CP+B announced the appointment of Jason De Turris, previously vice president, executive planning director, as its chief strategy officer. In the new role, De Turris will relocate to Hong Kong and oversee strategy on the Infiniti account, which the agency recently won AOR duties for following a review launched in the summer. He will also help open CP+B’s Hong Kong office and be responsible for building “the CP+B culture and brand throughout Asia” while still acting as a strategic leader across CP+B’s offices. CP+B said in a press release that it will appoint a new head of planning in North America in the near future.
While at CP+B, De Turris has worked with brands such as Xbox One, Grey Poupon, Best Buy, and Hotels.com. He previously served as senior planner at Ogilvy & Mather and Deutsch and as a planning director at JWT. Back in 2011, he also spent five months as a professor of strategic communications at Columbia University. (more…)
Last October/November, CP+B helped launch Xbox One with a series ofTV spots designed to show off how with the next-gen system “games and entertainment are no longer separated.” Well, following a series of Playstation 4 ads that positioned that system as the one “For the Players,” CP+B and Xbox One return serve with a new television spot reminding viewers that, oh yeah, “first and foremost, Xbox One is a gaming console.”
The new effort, entitled “Lost,” focuses on the realism of Xbox One’s graphics, imagining them as so realistic that a young man playing Ryse: Son of Romeactually believes he’s sustaining injuries. That, or the dude is just tripping balls, in which case he should probably play something a little less intense. The spot concludes with the somehow familiar sounding tagline, “If it was any more real, it would be real.”
As mentioned, “Lost” does feel like a direct response to the PS4 ads that position it as the system for gamers, which makes a lot of sense for Microsoft. The Redmond, WA giant may have overestimated the appeal of the whole “gaming and entertainment in one” selling point, and now it seems they can’t let Sony claim the “For the Players” crown without a fight. It will be interesting to see how the advertising battles for the two systems play out as both fight to win the next-gen console war. With the systems selling at a pretty close rate, it doesn’t look like things will let up any time soon. and perhaps that’s a good thing. Credits after the jump. continued…
With the Xbox One’s November 22nd launch date looming ever nearer, CP+B’s marketing blitz for Microsoft’s next-gen system continues with two new spots. Coming on the heels of the “Invitation” spot released late last month, the two new short spots highlight the system’s diverse capabilities while otherwise taking different approaches.
The first spot, “Retirement Home,” features recently retired NFL linebackers Ray Lewis and Brian Urlacher. Urlacher asks Lewis if he’s having any trouble adjusting to retirement as both watch football and play Madden 25 at the same time. Lewis claims not to be having any adjustment issues, but his actions say otherwise. It’s a funny little spot that will appeal to the (sizable) segment of the Xbox crowd who have always wished they could play Madden while watching the NFL.
The second spot, “His and Hers” addresses the apparent sexism of the “Invitation” spot (in which the only female featured uses the system only to watch movies, not play games). It highlights the voice recognition system by showing a woman command the Xbox One using her voice after arriving home to find her boyfriend watching soccer. She tells the system “Xbox go to Dead Rising 3″ and begins to play. Then she starts similarly commanding her boyfriend in a similar matter, telling him to get her a beer. It’s a bit over the top, but a welcome reversal of the gender stereotypes displayed in CP+B’s “Invitation” spot.
Credits and “His & Hers” after the jump. continued…
I may be something of a Sony loyalist, but I’ve got to admit CP+B’s new spot “Invitation” makes the Xbox One shine. Even some of Sony’s biggest fanboys might concede it looks a lot better than the recent PS4 spot.
Directed by Hungry Man’s Bryan Buckley, the commercial vet who recently helmed the R&B-inflected DirecTV spot starring the Manning bros (and who earned an Emmy nod for Grey Poupon’s “The Chase,” also from CP+B), “Invitation” features users invited into the world of several different games, and one movie. The spot opens with a giant robot warrior crashing a business meeting and making a “come here” gesture to a man giving a presentation. Then we see soccer player Steven Gerrard inviting a fan down from the stands. Spock invites a girl along for some sci-fi adventures. A sports car parks itself in front of some dude’s car and opens its door for him. (This is the automotive equivalent of “come here” apparently.) A zombie attempts to cajole a student in a library to join him, loses an arm, and then tells him to come along with the other arm.
Emphasizing the immersive nature of the next-gen platform, the spot announces, “This is an invitation to a new generation: where your games and entertainment are no longer separated, but together, in one.” Showing Xbox One users utilizing the system’s voice activation to launch games like Titanfall, Dead Rising 3, and the movie Star Trek: Enter Darkness gives fans an idea of what they can expect on launch day. The spot also shows users making use of the motion sensitive Kinect. You know, the camera that might be spying on you.
Mixing live action with just the right amount of actual gameplay, “Invitation” is slickly produced and should have Xbox fanboys chomping at the bit for the console’s Nov. 22 release date. My biggest problem with the spot is that the one woman featured uses the Xbox One not for gaming, but to watch a movie. Aside from this perpetuation of the gaming industry’s prevailing sexism (which most people won’t even notice), it’s a really solid ad. The whole “invitation” approach works to emphasize both the immersive nature of the system and the all-in-one entertainment value it offers. The $499 starting price, however, is less inviting. Credits after the jump. continued…
Lost in all the hullabaloo of Suzanne Powers‘ departure from CP+B and appointment as EVP/chief strategy officer at McCann is what’s happening on the former’s end in the wake of the move. Our bad. As you may have read, CP+B is restructuring its planning department (or COG department as they call it), axing the global strategy officer position formerly held by Powers to start with. According to CP+B camp, under the new structure, the COG departments in each of the agency’s offices will report to an executive planning director designated for said office. CP+B is kicking things off by promoting Jason De Turris and Benny Thomas to EPDs for Boulder and L.A., with Miami and Europe appointments to be announced at a later date.
In addition, CP+B has launched a new initiative called Mixed Reality Lab, which will be led by nine-year agency vet Wojtek Szumowski, who currently holds the title of EVP/group director of cognitive and cultural studies. What is Mixed Reality Lab? Well, according to CP+B’s rather poetic description, it’s “designed to continue to question convention, to prototype, experiment and examine the relationships between humans, technology and brands.”
Regarding the planning revamp as a whole, CP+B CEO Andrew Keller says in a statement, “At CP+B, we are constantly reassessing our structure, ensuring that we are meeting and exceeding our clients’ needs in every capacity, and streamlining and redefining as we see fit. This new structure really speaks to where we are as an agency, and the innovation and global strategic insights that we offer our clients are best delivered in this redesign.”
Son of The Godfather and Apocalypse Now director, Francis-Ford Coppola, Roman Coppola was on a bit of a winning streak after co-writing Wes Anderson films The Darjeeling Limited and Moonrise Kingdom. However, after directing the near-universally panned Charlie Sheen vehicle, A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, Roman lost a healthy portion of the goodwill he had racked up. As The A.V. Club put it, the film “it isn’t a movie so much as a feature-length perfume commercial for a Charlie Sheen signature cologne with gorgeous packaging and absolutely nothing inside.” So, yeah. It was pretty bad.
Seeking solace from tomato-throwing critics, Roman did what all directors attempting to recover from a stinker do: Join forces with CP+B for a Microsoft TV spot. Here, we see Roman channeling his own life experiences to sell Windows Phones. Sure, says Roman metaphorically through this spot, there are haters are either side of the aisle. But you can’t have the naysayers keep you down, you know? Yes, some people like Apple phones and some people like Samsung phones, just like some people like good movies and some people like other good movies. But, just because your movie isn’t “good” or your phone isn’t “good” either, doesn’t mean to have to be part of the fighting. As Jay-Z once said, “Get that dirt off your shoulder.” Most assuredly, Roman was playing this track on set throughout the production of this ad.
Embrace Roman Coppola, and embrace Nokia Windows phones. Credits after the jump.
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Lost in all the hullabaloo of 