We Hear: The North Face Business in Review

The North Face is making a big push to expand its brand. At the end of October, the company launched a new campaign called “Your Land,” its most expensive marketing effort to date; now a source tells us that it might have opened an agency review as well.

First, the spot created by Mekanism (with web experience designed by Colorado’s Factory Design Labs), which will make its TV debut during this week’s edition of Sunday Night Football:

For the record, we really hope the surfer in this spot wasn’t trying to bring his board on the L train at rush hour.

We know that North Face chose Factory Design Labs as its AOR in 2007 and that Mekanism took over the TV portion of the account recently, hence the credits on this new campaign (which has earned coverage in Fast Company, The New York Times, and other pubs).

A source tells us that, as part of this new initiative — which sees the company increasing its marketing spend by 50 percent – the rest of The North Face business is currently in review.

We’ve yet to receive confirmation or information about which agencies might be involved. Updates when they come in and credits for the ad above after the jump via Adhugger.

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Mekanism Made an Ad for Advertising Week. Hooray Advertising!

Advertising Week X, the tenth annual week for people in the advertising industry to celebrate advertising by talking about, awarding, and giving tips about advertising is only a week away. What more appropriate way to celebrate advertising than with an advertisement for celebrating advertising? Yay, advertising!

The above advertisement comes from SF-based advertising agency Mekanism, which doesn’t seem to be an official partner or sponsor of  Advertising Week so we’re assuming this advertisment was made just for love of the game. (The game is advertising, by the way.) While the ad does a good job of advertising all of the hipster/yuppie advertising people you’ll meet at Advertising Week, it doesn’t advertise one of the week’s biggest events: The Battle of the Ad Bands, in which advertising industry folks with trace amounts of musical acuity compete to be the best at simultaneously being in advertising and being in a band. I mean, CMJ is in town next week, but as an member of the advertising community, your attendance at the Battle of the Ad Bands should be mandatory if it isn’t already.

Advertising! Woo! Credits after the jump.

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