Hasta La Creative!

Office Depot was likely the first of the back to school flock this year, launching a 15-second spot from new AOR Zimmerman last month. But Great Clips is also getting out ahead of the pack, extending seasonal creep and ruining summer fun for children everywhere with a new campaign from Minneapolis agency Periscope targeting parents.

A pair of national broadcast spots, directed by Periscope chief creative officer Peter Nicholson, employ the “school described like it’s a nature documentary trope.” If you’ve ever taught at an elementary school, you understand why this is such a commonly employed tactic.

“The back-to-school season is a very important time for both kids and parents. The kids are returning to the proverbial kingdom of school,” Nicholson said in a statement. “It has a lot of great parallels to the classic animal kingdom shows, creating a great metaphor that stresses to parents the importance of starting the year off feeling great.”

“The Fall Migration” is set in the anxiety-provoking setting of the school bus on the first day of school.

“So begins the fall migration,” the retro-styled voiceover opens the spot. “In this roving habitat, youngsters are eager to show off their freshly shorn plumage,” he adds as the kids, who appear a bit too happy to return to class, show off their new haircuts.

The spot ends with a “survival tip” for parents, advising them to use online checking at Great Clips to save time during the busy back to school season.

Another spot, “The Watering Hole” employs much the same approach in a different location: the water fountain. Both spots will run in 30 and 15-second versions on national broadcast, and the campaign also includes digital, social, print and in-salon components.

Unfortunately, the effort fails to live up to the agency’s 2015 “#MoreMinutes” effort, which found a more fun and creative way to showcase how Great Clips can help save time during the busy lead-up to the school year.

“Our focus with this campaign is helping parents set their kids up for success. The first day is a time when everyone wants to feel their best; a haircut can really help boost confidence,” Great Clips director of brand marketing Ann Latendresse said in a statement. “It’s one less thing for parents to worry about during a really hectic time. The work with Periscope plays that up in a fun way.”

Last Friday, agency trade association the 4A’s announced that it had hired Keesha Jean-Baptiste to fill the newly created role of SVP and leader of the Talent Engagement and Inclusion practice.

Jean-Baptiste joins the group from Wieden+Kennedy after spending more than six years in that organization’s Portland headquarters, where she led recruiting efforts and more recently served as head of human resources.

For the new job she will relocate to New York, where she started her agency career nearly 20 years ago. Primary responsibilities for the position include running the org’s various diversity programs like the 4A’s Foundation and the Multicultural Advertising Intern Program (MAIP), from which Jean-Baptiste graduated.

“Keesha has demonstrated a passion for corporate culture and talent development as well as a deep understanding of how focusing on these issues can drive growth in our industry,” read the statement from 4A’s new president and CEO Marla Kaplowitz. “Her modern and innovative take on a critical function is important for the future-forward thinking we believe is necessary to ensure our members continue to grow their businesses.”

Prior to joining Wieden+Kennedy in 2011, Jean-Baptiste worked in accounts at Wunderman and spent more than a decade within the DigitasLBi organization, rising to the level of VP, group director of HR in New York.

UPDATE: This campaign could have been inspired by the real-life “Jessie’s Deli” stunt pulled by agency bros Tommy Noonan and Doug Cameron back in 2015. The world may never know.

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Today in Campaigns We Missed, Droga5 dropped all pretenses and budgets to make this spoof for client Sprint.

It’s all a joke on how Verizon’s unlimited data plan costs twice as much as Sprint’s, and it plays on the dollar store, which is obviously a fixture in New York or any other sizable city.

The spot is worth watching just to see an old white man say “bae.” Is this the new grannies dancing to hip hop?

Here’s the IRL version.

Feeling like we were very close to a “merits of capitalism vs. democratic socialism” debate there at the end. What say you, prolific tweeters with roses in their bios???

Sprint is very much sticking to their “Verizon is more expensive” approach, as one can see in this next broadcast spot.
Kind of interesting how the lowest-ranked wireless company never mentions the quality of their service in marketing efforts…

Huge is getting bigger in Canada.

The IPG agency’s Toronto office has grown to 100 employees in the 2.5 years since it opened, and today it announced the hires of two new leaders: general manager Emily Bond and group director of creative Vassilios “Vass” Alexiou.

The two come from very different backgrounds: she was MD of SapientRazorfish Toronto while he was head of experience design for classic British retail brand Marks and Spencer. Alexiou also held the experience director/creative partner title at BBH London, where he worked exclusively on the Walgreens Boots Alliance account.

These announcements follow the February hiring of ECD Matt Hexemer, who helped launch the office’s physical design or “analog” practice.

“As we continue to build on the success from our first two and a half years in the Canadian market, the additions of Emily and Vass will help us dramatically scale and redefine what is possible for brands,” said Huge Canada managing director Paul Burns. “While Emily will help us strengthen our operational capabilities through her ability to provide strategic guidance to both Canadian and global clients, Vass will leverage his expertise in design-driven business transformation and user-centric design to help our creative work thrive.”

Bond cited the agency’s reputation for “encourag[ing] entrepreneurship, push[ing] the boundaries of user behavior and offer[ing] end-to-end solutions for the most ambitious brands in the world” in discussing the new position, while Alexiou said, “Huge starts with the user and likes to tackle business, brand and customer challenges at the same time. I like wearing many hats, so I am naturally attracted to this approach.”

Huge Toronto’s clients currently include Canada Goose, Four Seasons, Nike and Google, among others.

Dogs aren’t always man’s best friend. In German agency Jung von Matt’s spot announcing the spinoff of Genesis as a standalone luxury brand (rather than just a Hyundai model), a chauffeur quickly develops an adversarial relationship with the small dog in the back seat. When he picks up a Hollywood client–played by actress and model…

Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara once said, “We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.” And clearly what he had in mind was versatile and contemporary rental space in Bristol. According to a passerby’s photo making the rounds on Twitter, a new mixed-use development called The…

Linda Persson, It was like experiencing a fold in time, she said, 2017. Photo by Istvan Virag for Momentum9

Lightning Ridge mine. Photo courtesy of Linda Persson

The latest edition of the MOMENTUM, the Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art explores the increasing unease and sense of alienation we feel when confronted with a world increasingly governed by technological, ecological and social shifts. I’ve already reviewed the event in previous stories but today i’d like to take a closer look at Linda Persson‘s contribution to the biennial because it uses several lenses and strategies to investigate aspects of our electronic culture that often remain under-scrutinized.

Informed by several years of research in the Australian outback desert, It Was Like Experiencing a Fold in Time, She Said bridges the gap between, on the one hand, the landscapes, mythologies and life of outback and aboriginal communities and on the other hand, the brutal origins of our technological ‘progress.’ The work highlights how alienated we are from the geological physicality of our so-called immaterial digital technology. Many of us might not realize it but there would be no IT, no ‘green’ energy without rare earths, iron ore, cobalt and other minerals that are dug out of the ground at huge costs for the environment and local communities.

Linda working in Queenstown, Tasmania. Photo : Liam Sprod, courtesy of Linda Persson

Helicopter mine survey, Goldfields, Western Australia. Photo courtesy of Linda Persson

Over the course of her research across ghost towns, open mining sites and discussions with local communities, Persson has been uncovering the toxic traces left by the mining industry on indigenous lands and human lives. Some of these traces are palpable and highly visible. Others are far more insidious and concealed.

Linda Persson, It was like experiencing a fold in time, she said, 2017. Photo by Istvan Virag for Momentum9

Linda Persson, It was like experiencing a fold in time, she said, 2017. Photo by Istvan Virag for Momentum9

Burkholderia pseudomallei is of the insidious kind. When in contact with humans and animal through air or skin wounds, this microscopic bacterium can cause a deadly disease called Melioidosis that eats into the brain and spinal cord in a matter of days. The bacterium normally lives into the soil and its emergence is one of the unintended consequences of the increase in mining, oil and gas extraction in Australia.

Over the past few years, the country has seen a surge in the number of Melioidosis cases and the disease is expected to spread south with climate change.

Persson managed to render visible the presence of the microscopic bacteria in the most poetical and visually seducing way. She magnified them as beautiful organic patterns fossilized inside hand-blown glass sculptures.

Linda Persson, It was like experiencing a fold in time, she said, 2017. Photo by Istvan Virag for Momentum9

Another chapter in Persson’s exhibition at Momentum 9 is And Then We Ran Away, a video work that weaves together interviews with Aboriginal women talking about their many languages and culture, images of fauna and flora as well as helicopter rides over the scars that mining activities leave on the landscape. The film quietly conveys how indigenous land is heavily exploited for the raw materials that power the technology we use on a daily basis. Aboriginal peoples, hit by the industry while being often excluded from it, have a deep connection to their ancestral land. The loss, profiteering and poisoning of the territory has thus a devastating social and physical impact on them.

Opalised fossil. Photo courtesy of the artist

Linda Persson, It was like experiencing a fold in time, she said, 2017. Photo : Liam Sprod, courtesy of Linda Persson<

Linda Persson, It was like experiencing a fold in time, she said, 2017. Photo by Istvan Virag for Momentum9

The final work in the show is SiO2.nH2O, a video installation that unfolds the various time frames of our mineral-mediated culture. SiO2.nH2O is the chemical formula of opal, the national gemstone of Australia. And the .n stands for the water molecules enclosed into tiny voids within the silicon structure, suggesting a dormant life inside the mineraloid.

SiO2.nH2O takes advantage of the internal structure of opal which is able to diffract light: Found 23-40 metres underground, surrounded by thousands of years in sandstone and clay, the opal acts as a time machine producing a light show that makes deep time visible here in the present. It portrays the potential of life, encapsulated dormant inside, ready to awaken in a future that the human species might never get to experience.

The ability of opal to act as a time travel agent doesn’t end there. It turns out that opal miners in Lightning Ridge, one of the towns in New South Wales where Persson worked on her research, have been digging up dinosaur fossils for years. Even more interestingly, the remains of the prehistoric reptiles are preserved as opal.

It Was Like Experiencing a Fold in Time, She Said is framed by an artificial landscape. The red sand used in the exhibition doesn’t come from the Australian outbacks, it simply imitates its colour of the burnt out desert area. As for the kaleidoscopic collages printed on the panels, they give a vertiginous top-down overview of the landscape around the mines, wounded by extraction processes.

Dead snake in Goldfields. Photo courtesy of Linda Persson

Old mining community, Goldfields. Photo courtesy of Linda Persson

Linda Person exploring the landscape. Photo courtesy of Linda Persson

Photo courtesy of Linda Persson

Linda Persson, It was like experiencing a fold in time, she said, 2017. Photo by Istvan Virag for Momentum9

Momentum 9, The Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art curated by Ulrika Flink, Ilari Laamanen, Jacob Lillemose, Gunhild Moe and Jón B.K Ransu remains open in various location in Moss, Norway, until 11 October 2017.

Previously: MOMENTUM9 – “Alienation is our contemporary condition”, MOMENTUM9. Maybe none of this is science fiction, The Museum of NonHumanity and MOMENTUM 9: A case for user-alienating design.

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Half an ad has been enough to comprise a digital “view” according to the industry’s Media Rating Council for the past three years, but the group may consider toughening its oft-maligned standard to require every single ad pixel displays.

That would close some of the “viewability” gap between the industry standard and the much stricter requirements of enormous ad buyers including Unilever and GroupM.

They would effectively align on display ads, where GroupM already demands that 100% of an ad shows on-screen for any amount of time and the Media Rating Council has required 50% to appear in view for at least one second. And it would get them closer on video. GroupM needs every pixel of a video ad to appear on-screen for at least half the purchased time or 30 seconds, whichever is longer, and requires consumers to press play. MRC requires half of a video ad to be in view for at least two seconds before it calls it “viewable.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

It was a simple concept once: bundle third-party ad feeds with your own ads to provide better coverage of inventory for publishers. The advent of real-time bidding (RTB) would differentiate the value of the inventory — high-value, front-page inventory on CNN.com should be priced higher than a bottom-of-the-fold ad on a cooking site no one ever heard of.

But rampant ad fraud, viewability issues and loss of control on ad placements have turned a simple arbitrage scheme into “garbitrage.”

Ad verification software has become a big business, with providers helping advertisers identify fraudulent impressions and undesirable ad placement on risky content. Early on, ad tech companies incorporated blacklists of suspect domains and even shared the data across platforms. However, keeping up with the bad actors was daunting. Whitelisting domains could eliminate the cheap fraud, but it was no match for sophisticated schemes that masked domain addresses. Was the ad truly being purchased and delivered to CNN? It was still too hard to tell.

Continue reading at AdAge.com