities of that family, underscoring how “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” Set to a dramatic piano score, Angelou’s narration is paired with a series of images shot, of course, on the iPhone 6S, which represent people’s differences, similarities and human connections.
It’s quite the departure from “Onions,” the 60-second spot TBWAMedia Arts Lab released to promote the iPhone 6S back in April.
At the time, we appreciated that the agency was keeping things light for Apple, but while “The Human Family” takes a more serious approach for the brand, it works. That’s largely thanks to Angelou, whose words and strong narration make what is otherwise just a slide show of photos and video seem like something more substantive.
We do still kind of miss Cookie Monster, though.
(TrendHunter.com) These eerie photos depict a woman posing among natural landscapes and elements in a way that evokes a sense of fear in the viewer.
Taken by Ashley Joncas—the founder of ‘Enigme Studio&#…
The judge said the notes and testimony of Frances Robles were “relevant and critical” to the case against Conrado Juarez, who is accused of killing a toddler in 1991.
Mr. Bennett was honored by Lady Gaga, Stevie Wonder and more, and the Empire State Building was lit in Italian and American flag colors in his honor.
Don’t say Twitter isn’t good for anything. Earlier this week we came across a tweet from U.K.-based animator Cyriak Harris that appears to depict a McDonald’s ad next to a video made by Harris.
The similarity between the two is quite striking.
Wonder how much @McDonalds paid someone to copy my video. I didn’t even get paid to make the original pic.twitter.com/XGWjHQq0j6
— cyriak harris (@cyriakharris) August 2, 2016
We reached out to Harris, whose work has appeared in ads for Coca-Cola, Trident and others over the past few years.
He wrote, “At this point all I know is that there is a video on the internet that appears to be a McDonald’s advert, which is clearly based on one of my own videos. It was brought to my attention on twitter, including a link to a forum thread supposedly by the creative behind the advert, where I was cited as the ‘reference.’”
Here’s the original video, which went live in 2010 and has more than 35 million YouTube views. Harris described it as “surreal bovine choreography.”
He also sent us the link mentioned above.
It leads to a tech forum in which Leandro Pedrouzo — who is co-owner of Buenos Aires production company Juan Solo — wrote three days ago that the Harris clip was “the reference for this Spot,” adding, “The director and I wanted to go a bit more realistic but the client loved the ref.”
The ad was run by Arcos Dorados, the Latin American version of McDonald’s, with creative by Sao Paulo, Brazil agency DPZ&T.
The agency hasn’t responded to an email we sent this morning, but they did get back to USA Today after Arcos Dorados took the ad down (BuzzFeed U.K. also covered the story yesterday). An agency representative pretty much denied the ripoff, claiming that the Harris clip was used “with numerous other works as a reference for the production of the spot” and that this is common practice in the ad industry.
The spokesperson then acknowledged that the clips were similar and promised that the production house would respond to Harris’s claims.
Today Harris told us that neither Juan Solo nor McDonald’s has gotten back to him. He wrote, “That’s not unusual for me, but it is quite unusual to be copied so directly like that.”
Most people might not think of the connection between clean laundry and school attendance rates. But, when presented with the decision between facing the ridicule of their classmates or staying home, young people will often choose the latter. So Whirlpool and DigitasLBi teamed up to promote the “Care Counts” program, a new campaign which placed a washer and dryer in disadvantaged schools in an attempt to provide students with clean clothes and drive up attendance rates.
As it turns out, the program made quite a difference.
A case study video from DigitasLBi opens with an introduction to the program and some of the students it has helped. One fourth-grader named Joe remarks about how when his family was homeless all their money would go towards food, leaving nothing left to spend on washing clothes. Another fourth-grader Vanessa really gets to the core of the initiative, saying, “When I wake up in the morning and I find out I have no clean clothes, I usually just end up staying home.”
It’s pretty heartbreaking stuff, but it all ends well. There was the expected increase in attendance, with over 90 percent of participants going to school for an average of six more days over the previous year. But there were some other, less obvious positive outcomes from the program including increased classroom and extracurricular activity, as well as improved test scores.
Plus, as Vanessa put it, “It makes me feel more excited and makes me feel like I fit in more.”
The video concludes with the brand’s plans to roll the program out to even more schools with the start of the new school year, since it has been such a success so far. In addition to the introductory video, there are also a series of shorter clips of students, school administrators and a parent liaison discussing the impact of the program.
Say what you will about the ubiquity of causevertising, but it works for Whirlpool here. Rather than another forgettable appliance ad, the brand has allied itself with a cause for which it can demonstrate results. That’s probably not something people would have expected from such a brand, and the video is likely to be shared on social media — especially by parents.
Credits:
Client: Whirlpool
Vice President, Brand Marketing, North America: Bill Beck
Sr. Director, Brand & Marketing Services: Robert Sundy
Sr. Brand Manager: Ryan Morand
Brand Manager: Chelsey Lindstrom
Agency: DigitasLBi & Production
Chief Creative Officer: Ronald Ng
EVP, Executive Creative Director: Morgan Carroll
SVP, Group Creative Director: Mike Frease
VP, Creative Director: Louie Calvano
Associated Creative Director: Chris Jansma
Sr. Art Director: Bryan Haupt, James Collins
Sr. Copywriter: Samantha Bordignon,
Lead Experience Designer: David Plant
VP, Executive Producer: Greg Lederer
VP, Account Director: Kristine Kobe
Account Manager: Julie Wisniewski
VP, Group Director, Creative Strategy: Brian Sherwell
Associate Director, Social Strategy: Rachael Datz
VP, Account Director – Media: Caitlin Finn
Media Supervisor: Ryanne Donnellon
Media Planner: Samantha Harvey
Production Company: C41 Media
Director: Mai Iskander
Director of Photography: Mai Iskander
Executive producer: Carla Tate
Line Producer: Carla Tate
Editing House: Cutters, Inc
Editor: Kathryn Hempel/Emily Tolan
Producer: Patrick Casey
Audio Mix: Another Country
Mixer: David Gerbowsi
(TrendHunter.com) Nostalgic 80s movie fans will either love or be totally disheartened by these movie illustrations by Tom Ward, a UK-based designer. The series puts a twist on beloved characters from some of the 80s…
The author of “The Nine,” “The Run of His Life” and, most recently, “American Heiress” wrote his senior thesis about Samuel Adams: “Musical rights to this work are still available.”
Target has resumed selling Amazon.com’s tablets and e-readers on its website and plans to bring them back to its stores, marking a detente between one of the world’s largest brick-and-mortar retailers and its chief online rival.
Amazon’s Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets and Fire TV devices went on sale on Target.com on Thursday, and the merchandise will return to the retailer’s stores in October, just in time for the holiday shopping rush.
When Target stopped carrying the devices in 2012, analysts hailed the ban as a savvy move to rid its stores of a Trojan horse. Amazon’s Fire tablet makes it easier to purchase items on Amazon.com, and its e-readers draw more customers to Amazon’s website, where it sells everything from shoes to shampoo, alongside its electronic books. A few months after Target’s decision, Walmart also stopped selling the devices. Some smaller chains, like Best Buy and Bed Bath & Beyond, kept them on shelves.
Jill Gregory has broken Nascar’s glass ceiling, becoming the auto racing association’s first female chief marketing officer. Ms. Gregory, who joined Nascar in 2007, was promoted after serving as senior VP-marketing and industry services.
Her ascension means that women now hold the top marketing jobs at three of nation’s largest pro sports organizations. Pam El was named the National Basketball Association’s CMO in 2014. That same year the National Football League hired Dawn Hudson as its CMO. The first female to lead marketing for a pro sports league was Jacqueline Parkes, who was named the CMO for Major League Baseball in 2008. She left MLB in April and in May was named exec VP-marketing and creative for Viacom’s MTV. MLB has decided not to immediately fill the CMO role.
Nascar’s previous CMO was Steve Phelps, who was promoted to the role of exec VP-chief global sales and marketing officer. That puts him over global marketing, partnership and series marketing, business development, integrated marketing communications, licensing and consumer products and Nascar digital media. Ms. Gregory will oversee brand and consumer marketing, brand platforms, entertainment marketing, driver marketing, team marketing, social media and analytics and insights.
Aardman animation director Lucy Izzard strikes gold with this infections little clip that is designed to educate little kids about modesty and how to defend themselves from would be perverts. Sinister topic handled with sugary sweet animation makes the medicine go down.
What’s in your pants belongs only to you
Your pants cover up your private parts
Your private parts belong only to you
If someone asks to see just tell ‘em no
Pantosaurus likes to wear his pants, he wears them all day long
They cover up his private parts, and that’s what makes him strong
If someone asks to see or tries to touch him underneath them
He tells them no, then tells someone he trusts and likes to speak to.
chorus
f someone asks to see or tries to touch under your pants
And says to keep it secret, then you must tell them NO.
Then go and find someone you trust, and tell them straight away
They’ll say well done for speaking out and make everything OK
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
