Hasta La Creative!

Earlier this week, Adweek reported that beauty giant CoverGirl had ended its 26-year relationship with Grey, picking Droga5 as its new creative agency partner after a review.

It’s true that Droga5 will be handling the business moving forward, but we’ve since learned that Grey resigned the account.

Representatives for Grey, Droga5 and CoverGirl’s parent company Coty declined to comment.

But sources close to the matter tell us that Grey officially resigned from all of the Coty brands it worked on (CoverGirl, Clairol, Wella, and various fragrances) on Monday Feb 13, just a couple of days before the Droga decision went public. At that point, the majority of the review had already been completed with Grey competing against Droga and other unnamed participants.

Last October, Coty acquired several key brands from P&G. Grey had been working on them for years under P&G and continued to do so. But according to our sources, the agency had significant disagreements with the company’s new leadership and also saw a potential opportunity arising with another major, unnamed beauty brand.

Coty is undeniably making big changes on most of its big brands. In a Q2 earnings call earlier this month, CEO Camillo Pane told investors that some of the key lines have not been performing as well as he hoped, and the company has responded by aiming to re-position them. We’re told that these revenue shortfalls and investor skepticism regarding the P&G integration increased the pressure to find new agency partners and sped up the process. In addition to CoverGirl, recent decisions saw Sally Hansen go to Anomaly and Rimmel/Bourjois go to BETC Paris. Coty has not yet picked a new agency to handle Max Factor.

Ultimately, the result is the same: the client launched a creative review that Grey seemed very likely to lose, and the agency opted to resign instead. We expect more news on this front soon.

Marcelo Mariano recently joined Toronto agency Zulu Alpha Kilo as associate creative director.

Mariano arrived at Zulu Alpha Kilo from The Martin Agency, where he has served as an associate creative director since March of 2015, working with brands including Oreo and Land O’Lakes. Prior to joining The Martin Agency he spent over a year and a half as an associate creative director on Ford with JWT in São Paulo. That followed a year in the same position with R/GA’s São Paulo office and around six months as an interactive art director with Toronto agency Sid Lee before that, working with brands including Dell, Alienware and Ubisoft. Mariano occasionally goes by Marcelo Jesus, which he explains on his LinkedIn page is not because of any “miracles but due to the long hair I used to have.”

“Mariano bring a wealth of innovative digital thinking which further strengthens an already strong group of thinkers,” Zulu Alpha Kilo CCO and founder Zak Mroueh said in a statement to SHOOT.

“I’m really proud to be part of an agency with such a strong creative DNA and culture,” added Mariano. “I’ve always loved Canada and Zulu is an agency I’ve admired for a long time.”

Just over a year ago, consumers were up in arms because of the lack of representation of “Star Wars” heroine Rey in the franchise’s toys and games. The suspected dissing of the crucial character led to the hashtag #WheresRey and numerous excuses from fumbling marketers who missed the mark over equal gender representation. Now, in 2017, it seems toy brands are wising up.

More than 1,100 toy companies displayed their wares this weekend at the annual North American International Toy Fair, now in its 114th year, and many pushed messages of female empowerment and gender fluidity. The Manhattan-based trade show, which concluded Tuesday, attracted an estimated 30,000 attendees. Toy sales in the U.S. alone top $26 billion, up 5% between 2015 and 2016, according to market research firm NPD Group, and giant brands like Mattel and Hasbro command millions in measured media, but they are only now beginning to take risks with social norms.

“The toy industry has gotten more savvy than most marketers,” said Steve Pasierb, president and chief executive of the Toy Industry Association, noting that brands are now dispersing of labels like boy toys or girl toys. Indeed, last year the TIA did away with its “Boy Toy of the Year” and “Girl Toy of the Year” awards in an effort to be more inclusive and modern with its strategy.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Pelo jeito drones ainda não sabem passar a bola muito bem

> LEIA MAIS: Drone ajuda jogador da NBA em concurso de enterradas

Better, faster, cheaper. The endless appetite for digital content and precision marketing has put unprecedented pressure on agencies to perform at the top of their game during a time of massive upheaval. So we asked the agencies on the Ad Age Agency A-List how they manage the chaos, and what that might mean for the future agency model.

We will be running the videos weekly leading into our Agency A-List and Creativity Awards gala on April 19 in New York City, where you can mingle with the winners.

Today, we begin with BBDO New York CEO John Osborn, who has a mathematical formula for solving the industry’s woes.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Agency Giant Spoon teamed up with production company Sandwich Video for an online spot parodying 80s technology programs while promoting the HP PageWide printer entitled “Computer Show.”

Developed from an idea created by Adam Lisagor (the actor, who you may recognize from this CenturyLink campaign, also directed the effort), Roxana Altamirano and Tony Altamirano, the spot pays homage to the Jim Henson-produced Computer Chronicles, which ran on PBS from 1983-2002. “Computer Show” imagines what would happen if the presenters of such a program were confronted with modern printing technology.

It centers around a printing race between the HP PageWide and the printer host Gary Faber (played by Rob Baedecker) got from Kwikopy (a print shop he seems to have difficulty pronouncing).

You can probably guess how that turns out.

The spot ends with an overly philosophical attempt to answer the question “What does it mean” by Lisagor himself.

“We started making Computer Show in 2015 as a kind of passion project—our passion being the early ’80s, technology, time travel and awkward conversations,” Sandwich founder and actor Lisagor explained to Adweek. “It was a nice surprise when HP got in touch, saying they wanted to sponsor an episode of their own. We hope to make a bunch more episodes with other companies, just to see how our host Gary Fabert will react to innovations he’ll never understand.”

Credits:
Title: “Computer Show”

Client: HP
VP, PPS Marketing: Vikrant Batra
Head of Americas, Print Marketing, Shuchi Sarkar
US Commercial Printing Marketing Director: Flavia Paulella Kennedy
Social Media Campaign Manager, Kathleen Barrett

Agency: Giant Spoon
Co-Founder: Jon Haber
VP, Brand Management: Pierre Parisot
Associate Director Strategy: Adam Wiese
Senior Strategist: Albert Kugel
Senior Strategist: Veronica Brothwell
Jr. Strategist: Madeleine Reeves
Business Affairs: Catherine Huang

Production Company: Sandwich Video
Created by Roxana Altamirano, Tony Altamirano, Adam Lisagor
Director: Adam Lisagor
Executive Producer: Shadie Elnashai
Executive Producer: Adam Lisagor
Written by Joshua Allen, Adam Lisagor, Roxana Altamirano, Tony Altamirano, Rob Baedeker
Producer: Greg Kindra
Director of Photography: Lowell A. Meyer

—Full Creative Credits

Created by Roxana Altamirano, Tony Altamirano, Adam Lisagor
Director: Adam Lisagor
Executive Producer: Shadie Elnashai
Executive Producer: Adam Lisagor
Written by Joshua Allen, Adam Lisagor, Roxana Altamirano, Tony Altamirano, Rob Baedeker
Producer: Greg Kindra
Director of Photography: Lowell A. Meyer
Art Director: Gabe Wilson
Wardrobe: Courtney Arthur, Gabrielle Levinson-Wahl
Make-up/Hair: Regan Livingston, Andrea Steele
Production Supervisor: Dave Beglin

1 Asst. Director: Alex Comery
2nd Asst. Director: Ben Kanyusik
Head of Production: Greg Kindra
Sound Mix: George Wymenga
Cameras: Jessica Fisher, Allison Hefner
Videotape Editor: Zena Grey
Videotape Engineer: Zach Hobesh
Electronic Graphics: Jarred Hageman
Computer Music by Adam Deibert, Breakmaster Cylinder
Set Design: Chase Sata, Quill Chae-Daniel, Carlos Flores, Joshua Griffey, Larry Alberti

If you’ve always dreamed of creating a self-portrait out of Lego bricks, rejoice! A nifty machine at the toy maker’s London store can finally set you on that path. Just head over to Leicester Square and climb into the “Mosaic Maker,” a cross between an instant photo booth and a Lego vending machine. For the…