In the category of “creativity for creative sake” which, of course, is not a bad thing — after all, creatives do need to remove themselves from pesky clients once in a while and stretch their creative juices — EVB “remixed” the adobe logo and turned it into a clock.
Because why? Because when an idea is born, the clock starts ticking. That’s why.
Lance Reddick, who you should know as Lieutenant Daniels on The Wire, takes center stage in Raleigh-based agency Baldwin&‘s new campaign for Cree LED Bulbs, entitled “The Room of Enlightenment.”
The digital campaign features Daniels Reddick in a series of loquacious spots extolling the virtues of LED bulbs, which compare favorably to the incandescent ham fryers you grew up with. Relying on solid copywriting and Reddick’s excellent delivery, the spots are memorable without any frills or fancy production touches. The campaign comes on the heels of a recent incandescent bulb ban, with stores still trying to sell their remaining stock of the soon-to-be relics. One spot, “Gray Market” (featured above) pontificates that there will soon be an illicit market for incandescent bulbs where you may find yourself “trading jugs of grandpa’s porch juice for bulbs out of a rusty hatchback from a guy with a tattoo on his forehead who goes by the name of Rattlesnake.” In other, clever spots, Reddick uses a competitor’s oddly-shaped bulb as a ping-pong paddle, and talks metaphorical money goats. Stick around for a couple more spots, along with campaign credits, after the jump. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Last week brought news that Toronto-based digital agency Twist Image had become the latest acquisition for WPP.
Unlike most comparable deals, however, this one now brings a bit of commentary from the agency founder himself. This morning, Twist president Mitch Joel took the time to answer some questions you might have about the why, the how and the “are you a sellout?” aspects of the deal on the agency’s blog. He even managed to work in a Metallica reference.
Some key quotes on why he–or rather, they–sold:
“Truthfully, business was great…we decided that it was time to make a bigger bet.”
continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
With Mother’s Day around the corner, the folks at Cadillac have unveiled this timely effort that might just warm your cockles and put your old flowers-and-card gift for moms to shame in the process. The automaker, armed with director Spike Lee and his SpikeDDB unit, Lawson Clarke (aka @Malecopywriter) and art director Khari Streeter (from Hill Holliday and Rogue, respectively) as well as Grenadier’s Mark St. Amant, have turned the spotlight on Teddy Bridgewater, University of Louisville QB who’s now a top NFL draft prospect. You see, folks, as a wee lad–when he was nine-years-old, to be exact–Bridgewater made a promise to his mom that one day, he would buy her a pink Cadillac (and yes, the Springsteen tune is rolling along in our heads). Well, as you can see in the 7-minute Lee-directed doc above called “A #Promise2Rose” (ideal for lunchtime viewing), consider mission accomplished.
According to ABC News, the pink Cadillac has even more significant meaning than just a promise from son to mother fulfilled, though, as Bridgewater’s mother also raised her son while battling, and eventually beating, breast cancer. Yes, folks, it is getting hella dusty in here.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Remember the Northwestern student who created a Lego version of herself and used it as a resume to apply for summer internships ad agencies? Well the student, Leah Bowman, has been hired by Energy BBDO and will start work in late June.
She writes on her imgur gallery, “A few weeks ago I was “that LEGO intern girl” but now I’m officially a BBDO Account Management Intern!”
Well congratulations, Leah!
Independent full-service agency DNA has expanded their “One Goal” campaign for Group Health Cooperative with a series of new broadcast spots.
Deciding that healthcare advertising all looked and sounded the same, DNA took a slightly different approach with “One Goal,” emphasizing their ability to help people continue to live their lives over any specific claims as to quality of care and coverage. In the 30-second “The Wait” (featured above), for example, a couple with an already healthy-sized family waits for the results of a pregnancy test.
“It’s really a tough time to be a healthcare marketer,” explained Dan Gross, executive creative director, DNA. “The clutter in healthcare advertising is at much higher levels now due to the health insurance exchanges. This has led to consumer confusion and, in some cases, they are completely tuning out. A longstanding issue for Group Health has been the misperception that they provide limited services and specialties, so we wanted to communicate the breadth of what Group Health actually offers, and to do it in a way that avoids the warm and fuzzy clichés in this category.”
In addition to television and radio, the campaign also features outdoor/transit and a new digital landing environment at http://onegoal.ghc.org.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
AMV BBDO’s new campaign for Currys & PC World, entitled “Football? What Football?” — their first work for the brand — manages to be World Cup-themed without ever mentioning the words “World Cup” (although at one point they come pretty close). The new broadcast spots for the UK’s largest specialist electrical retailing and services company each feature a hopelessly transparent man attempting to (not so) slyly suggest to his significant other that they should buy a new television, positing the purchase as selfless, and certainly having nothing to do with the impending 2014 World Cup in Brazil.
The approach is clever, examining the types of subtle and not-so-subtle manipulations partners in relationships make surrounding expensive purchases. In my favorite of the spots, “Pride and Sensibility,” a man tells his wife, over dinner, that him and his friends watched that “Pride and Sensibility” program and it really looked great on his buddy’s widescreen TV. He’s not nearly so slick as he thinks he is, and his significant other’s incredulous facial expressions really bring the spot together as he almost mentions the World Cup and claims the new TV is for “that castle program” she likes so much.
The other spots follow a similar formula, finding humor in a man suggesting to his wife that her gardening programs would look great on a new television, and a father attempting to justify the purchase as a way to better enjoy upcoming penguin documentaries to his daughter while a disbelieving mother looks on. It’s the kind of approach that works because of its relatability, with humor that is at once universal and distinctly British coming from true to life scenarios. The broadcast campaign launched on the first, along with accompanying 30 second ads appearing on sports radio. Stick around for credits and the other two spots after the jump. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Agencies active in the content game are making progress. They’ve moved away from the “every company is a media company” fallacy to a better place.
One thing we know for sure, every company is NOT a media company, especially not every advertising agency nor the marketers they support. Yet, the need for compelling brand-building media remains as strong as ever.
What is a global leader in digital marketing to do? If you’re Digitas LBi, you partner with with BuzzFeed and Epic Digital to develop new digital branded content. Why reinvent the wheel when you can simply buy new wheels and have them installed on your vehicle?
Epic Digital is an arm of Epic Magazine, which was co-founded by Josh Bearman and Joshua Davis (one of the most interesting people working online today).
According to Adweek, part of the deal includes marketing-side staffers from BuzzFeed will “grab a desk” in digital agency’s New York office. Teams from both companies will work together on strategies for brands.
Adam Shlachter, head of media activation North America Digitas LBi, said, “Buzzfeed has a formula for connecting with people, the things they want to read, the things they want to share, the things they want to talk about. We think we can combine that formally with how we think about the media to help brands tell really powerful stories.”
A formula to help tell really powerful stories? If the formula is to staff your team with outstanding writers, I can see where this is a winning idea. Other formulas like when to post, and how often are distractions.
Brands can’t tell their own stories. They need highly skilled modern-day storytellers to perform the hard work. An interesting twist here is that Digitas LBi has many solid copywriters on staff, but copywriters are trained to sell with short, smart language. Weaving long-form narratives (sponsored by a brand) is a different skill—one most often found in journalists.
The post Digitas LBi Applies BuzzFeed’s Content Formula To Client Problems appeared first on AdPulp.
Ant Farm and Activision have released the official reveal trailer for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, the upcoming title in the best-selling series, featuring the voice (and digital likeness) of Kevin Spacey.
Audio from the spot was leaked several days ago, which some hypothesized was from a House of Cards viral campaign. With the audio already making the rounds, Activision posted the reveal trailer late last night, Adweek reports. The 2:46 trailer features Spacey’s character pontificating about the futility of attempting to spread democracy. What people really want, he insists, is someone to protect them and give them boundaries. You know, someone like him. The spot ends with the “Power Change Everything” tagline, and November 4th release date.
Advanced Warfare is a bit of a departure for the Call of Duty series, with the story centering around an ill-intentioned private military corporation. As a tie-in, 72andSunny and Activision teamed up with Vice to produce a chilling short documentary on the rise of private military contractors and whether the events of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare could actually happen. It makes for a few minutes of interesting (and pretty damn scary) viewing, and one of the more intriguing pieces of branded content we’ve seen. We’ve included it after the jump, along with limited credits for the reveal trailer.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Wieden + Kennedy New York’s latest World Cup spot is a welcome departure from their previous World Cup work, foregoing focusing directly on the on-field action in lieu of the conversations and connections among fans sparked by the World Cup, leading into the “Every Four Years” tagline.
The new 30-second spot, called “Global Issues,” follows a linear conversation between soccer fans from diverse backgrounds. “Global Issues” stars real soccer enthusiasts — including a German butcher, an Italian barber, and a cab driver from the Ivory Coast, who support a vast array of teams, but all reside in the U.S. It’s a clever direction, executed well thanks largely to the precision editing, from editorial company Final Cut, necessary to pull off such an approach, and illustrates the excitement leading up to the World Cup well.
Wieden + Kennedy New York also debuted eight of its 32 original World Cup posters for ESPN, designed by Brazilian artist and graphic designer Cristiano Siqueira. Each features a likeness of key players and stories from the featured country competing in the 2014 FIFA World Cup. Stick around after the jump for a look at several of these posters, as well as campaign credits. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Sony could be excused if they had decided not to bother advertising the release of MLB 14 The Show at all. The latest installation in the long-running franchise, the only baseball simulation for PS3 or PS4, has literally no competition (which is how Sony got away with releasing the PS4 version a full month into the baseball season). Instead, they tapped Portland-based boutique agency Mutt Industries, who teamed up with Eastbound and Down star Danny McBride for a integrated campaign spanning broadcast, digital and social media. At the center of the campaign is a really fun online spot starring McBride, who also stars in the broadcast version.
In the 1:45 spot, McBride tells you something you should already know: that “Baseball is Better” — better than all other sports, and better than babies. He goes on to list all the reasons baseball is the best: no crying, no flags, no clocks, etc., all while sporting a badass old school Brooklyn Dodgers uniform. McBride is inserted into the game itself (Hey Sony: You really should make Kenny Powers a playable character) allowing Mutt Industries to show MLB 14 The Show‘s shiny new graphics, which really do look great. Most fans of the franchise have been eagerly anticipating the title for months now, but “Baseball is Better” may convince a few converts that The Show is worth picking up this year.
Broadcast spots will air on on Adult Swim, ESPN, Discovery, FX, History, MLB Network, Comedy Central and other cable stations, while digital and social media content highlights top MLB players, including Miguel Cabrera, Andrew McCutchen, Brandon Phillips, and Buster Posey. Over the course of the baseball season, Mutt Industries will release over 100 unique videos for the campaign, with each player given a unique role and character. Interestingly, Mutt Industries developed, directed and produced the entire campaign in-house with creative director Mike McCommon doubling as the commercial director. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
“What the hell was that?” — That is our (and, we’re guessing, your) reaction to “Oranjekoorts (Orange Fever),” W+K Amsterdam’s 2014 FIFA World Cup spot for Heineken, the agency’s first work for Heineken Netherlands.
The campaign actually began earlier this year with the search for Heineken’s first Chief Orange Officer (you can’t make this shit up), described as a “legitimate [cough] full-time role that sought a representative as Dutch as Heineken, but who shared the same international outlook and would be committed to spreading Orange Fever in The Netherlands and across the globe.” Heineken advertised the legitimate position on their own recruitment channels and throughout the Netherlands. After reviewing more than 2,500 applicants, the position was awarded to Marco van Houwelingen, who will fill the year long role at Heineken’s Amsterdam headquarters.
The 65-second spot features a float representing “everything great about the Netherlands and the Dutch,” making its way through a Brazilian Carnival. Lead by Heineken’s Chief Orange Officer, the float includes a windmill, illusionist Hans Klok, and Dennis Bergkamp, among various other weirdness. Float participants all dance to a samba version of the song “No Limit” by 2 Unlimited, “one of the world’s favorite 90’s anthems” (which is not how anybody outside the Netherlands would describe the song). Watch the confusing mess for yourself above, and stick around for credits after the jump. Maybe you just have to be Dutch to get it.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Serve Marketing, the country’s only all-volunteer nonprofit ad agency, has launched a harrowing new public service campaign in Milwaukee in an attempt to combat both domestic and animal abuse.
The campaign, entitled the Spot Abuse Project, is based on research from the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys which found that 76% of animal abusers go on to (or already) abuse a family member. By convincing more people to dial 911 to report animal abuse, Serve is hoping police will then uncover a higher number of domestic abuse cases. Since domestic abuse so often goes unreported and animal abuse is generally viewed as easier to report, Serve is hopes to benefit both animals and domestic abuse victims with the campaign.
The campaign kicks off today across television, outdoor, radio, and social media. Billboards for the campaign show pictures of abused pets next to young children with the troubling message “He’s next” or “She’s next,” imploring viewers to dial 911 to report abuse. The effort is already being lauded by domestic abuse organizations and local law enforcement, but has also met with some controversy. The outdoor campaign was originally planned to run at over 30 bus shelters in Milwaukee but was deemed “too vulgar” by the Milwaukee County Transit System.
“We’re not going to change people’s behaviors by showing warm and fuzzy pet pictures,” Serve Marketing executive director Heidi Sterricker said of the controversy. “Considering the images that are shown on magazine covers on newsstands and on the news every night what’s at stake here, I think people can handle seeing a picture of a dog with a bandage and a little blood on it if it saves a few lives.”
Credits after the jump. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Ace Hardware tapped FCB Chicago to help introduce The Paint Studio, which seeks to provide a “more style-inspired and personal paint shopping experience” for Ace customers with exclusive paint collections from Clark+Kensington, Valspar Optimus and Valspar Aspire. The resulting campaign, “Helpful Is Beautiful” is the largest ever for Ace Hardware, spanning television, radio, print, social and digital.
“Helpful Is Beautiful,” which was developed by FCB Chicago in association with Ace and Valspar, riffs on tropes from beauty advertising in an effort to emphasize the more design-oriented aspects of The Paint Studio. The attempts at humor fall flat (painfully so), but the spots do get across the more personalized approach Ace’s new Paint Studio takes when compared to other hardware mega-stores. Still, the three 30-second spots are pretty tough to watch.
“For years, women have expressed loyalty to their favorite cosmetics brands and the inspiring shopping experience that comes along with it,” explains John Surane, executive vice president, marketing, merchandising, and sales for Ace Hardware. “Ace and Valspar recognize the emotional response evoked by color and built the ‘Helpful is Beautiful’ campaign and The Paint Studio at Ace around this connection as a way to offer consumers a differentiating paint shopping experience featuring the brands they know and trust.”
Ace also launched a new website for The Paint Studio today, created by GSD&M, and will be featuring special offers to get customers to experience The Paint Studio throughout the month of May. Stick around for credits and a second spot after the jump. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
WPP added another established agency to its roster today by acquiring Toronto’s Twist Image.
Founded in 2000, the agency employs more than 100 and serves clients including Walmart Canada, TD Bank, the Montreal Canadiens and various other distinctly north-of-the-border entities.
Twist president Mitch Joel tells us that the move is significant because the agency will now have access to WPP’s vast data troves and its strategic partnerships with Google, Facebook, Twitter, Adobe, etc.
Twist will also continue to be led by its four partners and its existing management team. As Joel puts it, “They were eager to allow us…to continue running our business in the entrepreneurial way that we have always done.”
From the official release:
“Digital marketing is no longer an afterthought in the marketing mix. We
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Meet Harold and Lenny, the pair of geriatric kvetchers in Deutsch’s most recent assault on McDonald’s in their latest campaign promoting the new Taco Bell breakfast menu.
Deutsch and Taco Bell have had McDonald’s in their sights since they launched the breakfast menu with their real life Ronald McDonalds (an idea borrowed from a 2002 Jack In The Box campaign). They ratcheted things up with the 80s-referencing “Get With The Times,” which called out the McMuffin directly as being as out of touch as the spot’s Loverboy-fan protagonist. This time around, the McMuffin isn’t explicitly referenced, but the pair of old men complaining about youngsters and the new Taco Bell breakfast items appear to be eating McDonald’s signature breakfast sandwich on a park bench.
The formula is the same for the three new spots, said pair of old men complaining about young people and Taco Bell’s new breakfast offerings on a park bench across the street from a Taco Bell. This allows Deutsch to skewer McDonald’s as being for the old and out of touch while simultaneously promoting the new Taco Bell breakfast items, such as when the pair question the need for a one-handed breakfast (the A.M. Crunchwrap) — “so they can do that Tweeter thing,” one of them explains. In another spot, the pair complain about the “Morning Rave” happening at Taco Bell, despite the fact that they don’t know what a rave is. This all ties in well with the tagline, “The next generation of breakfast is here.”
There’s no official word as to whether Harold and Lenny are expected to make an appearance beyond this campaign, as a spokeswoman told AdAge, “Anything is possible” when asked if they will be ongoing characters. Stick around for “Morning Rave” and “Slippery Slope” after the jump. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Operating under the assumption that more people would recycle if it was fun, Coca-Cola and Grey Dhaka placed six “Happiness Arcade” machines around Dhaka, Bangladesh. The machines were operated by inserting an empty Coca-Cola bottle and played a branded version of arcade relic Pong. As some might remember (and Adweek readers noticed), DDB Stockholm made the same hypothesis regarding fun and recycling back in 2009 (dubbing it their “Fun Theory”) with their similar “Bottle Bank Arcade” campaign for Volkswagen.
“Bottle Bank Arcade” differed in that it turned recycling itself into a game: lights above bottle deposits lit up and, the faster you inserted the bottle, the more points you got. It seems like it was both more fun and a better way to promote recycling than Coca-Cola’s more branded effort, in which it appears the only type of bottle that makes the game work is a Coca-Cola bottle.
At the very least, these seem like two executions of the same idea. We’ve included DDB’s “Bottle Bank Arcade” after the jump for comparison.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Last year FCB Mayo (then Mayo Draftcb Peru) teamed up with The University of Engineering and Technology (UTEC) in Lima, Peru, to create the world’s first water-generating billboard in the desert city. The innovative campaign generated a lot of buzz, and a lot of attention for UTEC. This year, FCB Mayo teamed up with UTEC again to create an air-purifying billboard, an answer to the construction boom in Peru.
The billboard, located at a construction site in Barranco, Peru, contains an air-purifying system, developed with Peruvian technology, capable of cleaning large volumes of air by removing dust, metal and stone particles that inevitably escape into the air during construction. The billboard cleans air to a level that is “apt for human respiration, according to international and national air quality standards,” with the cleaner air impacting within a file mile radius of the site, benefiting residents of the area as well as construction workers. Operating “by means of thermodynamic processes that occur in nature, such as pressure, vaccuum and decreasing temperature,” the machine is highly efficient, with energy consumption of 2.5Kw per hour.
“This billboard seeks to spark young people’s interest in engineering, said Jessica Rúas, director of promotion at UTEC. “It is closely aligned with the university’s mission of educating creative engineers who are sensitive to social needs and have extensive scientific knowledge that enables them to become researchers and find solutions to society’s problems.”
“Putting our own ingenuity into action gives us great satisfaction, because in addition to the creative challenge it presents, it enables us to raise awareness, inspire and innovate in our work as advertising professionals,” added Juan Donalisio, creative director at FCB Mayo. “UTEC is a client that constantly challenges us, because its approach is not traditional. The university represents change. Therefore, its advertising does as well, and that makes us think about what is nearly impossible to do, in order to do it.”
See the case study video above to learn more about the campaign, and stick around for credits after the jump. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
Today Doner launched an integrated campaign on behalf of Bellefaire JCB, “an innovative organization that provides exceptional care, education, and advocacy to enhance the emotional, physical and intellectual well-being of children, young adults and families” to raise youth homelessness awareness.
The centerpiece of that campaign is “Take A Closer Look,” a series of faceless figures set up across Greater Cleveland, each wearing a sweatshirt describing the reason for their homelessness as a way to communicate the message that homelessness is not a choice, and that young people are driven to homelessness by forces beyond their control. For example, one of the shirts reads “My dad kicked me out of the house because I’m gay,” while another says “My mother’s boyfriend hurts me.” A sticker on the floor in front of each figure further describes the situation and offers ways to help. The campaign also includes TV and radio PSAs, social media and print components. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
CP+B have unveiled the latest in their continuing “You Know You Love It” campaign for Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Previous work on the campaign for Kraft’s macaroni and orange goo product has included the funny, on-point “What I Did For Love” and the nostalgia-laden “Go Ninja, Go.”
The two new 30-second spots are more in the vein of the former, although not as funny or effective, relying more on cuteness than humor. In “Pregnant,” a man eats the macaroni and cheese his pregnant wife requested, claiming that they’re “all out.” As you may have guessed, this is not a smart move and the spot ends just before she claws his face off (okay, not really). “Babysitter” is similarly minded, with a babysitter who will pay the price for helping herself to a late night mac and cheese snack. Stick around for credits and “Babysitter” after the jump. continued…
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.
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