Ad agency Preacher shoved live ferrets down actors’ shirts for latest Tommy John commercial. It did so to illustrate the indignities men often suffer owing to ill-fitting undershirts, and position the client’s products as the solution.
Have you ever heard what people say about Latinos? They’re intense, passionate and “macho”—a quality that’s often seen as protective.
Obviously, these are stereotypes. Another side of the “Latin man” is that he can be sensitive and expressive. But embracing “machismo” for its good qualities, without examining the bad stuff, can have unpleasant cultural side effects—like controlling behavior, which can lead to femicide, not to mention relatively unpunished rape.
(Hey. Sounds familiar.)
To show its support ahead of an Aug. 13 protest in Peru, Grupo el Comercio-owned newspaper Peru 21, one of the most popular papers in the country, tossed its cover pages into the ring. With help from McCann Lima, the paper converted its front and back pages into signs that protesters could grab off newsstands, flip open and carry in the streets.
After winning creative duties for New York Life late late year, following a review launched in April, Anomaly has launched its first work for the client.
The campaign, “Be Good At Life,” will launch with a 30-second spot starring comedian and onetime Daily Show regular Demetri Martin entitled “Welcome to the World.”
In the spot, Martin advises, “Better start saving for college tuition” as the scene shifts back and forth between Martin calmly gardening and a man nervously looking on as his wife gives birth. “But you don’t have to think about that right now,” Martin adds, “because New York Life can help you manage your family’s financial future.”
The spot will make its broadcast debut this Saturday and run in 60, 30 and 15-second versions. It’s a bit of a strange approach, to say the least. The juxtaposition of Martin’s gardening and the chaotic birthing scene seems designed to grab attention, while Martin’s involvement in the first place seems obviously designed to attract a certain demographic.
“We have made a choice to focus more specifically on the maturing millennials market because we believe it’s so important to break through and win their attention to encourage our ability to grow and their ability to have access to financial security,” New York Life senior vice president, chief communications and marketing officer Kelli Parsons told AdAge, adding that Martin only signed on for the launch spot but may appear in future ads.
In addition to being Anomaly’s first effort for the brand, “Be Good At Life” marks New York Life’s first campaign since “Keep Good Going” in 2012. Code and Theory, which was named the brand’s digital agency last December, has redesigned the brand’s website as part of the campaign’s digital push. The campaign also includes OOH elements in cities including New York.
Denver Broncos linebacker and Super Bowl 50 MVP Von Miller has some big cleats to fill as the latest Old Spice guy, following popular pitchmen Isaiah Mustafa and Terry Crews as the star of Wieden + Kennedy’s high-profile ads for the P&G brand.
In a pair of spots tagged “Unforsweatable,” touting Old Spice’s Hardest Working Collection of deodorants and body washes, Miller quickly establishes his game plan. Less self-consciously suave than Mustafa, and way less manic than Crews (who came off like a crazed human cartoon character in some of his Old Spice appearances), Miller exudes a highly relatable vibe, and his confident charm really shines through.
The European Champions League is soccer’s biggest competition after the FIFA World Cup. Every year Europe’s most successful clubs where the top global players come together compete for the trophy, which Heineken has sponsored since 2005.
With the tournament kicking off this week, Heineken is launching a blockbuster ad by Publicis Italy with a global theme. The spot stars charismatic and sometimes controversial soccer manager Jose Mourinho, who has won the trophy twice with two different clubs and currently manages the world’s most profitable team, Manchester United.
(Manchester United didn’t even make it into the Champions League this year, which is why Mr. Mourinho was hired to sort them out.)
Beam Suntory has put its flagship Jim Beam bourbon brand into global creative agency review. The brand is currently handled by consortium of agencies from three countries known as StoryWorks. It includes Mekanism from the U.S.; The Works from Australia; and Jung von Matt of Germany.
Mekanism is not participating in the review, according to a person familiar with the matter. The agency declined to comment.
“I can confirm that we are in official review for Jim Beam’s global creative agency, which is being managed by our global marketing team out of our Deerfield, Ill., headquarters, however, we have no other news to share at the moment,” a Beam Suntory spokesman stated in an email.
Deutsch Chairman Linda Sawyer, who celebrated 27 years at the agency last week, will leave the Interpublic Group shop at the end of the year.
Ms. Sawyer became chairman at the beginning of 2015 when former chairman Donny Deutsch announced his plan to step down from the agency to pursue a TV show on the USA Network. At the time, Ms. Sawyer promoted former Los Angeles CEO Michael Sheldon to her previous role of North American CEO, a position she’d held for 10 years. Mr. Sheldon will add chairman to his title upon Ms. Sawyer’s departure.
“We had a great 18 months and it really solidified things and I feel like we’re in a solid, strong place on both coasts and it feels like the right time to take on a new challenge,” said Ms. Sawyer.
In possibly the broadest attempt yet to fix online advertising so that consumers don’t become obsessed with blocking it, Google has got together with a diverse group of marketers, publishers, agencies and industry bodies to create The Coalition for Better Ads. Other participants include top global marketer Procter & Gamble, Unilever, The Washington Post, the 4As agency association, the Association of National Advertisers, the World Federation of Advertisers and GroupM, the world’s largest ad buyer.
The goal is to monitor the quality of ads using bespoke technology now in development at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Tech Lab. Only ads that make it through the filter will be displayed on the websites of participating companies.
In some ways the effort echoes the “Acceptable Ads” program run by Adblock Plus, under which the ad-blocking software lets certain ads through if it deems them unobtrusive and lightweight enough. Controversially, Adblock Plus charges large players in the ecosystem — such as Google — to participate.
Back in January, Ogilvy & Mather appointed 37-year agency veteran John Seifert as its new global CEO. Seifert succeeded Miles Young in the role, who remained with the agency as worldwide chairman until the beginning of this month, when Seifert succeeded him in that role as well. Young left the agency to become Warden of Fellows of New College at Oxford University.
Seifert, who originally joined Ogilvy as an intern in 1979, told Campaign in a recent interview that he plans to focus on the agency’s heritage going forward.
“I think we have one brand and that’s Ogilvy. Over time, we have created lots of different entities that have Ogilvy in their name. But in a world that has got so complicated and so fragmented, I’m not sure that all those different entities signal to the market the brand promise of Ogilvy,” Seifert told the publication, which pointed out that he will be the last CEO of the company to have worked with all eight of its previous chairman, including founder David Ogilvy.
That focus on the agency’s heritage, Seifert admits, will include a simplification of the agency’s offerings. This summer’s closing of Ogilvy Labs could be seen as the beginning of that process.
“We’re still working on what the right brand naming is in the modern marketing world but I know it will be different from what it is today,” he told Campaign, before clarifying, “we are not going to dumb things down.”
Other areas Seifert will focus on changing include increasing agency diversity and digital transformation.
“I want to be the most diverse and inclusive group of employees worldwide,” he said. “More than 50% of our senior managers are going to be women. We’re going to have many more multicultural leaders who represent the world.”
And Sefiert plans to work fast on implementing his changes. “I’ve had 37 years of training to be the CEO,” he told Campaign. “We’re going to move fast.”
It’s worth noting that Ogilvy currently leads agency networks in terms of global revenue according to consultancy R3, though last month that company’s principal Greg Paull told us, “They’re not number one in the U.S. by any means, but it’s about diversity of markets. There are so many dots on the map and so many ways to expand client relationships.”
For more, check out Campaign’s video interview with Seifert below.
L to R: Blake Kidder, Susan Golkin, Doug Fallon, Steven Fogel
BBDO New York announced three key hires and one promotion today, further solidifying the leadership of its creative department after AT&T consolidated its ad business with Omnicom last month.
Susan Golkin has been promoted to the role of executive creative director while the agency hired Doug Fallon and Steven Fogel to serve as ECDs and Blake Kidder as a senior creative director. The moves officially went into effect this week.
“Susan, Doug, Steven and Blake are award-winning, industry-defining, obsessively-focused creative leaders who are also really good people,” said chief creative officer Greg Hahn in a statement. “I couldn’t be more excited to have them here.”
Golkin, who has been with the BBDO organization for nearly a decade, will lead creative on the Campbell’s Soup, Quaker Oats, AFI and Dove Chocolate accounts moving forward; she was credited as ECD on campaigns produced for the latter two clients in recent weeks and also led Campbell’s Star Wars tie-in campaign “Your Father,” which aired in late 2015.
Fallon and Fogel come to BBDO from Grey New York. They first worked together on a Dairy Queen campaign and later served as co-creative leads on the DirecTV business, which is now with BBDO following parent company AT&T’s consolidation. They will effectively reprise their roles on DirecTV, which will continue to be run as a separate account.
Kidder most recently worked as a freelancer after holding positions in the creative departments of Wieden + Kennedy Sao Paulo and Amsterdam, Mullen Boston and TBWAChiatDay Los Angeles. She will be senior creative director on the Visa account in New York.
“We have a good talent pool now across the business,” said Hahn when we spoke to him about the news. He said that BBDO had been eyeing Fallon and Fogel for some time: “They interviewed here 3-4 years ago, and we kept an eye on them.” Hahn called the AT&T decision “a perfect opportunity to bring these guys aboard,” adding, “They’ve done great work on the business. They’ll all be reporting into Matt MacDonald [who leads the larger creative team] because we want all messaging to be in-line” across the AT&T and DirecTV brands. Last month, Grey went through a cross-department staffing reduction before Fallon and Fogel accepted the new positions with BBDO.
In April, Omnicom CEO John Wren made headlines when he promised to double the number of female leaders in BBDO’s creative department over the next 12 months. Golkin’s promotion and the hiring of Blake do move the organization toward this goal, though Hahn says Wren’s statement did not ultimately factor into the decision.
“Above all else it’s about talent and opportunity,” Hahn said, “no matter what the individual’s chromosomal makeup happens to be.” He pointed to recent work Golkin has done on Campbell’s, AFI and Dove, adding, “She’s taking on a lot more responsibility … it felt like a natural progression at this time.” Hahn also praised Blake, who will report directly to ECD Michael Aimette on the Visa account.
Earlier this week, BBDO also furthered its commitment to data-driven creative work by hiring MEC veteran Sharona Shankar-King to fill the newly created role of EVP/head of marketing science. She will work under head of data solutions Tina Allan, who joined last year to help develop the New York data practice.
Hahn told us that the concept of data-supported creative is “not just a PR line.” He said, “Creatives embrace it; it makes the work sharper. We had conversations [about data] from the beginning in which I could see creatives’ eyes go wide with fear. But basing creative on behavior? That’s like candy.”
In other BBDO news, Robin Fitzgerald officially started her job as chief creative officer at the agency’s Atlanta office this week.
(TrendHunter.com) Two Japanese companies, ‘mythography’ and ‘BONUM,’ worked to design a line of sneakers and sandals that make use of vintage patchwork material. With the former company being…
(TrendHunter.com) During New York Fashion Week, a fresh DKNY collection was revealed for the 2017 Spring/Summer season.
On high-profile models like Bella Hadid, the brand shows off looks that flaunt a modernist…
Informa, the U.K.-based business information provider, has agreed to buy Penton Information Services for 1.18 billion pounds ($1.6 billion) to add exhibitions and professional services in the U.S.
The company will fund the purchase through new debt and equity, according to a statement Thursday. The sellers, MidOcean Partners and Wasserstein & Co., will receive about 1.1 billion pounds in cash and 76 million pounds in Informa equity.
Informa has accelerated its expansion under CEO Stephen Carter, a former head of U.K. media regulator Ofcom who was named CEO in 2013. Informa, which has a market value of about 4.5 billion pounds, employs more than 6,000 people globally across five divisions: Business intelligence, academic publishing, knowledge, events and support, according to its website.
The author of “The Girl on the Train” steers away from a couple of popular genres: “I have (shamefully) never read any sci-fi, and I tend to avoid horror because I’m a wimp.”
Pandora Media introduced a new paid version of the world’s most popular online radio service Tuesday as part of an effort to convert free users into paying subscribers.
Called Pandora Plus, the ad-free service will cost $5 a month, and offer three of the four features most requested by users, Pandora Chief Financial Officer Mike Herring said in an interview. Customers will be able to replay songs, skip more songs and listen offline — but won’t be offered songs on demand.
Pandora amassed a base of 78 million users with its free service, which offers online radio stations customized to a specific user’s tastes. The pace of user additions has stagnated and sales growth has slowed, so the company is looking to more complex paid services for revenue.
Oh, the places you’ll go!
In 2013, Heineken scored a bronze Lion at Cannes with “The Candidate,” an internship contest that generated a whopping 1,734 global entries.
Now, the brand is back to recruiting with “Go Places,” led by a musical Dr. Seuss-ish video inviting talent to respond to 12 questions, which must be answered in three to five seconds. Based on the Enneagram model, the results give you a personal profile, which must be sent along with your résumé when applying for your Heineken dream gig on LinkedIn.
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.
