According to our tipsters, this came as news to those who work(ed) for her.
Schwartz, who spent more than twelve years with Havas, will run the just-announced Chicago office of BDD or Barrie D’Rozario DiLorenzo (formerly Barrie D’Rozario Murphy), starting next week. As the piece notes, the Minneapolis-based agency has expanded its executive team in recent months, hiring president and partner Kevin DiLorenzo from OLSON and opening a San Francisco office while preparing to set up shop in New York as well.
Our tips specifically claim that staffers received no announcement regarding Schartz’s departure — and that they learned of the news first thing this morning via the AdAge piece itself.
Contacts did not respond to AdAge or this blog, but other sources (who apparently know more than those who contacted us) told the magazine that the agency has begun searching for Schwartz’s replacement. She assumed the role of president in May after serving as co-president since 2009.
A new spot for Durex combines football/soccer and double entendre with a cheeky call for footballers to stop faking it–their ridiculous on-field “injuries”, that is.
The spot brings the overwrought drama with a little help from one Don Giovanni:
Coincidentally (or not), this campaign arrives at the same time as a super-serious survey sponsored by Durex which found that “I want to watch football” happens to be the number one excuse British men use to avoid having sex with their significant others. Numbers two and three: “I’ve got a bad back” and “I’m too tired.”
We wonder what sort of advice Durex might have for LeBron James…
Havas Worldwide is creative AOR for Durex, but we don’t have credits at the moment.
In news that will surely warm the cold, jaded heart of any copywriter, designer or other creative struggling to stand out at an independent agency, Havas Worldwide paid now-former CEO David Jones $13.5 million bucks last year.
In fact, he made 7 of those millions simply for stepping down to fulfill his “burning desire to be an entrepreneur“–or, as we call it in the blog world, “the possibility of making even more money.”
This morning our future colleages at AdWeek combed through the company’s annual report to reveal those important stats. This fact stood out to us:
“Jones received another $1.2 million compensation for a non-compete clause and his role as an advisor to the younger Bolloré”
So he received a significant sum for advising the man who replaced him. Jones was unavailable for comment, presumably because he was too busy laughing about the fate of the Publicis-Omnicom merger.
After receiving related tips for at least a week, we can confirm that Alex Bombeck is now the former Chief Digital Officer at Havas Worldwide.
A spokesperson told us that he would be moving with his family to Atlanta to “take on new responsibilities”, and a fresh-off-the-virtual-press release tells us that those responsibilities include leading Sparks Grove, or “the marketing strategy and creative division of global consultancy North Highland.”
Bombeck earned the CDO title less than a year ago; previous roles included President of Havas Digital North America.
The hire comes amid something of a growth spurt for Sparks, which recently added “5,000 square feet of additional space in its Atlanta office” and promoted Bombeck’s predecessor Maria Bothwell to managing director and president of new ventures at North Highland.
Bombeck will report to North Highland CEO Dan Reardon.
Rats and mice are not endangered species in New York City. (There are thought to be at least as many rats as people in the Big Apple, and there could be five times as many.) But d-CON, the rodent control company, is taking its small victories against our furry friends and publicly celebrating them in an amusing new campaign from Havas Worldwide.
As one part of the integrated campaign, the agency put missing posters for rodents all over the city, at mice level (though presumably not in the subway, where they'd be more likely to be proven wrong in an instant). Havas also created the darkly comic videos below, in which mice families deal with the horror of having ingested d-CON products.
Because if there's one advertising category where depictions of painful death are acceptable, even enjoyed, it's pest control.
CREDITS Client: d-CON Agency: Havas Worldwide, New York Chief Creative Officer: Darren Moran Group Creative Directors: Dustin Duke, Jon Wagner Creative Director: Eric Rojas Creative Director: Gian Carlo Lanfranco Creative Director: Rolando Cordova Writer: Eric Bertuccio Global Chief Content Officer: Vin Farrell Co-Head of Production, North America: Sylvain Tron Executive Producer: Deepa Joshi Producer Erin Jackson Chief Strategy Officer: Tim Maleeny Group Planning Director: Kerin Morrison Senior Strategist: Chris Lake Global Brand Director: Betsy Simons Group Account Director: Joe Maglio Account Supervisor: Darah Rifkin Production Company: Bar 1 Director: Joe Barone Mixer: Tim Leitner Casting Director: Dawn Mjoen Production Designer: Radek Hanak, Unit+Sofa Editor: David Bartin, Studio 6
Começa como um desenho animado, um jogo de sedução entre uma mulher e um homem. Conforme as coisas vão esquentando, entretanto, os desenhos se transformam em live action. Assim é “Real Feel”, novo comercial para o produto de mesmo nome da Durex.
Com criação, produção e direção daHavas Worldwide, Partizan e Golden Wolf, essa foi uma ótima sacada para destacar a proposta de sensações reais oferecida pela nova camisinha. E o resultado ficou bem bacana.
Veet, the hair-removal brand, has a new ad campaign out from Havas Worldwide with the theme "Don't risk dudeness." Three ads feature women who turn into hairy, overweight men (actually, the same hairy, overweight man) because they "shaved yesterday."
A lover is disgusted, a nail technician is appalled, and a taxi driver refuses service because these gorgeous women are now sporting a whole 11 hours of hair growth. "Don't risk dudeness," Veet tells us, and follows up with the tagline, "Feel womanly around the clock."
I'm no Letterman, but he's retiring and I just drank a lot of iced tea, so I'm feeling good and I'll take a shot at a list. Check out the first ad below (it breaks tonight during Dancing with the Stars on ABC), and then my take on five things wrong with this strange campaign.
5. It makes fools of both men and women. Veet impressively accomplishes the task of ridiculing both men and women here. The burly guy in the nightie speaks in a baby-girl voice, doing neither gender any favors.
To its credit, Veet has left the YouTube comments open, but it's not looking good. "I'm kind of dumbfounded as to how a campaign like this was passed when it's pushing a lot of really old ideas about gender typing," says the second of only two comments so far. (The first wasn't kind either.) "So if a woman doesn't shave her legs, it makes her a man? If a man wakes up next to his girlfriend, who hasn't shaved her legs in a day or two, it'll completely repulse him? It's considered 'rude?' If a man shaved his legs would it make him a woman?"
4. It's empirically wrong. Realistically, not shaving for one day still goes unnoticed at the beach. I polled other women for this one. Results may vary, but no one's turning into Chewbacca overnight.
3. It's dumb. Everything is exaggerated in a way that's supposed to be funny, but comes off as cringe-inducing—for example, the taxi driver who leaves the EW SO GROSS woman behind in one of the two spots below. (Also, the word "dudeness" can be bullet item 3b.)
2. It's mildly homophobic. Guys are repulsed by other guys? I know this is supposed to be comedy, but … eh.
1. It shames women. Telling women that they're less womanly if they miss a spot shaving their legs in the shower, or if they're part of an entire sect of women who choose not to shave at all, is closed-minded. And shame is a weird marketing tool.
In an age when marketers like Dove are seeing great response to ads about accepting one's imperfections, any products that demand women be squeaky clean 24/7 is rowing against the tide. Even cartoony humor can't gloss over that kind of regressive message. As a friend told me on Gchat: "I don't like it. Maybe it's cause my legs are always slightly fuzzy and I don't think that makes me a dude. I also don't like that it implies that only feminine women are sexy. Mostly it's just annoying."
A swing and a miss. Or maybe more like a shave and a nick, am I right? (Sorry.)
Funny how Alex Bogusky is still seeing opportunities where brands and agencies are missing them. Case in point: A recent tweet to Liberty Mutual urging the insurance company—whose Winter Olympics ads are all about overcoming setbacks—to make a commercial about Heidi Kloser, the U.S. skier who was badly injured the day before the Sochi Games began.
USA Today has the story. "It was pretty much a no-brainer," says Bogusky, a fellow Coloradan and a big fan of Kloser's. He sent a direct message to Liberty Mutual, which got its agency, Havas Worldwide, working on a commercial. They filmed Kloser, 21, at home in Vail, Colo., where she had returned for surgery and rehab on her knee. Her parents appear, too, and recall Heidi's poignant question to them after the injury. (You probably remember Kloser walking with the help of crutches during the Opening Ceremony.) The ad, which you can see below, will air Wednesday night during NBC's Olympic coverage.
"At Liberty Mutual, we believe that with every setback, there's a chance to come back. And rise," says the voiceover for the company's anthem spot (also posted below), which has been running throughout the Games.
That fits Kloser perfectly, as she is already looking to 2018—although, as she admits to USA Today, "I'd rather star in a commercial because I won a gold medal."
Following the trend of hunky men peddling not-so-hunky products (like Liquid-Plumr and Kraft salad dressing) is Hefty with its new "Ultimate Garbage Men" commercial.
In the spot by Havas Worldwide Chicago, super sexy garbage men in tight shirts drop all sorts of weird innuendos that make zero sense when discussing garbage bags. However, the presence of an actually hefty garbage man makes the spot kind of funny. Or at least funny enough to excuse the phrase, "And that gripping drawstring? So tight." Unfortunately, there's no redeeming the housewife making awkward expressions of arousal. Check out the credits after the jump.
CREDITS Agency: Havas Worldwide Chicago Chief Creative Officer, President: Jason Peterson Creative Director: Ecole Weinstein Art Director: Cam Giblin Copywriter: Tom Houser Executive Producer: David Evans Producer: Joe Tipre Business Manager: Bonnie Hamilton Account Director: Vicky Runyon Senior Account Executive: Lindsey Cohen Assistant Account Executive: Christina Banuelos Production Company: BRW Director: Matthew Pollock Music Production Company: Duotone Audio Group
Bedsider.org, a free online resource for birth control, has teamed up with BET Networks to target African-American women ages 18-29 through a series of TV spots from Havas Worldwide portraying painfully awkward discussions about sex and birth control with family and friends. The idea is cool. Talking about sex can be awful, but checking out a website about sex and birth control is awkward free, as long as you're not in a library or synagogue or elementary school.
The three spots feature a young woman having cringe-worthy conversations with 1) her grandmother, 2) her boyfriend and 3) her mother.
A little old lady delivers the line "Oh, you're very supple" to her visibly uncomfortable granddaughter in the best of the three ads. The spot featuring the IUD conversation with the boyfriend doesn't do it (pun!) for me. You guys are having sex, but you can't ask your boyfriend to tell his dog to stop humping your leg? Strange. The video featuring the daughter—wrapped in a towel, fresh out of the shower—and the overeager mother is the weirdest of the three. The line "We should talk, like, vagina to vagina" is seriously grossing me out.
Bedsider's goal is to make us all cringe; mission accomplished. I've maxed out my quota for hearing the word "vagina" today. Nobody talk to me until tomorrow.
CREDITS Bedsider 2013 Awkward Campaign
Agency: Havas Worldwide New York Chief Creative Officer Global Brands: Lee Garfinkel Chief Creative Officer: Darren Moran Executive Creative Director: Lisa Rettig-Falcone Creative Director: Jeremy Pippenger Art Director: Thomas Shim Copywriter: Catherine Eccardt Global Chief Content Officer: Vin Farrell Integrated Producer: Candice Vernon Group Account Director: Tamara Goodman Account Executive: Alexandra Litzman Senior Content Strategist: Shawn Shahani Strategy and Analytics: Chris Lake
TV Production Company: Director: Clay Williams EP: Scott Howard Producer: Debbie Tietjen DP: Stefan Czapsky
Editorial:Mackenzie Cutler EP: Sasha Hirschfeld Producer: Evan Meeker Editor: Dave Anderson Telecine: Company 3 NY Colorist: Tim Masick
Durex Australia and agency Havas Worldwide in Sydney have invented Fundawear—underwear that's fun to wear because it allows your partner to remotely operate sensors and "touch" you over the Internet. Tickle her titties or send a jolt down under with electric pulses from sensors built into the underwear and controlled via a cellphone app. I guess when you can't be close enough to use a condom, it's the next best thing. The idea is just one of the brand's "Durexperiments" (why are science-y projects so popular in ads all of a sudden?). It's pretty awesome, and designed for viral success, but of course when they call it a world's first in the video, it's not. Remote-control sex toys have been around for ages. Many of the female ones are wearable, and you know there are even existing phone apps to control them long distance. But who gives a bleeping flip? It's a great experiment. Want your own pair? You have to enter a contest on Durex Austrialia's Facebook page. Or jury-rig a Tens unit.
Sauza Tequila had a major hit last year with its "Make It With a Fireman" video, starring Thomas Beaudoin—which reached No. 15 on YouTube's list of the 20 most watched ads of 2012. The Jim Beam brand had a similar campaign planned for 2013, featuring a lifeguard. But then, days before the big reveal, it saw its surprise new spokesman, the hunky Anderson Davis … doing ads for Kraft Zesty Italian salad dressing in quite a similar style. Both campaigns show Davis talking suggestively to the camera as he mixes up, respectively, salads and margaritas.
Lewis Lazare has more details here. Beam says it knew nothing about the Kraft work, which launched Monday. And the liquor maker is now scrambling to make sure its lifeguard ad doesn't get lost in the shuffle—it's launched the spot now instead of the planned April 15. A Beam rep tells Adweek: "Well, they say imitation is the best form of flattery. And apparently one company believes nothing goes better with Sauza margaritas than a zesty salad. I know you're familiar with the videos that Kraft just launched. … The success of our 'Make It' campaign has opened the door for other companies to do the same—even with the same moves and the same actor who plays our lifeguard. You be the judge…"
The Kraft work has gotten quite a bit of attention, including this Good Morning America segment. And that has put Beam in the odd position of actually drafting off the Kraft success as it introduces the lifeguard. "How do you like your @Sauza #margaritas? #Zesty, we hope," Sauza tweeted on Wednesday night.
Having launched its work first, Kraft, not surprisingly, doesn't seem too stressed out about the whole thing, even giving Davis a shout-out. "It's noted in his biography he was working with Sauza, but we didn't know any specifics about the campaign," a Kraft spokeswoman says. "We think Anderson has done a terrific job for us on Kraft Zesty dressing."
A Metropole Orkest, da Holanda, vai apresentar nesta sexta-feira sua Tweetphony, uma sinfonia feita a partir de tweets. A ideia surgiu porque a orquestra, fundada em 1946, precisa levantar fundos para continuar existindo. O grupo formado por 52 músicos sofreu um corte de verbas do governo, que havia prometido manter a Metropole Orkest mas, adivinhe: não cumpriu.
No hotsite da Tweetphony há uma interface de piano digital, onde os usuários podem compor sua música e ouvir o que foi feito por outros participantes. Feito isso, é só clicar em enviar. O tweet mostrará letras associadas às notas musicais. Clicando no link que é gerado a cada tweet, é possível ouvir a música que corresponde ao que está escrito.
Para a apresentação desta sexta-feira, serão escolhidos os tweets mais interessantes. O público poderá acompanhar via live stream ou em vídeos que serão postados no You Tube.
A ação é das agências Havas Worldwide e Perfect Fools.
A Euro RSCG Austrália mudou de nome e agora é Havas Worldwide. Ao longo do processo, eles resolveram que gostariam de aproveitar o embalo da mudança de nome e fazer algo maior… Algo como mudar o mundo. Foi assim que surgiu o Project Change, que contará com uma série de iniciativas que provoquem pequenas transformações positivas nas pessoas e, quem sabe, até mesmo no mundo. A primeira delas foi realizada nas cidades de Sydney, Melbourne e Brisbane.
A partir de uma pesquisa feita pela própria agência, a Havas Worldwide descobriu que 97% dos australianos ficam infelizes a caminho do trabalho. Para tentar mudar isso, eles resolveram ir às ruas no horário do pico para “vender” biscoitos pelo preço único de um sorriso. É claro que tudo foi gravado e virou o vídeo acima. Há, ainda, algumas fotos no Facebook.
Agora é aguardar e ficar de olho para ver o que vem por aí no Project Change.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
