Hasta La Creative!

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What would you do if you saw somebody who looked exactly like you, only better dressed?

BBDO New York tackles the question in its spring campaign for Macy’s. Set to a version of the second most stalker-y song of the New Wave era (Blondie‘s “One Way Or Another”), a spot entitled “The Chase” features a series of women who encounter such fashion-forward look-a-likes and do their best to keep up with them — hopefully just to kindly ask them where they got the outfit.

The spot ends with one woman looking at the reflection to find herself already wearing the outfit she was chasing after seconds earlier, concluding with the lines, “Find Spring Fashion. Find The Remarkable You.” Social media activations support the effort.

“Spring is an excellent time to update your wardrobe to reflect the freshness and fun of the season. From minimalist designs rendered in sun washed pales and charming florals to reimagined applications of stripes and utilitarian details, we’ve culled together a truly inspired assortment of clothing, accessories and beauty that will reenergise our customers to make them look and feel remarkable,” Macy’s Fashion senior vice president Cassandra Jones said in a statement published by LBB. “In our Spring fashion campaign, we show just how empowering and transformative fashion can be! We’re excited to have our customers find the best version of themselves with their favorite influencers through our unique #FINDREMARKABLE and Live hack Instagram programs.”

The Live Hack program launches today, featuring Wendy Nguyen from Wendy’s Look Book, Jones and other fashion personalities giving viewers fashion advice by utilizing Instagram’s new Live Share feature.

BBDO New York won creative duties for Macy’s last August, following a review, and subsequently launched a holiday campaign for the brand. “The Chase” follows on the heels of JCPenney’s own spring campaign, which represented the first work from that brand’s new agency of record, Badgers & Winters.

Credits:

Agency: BBDO New York
Executive Creative Director: Danilo Boer, Marcos Kotlhar
Chief Creative Officer: Greg Hahn (New York)
Executive Producer: Dan Blaney
Account Executive: Clare Driggs
Associate Creative Director: Cesar Finamori, Roberto Danino, Joao Unzer, Kathryn Kvas
Planning Director: Lindsey Gonnella (Group)
Senior Director: Corey Cirillo
Director of Music: Rani Vaz
Assistant Account Executive: Maddy Bell
Business Affairs Manager: Nancy Espinal
Communications Planner: Julie Naidu
Global Chief Creative Officer: David Lubars
Account Manager: Justin Perrelli
Account Director: Lauren Munilla

Production Company: MJZ
Executive Producer: Emma Wilcockson
Director: Nicolai Fuglsig, Adam Somner (Assistant)
DOP: Greig Fraser
Line Producer: Laurie Boccaccio
Production Designer: Jahmin Assa

Edit Company: Work
Editor: Rich Orrick
Edit Assistant: Theo Mercado
Executive Producer: Erica Thompson

Post Production/VFX
Producer: Alexa Mauro
Executive Producer: Charlotte Arnold

Grade: Tom Poole @ Company 3
ROTO: Trace VFX
VFX: Blacksmith
2D Lead Aritsts: Daniel Morris
2D Artists: Chris Memoli, Youngjae Lee

Sound Mix: Sonic Union
Mix: Steve Rosen
Music Production: Sound Tree
Producer: Jay James (Sound Tree), Luis Almau, Peter Raeburn, Luke Fabia
Sound Design: Brian Emrich

Senior Project Manager: Noreen Masih

VFX Supervisor: Daniel Morris

Voice Actor: Kyra Selman

Today Cadillac officially hired Deborah Wahl as its new chief marketing officer three months after her predecessor Uwe Ellinghaus resigned, citing unspecified health problems.

Big trouble for Publicis, right? Not according to the client.

They gave us the following statement:

“Deborah’s appointment will not impact our AOR relationship with Rokkan, within the Publicis Groupe. Rokkan has been a part of the Publicis Group and working on pieces of the Cadillac business since 2014.  Their scope expanded towards the end of 2016.”

First, we didn’t realize Rokkan had assumed the lead role. And it’s interesting to see the client make such a firm commitment to its agency.

The Wall Street Journal, which broke the Wahl story this morning, reported that “Cadillac has lost U.S. market share each year since 2014, even as its sales in China—the world’s biggest auto market—have tripled over the same period,” adding that the company “now lags far behind BMW, Lexus and Daimler AG’s Mercedes-Benz.”

The fact that Wahl previously worked at Lexus hints that Cadillac looks to retake that former pole position … but does not want to review its creative advertising business.

Cadillac spent $270 million in paid media in the U.S. in 2016 and $188 million last year, according to Kantar Media.

Helzberg Diamonds, a legacy jewelry company whose CMO recently left for Party City, has announced both a new top marketer and a new agency of record, Carmichael Lynch.

Ellen Junger joins Helzberg from Payless Shoes, a business she led through bankruptcy after spending more than a decade atop Hallmark Cards’ marketing department. Her arrival and the choice of a new agency mark an new stage in the brand’s “I Am Loved” marketing strategy at a time when young consumers are less interested in premium jewelry.

“We’re thrilled to announce Ellen Junger as the chief marketing officer of Helzberg Diamonds,” chairwoman and CEO Beryl Raff. “Ellen brings a wealth of experience in retail and will help lead Helzberg Diamonds into the next generation of innovation for the brand.”

Carmichael Lynch won creative, social, design, influencer and analytics duties after a competitive review. As part of this shift, Horizon Media will also take over all media planning and buying duties for the brand, which has been a client for more than a decade.

“I have always been a fan of Helzberg Diamonds as a company with a strong legacy of success and leadership in jewelry retail, but also as a consumer,” said Junger. “I look forward to taking this great company forward by re-energizing the brand through smart marketing and new ways of reaching consumers.”

“We are proud to partner with Helzberg Diamonds and help propel their business,” added Carmichael Lynch President Julie Batliner.

In the past, Helzberg has worked with various agencies including Doner and, more recently, Barkley. NexGen Agency came on to handle customer experience work in 2016.

Kantar Media estimates that Helzberg spent just over $3 million on paid media in 2016, though other parties put that total in the low double digits. New work will launch this spring.

Spirits brand/college staple Jägermeister has selected Firstborn as its digital agency of record, following a review launched in October which included four undisclosed agencies, in addition to Firstborn.

Firstborn will be tasked with handling all digital duties for the brand. Jägermeister will continue to work with global lead creative agency Opperman Weiss, Cross Media, which was named media AOR for the brand last year and Integer on point-of-sale.

“We are a brand that likes to be first—so we were looking for a digital partner that could not only conceive of, but execute, technologically-driven ideas that would push the norm and bring innovative thinking to our marketing,” Mast-Jägermeister U.S. vice president, integrated marketing and services Heather Kozera said in a statement. “Firstborn is the perfect agency to provide that leading-edge digital expertise.”

The appointment follows Jägermeister’s first major rebranding campaign in its 80-year history last year. For Firstborn, it follows the agency picking up work for NYU Langone, luxury apparel brand Lafayette 148 and travel brand Tauck.

Nike-owned Converse, best known for those timeless Chuck Taylor sneakers, has placed its global media buying and planning business in review.

Multiple parties close to the matter confirm that the company recently issued an RFI. According to these sources, the query included questions about various global regions. Converse purportedly looks to consolidate the entirety of that business with a single agency network.

A spokesperson for PHD, which is incumbent on the U.S. business, confirmed that the review is active and that it will not be pitching. The Omnicom agency won Converse away from Mediavest in early 2015.

Sources say Nike has reached out to WPP, but it’s not clear at this time which networks are involved. Spokespeople for GroupM and MEC did not respond to emails regarding the review, and Converse PR has not responded to multiple emails and phone calls this week.

The precise scope of the review is also unclear. It follows AdAge’s January report on Nike’s “reverse auction” reviews, which are designed to reduce overall agency fees.

Sales of Converse shoes dropped significantly last year, with the biggest hit coming in the North American market. But Nike implied that this was part of an intentional effort to make the shoes more desirable, citing “a purposeful tightening of supply in North America” along with considerable gains in China.

According to our sources, the review does not touch on creative, which has been with Anomaly since 2007.

Greg Paull, co-founder and principal of international search consultancy R3, estimated that Nike spends around $100 million each year promoting the various Converse brands around the world.

Kantar Media’s latest numbers, however, have the U.S. totals at only $3.5 million for 2016.

Auto-buying platform TRUECar has hired Wolfgang of L.A. to handle a rebranding campaign.

The agency/consultancy, formed by former David&Goliath executives Mike Geiger, Seema Miller and Colin Jeffery less than a year ago, hopes to help the company stand out in a market that now includes a growing number of competitors like, say, Vroom—which picked Anomaly as its AOR late last year.

“TRUECar was really innovative when they launched in 2008,” said president Miller. “But the marketplace has become incredibly competitive lately, and they recognized the need to separate themselves. We couldn’t be more excited to help them do just that.”

This move marks a big change for TRUECar, which has relied on direct marketing in recent years.

TRUECar chief brand officer Lucas Donat cited the agency’s dual-purpose selling points in explaining the relationship: “Wolfgang’s consultancy/agency model has allowed them to be extremely nimble and flexible in working with our in-house team, while also shouldering the full responsibility for the 2018 campaign.”

The release gives no indication as to the direction of the creative, but based on the image above we have little doubt that it will be quite bad ass.

Back in 2013, the brand took some heat for an ad that seemed, at least to some viewers, to imply that women couldn’t really handle the car-buying process without a handy man until TRUECar came about.

The copy included the lines “TRUECar makes it a lot easier to go in by yourself” and “I don’t need to bring a dude with me,” but the company said this messaging was intended to empower female consumers while noting that the creative director behind the campaign was, in fact, a woman.

This is Wolfgang’s second win of the year after the team picked up Halo Top in January. The Stagwell Group, run by former political strategist Mark Penn, acquired a minority stake in the company last March.

In case you missed it, banking brand Wells Fargo has taken something of a beating in the arena of public opinion due to a scandal involving millions of fake savings and checking accounts created by employees in response to alleged performance pressures.

Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve also punished the company by effectively restricting its ability to grow until it makes changes to its board of directors.

And just this week, Senator Elizabeth Warren chided the company’s relatively new CEO Tim Sloan for admitting that the company had “charged nearly 600,000 customers for auto insurance they didn’t need,” “improperly charged 110,000 customers fees to extend their mortgage rate locks,” and “bungled its reimbursements to the auto loan and mortgage rate lock customers.”

This was all after the fake account issue had seemingly been resolved.

Now, we hear that the company is turning to a familiar party for help: its ad agency of record, BBDO San Francisco.

According to our sources, the shop plans to launch a new campaign with “a multi-million dollar budget” that is specifically designed to improve the bank’s reputation after more than a years’ worth of bad headlines.

Since winning the account in early 2014 (it had been with DDB for nearly 20 years), BBDO has indeed produced some surprising efforts. Its first campaign, for example, starred a real-life lesbian couple learning sign language before a touching last-minute reveal about their plans to adopt a deaf girl also played by a real-life deaf girl.

Regarding this post, a BBDO spokesperson referred us back to the client for comment. Wells Fargo representatives wrote, “We typically launch a new brand campaign every year in the Spring.  Currently, we are working through the details of our 2018 plans.”

So it’s unclear exactly how the agency will attempt to address the issues that its client has faced over the past year-plus. How would you do it?

As the first pitchers and catchers start to report to spring training the San Francisco Giants have named 215 McCann as the team’s new agency of record, following a review.

“We met with several agencies, and we connected with 215 McCann immediately,” Giants executive vice president of business operations Mario Alioto said in a statement. “We had a strong chemistry from the start and 215 McCann seemed to really understand our brand and our organization goals. The quality of their work — both strategy and creative — was equally impressive. Having worked together for a few months now, we are thrilled with our decision.”

“The Giants are widely regarded as pioneers and leaders in professional sports and throughout the community,” added 215 McCann chief creative officer Scott Duchon. “We look forward to celebrating this team that represents Bay Area values of innovation, diversity and inclusion.”

215 McCann will be tasked with launching a new campaign celebrating the MLB team’s 60th anniversary in San Francisco.

The Giants franchise pre-dates such conventions as the four-ball walk (1889) and the modern distance of the pitching mound to home plate (1893). Founded as the New York Gothams in 1883 and renamed the Giants three years later, the team stayed in New York until the 1958 season when it moved to Seals Stadium, which had been the longtime home of the Pacific Coast League’s San Francisco Seals, before spending nearly four decades in Candlestick Park. The Giants settled in their current home, AT&T Park, in 2000.

It shouldn’t be hard for 215 McCann to find events to celebrate as the Giants have had their share of recent success, winning three World Series titles since 2010, most recently on the strength of a historic World Series pitching performance by Madison Bumgarner in 2014.

Is your agency in the market for another hospitality client?

This morning Adweek reported that MullenLowe has ended its relationship with Hyatt after approximately two years due to “creative and financial differences.”

It’s the most recent in a series of changes at the hotel company, which announced approximately three weeks ago that it would be eliminating the global CMO and global head of capital strategy, franchising and select service positions on its executive board in favor of a single chief commercial officer who will oversee various operations including global marketing.

According to at least three sources familiar with the business, Hyatt has launched a global creative review seeking one agency to promote all 12 of its brands.

We unfortunately don’t have much information about the RFP so far in terms of competitors or specifics, but it does appear to be creative only, unlike the 2016 review that saw the client consolidate global creative with MullenLowe and assign its PR and social media business to other shops.

Kantar Media has Hyatt spending $35 million in 2016 and more than $20 million last year, and we hear almost all of that paid media was in the U.S. market. But the client has not launched any major campaigns since last February, and others tell us the number may be closer to $10 million.

All of the involved parties declined to comment on the record. Good luck.