Hasta La Creative!

Only Child, aka the directorial project of former DDB creatives Mike Andrews and Daniel Mabe, is one of the many parties merging to form newly launched L.A. production studio Joinery.

Principals include veteran director Paul Dektor, producer Richard Gladstein (“Pulp Fiction”, “The Bourne Identity”), and Leslie Dektor, all of whom will work under former Believe Media executive producer Gerard Cantor.

On the directorial front, the lineup also includes Lasse Hallstrom (“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”) as well as John Curran, Rob Feng, David Masters, Bo Platt, filmmaking/motion design studio ‘weareflink’ and video artists ‘Objective.’

Peter Mertz and Alvaro Chacon, both of whom spent time at TBWA/Media Arts Lab, will serve as digital producers.

The agency’s name comes from the tradition of “joiners” who used carpenters’ raw material to create new pieces without using nails, screws or other fasteners.

Current clients include HP, Bayer, Bombay Sapphire and McDonald’s.

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Belgium's B-Classic music festival, whose mission is to "give classical music the same recognition as pop and rock music," brings us a rather interesting sensory collision in the form of the music video below, promoting its "Classic Comeback" competition.

Korean pop-dance group Waveya interprets the godfather of Slavonik dance music (and Brahm's brosef) Antonín Leopold Dvo?ák in the three-minute synchronized bump-'n'-grind-gyration-twerk-fest set to "Symphony No. 9 Allegro con fuoco."

The video, shot by Raf Reyntjens in South Korea, is cleverly edited and choreographed, albeit shameless in its attempts at drawing in a younger demographic. See, the organizers of the festival believe "the kids" simply need more access to classical music.

Music videos, they believe, are the best way to do this.

In a short documentary also posted below, Frank Peters, a Dutch classical pianist and spokesperson for B-Classic, says he's "not convinced that youth are uninterested in classical music. I think that it's simply more difficult for them to discover."

Chereen Gayadin, a senior music programmer at MTV, adds, "I think that this is the first video in which one listens to classical music without being aware that it is classical music."

Via Ads of the World.

CREDITS
Client: B-Classic
Agency: DDB, Brussels
Creative Director: Peter Ampe
Creatives: Tim Arts, Stefan Van Den Boogaard
Designer: Christophe Liekens
Account Team: Francis Lippens, Kaat De Brandt
Strategic Team: Dominique Poncin, Maarten Van Daele, Michael D’hooge
Digital Strategy: Geert Desager
Digital Project Manager: Stefanie Warreyn
TV Producer: Brigitte Verduyckt
Production Agency: Caviar
Producer: Geert De Wachter
Director: Raf Reyntjens
Music, Sound: Sonicville
Aired: April 2014

We’ve confirmed a round of turnovers at the offices of Tribal Worldwide.

The tips we received listed multiple project managers and experience designers as now-former employees, with names including Kevin O’Connor, Alex Lynch, Omkar Palekar, Peter Gallo, Nikhil Mitter and Rocky Romano.

An agency spokesperson commented:

“In the normal course of business, people are presented with opportunities to take on different, new, and challenging opportunities. As sad as we are to see some of our colleagues leave Tribal to pursue these new opportunities, we’re happy that other companies recognize their talent and the value of the experience they have gained at Tribal. We also wish them well and look forward to welcoming new colleagues in their stead.”

Updates if/when we receive them.

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To stoke viewers’ (already feverish) anticipation for season 4 of international hit Game of Thrones, DDB New Zealand has crafted a unique social media/experiential event for SKY Television’s premium entertainment channel SoHo, entitled “Bring Down The King.”

With help from production company Finch, DDB has erected a seven meter statue of the show’s much hated King Joffrey in Aotea Square, one of the largest public squares in Auckland. A rope is positioned around the statue’s neck, attached to a winch, and fans are challenged to topple the statue using the hashtag #bringdowntheking on Twitter. For every tweet using the hashtag, the statue will be one step closer to toppling, but it will take one million such tweets to bring down Joffrey.

“Game of Thrones is a worldwide phenomenon and King Joffrey is quite possibly the most hated fictional television character of all time,” explained SKY’s director of programming, Travis Dunbar. “It’s exciting to give fans an opportunity they are dying for; to assist in the demise of the King of the Iron Throne.”

DDB executive creative director Shane Bradnick was equally enthused, saying, “It’s great to be working with clients that want to create ideas that bring the fictional, digital and real worlds together. Let’s bring the bastard down!”

You can keep up with the campaign at bringdowntheking.com. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

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DDB Chicago continues bringing out the bizarre for Skittles in a new campaign complete with some perhaps unintended implications.

The new spot features a cloud named Freddie, who, when walked by an elderly woman “rains” Skittles after being pet. Now, the problem with portraying a product as something that comes out of a pet while being walked is…well, pretty obvious right? Okay, I get that Freddie is a cloud and that DDB has been doing strange stuff for Skittles for a while now, but you don’t want viewers asking, “Is that cloud pissing Skittles?” — a distinct possibility here. In the 30-second spot, “Cloud,” Freddie responds very differently when a curious onlooker attempts to pet him, ending with the spot-specific tagline “Pet The Rainbow. Taste The Rainbow.”

The campaign features two more 30-second adverts, each following the same oddball theme, with Freddie going to the vet and the groomers. Additionally, DDB Chicago teamed up with PR agency Olson to build a remote-controlled, Skittles-dispensing cloud. Built from the ground up, the cloud “features two unique dispensing functions and a variety of fun lighting and audio features.” It’s a high-tech evolution of The Rainbow team’s past Skittles-dispensing gifts like pinball machines and vending machines, and a pretty cool extension of the campaign (we’ll hear more about this later in the week). Stick around for credits and “Groomer” after the jump. continued…

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Ever wonder what tennis can do for you? Well, for starters, it can make you smarter, stronger, happier, more attractive and pretty much invincible.

The United States Tennis Association doesn't skimp on the specifics of the sport's many benefits to its athletes in this new campaign from DDB New York, targeting millennials. And the messages are delivered in decidedly offbeat fashion, thanks to the inimitable style of director Jared Hess, who made Napoleon Dynamite.

Five short online spots communicate the benefits with quirky visuals and simple factoids—all crisp, clean and slightly off center. The theme is "Tennis Makes You," which works well as a stand-alone line and an introductory phrase.

Judging by the shrimp with the one giant arm, the only question is whether being stronger and being more attractive are mutually exclusive.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: United States Tennis Association
Campaign: "Tennis Makes You"

Agency: DDB, New York
Chief Creative Officer: Matt Eastwood
Executive Creative Director, Chief Digital Officer: Joe Cianciotto
Creative Director: Scott Cooney
Associate Creative Director: Carlos Wigle
Copywriters: Step Schultz, Bobby Finger
Art Director: Amanda Millwee
Head of Production: Ed Zazzera
Management Supervisor: Ginny Levine

Production Company: Community Films
Director: Jared Hess
Director of Photography: Mattias Troelstrup
Executive Producers: Lizzie Schwartz, Carl Swan
Producer: Lisa Shaw

Visual Effects: MPC (Bee spot only)
Editing House: Fluid
Editor: John Piccolo
Flame/VFX: Ross Vincent, Fluid
Producer: Laura Relovsky
Music: Stock

Le quotidien sportif L’Equipe a imaginé ce projet dédié au handisport Hors Normes. Parmi les actions, voici cette vidéo appelée Les Ombres réalisée avec l’agence DDB, et tournée avec des joueurs du club de cecifoot de Saint-Mandé. Il montre la concentration des joueurs et leurs capacités à se mouvoir et jouer sans voir.

DDB and Tribal Worldwide Amsterdam have an interesting social campaign brewing for the beermeisters at Heineken.

Entitled “Share the Sofa,” the campaign invites fans to join star UEFA Champions League players on Twitter for a chat during select games. Players involved include Ruud Gullit, Ruud van Nistelrooy, Owen Hargreaves, Hernan Crespo and Fernando Morientes. Owen Hargreaves was featured recently, with his “Share the Sofa” generating 2,600 tweets and 55.6 million social impressions. Dutch star Patrick Kluivert was the most recent player to be featured, during Tuesday’s Manchester City Vs. Barcelona match.

Fans questions need not be about sports, but can range from “What’s your favorite sandwich?” to just about anything. While it’s easy to be cynical about the overcrowded social media marketing space, this seems like a fun initiative offering fans real insights into their favorite players (even if it’s just their favorite sandwich) with a unique opportunity to ask them just about anything. The initiative makes good sense for Heineken as well, offering a large part of their fan base (those looking for watery beer to guzzle during matches) a unique second screen experience they’ll associate with the brand.

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We’ve received confirmation that Juan Carlos Pagan, who’s spent the last two-and-a-half years as head of design at DDB New York, is leaving the agency at week’s end. No word yet, though, on where Pagan’s headed to next, but the creative has pulled double duty as he also serves as partner/CD of his own Brooklyn-based design studio, Pagan & Sharp. During his time at DDB NY, Pagan has worked on several outdoor/print efforts for New York Lottery among other accounts.

Prior to DDB, Pagan (part of the ADC Young Guns class of 2013) spent a few years as as an art director of what was then G2 and served in a similar role at MTV. No word yet on if there are plans to replace the creative.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Here's a fun neighbor-shaming McDonald's billboard from DDB Stockholm.

Sitting right at the border between Sweden and Norway, the billboard displays comparative pricing for Big Macs in the two nations—egging on Norwegians to take advantage of Sweden's cheaper burgers. In other words, it's the rare fast-food ad that doubles as fodder for exchange-rate geeks.

The Economist's Big Mac Index has for decades used McD's staple burger as an international benchmark for measuring relative prices around the world. Norway's Big Mac was, in fact, recently declared the most expensive anywhere (and not for the first time). That's due to the country's oil-rich, inclusive economy, where generally high wages (even for burger flippers) help drive up prices. (Some observers, meanwhile, are claiming all the extra money is making the country's workforce too lazy.)

DDB points out that Norwegians are already crossing the border for bargains in droves. So really, the agency is just reminding them to stop for a more affordable heart-stopper.

How much will they save? In Norway, a Big Mac costs the equivalent of about $14.41, says the billboard. In Sweden, it's only about $9.08. Of course, that's still way too much for a Big Mac—especially if they're made in any way like the brand's Chicken McNuggets.