Hasta La Creative!

AdAge reports that General Mills has appointed W+K Portland as agency of record for its Yoplait brand.

Incumbent Saatchi & Saatchi will continue to handle portions of the business including innovation and kids variety Go-Gurt, but W+K will play lead moving forward.

For W+K, the account, along with the addition of KFC to its roster last month, makes up for ground lost in Kraft’s agency consolidation in November and the recent departure of Weight Watchers.

The agency move — like so many others — comes shortly after General Mills’ appointment of Ann Simonds as chief marketing officer. According to Kantar Media, the company spent $169.4 million on U.S. measured media for the Yoplait brand last year.

CarMax has handed media duties over to Horizon following a competitive review, sources told Adweek.

The review for the assignment, previously handled in-house, also included finalists OMD and Vizeum. It follows the selection of new CMO Jim Lyski last August, and a competitive review which handed creative duties to McKinney in November. According to Kantar Media, CarMax spends around $70 million on media annually.

Back in November 2014, sources told us that Snyder’s/Lance, maker of various salty snacks, had begun speaking to new agencies as it planned to leave then-AOR BFG Communications.

While BFG offered no comment at the time (they don’t seem to like responding to emails), we now know that the rumors were true.

Barton F. Graf 9000 won creative duties on four Snyder’s-Lance brands, — Cape Cod potato chips, Snyder’s of Hanover pretzels, Pretzel Crisps and Lance crackers — Adweek reported yesterday.

Barton F. Graf 9000 beat out finalists Taxi, The Burns Group and GKV to win the assignment, which combined account for around $15 million in measured media annually. The assignment follows Snyder’s-Lance switching social media and PR agencies to Tenthwave and Luquire George Andrews, respectively.

Additionally, Snyder’s-Lance is currently searching for a new media agency to replace GKV (who were also the incumbent agency on Snyder’s, Cape Cod and Lance). The media review is expected to conclude some time in March. New work from Barton F. Graf 9000 for the Snyder’s-Lance brands is expected to debut in the third quarter of 2015.

Vodafone has selected Grey London as its lead creative agency following a pitch against incumbent Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R, who had worked as the brand’s lead agency since August of 2011, Campaign reports.

Grey has worked with Vodafone since 2011, when it was tasked with handling the business in Ireland. According to Nielsen, Vodafone spent around £52.9 million on measured media in 2013. We’ve provided a sample of RKCR/Y&R’s work for the brand, in the form of an ad from this past summer in which it cast real British families, above.

The pitch followed Vodafone hiring Grey London for a network differentiation campaign last March, which encompassed broadcast, cinema, print and digital. Grey London’s first campaign for the brand is expected in April.

“We have been aiming to bring our focus our consumer brand work into fewer agencies for some time, as this allows us to foster a closer working relationship with them and also ensures greater consistency across all channels,” said Daryl Fielding, director of brand marketing at Vodafone UK.

Papa John’s has selected Initiative as its new media agency, taking over for Zimmerman Advertising without a review. In addition to media buying and planning, the agency will also be tasked handling digital and social media efforts, Adweek reports. Papa John’s spends approximately $130 million annually on measured media.

Bob Kraut, who was named Papa John’s chief marketing officer in late 2013, worked with Initiative previously while serving as senior vice president of brand marketing and advertising at Arby’s Restaurant Group. The move follows the selection of Grey as the brand’s creative agency of record in early 2014, shortly following Kraut’s arrival. Zimmerman had previously held creative duties for the brand as well, but declined to defend in the review that led to Grey’s selection.

“This was an internal decision as part of Papa John’s ongoing effort to be a more global company and improve efficiencies,” the Louisville-based brand said in a statement. “We feel like Initiative is the right partner as we continue to move in this direction.”

Today in news we missed because of all the Super Bowl nonsense, FCB apparently lost the KFC creative account to Wieden+Kennedy after more than ten years — a period during which the agency produced a wide variety of work for the client.

A source who didn’t speak to us told Maureen Morrison of AdAge that the two agencies faced off in a closed pitch from which Wieden emerged victorious.

No one involved would confirm the story, but one year ago KFC’s parent company hired a new CMO — a move that often portends doom for a client’s agency of record. Coincidentally, that very CMO spent many years at Procter & Gamble and served as the North American marketing director for Old Spice when W+K launched “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.”

The internal memo from CCO Todd Tilford and Chicago President Michael Fassnacht reads as both disappointed and puzzled:

“We have done incredibly strong work for KFC over the last 10 years, especially over the last 24 months…In 2014, KFC was the most social [quick-service restaurant] brand in North America, was ranked as the second most engaging QSR brand by Forbes in November 2014, and enjoyed very strong sales results over the last nine months that outshine the rest of the QSR category. We expect this trend to continue in 2015 while our new work runs nationwide.”

The news marks Wieden+Kennedy’s biggest win since Verizon less than three weeks ago.

In other KFC news, McCann Erickson continues to serve as the brand’s AOR in Romania, where “Rich Kids of Instagram” remains a topic of considerable interest among young people. To promote the client’s new Smart (read: cheap) Menu, the agency challenged Romanian teens and others to “recreate” the most popular shots to appear under that hashtag…minus all the money and expensive crap it buys.

Here are a couple of selections from the resulting tumblr page with a hashtag that translates to “little money, big fun”:

The kids are clever, but without formal training they probably won’t get hired by W+K.

Ameriprise Financial has split with lead agency R/GA and launched a creative review, Adweek reports. According to Adweek‘s sources, R/GA, which had been Ameriprise Financial’s lead creative agency since 2009, declined to participate in the review. Media buying and planning will remain with Initiative.

The agencies involved in the review are currently unknown, but final presentations have been set for the middle of February. According to Kantar Media, Ameriprise Financial spent around $38 million on measured media in 2013. R/GA’s current campaign for the brand centers around actor Tommy Lee Jones, who will likely part ways with the brand as well. Boston’s Pile + Co. is managing the review process.

Ogilvy & Mather, Paris have launched a new campaign for Dove haircare products entitled “Love Your Curls.”

As that title suggests, the campaign is aimed at women with curly hair. The campaign is based on Dove’s research finding that only 4 out of 10 girls with curly hair think that their hair is beautiful. “Love Your Curls” begins with interviews with girls who express their dissatisfaction with their curly hair, and that they think straight hair is prettier. It’s tough to watch girls so young dissatisfied with their appearance, but Dove’s research also unearthed a more promising statistic: that curly-haired girls are seven times more likely to love their hair if the people around them do. As the text “The best way to change how they feel about their curls, is to show them how you feel about yours” comes on the screen, girls and their relatives dance through the streets celebrating their curls. They then arrive at a sort of Dove sing-a-long where a group plays and sings a tune with the repetitive chorus, “We all love our curls.”

“The Dove Hair Love Your Curls film reveals an important issue, and Dove Hair has a responsibility to take that finding and instigate positive social change,” Rob Candelino, Unilever’s vice president of marketing for haircare, told Adweek.

Critics of Dove’s marketing tactics have suggested that the brand is manipulative and preys on customers’ insecurities, and will likely take similar issue with this latest effort, but Candelino defended the ad, telling Adweek, “We are a proud leader in redefining how beauty is portrayed and celebrated, and we have been committed to helping make beauty a source of confidence, not anxiety. Building on the scale of the Dove brand, the Dove Hair Love Your Curls campaign reveals the opportunity that all women have to set a positive tone for the next generation.”

W+K Amsterdam has launched an integrated campaign for Booking.com introducing the Booking Now app.

In a series of four 30-second spots which begin airing this Sunday, W+K Amsterdam borrows a trick from “Ship My Pants,” ending each ad with the almost-expletive filled, “The right room, right booking now,” in suggestive circumstances. Each spot presents a comical scenario where immediate booking is a necessity. In “Dead Bed” it’s a grandmother offering up the bed where her husband died peacefully, while the similar “Race Car Bed” borrows a gag from Grandma’s Boy. “Karate” and “Interview” change things up, presenting a couple who are pleasantly surprised by their daughter’s performance at a karate competition and a woman who arrives for a job interview a full day early.

In addition to the broadcast spots, the campaign also includes cinema, OOH and digital activations.

Deutsch LA recently launched a new ad for Dr. Pepper, introducing “Mop Dog.”

“Mop Dog” is a Puli — a Hungarian breed that develops natural dread locks or “cords” giving it a distinct, comical appearance — who roams around in search of a home. The dog walks past an owner taking her two (more normal looking) dogs for a walk and passes two shops with mops in the window before finally being taken in by a Dr. Pepper truck driver (who Breaking Bad fans may recognize as “Krazy 8?). From there it’s straight Puli cuteness as the dog tags along. For a moment it seems the driver is going to drop the dog off at an animal shelter, but, predictably changes his mind. The spot ends with the “Always Be One of a Kind” tagline.

While the ad could hardly be accused of originality, Deutsch LA handles the canine approach as well as most with “Mop Dog.” Saccharine as it might be, it’s hard to imagine that people won’t eat this one right up (who doesn’t love Pulis?), and we wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Pepper’s “Mop Dog” makes a reappearance.