Hasta La Creative!

DigitasLBi hired David Chriswick as senior vice president, creative strategy lead for its Chicago and San Francisco offices. In the role, Chriswick will be based out of Chicago and report to senior vice president, connections and brand experience planning Jonathan Tatlow. 

“David has a proven track record of award winning work with a passion for insightful thinking and brave ideas,” Tatlow said in  a statement. “His expertise to inspire and create across a breadth of categories, makes him a perfect fit for DigitasLBi. We look forward to him continuing to set the bar ever-higher.”

Chriswick joins DigitasLBi from DDB Worldwide, where he served for over three and a half years as global strategy director out of the agency’s Chicago office. While there, he led strategic planning on the agency’s international Mars account, which includes Wrigley, Mars Chocolate and Mars Petcare. Before that he spent nearly two and a half years as a planning director for DDB Sydney, leading the office’s strategic offering and working with clients including Mars, McDonald’s and Campbells Arnotts. A native of Wales, he began his career with Ogilvy Heathworld (formerly Bates Healthworld) in London as an account executive, leaving two years later to become a senior account manager with In Vivo Communications in Melbourne, later joining McCann and then DDB in account management roles. 

“The concoction of in-house capabilities at DigitasLBi is mouthwatering for an account planner like myself,” said Chriswick.  “Transformative creative opportunities lie in so many places nowadays, so with these resources within arm’s reach, I’m very excited. DigitasLBi can become the future-proof agency model that more and more clients are realizing they need.”

Maytag doesn’t just make washing machines in the U.S. It makes people.

Lots and lots of very zen Maytag Men, to be precise. A new ad from agency DigitasLBi shows the appliance brand’s famous mascot—that is, the 2014 macho reincarnate edition—taking form, assembly-line style.

Set at the company’s factory in Marion, Ohio, the ad also features real Maytag employees, and a giant American flag. It’s like a hyper-patriotic sci-fi comedy, where the clones are all the same affable guy who wants to fix your stuff (but sorry, it’s so well built it never breaks).

Actually, the Maytag guy stands in for the products themselves here—he’s no longer just the guy who wants to repair them—which is a little dissonant at first, though the final visual clears everything up.

It’s pretty silly, but in an appropriately vanilla kind of way. “What’s inside matters,” says the tagline. And apparently, what’s inside is a fake human—which doesn’t seem like the most efficient or comfortable way to wash clothes in 2015.

It does explain why the dude is so chiseled, though.

Digitas LBi offers a touching, believable portrait of a single father and his son in the 60-second spot “Dad & Andy” for Whirpool.

Based on the insight that 2.6 million households in America are headed by a single father, a number that continues to increase from just 300,000 in 1960, according to Pew Research, Digitas LBi wanted to give voice to this often overlooked demographic. “Dad & Andy” doesn’t present its father figure as perfect or superhuman — “Sometimes I forget to cut the crust off the sandwich,” and “Sometimes work comes before games” he admits, later burning a batch of cookies. By showing these imperfections, though, the ad drives home that he’s trying the best he can, writing notes and reminders to his son that may seem to be taken for granted, but aren’t, and throwing a second batch of cookies in the oven. The product integration in the ad is also handled well, subtly suggesting Whirlpool helps dad navigate the sometimes overwhelming task of parenting.

“Rather than focus on features and technology, we are depicting the reality of everyday life,” explained Morgan Carroll, executive creative director, DigitasLBi. “Cooking, cleaning, and washing clothes can often feel like thankless tasks. With ‘Dad & Andy,’ we wanted to show the significance of this everyday care, specifically amongst the growing population of single fathers.”

In addition to “Dad & Andy,” Digitas LBi also created the more product-focused “Finding Time,” which “takes the brand idea of Every day, care, and shows how the challenge of finding time for a working parent is translated into why Whirlpool developed its Frozen Bake technology for the slide-in range.”

Credits:

Chief Creative Officer: Ronald Ng
EVP, Executive Creative Director: Morgan Carroll
SVP, Group Creative Director: Mike Frease
VP, Creative Director: Jeremy Bacharach
Associate Creative Director: Chris Jansma
Senior Copywriter: Robyn Tennenbaum
Executive Producer: Greg Lederer
Senior Producer: Jennifer Passaniti
EVP, Account Management: Chris Reed
VP/Group Account Director: Andrea Kroll
Account Director: Kristine Kobe
Copywriter: Samantha Bordignon
Photographer/Designer: Arnaud Uyttenhove
Production Company: Caviar Content
Director: Arnaud Uyttenhove
Director of Photography: Chayse Irvin
Executive Producer: Kim Dellara
Line Producer: Bernard Rahill
Editing House: Beast
Editor: Angelo Valencia
Producer: Lauren Roth
Music House: Genuine
Composer: John Ferreira
Sound Design: Particle Audio
Sound Designer: Katy Mindeman
Audio Mix: Particle Audio
Mixer: Katy Mindeman

DigitasLBi launched a digital April Fool’s Day spot for Motorola, supposedly introducing the “#MotoSelfieStick.”

The 90-second spot plays it straight, feigning seriousness with dramatic piano music and artisans talking about their craft and what the selfie stick really means. “A selfie stick is a branch of self-expression,” says a woodworker at the beginning of the spot. “To take such a raw form and craft it into one of the most practical and useful accessories around…it’s like when the sun turns the rain into a rainbow.”

The tongue-in-cheek spot never turns its back on the mock serious tone, which pokes fun at both the selfie stick and advertising cliches. Because of this, it may be the most successful of branded April Fool’s Day videos (although it also helps that we viewed it after the barrage of such efforts). It also appears to be one of the more popular, racking up almost 400,000 views over the last several days.

Credits:

Client: Motorola Mobility LLC

North America Social Media: Jenna Rice

Global Social Media: Barbara Liss

North America Public Relations: Dawn McKenzie

Sr. Brand Comm. Manager: Katie Cowan

Agency: DigitasLBi

VP Account Director: Kevin Babcock

Creative Director: Mark Czupryna

Sr. Social Media Strategist: Matt Wolk

Sr. Producer: Kristen Hartill

Production Company: Tool

Director: Shawn Z

Managing Director – Live Action / EP: Oliver Fuselier

Managing Director – Digital: Dustin Callif

Executive Producer Live Action: Lori Stonebraker

Producer: Patrick Malloy

Editorial Co.: BUTCHER

Editor: Teddy Gersten

Executive Producer: Rob Van

Here’s a quick round-up of some recent VP-level changes at DigitasLBi Chicago:

• VP and Group Director of Creative Strategy Shelley Rees joined the agency after a stint at JWT.
• SVP of Media Aaron Hoiles left Digitas; we have no word on his destination.
• VP/Group Director of Project Management Charles Chung joined Digitas after serving as senior manager/program director at SapientNitro. He previously held senior project manager positions at Razorfish and Wunderman.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Portland’s NORTH has hired Eric Samsel as its newest Creative Director. Prior to joining North, Samsel was a copywriter at W+K Portland for more than eight years, working on clients as diverse as Jeep, EA Sports, Coca-Cola and Nike (for which the shop won a Webby).

Samsel started his ad career at Portland’s JohnsonSheen. In his new role, he will handle work on existing campaigns for car-rack brand Yakima, outdoor gear maker Stanley and Anchor Brewing. Managing Director Rebecca Armstrong writes:

“With more than 16 years of experience in outdoor lifestyle brands, Eric’s experience makes him a perfect match for one of our core practices… Plus he is an exceptionally talented writer and a really nice bloke.”

Samsel will report to CCO Mark Ray.

In other agency people news, we can confirm that DigitasLBI VP/Director of Tech Jeff Kean will soon leave the agency for a spot on the roster of Omnicom’s CriticalMass. No word on details regarding his new position.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

There's an ad blog called Creative Criminals, but here's the real thing—federal prison inmates who are trying their hand at copywriting and art directing thanks to a program called Concepting With Convicts, launched by two interns at DigitasLBi in San Francisco.

Ben Pfutzenreuter and Pat Davis used prison pen-pal websites to contact the inmates and get them involved in the program. The inmates provide either the copywriting or the art direction on each ad. "We realized that if we could contact convicts themselves, maybe we could also show them that their creative talents can translate into a real career on the outside," Davis tells PSFK.

On the website, Pfutzenreuter and Davis say of the initiative: "We hope it proves two things: that creativity can be a career, and that good ideas can come from anywhere."

Check out the whole project at con-cepting.com.