Unfurlable Solar Panel Systems – The Rapid Roll Solar PV Design Allows Flexible Panel Installation (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) Solar panel systems are becoming an increasingly popular way for municipalities and governments to take advantage of the sun as a natural and clean source of energy, which is why the Cardiff Council…

Future Festival on Notable.ca – Notable Life Provides Its Review of Future Festival 2017

(TrendHunter.com) While Future Festival 2017 may have wrapped up here in Toronto, many attendees are still buzzing with the energy of the conference. One attendee from Notable Life—“Canada’s leading…

Cruise Ship-Inspired Yachts – The Heesen Project Maximus Yacht is Elegant and Modern (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) The Heesen Project Maximus Yacht comes as an opulent vessel that boasts an 83 meter length, a number of signature features and has been inspired by cruise ships for a truly high-end finish. The…

Top Fox News Lawyer, Dianne Brandi, Takes Voluntary Leave

Ms. Brandi, a member of Fox News’s senior leadership, was closely involved with how the network dealt with women who complained of sexual harassment.

Google creates lightshow using footsteps at Berlin Festival of Lights

Google is creating a lighting display in Berlin that is synchronised with the footsteps of visitors.

Benefit creates 70s disco with makeovers

Benefit, the cosmetics company, is taking people back in time with a 70s-themed disco.

Sally Hansen picks Chelsea Ladies footballer Aluko as global brand ambassador

Chelsea Ladies FC striker and England centurion Eniola Aluko has become a global ambassador for beauty brand Sally Hansen.

Brands 'waste money' by showing the same consumers too many of the same ads

By buying impressions through multiple DSPs and Networks, brands may be targeting the same consumer a hypothetical 18 times instead of just the desired three times.

Mastercard to launch two-stage ad campaign for digital wallet Masterpass

Mastercard will launch its first TV ad campaign on Monday for digital wallet service Masterpass.

Jatos híbridos são aposta para revolucionar o transporte

Zunum Aero funciona através de energia elétrica e deve voar em 2022

> LEIA MAIS: Jatos híbridos são aposta para revolucionar o transporte

Festival do Rio: “A Forma da Água” vai te deixar sem fala e sem fôlego

Marque no calendário: novo filme de Guillermo Del Toro estreia em janeiro

> LEIA MAIS: Festival do Rio: “A Forma da Água” vai te deixar sem fala e sem fôlego

O apocalipse foi apenas adiado no novo trailer de “Pacific Rim: Uprising”

A esperada continuação de “Círculo de Fogo” estreia no dia 22 de fevereiro

> LEIA MAIS: O apocalipse foi apenas adiado no novo trailer de “Pacific Rim: Uprising”

Friday Morning Stir

-Glassworks Amsterdam teamed up with NBA star Russell Westbrook in a new campaign for TUMI (video above).

-The Tokyo Summary Court fined Dentsu 500,000 yen for labor standards violations related to overtime.

-According to Ace Metrix, Sea World made the most popular ad of the third quarter.

-Samsung head of global brand marketing Pio Schunker explains how advertising helped the brand bounce back from its Note 7 disaster.

-CMOs don’t like programmatic.

-Aren’t you sad that you missed the “nearly naked Santa” at the ANA?

-StrawberryFrog’s Scott Goodson discusses what brands gain by being “rebels with a cause.

-Group Nine Media is launching a content team to create shows exclusively for social platforms.

Sunny D Brings on Terri & Sandy for an AOR Relaunch

Remember back in the halcyon days of 2015, when everything was still Hope and Change and Grenadier won headlines for recasting the classic ’90s ads for Sunny D with some aging extras?

Those were different times.

Now, the not-really-juice brand owned by Harvest Hill has picked New York’s Terri & Sandy (no more Solution, remember) as its new agency of record after a review in another attempt to reach that young, beverage-drenched consumer.

T&S will launch the brand’s first communications platform since 2015, with the ultimate goal of reaching both the Gen Z kids and their parents.

How did they win?

“I had the pleasure of working with Terri Meyer and Sandy Greenberg on iconic brands during my time at Kraft,” said John LeBoutillier, President and Chief Executive Officer of Harvest Hill. “Their strong strategic capabilities paired with big, transformative ideas, led us to have great success together. We are excited to team up with them to reinvent SunnyD.”

“We plan to embrace what’s in the brand’s DNA—a big personality and a unique, delicious taste—to ignite new excitement,” added Terri Meyer.

Indie shop Media Storm, which has long worked with Sunny D, will again handle buying and planning duties.

For some reason, we really want to see early 30 Rock-era Tracy Morgan star in these ads and say random, kind of disturbing things. Who’s with us??

22squared Crafts Hurricane Irma Relief Effort from Destroyed Billboards

While the aftermath of Hurricane Maria dominates the news cycle, residents of Florida are still dealing with the destruction wrought by Hurricane Irma.

The Tampa office of 22squared was motivated to do something to help.

“Highways are lined with billboards shredded to pieces,” 22squared senior copywriter Luke Sokolewicz said in a statement. “It’s a constant reminder that even though the storm has passed, there are still so many people in our community who remain broken.”

So the agency crafted a message of hope out of the wreckage of such billboards in a campaign called “Irma Gives Back.”

22squared utilized  the remains of billboards destroyed in the storm to craft new ones, directing viewers to IrmaGivesBack.org, where they can volunteer their time or donate money to Volunteer Florida’s relief efforts.

“Many of us have family or friends that have been affected by Irma, so this has been a deeply personal project for all of us,” 22squared associate creative director Garen Bogosian said in a statement. “The idea started with a small group, but as word spread throughout the agency, we had an outpouring of volunteers helping transform these signs of destruction and devastation into signs of hope, and a rallying cry for our communities to come together.”

To bring the idea to life, 22squared partners with media vendor Lamar to collect pieces for the project and display them on billboards in Fort Myers, one of the areas hit hardest by Hurricane Irma.  Agency staffers volunteered their time and efforts for the “Irma Gives Back” campaign, which was created, from concept to execution of the hand-crafted billboards, in just five days.

AICE Aims to Shame Agencies for Pilfering Production Work In New Video

Last December, the Wall Street Journal broke a story about the Department of Justice investigating agencies allegedly engaging in “bid rigging” and other anti-competitive practices to favor in-house production teams over independent studios. As it turned out, the investigation involved subpoenas of all four major holding companies.

In March, the Association of Independent Creative Editors (AICE) and the Association of Independent Commercial Producers (AICP) both released internal memos detailing what they knew about the investigation’s progress as the Association of National Advertisers created a Production Transparency Task Force.

At the time the AICE said in a statement, “As a trade association, AICE’s policy is to refrain from commenting on the investigation itself but rather to focus on our continued push to raise awareness among advertisers about transparency issues in an effort to affect change in the non-transparent practices employed by ad agencies with in-house capabilities.”

In August, the ANA released its “Production Transparency in the U.S. Advertising Industry” report, which seemed to corroborate many of the allegations of “bid rigging” and other anti-competitive practices by holding companies.

The AICE responded with a statement reading in part, “This report does a good job of documenting where [transparency issues] are found, what form they take and what impact they have on the advertising production process. More importantly, it provides advertisers with a common-sense road map to help them address these concerns.”

Now the group is taking a more direct approach with a personal appeal to creatives at agencies themselves. A new video entitled “Avoid the Skip Button” argues that cutting out independent production and post-production companies doesn’t just hurt those production houses and clients, but also agencies themselves.

More specifically, it suggests that those awards agencies care so much about might disappear without the help of such third parties.

It’s notable for its appeal to the creatives’ self-interest. “Avoid the Skip Button” argues that the right production and post-production partners can mean the difference between a shelf full of awards or no awards, millions of views, or just another skip button magnet.

It concludes with the message “Agencies pushing to work in-house may not have your best interest in-mind,” followed by the tagline, “Dedicated to Better.”

Not Dead Yet: How a Small Agency Survived After a Major Account Loss

This is a guest post by Steve Landsberg, co-founder and co-CCO of New York indie agency Grok.

I blame Michael Dell. It was all his fault that we lost one of our largest accounts, VMware.

A little background: We had won our first VMware assignment back in the summer of 2010 when Grok was just a five-person company. Over the next five years, we grew the business dramatically. We were working with five different business units and running global campaigns in six countries.  The scope of work included all things digital and traditional: long and short-form videos, banners, landing pages, outdoor, and print. VMware helped fuel Grok’s growth to a 25-person shop and helped us become one of the Inc.500 fastest growing companies in America. By December of 2015, VMware’s business accounted for almost half of our revenue.

It was all good until Mr. Multi-Billionaire Michael Dell announced his intention to acquire EMC, VMware’s parent company. VMware immediately put their advertising dollars on hold. Well, it was fun while it lasted.

Dr. Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We grieved but we were not about to accept defeat and close the agency. We still had great clients and great people who we did not want to disappoint.

We developed a multi-pronged strategy to keep Grok going that we would put into effect the day we returned from the holiday break:  be transparent; cut payroll; over-deliver for our existing clients; increase new business efforts; and develop new skills and competencies.

The transparency really started before the holiday break.  We let our staff know what was going on in our end-of-year “kitchen meeting.”  (OK, so maybe we didn’t tell them exactly how bad it was; no need to scare the kids.)  But we still had a holiday party and gave modest bonuses to the entire staff of “Grokstars” who all worked their asses off in 2015.

The partners, Julie Bauer, Tod Seisser, and yours truly, took 25% pay cuts. Vicki Duffy, Chief Operating Officer, and Ann Figwar, Director of Human Resources, volunteered to take pay cuts too. These savings allowed us to keep the people we needed to over-deliver for existing clients and for new business efforts.  We did let the senior account director on VMware go, but gave him a few months to find a new job. And when people left on their own for other agencies, as young people often do, we didn’t replace them.

Our new business efforts included calling and emailing old contacts and agency search consultants. We sent them videos and digital newsletters that touted our expertise and results. We overhauled our company website and increased our social media presence.

We upgraded our digital and social capabilities so we could say yes when those assignments presented themselves and do them in house. We took on branding assignments, website design, coding, corporate identity, and social projects. We created corporate brand films and, for our olive oil client, shot recipe videos. All in house. We did anything and everything to bring in revenue.

Many of these small projects led to other engagements. Some of our existing accounts introduced new products and increased their spending. We won new business thanks to client referrals and to former clients who went to new companies.

By the end of 2016 we had regained much of the revenue we had lost. And going into 2017, my partners and I, along with Vicki and Ann, went back to our old pay.

Today, Grok’s revenue is spread out more evenly across multiple clients. And we provide more solutions to our existing clients (and new business prospects) with a broader range of skills and competencies.

In short, what didn’t kill us made us stronger. Thanks, Michael Dell.

[pic via]

Audi: Electric Story

Audi – Electric Story

Video of Audi – Electric Story

MasterCard: Reverse Advent Calendar

MASTERCARD Reverse Advent Calendar

Video of MASTERCARD Reverse Advent Calendar

Optrex: Screen Eyes

Optrex – Screen Eyes

Video of Optrex – Screen Eyes