Hasta La Creative!

If this week's news of a potentially disastrous Antarctic ice melt wasn't enough to give you a sinking feeling, then you might want to check out "World Under Water," an interactive initiative that lets people see what their neighborhoods might look like following floods caused by climate change.

BBDO and Proximity Singapore created the site for CarbonStory, a crowdfunding platform, ahead of World Environment Day on June 5. The site includes most areas on Earth catalogued by Google StreetView.

"This is an emotionally engaging consumer experience that we hope will change behaviors," says Ronald Ng, CCO of the agencies that crafted the work. The goal is to convince folks to calculate and offset their carbon footprint and hopefully slow global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps.

The campaign's timing is prescient, as NASA just determined that melting ice sheets in Antarctica could cause higher global sea levels than previously anticipated. Luckily, that process should take a few centuries, so in the meantime we can use CarbonStory's tool to preview the potentially soggy world of our descendants.

At least one scientific researcher, Philip Orton of the Stevens Institute of Technology, says World Under Water's approach is all wet. Interviewed by Mashable, he dismisses the campaign as an "information-less thing that just demonstrates what it looks like to have water on your block (be it Denver or Charleston). It has very little actual information content."

Typing in my location generates an image of waves rushing down the street, covering cars and lapping at second-story windows. But with all the rain we get here in Boston, it always kind of looks like that anyway.

A few weeks ago, a clever and creative young woman with agency aspirations named Leah Bowman won a bit of attention on this Internet of ours by submitting an account services internship application that starred herself in LEGO form.

You may have heard, via our morning stir or some other party, that she did indeed score an internship with BBDO.

Today we reached out to the newest member of the agency world to learn a little more about the application that went viral.

Our questions and her answers after the jump.

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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.

The Atlanta-based Sparks Grove agency–itself a division of global consultancy North Highland–has hired Russell Heubach as the newest executive creative director in its New York office.

Heubach brings an extensive agency history to the role: he began his stateside career with stints at The Martin Agency, JWT and DDB before working as creative group head at Australia’s Publicis Mojo and regional ECD for JWT Dubai.

While he held the GCD title at mcgarrybowen in his last full-time in-house position, the past two years include freelance gigs with BBDO, DDB, CP+B, StrawberryFrog and, most recently, McCann Erickson, where he worked on the Verizon and Burger King accounts.

OK, then. As CCO Minsoo Park puts it:

“We are excited that someone with his background and industry recognition chose Sparks Grove. “

Heubach himself fills out the press release, writing:

“My goal is to help build and grow a company that services our clients and all of their possible needs with the highest creative excellence.”

He certainly has the track record.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

This one’s been making the rounds for awhile, but we figured we’d add our two cents since it involves the ruining of a classic Beach Boys track. BBDO New York employs the Beach Boy’s “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” for their latest AT&T campaign. In the debut spot, “Sing Anthem” people in everyday situations randomly start singing the song as if they’re on Glee or something.

To be fair, BBDO does a passable job of connecting the song to AT&T’s message of helping “people and things speak the same language” and a good job of illustrating the point visually. But people of various walks of life (including an operatic news reporter) randomly bursting into song is a lot to swallow, and that the song is a personal favorite makes it even harder to take. The spot, which BBDO collaborated with Biscuit Filmoworks and editorial company Rock Paper Scissors to make, is part of a broader campaign that employs “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” as a theme song in each of its commericals. Thankfully, “Sing Anthem” is the only one of these to turn everyday life into a cheesy impromptu musical. Stick around for credits and “Sing Network” after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Puppy spots pretty much write themselves, but this one from BBDO Colenso goes a bit further than most, explaining YouTube’s business model and following with a particularly direct call-to-action that helps viewers donate without spending any money by using views as virtual currency that won’t just vanish like Bitcoin.

The release describes it as “potentially a new way for charities around the world to raise money.”

That strategy might conflict with Facebook’s new anti-spam algorithm, but as puppy owners we’re quite  susceptible to the message.

Credits after the jump (though the real star of the spot appears on the floor at 0:47).

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The Internet really is a boon for pet-food marketers clever enough to capitalize on animal-obsessed Web culture without seeming too mercenary.

Pedigree New Zealand gets extra brownie points for this video of cute dogs being cute, which attempts to leverage YouTube's revenue-sharing model to raise money for dog charity … as if you needed another reason to watch dachshunds eating hot dogs. (No, it's not cannibalism, though it might count as a sort of professional discourtesy.)

The concept is all the more impressive in the way it take two things that are usually annoying—seeing ads on other ads, and being asked to share ads—and makes them kind of feel-good (even if, given YouTube's meager ad rates, it's hard to imagine the campaign actually making significant money).

Regardless, the spot, by Colenso BBDO, is a knockout delight when measured against the high bar for misery-inducing commercials in the pet-adoption genre. Unlike the Sarah McLaughlin ASPCA sob fest that haunts an entire generation of U.S. TV viewers, this one doesn't hinge on making everyone feel awful about themselves.

Plus, the dogs are awesome to watch. Except for that winking puppy at the end, which clearly needs help for having confused itself with a cat. Only cats are supposed to be creepy.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Pedigree
Agency: Colenso BBDO, New Zealand
Creative Chairman: Nick Worthington
Creative Director: Levi Slavin
Senior Copywriter: Matt Lawson
Copywriter: Ben Polkinghorne
Art Director: Scott Kelly
Business Director: Helen Fitzsimons
Senior Social, Digital Strategist: Neville Doyle
Senior Planner: Tamsin McDonnell
Production Company: Finch
Director: Nick Ball
Executive Producer: Rob Galluzzo
Producer: Karen Bryson
Associate Producer: Amy Dymond
Director of Photography: Crighton Bone
Production Designer: Sara Mathers
Animal Wranglers: Animal House
VFX Supervisors: Andrew Timms, Mat Ellin
Offline: Method Studios
Editor: Seth Lockwood
Visual Effects: Beryl
Grade: Pete Ritchie
Flame: Andrew Timms, Mat Ellin
Sound Design: Franklin Rd
Composer: Jonathan Dreyfus

BBDO New York continues its ”Approved” or “athletes not taking themselves too seriously” series for Foot Locker with “No Rings.”

The spot follows “All Is Right” and stars Damian Lillard and a crew of veterans–including Barry Sanders, Chris Webber, Karl Malone and a guy we’re too old to recognize–whose undisputed greatness never led to a title.

We mostly appreciate Lillard’s decision to enter the YouTube comment thread, which is something we will never ever do.

Echoing a couple of the commenters: where’s Charles Barkley? Patrick Ewing? Dan Marino? If we’re going edgy, why not Barry Bonds? That one would have rattled a few cages.

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

And now for some more BBDO news: the agency’s ongoing relationship with Anheuser-Busch got a bit fruitier today as its Chicago office won the Bud Light Lime account from Steve Stoute’s Translation.

This move comes less than a year after Bud Light made the same switch; Energy BBDO will run the account.

From AB’s official statement:

“…we are moving Bud Light extensions work to BBDO now to gain synergies.”

And yes, “Translation continues to be a valued creative partner and collaborator on our successful Budweiser Made in America program.”

Just not in Chicago.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Innovative newspaper ads are a rare beast. We've seen a few fun ones lately—the Game of Thrones ad with the dragon shadow; the ad for the movie The Book Thief with two almost completely blank pages.

Here's an interesting one from Colombia. It's an ad for kitchens hidden inside a fake classifieds page—thanks to a nifty 3-D effect applied to the text. "The kitchen you are imagining is in HiperCentro Corona," says the headline.

You can argue about how effective it might be. Is it too subtle? But it's conceptually strong (it's a great way to illustrate something that could be on your mind while idly reading a newspaper) and executed well, too. Plus, here we are talking about a newspaper ad from Colombia. How often does that happen?

Sancho BBDO copywriter Felipe Salazar posted the ad to his Behance page.

Via Design Taxi.