Hasta La Creative!

Remember The Red Baloon? The 1956 short by French director Albert Lamorisse has become something of a childhood staple and the film, which won both an Oscar for best original screenplay and a Palme d’Or, is generally remembered fondly by kids and film students everywhere.

TBWAMedia Arts Lab seems to have looked to the film for inspiration (we’re not the only ones to make the comparison) in its new spot promoting the iPhone 7’s new expressive messages capability, allowing users to send animated messages including, yep, balloons.

The spot opens on a solitary red balloon, which floats out a window, across mountains and forests to the city. There it is met by a swarm of balloons of all different colors before reaching its ultimate destination.

That description probably sounds pretty familiar if you’re acquainted with the aforementioned Albert Lamorisse film, but the 60-second spot comes across as an homage rather than a mere rip-off. Its cinematic scenes are well constructed and ultimately in service of a message that is well tied to a feature of the product. If it takes “Baloons” awhile to get to the point, its eye candy should entice viewers enough to get them there.

The spot is the latest in the brand’s “Practically Magic” campaign for the new iPhone, which launched earlier this month with TBWAMAL’s “Midnight” and the in-house effort “Morning Ride.”

This isn’t the first ad to focus on a red balloon, though the homage in W+K’s 2014 animated Coca-Cola spot was a little less direct.

-McCann celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Chevy Camaro (video above).

–Richard D. Trentlage, writer of the famous Oscar Mayer weiner jingle, has died.

-The New York Times weighs in on brands’ diversity goals for agencies, thinks that “the prospect of losing marketing dollars could drive change in a way that societal pressure has not.”

-Facebook plans to launch an ad campaign encouraging its users to stream live video.

-The One Club and Miami Ad School announced at the Here Are All the Black People (HAATBP) multicultural creative career fair that Miami Ad School will offer scholarships to 15 students of diverse backgrounds.

-A new eye-tracking study conducted by InSkin Media, Research Now and Sticky found that “ads achieving at least one second of gaze time are, on average, viewable for 26 seconds.”

-LBB’s Laura Swinton celebrates McCann Manchester’s gender stereotype-challenging Smyths ad.

BBDO New York recently launched a pair of 30-second broadcast spots for FedEx, directed by O Positive’s Jim Jenkins, promoting the brand’s ecommerce offerings. Both aim for comedy, but each has a distinct tone.

In “Passive Aggressive,” a man announces at a meeting that since FedEx helped the company simplify its ecommerce, they can “focus on bigger issues, like our passive aggressive environment.”

“We’re not passive aggressive,” a co-worked argues. The remainder of the ad, however, proves her wrong, as the co-workers trade passive aggressive lines back and forth.

The spot has a kind of entertaining dry office humor, which is an accomplishment for an ad about FedEx’s ecommerce offering

“Goofy Glasses” employs a different kind of comedy, relying instead on a visual gag that’s not quite as precise a fit for the brand. On the other hand, the spot addresses a business being helped by the offering more directly, as owners of a novelty shop discuss how they’re shipping goofy glasses all around the globe.

Credits:
Agency: BBDO New York
Client: FedEx
Chief Creative Officer Worldwide: David Lubars
Chief Creative Officer New York: Greg Hahn
Executive Creative Director: Gianfranco Arena
Executive Creative Director: Peter Kain
Senior Creative Director: Tom Kraemer (“Goofy Glasses”)
Senior Creative Director: Jens Waernes (“Goofy Glasses”)
Creative Director: Scott Mahoney (“Passive Aggressive”)
Creative Director: Dan Oliva (“Passive Aggressive”)

Director of Integrated Production: David Rolfe
Group Executive Producer: Amy Wertheimer

Group Planning Director: Sangeet Pillai
Senior Account Director: Kathryn Brown
Account Director: Dan Langlitz
Account Manager: Cailin Gibbons
Account Executive: Billy McLellan

Production Company: O Positive
Director: Jim Jenkins
Director of Photography: Roberto Schaefer
Executive Producer: Marc Grill

Edit House: Mack Cut
Editor: Ian Mackenzie
Assistant Editor: Mike Leuis
Audio Post: Sound Lounge
Mixer: Tom Jucarone
Post VFX: Method
Colorist: Tim Masick

If we had learned two things at this year’s Advertising Week, they would have been that Facebook is a media company that would rather not be known as such and that ad agencies are under a good bit of pressure to diversify.

Today the New York Times revealed that Verizon has joined HP and General Mills in calling on all of its agencies to hurry up. Earlier this month, Verizon’s EVP/CMO Diego Scotti sent a related letter to 11 of the shops on its roster. From that letter:

“At Verizon, we have the assets to change the world. … our purpose-driven culture gives everyone at Verizon a seat at the table to ideate and work together to solve the world’s biggest challenges.

That’s why I’m reaching out to you today to ask that your company make an important commitment to drastically improve the percentage of women and people of color in leadership roles and continue to support our diverse supplier community by awarding more subcontracting work to diverse businesses.”

He goes on to drop some key data points:

“At Verizon, we take great pride in having a workforce that’s 59% diverse (people of color and women). Worldwide women make up 35.7% of the workforce and in the U.S. people of color represent 40%.

Verizon spent more than $25 billion dollars with diverse businesses and $4.25 billion in 2015 alone. Moreover, Verizon’s board of directors is one of the most diverse boards in the country comprised of 4 women and 5 people of color — from a total of 13 board members.”

Unlike General Mills, Scotti does not list any specific numbers that these agencies must reach. But he does demand a response:

“… my expectation is that in the next 30 days you will share your current state of workforce broken out by number of women (by ethnicity) and people of color in your different levels, including senior leadership. Moreover, please provide your action plans that describe how you are growing workforce and supplier diversity.”

We think it fair to note that, while self-described “leading source of information on diversity management” Diversity Inc. lists General Mills as number 40 on its list of the 50 most diverse companies, Verizon does not appear on the list. Neither does HP.

Here’s a link to Verizon’s leadership team and here is a link to its Board of Directors, which does indeed include several women and people of color.

General Mills chief creative officer Michael Fanuele, who formerly worked in planning and strategy for Fallon, JWT and Havas, also had some words to share at this week’s events.

Of his own company’s call for diversity, he said, “It wasn’t some sort of moral high-horse stance about the failing ad industry.” Regarding agency efforts on that front, he continued:

“Some show up with all the right people around the table and it almost does feel like a quota of tokenism; it’s like ‘Oh, thank you. You found the, you know, Southeast Asian transgender woman who works somewhere in your network to come to our meeting to talk.’ And then other times it just looks beautiful and diverse and it’s very genuine and real…”

Sounds about right.

Richard D. Trentlage, the man who composed the famous Oscar Mayer wiener jingle, died of congestive heart failure, at the age of 87, on September 21, The New York Times reports.

Trentlage worked at several top agencies including McCann and D’Arcy before launching his own jingle-writing firm.

His most famous contribution to advertising was the Oscar Mayer jingle which ran for 52 years, beginning in 1963, a feat his family claims, in an online obituary, is a record.  The jingle, Trentlage recalled in a 2012 interview with The Wisconsin State Journal, was a last minute effort. Trentlage wrote it in September of 1962 after hearing about Oscar Mayer’s jingle contest from a colleague at JWT the day before the deadline. Its opening line was inspired by his son’s declaration, “I wish I could be a dirt bike hot dog” (about a dirt bike-riding friend). Trentlage finished composing the tune in about an hour and recorded it in his living room recording studio, playing banjo-ukelele while his daughter Linda, then nine-years-old, belted out the vocals.

Chairman Oscar G. Mayer Sr. selected the jingle as the winner of the contest and from its humble origins in Trentlage’s living room it went on to be heard in 21 English-speaking countries (including all 50 states) and become a pop culture icon. The Simpsons even payed tribute to the jingle when it was sung by Jon Lovitz‘s Jay Sherman character in a crossover with The Critic.

Some of Trentlage’s other well-known jingles include “Wow! It sure doesn’t taste like tomato juice” for V8, “McDonald’s is your kind of place!” and “Buckle up for safety, buckle up!” (a 1964 National Safety Council PSA).

Trentlage is survived by his wife, Jacqueline, daughters Linda Bruun and Becky Trentlage, sons David and Tom, stepdaughters Susan Jennings and Patricia Kelley, stepson Jeffrey Davis, 19 grandchildren and ten great grandchildren.

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Among iOS 10’s shiny new toys is a messaging feature that allows you to add effects to your message bubbles, send full-screen animations with your messages, add handwritten notes and more. Apple pushes those capabilities with a pretty new spot from TBWAMedia Arts Lab that focuses on one full-screen animation in particular.

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