Hasta La Creative!

Venables Bell & Partners found a way to stand out for Audi amidst a barrage of feel-good holiday ads. 

“Parking Lot” eschews the typical approach and instead takes a look at the darker side of the season, via a relatable seasonal dilemma: the war for a parking space. The spot opens with two Audi drivers entering a parking lot, where they proceed to enter a prolonged battle for the last parking spot, set to the strains of “Carol of the Bells.” With seemingly no parking spots left, they resort to drastic measures.

Just when things seem resolved, albeit via an ambiguous scene jump, the two find more to fight over. The spot ends with the tongue-in-cheek line, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.”

The approach will inevitably be a divisive one. Some will fault the ad for being too dark or Audi for not having holiday spirit. Others will welcome it as a much needed break from a barrage of overly saccharine odes to the holidays. Either way, the narrative does find a way to showcase the Audi RS3 and RS7 in action.

Credits:
Advertising Agency: Venables Bell & Partners, San Francisco, USA
Founder, Chairman: Paul Venables
Partner, Executive Creative Director: Will McGinness
Creative Directors: Justin Moore , Erich Pfeifer
Copywriter: Tedd Wood
Art Director: Cody Pate
Director of Integrated Production: Craig Allen
Producer: Hilary Coate
Business Affairs Manager: Sametta Gbilia
Head of Brand Management: David Corns
Brand Director: Jon Phillips
Brand Supervisors: Jessica Lo, Justin Wang
Brand Manager: Hope Stadulis
Brand Coordinator: Alexandra Kaye
Senior Strategist: Mike Riley
Senior Traffic Manager: Jermelia Holling

Production Company: Biscuit FIlmworks
Director: Steve Rogers
Executive Producers: Shawn Lacy, Holly Vega
Line Producer: Karen O’Brien
DoP: Alwin Kuchler

Editing Company: Exile
Editor: Kirk Baxter
Assistant Editor: Paul Jarolimekproner
Executive Producer: CL Weaver
Producer: Remy Foxx

VFX / Finish: ETC
VFX Lead Supervisor: Adam Watson
VFX Executive Producer: Kate Hitchings
VFX Producer: Scott Boyajan
2D Artists: Matt Lee, Matt Lee
CG Supervisor: Corinne DeOrsay

Color: Co3
Colorist: Stefan Sonnenfeld
Color Producer: Katie Andrews

Music Company / Music Arrangement / Sound Design / Mix: Barking Owl
Creative Director / Partner: Kelly Bayett
Producer: KC Dossett
Sound Designers: Wylie Statemen, Harry Cohen
Mixer: Mike Franklin

Crispin Porter + Bogusky announced plans to close its Miami office in March as part of an effort to consolidate its U.S. operations, Adweek reports.

“It’s something we’ve been talking about for a while,” CP+B founder and chairman Chuck Porter said, adding that while “agonizing,” it was “the best thing for the agency and the work. We’re done restructuring now.”

“Obviously, it was partly a financial decision. A lot of clients we had here came from our connections in Brazil,” he added.

CP+B launched with Miami as its headquarters back in 1988, subsequently opening offices in Los Angeles and Boulder in 2001 and 2006. The agency’s accounts run out of Miami will now move to its Boulder, Los Angeles and São Paulo offices.

The announcement follows CP+B’s decision to shrink the size of its Los Angeles office earlier this month, after laying off five percent of its staff this summer in the wake of Infiniti moving global creative duties to 72andSunny without a review. CP+B L.A. retains the U.S. agency of record duties for the car brand.

Around 75 staff members will be affected by this news. Porter told us that most employees in Miami are “support people” handling bookkeeping and business affairs work but said that a majority of client-facing staff, “particularly creatives” like ECD Tom Adams, will be moving to L.A. CP+B is working with the larger MDC Partners network to find opportunities for other employees, though Porter acknowledges that many will not be able to leave Miami.

One user of the Fishbowl app described the move as a “trail of tears.”

Any employees unable to find work at MDC might be able to score a gig at the new agency that David veterans Anselmo Ramos and Gaston Bigio plan to launch in March.

Those guys didn’t want to tell us which clients will help fund their new operation. Who wants to guess??