Hasta La Creative!

MDC Partners has acquired Swedish agency Forsman & Bodenfors, which will in turn form a “strategic global partnership” with CP+B.

At least we assume that’s the news. The press release does not include the word “acquisition” and mentions nothing about what portion of the agency MDC will own. It does, however, note the newly empowered network’s plan to unleash “an arsenal of extraordinary creative talent” by giving CP+B access to international staffers.

F&B is, of course, best known for the 2013 “Epic Split” campaign for Volvo Trucks starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. This past December Volvo designated Forsman & Bodenfors as its global strategic creative agency, and recent work for the client includes the “Prologue” launch spot for its “Made in Sweden” campaign, arriving ahead of the UEFA Euro 2016 tournament and starring Sweden national team captain Zlatan Ibrahimovic. Last September, the agency also teamed up with Iggy Pop in a spot for  H&M called “Close the Loop.”

Since its 1986 inception, the agency has grown to a team of 300, led by CEO Erik Sollenberg and chairman Anna Qvennerstedt. 

“I love Forsman & Bodenfors,” said CP+B chairman Chuck Porter, in a statement. “They only care about great work, and we share so much DNA they’re like our twin who grew up in Sweden. This business always needs re-invention and I think amazing things will come out of this partnership.”

“What we are creating is a fresh, seamless way to tap into the most potent collection of creative talent in the world,” added CP+B global CEO Lori Senecal. “At CP+B we’re building a modern global model that challenges the conventions of legacy agencies.  What ultimately makes us most valuable to global marketers is creating the boldest most inventive ideas that deliver the highest return on creativity, and this partnership amplifies our mission to do that more consistently and brilliantly than ever before.”

Ever hear of Kalles Kaviar? It’s cod roe, and you eat it out of a toothpaste tube.

Cringe away, but Kalles is a beloved Swedish product. They put it over eggs and eat it on toast. It’s basically Sweden’s Marmite. To drive sales, parent company Orkla tapped Forsman & Bodenfors to produce a self-deprecating campaign. For the last year, Kalles has been traveling the world, seeking to initiate others—unsuccessfully, to put it mildly—in the Swedish taste of home.

The first ad takes place in Los Angeles and sets the tone. An earnest sampler with a pillowy-soft, Swedish-accented voice, perched in the one shadow on a well-lit boardwalk, shyly stops random strangers to offer them seasoned Kalles on slices of bread. People are eager to give it a go. It’s an open-minded crowd. But the reactions come fast and hard.

“This is not food,” one victim exclaims with a certainty usually reserved for proclamations of love or long-awaited deaths. After taking a reaming all day, our unlucky sampler reclines on the beach at sundown to enjoy his slices of the motherland in peace.

Our favorite is probably “Kalles in Tokyo.” The Japanese, they’re so polite! They leap in for the kill, and you can literally see their faces transform in horror as their mouths close. In a key moment, the sampler asks a still-chewing (and evidently disgusted) woman, “Do you like it?” She covers her mouth, nods politely, and backs away—slowly, like you would if you suddenly found yourself face to face with a bear.

The self-deprecating work plays on the cottage food-challenge trend. Kalles itself has starred in many. Two years ago, Maker Studios’ Morfar ate a whole tube over the course of nearly 10 minutes, and after a few unsettling dry-heaves, he cuts the video off—ostensibly to vomit in private. In another stunt, vlogger Big Steve from England tried getting locals to let him squeeze a hefty portion of Kalles in their mouths. The video is called “EATING THE WORST FOOD IN THE WORLD! (KALLES CAVIAR)”.

The genius of the campaign lies how it magnifies those chimes of universal disgust to bolster Swedish pride. (The ads are airing in Sweden, where there’s no need to win people over to the stuff.) Look at the beatific faces of those samplers when they’re finally done for the day. Hours of rejection can’t shake their love for the salty pink goo, because in the end, it’s a little squirt from home. (This kind of nationalism, evoked by acquired tastes, has made for good ads before—notably’s Pizza Hut Australia’s punking of backpackers with a Vegemite-crust pizza. Plus, there’s inherent value in saying your product isn’t for everyone—as Laphroaig scotch has realized lately.)

We’ve all got a Kalles, right? The Aussies have Vegemite. The Brits have Marmite. And Americans have peanut butter. Sweet, sweet peanut butter. You won’t know how much you love it—and how singular and alienating that love is—until you’re living elsewhere. Say, France. And when we spread our respectively weird creams over a bland carb, wherever we are in the world, they bring us back to a place we understand intuitively.

A few other Kalles ads appear below. In the most recent variant (at the very bottom), Kalles visits New York, and the first person to approach the kiosk is a black dude with hipster glasses and a Yankees cap. This time the response is surprisingly different. On the other side of the world, the brand finally finds its people.

Volvo Trucks, the surprising brand behind YouTube’s most watched ad of all time, is back with a new video. And this time, instead of Jean-Claude Van Damme, it’s an unsuspecting valet who’s put in an uncomfortable position.

While this clip’s quite unlikely to become a viral juggernaut on the scale of “Epic Split,” it’s a fun bit of hidden-camera prankery focused on the newest employee at a casino’s valet stand.

“All the sports cars that you see pulling up are all rented, and all the paparazzi there are fake,”  director Henry-Alex Rubin says in the behind-the-scenes video. “The crowds are fake. Everything’s fake, really, except for the valet, who has no idea all this is for him.”

Rubin is riding high in the ad world these days, having also recently directed Gatorade’s epic send-off to Derek Jeter and several other notable spots, including Samsung’s hard-hitting piece for the Paralympics.

Setting up the joke takes a bit longer than you’d like, but you have to applaud the rather extreme commitment to the gag. As with all of the brand’s globally awarded videos from agency Forsman & Bodenfors, the clip highlights a specific technical aspect of Volvo Trucks. This time it’s the I-Shift Dual Clutch gearbox, adapted from sports car technology.

CANNES, France—All this past week, Cannes Lions judges and presenters talked endlessly about how the best ads are those that inspire and even improve the world.

So, why was the festival’s most awarded campaign an unapologetic (if tongue-in-cheek) homage to selfishness and greed? One whose centerpiece video has a relatively meager 500,000 views on YouTube—and was, in fact, the only ad jeered by attendees at Saturday’s award show here?

The Harvey Nichols holiday campaign “Sorry, I Spent It on Myself” from agency adam&eveDDB took home no less than four Grand Prix, making it the second most awarded campaign in the festival’s history. (McCann Melbourne set the record last year with five Grand Prix for “Dumb Ways to Die.”)

The campaign centered on the creation of cheap products, such as gravel or rubber bands, sold in Harvey Nichols stores with the label “Sorry, I Spent It on Myself.” The video showed customers giving these crap gifts to relatives and loved ones at Christmas while enjoying expensive clothing and handbags for themselves.

It’s a good campaign, and may well have deserved the Integrated Grand Prix. It also won the Press Grand Prix, the Promo & Activation Grand Prix and a Film Grand Prix—one of two awarded in that category, along with Volvo Trucks’ “Epic Split.” And it’s that Grand Prix in Film—where it bested some truly powerful and popular pieces of cinematography—that’s the real head-scratcher.

At a press conference Saturday afternoon, the Film Lions judges gushed about the spot’s “boldness” but struggled to explain how it merited such lofty accolades. I asked them how it could possibly have been a unanimous selection as one of the two best pieces of advertising film in the past year.

“To take greed and make people laugh and smile about it is, I think, incredibly difficult,” said jury member Pete Favat, chief creative officer  of Deutsch L.A. “And as a film, it’s a perfect piece of film.”

I disagree, and it was clear I wasn’t alone when, during a screening of the ad at Saturday’s big award ceremony, some derisive whistling could be heard.

To illustrate why its Grand Prix selection was so baffling, we’ve decided to highlight some of the work it beat for the top spot. You might not agree that any one of them was Grand Prix material, but you’d be hard pressed to argue that they’re lesser films. 

Below are our picks for seven ads that could have, and should have, ranked higher than Harvey Nichols:

 
• Lacoste: “The Big Leap” by BETC Paris

Somehow this stellar piece of cinematography only won a silver Lion in Film. French journalists told me they felt the video was largely snubbed at Cannes, where it was shortlisted in Film Craft but awarded no Lion in that category.

 
• Wren: “First Kiss” by Durable Goods L.A.

While this viral juggernaut with nearly 85 million views has its share of critics, it’s hard to deny it was one of the most compelling, talked-about and just plain interesting videos of the year. Judges clearly liked it quite a bit, awarding it bronze and gold Lions in Film and a bronze in Film Craft.

 
• Coca-Cola: “Parents” by Santo Buenos Aires

Surprising, funny, perfectly crafted. It’s just so damn good. Judges liked it enough to give it a gold Lion in Film.

 
• Guinness: “Sapeurs” by AMV BBDO

A real story, told really well. This piece starring a super-stylish group of Congolese gentlemen won a silver Lion in Film and a bronze Lion in Film Craft. 

 
• Lurpak: “Adventure Awaits” by Wieden + Kennedy London

Anyone who’s ever made a food ad (or, hell, watched a food ad) will realize what a masterpiece of innovative visuals this is. It won gold in Film Craft.

 
• Skype: “The Born Friends Family Portrait” by Pereira & O’Dell

It’ll make you smile. It’ll make you cry. It’s a touching piece of documentary that’s as stylish as it is emotional. But oddly, it didn’t win any Lions in Film. (It did win two silver Lions and two bronze Lions in Cyber and a bronze in Branded Content & Entertainment.) Read the story behind the story in our interview with creator PJ Pereira.

 
• Volvo Trucks: “The Epic Split” by Forsman & Bodenfors

The other Grand Prix winner in Film, and deservedly so. Let’s revisit it to remind ourselves how different these supposedly equal spots are.

 
What do you think? Did the Film judges overreach, or was the Harvey Nichols spot really that good? And what would you have selected?

Forget about those famous Internet felines in Friskies' Christmas spot. The real holiday supergroup is in this campaign from Forsman & Bodenfors for Unicef Sweden.

I'm talking about Jesus, Gandhi and Mother Teresa—dubbed "The Good Guys"—who get together to discuss the sacrifices they made to benefit humanity. They're joined by a typical party dude, who gets to hang with the hallowed do-gooders simply because he clicked on a Unicef banner to help save kids' lives.

The three spots in the series strike just the right tone. They're mildly irreverent and amusingly low-key, with lots of cute exchanges and details. You've gotta love Gandhi's mod yoga mat; the slacker complaining that Jesus's story, while possibly the greatest ever told, drags on a bit; and Christ accidentally clicking through to an ab-blasting offer when He initially tries the Internet.

It's a good thing Jesus is on board, since it usually takes a miracle to get folks to click on banner ads, even for a good cause.

CREDITS
Client: Unicef
Director of Communication: Petra Hallebrant
Senior Marketing Officer: Jim Carlberg
Marketing Officer: Åsa Lee

Agency: Forsman & Bodenfors
Art Directors: Johanna Hofman-Bang, Agnes Stenberg-Schentz
Copywriter: Marcus Hägglöf
Account Supervisor: Jacob Nelson
Account Manager: Lena Birnik
Agency Producers: Magnus Kennhed, Helena Wård
Public Relations: Desirée Maurd
Designer: Nina Andersson
Original: F&B Factory

ACNE Production
Directors: Torbjörn Martin, Tomas Skoging
Executive Producer: Petur Mogensen
Producer: Fredrik Skoglund
Account Manager: Jacob Englund
Director of Photography: Christian Haag
Costume: Patrik Hedin
Makeup: Sanna Riley
Set Designer: Cian Bournebusch

Special Thanks during the film production
Postproduction: Chimney Pot
Camera and Lights: Ljud & Bildmedia
Casting, London: Aston Hinkingson
Casting, Los Angeles: Stone
Casting and Location, Sweden: Röster (voices, places, faces)

Stills
Photographer: Pelle Bergström, Skarp Agent
Stylist: Lotta Agaton, Link Deco
Retouch: Bildinstitutet

Radio
Production Company and Casting: Flickorna Larsson

Not really new, but  still the imho best use of Facebook since “Whopper Sacrifice”.