Hasta La Creative!

Creating more immersive experiences has been the goal of storytellers since humans first gathered around the campfire and added a lion’s roar to their tale of the hunt. The stunt-loving film director William Castle electrified seats in the ’50s for “The Tingler” to literally add extra shock value! John Waters infamously included “Odorama” scratch and sniff cards for screenings of his 1981 cult classic, “Polyester.” More recently, 4D theaters have been offering wind, water, smells, jostles and even pokes in the back to make sure we are transported beyond the humdrum.

Not to be left behind, brand storytellers are joining this “experience rush” by testing relatively new media platforms like virtual reality. Recognizing this trend, Zoo, the creative think tank at Google, initiated an anthropological study on VR 180-degree and 360-degree video. Zoo is now working with brands to capitalize on its findings. To understand what all this means for CMOs, I interviewed Abigail Posner, head of strategic planning at Zoo. A student of anthropology herself, Posner’s insights reveal a world of opportunity, especially if marketers are prepared to approach these channels with open minds.

What were some of the key findings from the study?

Continue reading at AdAge.com

MullenLowe London has completed its acquisition of independent creative shop 101 in a move that marks the end of the six-year-old agency brand.

MullenLowe London has completed its acquisition of independent creative shop 101 in a move that marks the end of the six-year-old agency brand.

So, you know how Carl’s Jr. is all about “real” ingredients now, instead of the totally unreal idea that eating fast food is somehow connected to hyper-sexualized sequences starring the people our culture has deemed attractive?

Hungry Jack’s is on the same kick. Sort of. The Australian version of Burger King and its AOR Clemenger BBDO just a launched a big new campaign that tells all viewers to “Keep It Real,” because ground beef and processed cheese are somehow more legitimate than some shit your neighbor grew in his solar-powered roof garden.

Australia is looking a lot like Los Angeles these days, no?

Now wait for CMO Scott Baird’s take:

“We’re not about pretension. We’re about real food, made real good. Over the past 18 months we have make real improvements in the quality of our food with 100 per cent Aussie Beef with no added hormones, cage free eggs, 100 per cent Arabica coffee, no added flavour or colours in our desserts and 100% chicken breast in our nuggets.”

We dislike the concept of kale smoothies as much as the next hungry blogger, but that sounds kind of familiar, what with the focus on ingredients.

From CCO Ben Coulson:

“HJ’s are our biggest client, they deserve our best. I’m proud to be part of this refreshing new direction for them. It’s great to see some fun being had in this category while selling those big beefy burgers.”

So they’re really saying, can’t a chain burger just be a chain burger???*

*If it’s made from 100 percent grass-fed uuuurrrrrrrggggghhhhh…

Nationstar is a data security firm, right? No, it’s a bank. No, it’s a car loan provider.

You’re all wrong, it was a mortgage company with a branding problem. Enter Phenomenon, the L.A. agency or “innovations company” founded by former DDB chief strategy officer Krishnan Menon.

Phenomenon recently helped Nationstar complete its planned transformation into Mr. Cooper and launched the renamed entity’s first campaign this week. We’ll start with the highlight: a minute-long sketch starring generic office workers inspired by the late Michael Jackson.

That song was about a multi-millionaire learning to better appreciate the plight of homeless people, but it could theoretically also apply to those who need a mortgage loan.

And the company has indeed made a change.

This work was more about a long-term effort to update the public perception of Nationstar rather than to just make a few ads. Phenomenon has been on the account for quite a while, and its team did everything from coming up with the new name and logo to making some ads, which the agency has gone out of its way to frame as simply one small slice of a much larger pie.

Here’s an explainer video introducing the new business formerly known as Nationstar.

From Menon: “When Nationstar’s CMO approached us over two years ago, he gave our team a challenge: How do we reinvent the home loan industry and rebuild trust with consumers that had lost faith in the institution itself? Nationstar was born out of the housing crisis and economic downturn and the company recognized a change was needed.

“We knew we needed ACTIONS, not ADS. We knew that re-inventing one of the largest home loan companies would need something bigger; we would need new products and services and digital tools that benefited their customers—a new way to talk and behave— and a customer-centric approach that employees could embrace. Together, our partnership has resulted in the first mortgage brand that’s been built from the ground up to fuel the dream of home-ownership. Mr. Cooper is more than just a name—its the way we, Coopers, all do business.”

The agency designed the company’s website, created a new mobile app, designed the logo and all related assets “with a lot of research and buy-in from the client,” created new formats for direct mail and billing statements, made all the digital ads including the videos above and even helped redesign the company’s offices. And the Phenomenon team came up with the idea of referring to every person within the business as another Mr. Cooper.

It was quite extensive, which is understandable considering how most Americans still view mortgage providers nearly a decade after the last housing crisis. As CEO Jay Bray put it on an early 2016 earnings call, “Mr. Cooper is meant to be that advocate that person that’s going to connect with the customers to deliver best—better experience and to be an advocate for them day in and day out.”

Many seem to read it as a reference to Gary Cooper.

From Phenomenon group brand director Jon Levine:

“The evolution to Mr. Cooper was never about just advertising. It is the personification of what consumers rabidly want in the space—a champion in their corner, someone to help make getting to the great American dream less of a challenge. We knew this couldn’t happen overnight. Throughout our research, we constantly heard how employees were going to be a critical piece in living out the promise.

So from day one, Mr. Cooper was never about ‘a’ person but about the thousands of employees who were going to live and breathe the promise every day. And it was during this time of internal roll-out that the further products, services and tools were developed so that when it was time to bring Mr. Cooper to its millions of customers, it was more than just a new name and identity. Instead, Mr. Cooper the brand, and the company, were completely aligned on helping customers achieve the dream of home ownership.”

Side note: did you know Menon worked on product integration segments for Celebrity Apprentice? Neither did we. Wonder what that was like.

CREDITS

Client: Mr. Cooper
Agency: Phenomenon

President & CEO: Krish Menon
Group Brand Director: Jonathan Levine
Sr. Brand Director: Meghan Dougherty
Brand Manager: Sophie Allen
Brand Manager: Amanda Tutora
Project Manager: Cornelia
Chief Creative Officer: Chris Adams
Creative Director: Jeff Heath, Tim Bateman
Associate Creative Director: Steve O’brien, Julian Newman, Sean Cunningham, Aaron Sanchez
Design Director: Sim Brar
Senior Designer: Sarah Stroschein, Andy Hawgood, Nic Brenden
Designer: Seth Stephan
Chief Strategy Officer: Jason De Turris
Strategy Director: Martin Heaton
Head of U: Ian Campbell
UX Lead: Peter Ford
Head of Integrated Production: Chris Kyriakos
Producer: Karin Ostrander, Jenny Court
Jr. Digital Producer: Anoosh

PRESS ALERT || Aug. 21, 2017 (NEW YORK) — The American Council of Emotionally Manipulative Advertisers (ACEMA) today issued a special directive to its brand and agency members instituting a moratorium on so-called “cry before you buy” commercials. The directive, which calls for a six-month freeze on filming and distributing ads designed to make consumers tear up, encompasses categories of manipulative marketing including the council’s MEM (momentary eye-moistening), RMC (rapid mouth-clasping) and OSI (outright sob-inducing) rating classes.

The moratorium is meant to allow the advertising marketplace to absorb what ACEMA, a self-regulatory group, has officially designated a “glut” of heartstring-yanking ads. The council also plans to consider additional proposed guidelines and regulations regarding such ads’ production and use.

The action follows an emergency meeting called by ACEMA President Simon Dumenco in the wake of a new Windex campaign titled “The Story of Lucy,” which describes the (fictional) life of an adorable girl and her seafaring — and therefore often literally distant — father. The campaign, which launched Aug. 7 as a three-minute short film on YouTube and Facebook, is also being released as a series of 30-second TV spots that excerpt different moments from the longer piece.

Continue reading at AdAge.com

The Village Voice, the legendary New York alternative newsweekly, announced today that it’s killing off its print edition. It will continue to publish online. Per a statement issued by the paper:

The announcement comes as part of the ongoing effort by owner Peter Barbey, who purchased the Voice in October 2015 from Voice Media Group, to revitalize and reimagine the Village Voice brand. “When The Village Voice was converted into a free weekly in an effort to boost circulation back in 1996, it was at a time when Craigslist was in its infancy, Google and Facebook weren’t yet glimmers in the eyes of their founders, and alternative weeklies — and newspapers everywhere — were still packed with classified advertising,” Mr. Barbey said.

“Clearly a lot has changed since then. That business has moved online — and so has the Voice’s audience, which expects us to do what we do not just once a week, but every day, across a range of media, from words and pictures to podcasts, video, and even other forms of print publishing. This decision will allow us to move forward more freely in our pursuit of all of those avenues so that The Village Voice brand is not just once again viable, but vital.”

Continue reading at AdAge.com

Like an army amassing troops on the border, AT&T is inspiring a lot of speculation about what it plans to do next. Once the Time Warner merger is complete, will the company sell CNN, forever altering the cable news landscape? Will it snuff out the creative spark at Time Warner, forcing HBO to produce short, mobile-friendly episodes of beloved shows?

Most urgently, will it revolutionize TV advertising?

Because, yes, with the pending acquisition of Time Warner, AT&T is well-positioned to fundamentally change how television ads are bought and sold. Take the content from Time Warner and DirectTV, combine it with AT&T’s ever-expanding trove of subscription data, then add Brian Lesser — the former GroupM CEO who joined AT&T this month to lead a mysterious new advertising division — and you’ve got a solid blueprint for disruption.

Continue reading at AdAge.com