Hasta La Creative!

Doner appointed Eric Weisberg as its new global chief creative officer, effective September 6, when he will take over for Rob Strasberg, who will remain with the agency as global creative chairman.

Weisberg will relocate from New York to Doner’s Detroit headquarters for the position, and will be responsible for overseeing creative across all Doner offices and clients, while reporting to Doner global CEO and president David DeMuth. 

“Eric really stood apart as a collaborative, impact-driven creative leader who has a strong vision for the future and who will help us build a culture of inventive creativity. His expertise in storytelling, technology, data and media will elevate our creativity to better solve modern marketing challenges,” said DeMuth. “As we continue to focus on the emerging needs of our clients and leveraging the power of our integrated capabilities, Eric shares both our desire to flex our creative muscles in new ways and our ambition to fuel the positive momentum building across the Doner network.”

“We couldn’t be more excited to have Eric join Doner,” added Strasberg. “Eric is an experienced, multi-faceted creative leader, who will elevate Doner’s legacy for great work by taking advantage of the modern creative toolbox to power ideas that move people.”

Weisberg joins Doner following 15 years with JWT New York, most recently serving as global executive creative director. While with JWT, he helped established the agency’s first fully integrated creative group and led creative on accounts including Johnson & Johnson, the agency’s largest client, KPMG, Nestlé, Northwell Health and Wild Turkey. Prior to joining JWT in 2001, Weisberg spent three years as a creative with Leo Burnett, a year as a senior copywriter with Saatchi & Saatchi and ten months as an associate creative director with K2 Digital. 

In a statement, Weisberg called Doner “ an underestimated giant in the industry,” adding, “Doner is a network with amazing people, impressive clients, beautiful work and incomparable real-time production capabilities. By adding even more disruptive innovation, Doner can unleash its full potential.”

Doner L.A. made three appointments to its account and production departments. Hamid Saify joins the agency as vice president, account director, Julian Smith was appointed as director of digital production and Scott McDonald arrives as a digital producer. 

Saify arrives at Doner from California ticket exchange company Razorgator, where he served as senior vice president, marketing for the past nine months. Prior to that he was agency-side with Deutsch, where he spent over five years as vice president, search marketing and paid social. In his new role with Doner L.A., Saify will report to managing director Zihla Salinas. 

Smith most recently served as program manager for Rosetta, working primarily on Samsung. Before that he spent nearly four years at Deutsch as senior integrated producer, digital, working on the agency’s Volkswagen, Pizza Hut and Sprint accounts. Prior to Deutsch he spent four years with AKQA as project manager and then senior project manager, leading digital interactive marketing campaigns, primarily on the agency’s Visa account. 

McDonald joins the agency from Thirst Agency, where he was responsible for running operations and connecting brands, studios and start-ups with agency partners. He began his career as an architectural draftsman, moving on to become a set dresser, a production designer and then directing and producing digital content. 

The new appointments follow the arrival of five new creatives last month and the agency winning AOR duties for Children’s Mercy Kansas City.

Doner launched a new campaign for Neato, taking a humorous approach with a series of five 30-second spots for the robotics company (and Roomba competitor).

In “Card,” featured above, an elderly woman is happy to receive a card from her grandson Kyle. That is, until she opens the envelope and glitter spills out everywhere. The spot ends with the grandmother about to let out a loud expletive and Neato taking care of the mess. Each of the spots ends with the message “Meet Neato, the smartest, most powerful robot vacuum” and the tagline “Neato Knows,” which is followed by spot-specific messages, in this case “glitter ruins everything.” Other spots explore a house sitter who brings along all of her cats, a late night junk food binge, a pinata filled with seaweed snacks and unforeseen consequences of a one night stand. It makes sense for Doner to employ humor for Neato, since they’re taking on a well-known brand in Roomba, and even if the spots don’t always hit the funny bone, they manage to be fairly memorable and leave plenty of room for further expansion of the idea.

Credits:

Advertising Agency: Doner, Los Angeles, USA
Executive Creative Directors: Jason Gaboriau, Chris De Abreu
Associate Creative Directors: Jason Tisser, Regan Kline
Art Director: Lauren Culbertson
Managing Director: Zihla Salinas
SVP Account Services: Maria Carr
SVP Strategy: Marlene Calderon
Producer: Robert Samuel
Brand Leader: Jason Villar
Production Company: GO
Director: Brigg Bloomquist
Managing Director: Gary Rose
Executive Producers: Adam Bloom, Catherine Finkenstaedt
Managing Partner/Producer: Aesli Grandi
Line Producer: Greg Jonesy
Production Supervisor: Carol Fahey
DP: Pablo Berron
Editorial: Cut & Run
Editor: Frank Effron
Executive Producer: Carr Schilling
Producer: Ali Reed

After playing foil to Larry David for several years on Curb Your Enthusiasm and hosting his own MSG show Four Courses, funnyman J.B. Smoove continues to pad his resume by taking on the role of “Legit-a-Master” for Rent.com.

This is the company’s first-ever ad campaign, created by MDC agency Doner. Doner emphasizes the word “legit” in its overall rebranding effort for Rent.com–a free national listings site targeted at both renters and property managers–which also includes a new logo and updated website.

In the debut spot above, we’re introduced to Smoove’s character and his mission: to ensure that every listing on Rent.com is legit and that every review is certified. While the actor/comedian doesn’t go full Smoove in the initial ad, his presence alone adds some levity to the campaign, which will soon find his character dealing with renters/dog owners and the always-contentious issue of picking up after your pets.

According to Doner co-CEO/CCO Rob Strasberg, the Rent.com ad debut is aimed at–you guessed it–younger millennials, hence its airing on cable networks such as Spike, Adult Swim, MTV and VH1 along with the usual broadcast channels.

Co-CEO, Chief Creative Officer: Rob Strasberg
EVP, Executive Creative Director: Brad Emmett
VP, Creative Director: Mark Cooke
VP, Creative Director: Bryan Hutson
Writer: Matt Livengood
Art Director: Dominique Wilson
Art Director: Bert Loera
EVP, Brand Leadership: Lisa Nardone
SVP, Brand Leader: Dennis Castillo
VP, Brand Leader: Stephanie Giorio
Brand Leader: Kari Weaver
Account Executive: Brad Sanders
VP, Strategic Planning: Alima Trapp
SVP, Director of Business Affairs: Sherryll Kollin
VP, Executive Producer: Paul Renusch
VP, Business Management Supervisor: Katherine Simmonds
SVP, Media Strategy and Activation: Bruce Haynes
VP, Associate Media Director: Alicia Lingenfelter

The Atlanta, Georgia offices of Doner, which holding company MDC Partners rebranded after an acquisition several years ago, will be closing this summer as the company moves all related operations to Detroit. (As late as 2008, the agency was considered America’s largest indie shop.)

MDC’s Atlanta-based media and research units–named Assembly and SEE Insight, respectively, and formed in 2014 and 2013–will remain open. But all creative operations in the Atlanta area will be relocated to the agency’s headquarters in The Motor City.

Here’s the official statement from MDC:

Given current client demands and the need to focus resources against our strategic growth initiatives, we will be consolidating most of Doner’s resources based in Atlanta into our Detroit headquarters over the next month. SEE INSIGHTS and Assembly will continue to operate from the Atlanta office. We thank those affected by this consolidation for their service and are doing our best to help them find new positions.

No word on what, exactly, led to this change–but the last sentence means that not every member of the Doner Atlanta team will make the transition to Detroit. The total number of employees affected remains unclear as well, though for context you may recall that MDC made some staffing cuts in early 2013 after the Atlanta office became a Doner operation. A few weeks before that move, MDC officially merged Doner and Media Kitchen Atlanta in order to better serve the agency’s media clients.

A tipster tells us that the last day of operations for Doner Atlanta will be July 6 and that executives have already contacted clients to announce their resignation from all active accounts managed by the Atlanta office.

Updates when they come in.

Doner Detroit launched a sentimental new campaign for Minute Maid, which lets parents sometime unsure of their parenting skills know that they’re “Doin’ Good.”

A 3:30 online spot explores the subject by first asking parents how they think they’re doing. Many of the parents seem unsure of themselves, saying things like, “I do feel like I let them down sometimes.” When the children are asked to write a letter to their parents on how they’re doing, however, they are nothing but positive. When the parents then tearfully read what their children wrote, they realize how much they are appreciated and the spot ends with the message, “You’re doing better than you think.” The tearful approach is not all that different from similar efforts, such as Leo Burnett Chicago’s Mother’s Day spot for Hallmark, in which children are asked to describe their mothers, not knowing that the moms are listening in and watching from an adjacent room. While “Doin’ Good” was also released in the lead up to Mother’s Day, it’s nice to see fathers getting some love as well, which is one detail that helps differentiate the effort from the onslaught of similar ads and should also help give the campaign relevance beyond the holiday.

Credits:

Client: Minute Maid
Agency: Doner Detroit
President/CEO: David Demuth
Chief creative officer/co-CEO: Rob Strasberg
Executive vice president/executive creative director: Chad Ackley
Creative director: Jason Bergeron
Creative director: Virgil Adams
Senior vice president, creative director: Jason Jakubiak
Senior vice president, creative director: Michael Leslie
Associate creative director: Anthony Moceri
Senior art director: Alex Drukas
Executive vice president/director of content production: Laurie Irwin
Executive producer: Stacey Gizinski
Executive vice president/brand leader: Monica Tysell
Senior vice president/brand leader: Jim Vassallo
Vice president/brand leader: Adina Sigler

Today we learned, via Doner President/co-CEO David DeMuth, that the agency has lost its second executive creative director in less than a month. Following the January departure of EVP/ECD Justin Smith from the agency’s Detroit office, Rob Palmer will be leaving Doner’s LA office after 18 months.

Before joining Doner September 2013, Palmer held CD roles at some of the industry’s biggest shops, including BBDO, Wieden+Kennedy, TBWA/Chiat/Day GS&P, and Razorfish. Palmer joined the latter agency in Summer 2010 and seems to have spent much of his time there working remotely from “his home turf in Boise.”

Palmer’s own portfolio site offers an amusing summary of his career in the form of snippets like “smoked a cigar with tony danza,” “worked for clow,” “partied with johnny knoxville and paris hilton,” and “heard about the world wide web.”

Here’s the statement from DeMuth:

“Rob has accepted an offer with a fast-growing company that Doner LA has done some project work with over the last few months. It’s an exceptional opportunity for Rob and we’re excited for him. We’re also excited to announce Rob’s replacement, which we anticipate doing very soon.”

What might that fast-growing company be? It’s almost certainly not JC Penney.

Expect more Doner news to come.

Here are a couple of spots that actually illustrate the functionality of the product they’re promoting.

This work by Doner of Michigan, launched earlier in the week, demonstrates the many (sometimes excruciating) pains caused by old-school headphones with their freaking cords.

We write this post while wearing phones with a cord too short to allow us to sit up properly, so we get it.

Another one after the jump.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

230 locations across the country isn’t bad, but dining chain O’Charley’s still has something of a market share issue. On that point, the company recently held a review (previous creative lead Doner chose not to defend but will maintain the media planning and buying responsibilities).

There were three finalists, two of which were not disclosed; Nashville-based Bohan Advertising won the business, and its nearly $10 million in annual advertising revenue.

Bohan and its 74 staffers work on a diverse portfolio including Dollar General, Jos. A Bank (which is currently on another list), Pensacola CVB, Fazoli’s, and the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children.

“In the pitch, Bohan executives distinguished themselves by capturing the tone of the brand and presenting ideas that went beyond traditional advertising, said David Ellis, VP of marketing at O’Charley’s. The new shop’s first campaign is expected in the fall.”

The fact that O’Charley’s parent company American Blue Ribbon Holdings is based in Nashville probably didn’t hurt either.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today Doner launched an integrated campaign on behalf of Bellefaire JCB, “an innovative organization that provides exceptional care, education, and advocacy to enhance the emotional, physical and intellectual well-being of children, young adults and families” to raise youth homelessness awareness.

The centerpiece of that campaign is “Take A Closer Look,” a series of faceless figures set up across Greater Cleveland, each wearing a sweatshirt describing the reason for their homelessness as a way to communicate the message that homelessness is not a choice, and that young people are driven to homelessness by forces beyond their control. For example, one of the shirts reads “My dad kicked me out of the house because I’m gay,” while another says “My mother’s boyfriend hurts me.” A sticker on the floor in front of each figure further describes the situation and offers ways to help. The campaign also includes TV and radio PSAs, social media and print components. Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.