Hasta La Creative!

BBDO New York has received a fair deal of attention for its recent work for GE, including an Emmy nomination for wistfully surreal “Childlike Imagination.” More recent spots like “Ideas are Scary” and “The Boy Who Beeps” followed in a similar tone, celebrating ideas and innovation in imaginative ways. So the agency’s fake infomercial for GE Lighting, directed by Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim (better known as Tim & Eric) and starring Jeff Goldblum, comes right out of left field.

The over two minute-long mock infomercial (mockfomercial?), entitled “Enhance Your Lighting” sees Goldblum playing “Terry Quatro, Famous Person” as he hocks the GE Link light bulb, which offers “successful guy lighting at normal guy prices.” It’s also so easy to install, you can do it while painting a portrait of yourself. It should come as no surprise that the spot is all over the place with random humor, but Goldlum plays the part perfectly and when it’s on it can be pretty funny. And while it may seem like an odd approach for the brand, especially coming off BBDO’s recent spots, it should garner some attention for the new product as the YouTube views (currently at around 115,000) inevitably pile up. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

To update our recent post on MRY‘s status in the wake of this month’s Publicis shakeup, we can confirm that founder/CEO Matt Britton will now oversee the operations of both his own agency and fellow New York shop Big Fuel. The agency founded by Avi Savar announced in 2011 that it would sell to Publicis, where it initially served as a “social media center” for Razorfish, Digitas, Zenith and Starcom).

This week Laura Desmond, CEO of the Starcom Mediavest group that now includes both MRY and Big Fuel, announced that their leaders would report to Britton, who will subsequently report to her.

The move has not been announced outside the newly expanded Starcom because it will not reportedly affect any of the services that either agency provides to clients.

While the leaders of both shops will report to Britton moving forward, they will remain operationally independent from one another. (As a reminder, one of Big Fuel’s most recent major staffing moves was the hire of former Dachis Group ECD Jon Resnik as EVP/ECD.)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Erwin Penland teamed up with production company Harpoon Picures for a visually striking tribute to Alaska, celebrating the network’s arrival in the 49th state.

The well-shot 30-second spot highlights some of the state’s natural beauty before concluding with the Verizon team showing up and saying, “We’re here Alaska.” The ad celebrates the fact that Verizon’s expansion into the territory has made the company Alaska’s largest and fastest 4G LTE network. Harpoon was able to assemble a team and put the spot together over the course of just several days.

“A project like this reminds us that it takes more than a great director to produce a great spot,” said Chris Miller, Harpoon’s director of new business development.”Harpoon put all our best problem solving skills to the test and our amazing production team deftly pulled off every challenge presented to them in an incredibly short amount of time.” (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Richards Group’s latest campaign clearly operates under the “less is more” mantra, with a series of minimalist 15-second ads.

The campaign leans heavily on the brand’s product itself, without any bells and whistles. In “Beastly” for example, the visuals are restricted to a bottle of Prestone with an effect to make it look bulked up at one point as the voiceover says, “It’s like Prestone started working out, got buff…beasty.” Another spot, “Patented,” touts the company’s patented cor-guard inhibitors, asking who else has them before answering its own question with “Nobody…because they’re patented,” while displaying the actual patent numbers.

It’s an unusually restrained approach that emphasizes the product’s superior corrosion protection in a way that implies there’s no need for further discussion. By keeping the message simple and not dressing it up with storytelling or impressive visuals, The Richards Group hopes to lend that message a sense of authenticity. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Grey London has launched its first global campaign for Volvo since winning creative duties last December, which takes a different approach to automobile advertising.

In the 60-second “The Swell,” the first shot is from the passenger side perspective. As the camera zooms out (while panning around the car) we see that the door is open and the car is parked at a deserted beach. “To feel, to really feel, is a rare thing these days,” intones the voiceover as we see the car’s driver (presumably) riding a surfboard and taking in the surroundings. As the camera submerges into the water, we see the tagline, “Seek feeling.”

The unusual spot breaks today on Volvo’s YouTube account and website, and will broadcast in Germany, Australia, France, Turkey and Belgium at the end of this year, and the UK in 2015.

“The last thing the world needs is another overly-retouched car, hooning down a mountain road to a soft rock soundtrack,” Hollie Newton, Grey London’s global creative director told Campaign. “There’s a defiant, slightly renegade Swedish spirit to Volvo that simply doesn’t fit with the bland world of car advertising. And thank God for that.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Arnold Worldwide and the Ad Council teamed up with Year Up, the Employment Pathways Project, ConPRmetidos, MENTOR: The National Mentoring Partnership, New Options Project, and Opportunity Nation for a PSA campaign entitled “Grads of Life.”

The campaign promotes alternative hiring processes and attempts to “raise awareness and change employer’s perceptions of opportunity youth” to fill the 4 million vacant positions companies in the U.S. are trying to fill. In a spot called “Pathways to Employment,” running in both 30 and 60-second versions, an employer sits down with a candidate for an interview. She touts her problem solving skills and strong work ethic, and, while he mentions her lack of a college degree, he ultimately decides she’s exactly what he’s looking for. Then, she disappears into thin air, symbolizing that because of the way in which they look for candidates, most employers never meet these type of prospective employees.

The campaign launch was backed by Hilary Clinton at the tenth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative, where she said, “The Grads of Life PSA campaign is the first effort to drive employer demand for the millions of low-income young adults that are a huge source of untapped talent in our country and through GradsofLife.org employers can now access the first-ever online platform for the information, tools, and resources they need to take action today.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

mono teamed up with New York-based Hornet Studios to introduce Honeywell’s new Lyric thermostat with a new animated campaign.

In a 30-second spot, mono introduces the new smart thermostat’s geo-fencing capabilities, showing how the Lyric can use the location of your phone to determine when you’re away and go into power saving mode, and then sense when you’re coming home and return your home to your preferred temperature. To accomplish this, the animated spot presents the scenario of a man whose layover “turns into a stayover” as he’s forced to book a hotel room. This provides viewers with a good example of when Lyric’s smart features might come in handy. A 15-second spot (also animated) takes a similar approach, telling the story of a family who decide to go camping.

In addition to the broadcast spots, the campaign also includes digital, social, print and OOH properties. Like the broadcast spot, these components align “with moments when Lyric’s technology will be most useful, encouraging people to rethink the possibilities of a smart, money-saving thermostat that offers people the versatility to live their lives spontaneously.” (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

McCann Paris has a provocative new take on the breast cancer awareness PSA, launching the world’s first (according to them) “Bra Cam,” to remind women to check for breast cancer.

At the beginning of the spot, a woman fastens a hidden camera to her bra before heading out for the day in a somewhat revealing (but still plenty safe for work) outfit. The ad then brings up a counter recording each time her breasts are “checked out” over the course of the day. It’s an attention grabbing way to deliver a pretty clear message: Everyone else is checking out your breasts, so check them out yourself and self-examine regularly for breast cancer. The campaign comes complete with a social initiative asking women to post a #CheckYourSelfie, checking themselves out and inviting friends to do the same in an effort to raise breast cancer awareness and get more women to self examine regularly. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Carmichael Lynch has another new spot for Subaru, following the release of a campaign promoting the Subaru Outback just last week.

This time around, Carmichael Lynch has crafted a spot for the Subaru Legacy. In the 30-second ad, a teenage boy is distracted by girl-minded daydreams when the Legacy’s obstacle-detection technology comes to the rescue. While his daydreams are squeaky clean compared to what actual teenage boys fantasize about, it’s still a relatively realistic scenario which makes a lot of sense as an approach for a family car, whose customers are likely to have to lend to their adolescent kid at some point. So while there’s not enough truth here for a full laugh, there’s more than enough to effectively make a point about the Legacy’s safety. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today we learned that TechCrunch blogger Kyle Russell doubles as an advertising critic. More specifically, he criticizes the websites of ad agencies.

There’s a reason he was interested in this one: it’s West, the San Francisco shop founded by former Apple marketing chief Allison Johnson and top Facebook PR Brandee Barker with a bit of capital from Twitter originator Jack Dorsey.

About a year ago, we posted on West in response to tipsters’ claims that all the real ad people hired to staff the agency were leaving. West’s web presence doesn’t help clarify that matter, because it provides absolutely no information about the organization itself.

Still, Russell lingered on the page long enough to call it “a new champion in the endless battle to have the most pretentious startup website.”

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.