Hasta La Creative!

Leo Burnett London announced today the addition of creative directors Matt Collier and Wayne Robinson.

The creative team arrives from DDB Chicago, where they have worked together since 2011. While at DDB, the pair won over 20 awards, including five Cannes Lions for brands Skittles, Milky Way, Walls, and government-backed adult education program GED. Prior to moving to the states for their DDB Chicago gig, Collier and Robinson began their careers at JWT London before moving on to CHI & Partners. While in the UK, the pair won over 100 awards, working with clients including Shell, Nestle, Toyota, Mazda, Kellogg’s, News International and 888.com. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Today Leo Burnett’s London office launched a new campaign celebrating the 40th anniversary of McDonald’s arrival in the UK.

The campaign aims to portray the important moments in people’s lives…that just happened to occur at McDonald’s. In “Just Moved In,” (featured above) the most realistic of these scenarios, a family moves in to a new house. After a hard day of moving, they realize there’s nothing in the fridge to make for dinner and head to McDonald’s for a quick meal (which is just fine with the kids).

Other spots in the campaign feature an awkward first date, a rescue meal for a rainy camping trip, and a teen celebrating passing his driver’s test. Leo Burnett doesn’t overreach with the scenarios, instead choosing small moments that compliment larger ones — although the idea of taking a date to McDonald’s does seem a bit of stretch, no matter how young you are.

The broadcast spots are supported by an outdoor campaign “comprised of eight executions which also reminds people that McDonald’s has been there in the background of a myriad of moments all through their lives.” (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Leo Burnett has a new campaign for Delta Faucets introducing the portmanteau “HappiMess” to describe the joy of using Delta’s products to wash away fun messes.

The 30-second anthem ad features a variety of messy situations highlighting Delta’s different faucets. A woman clears a collection of dirty dishes at a dinner party and washes them in her Delta kitchen faucet; children play in a garden and are then ushered inside for a bath; a father and daughter enjoy a muddy hike and then the father washes his hands with a motion sensor faucet; a woman gets blasted with colored powders on a color run and returns to take a shower. “When Delta bath, toilet, shower and faucet innovations make getting clean just as beautiful as getting dirty, that’s HappiMess,” the voiceover intones. As The New York Times points out, the tagline is similar to children’s bath bubble brand Mr. Bubble’s, “Makes getting clean almost as much fun as getting dirty!” Only Leo Burnett aims to translate the idea for adults.

“When you think back to when you were a kid, getting messy in the garden, or baking and getting flour all over you were always considered to be a great things,” Leo Burnett Creative Director Jo Shoesmith told The New York Times. “But for adults, getting sweaty going for a run, or going on a mud run or a color run — those also are moments in life that people love and Delta plays a role in that, because where there’s a mess you need to be cleaned up.”

The campaign, which also features print and digital components, also marks the first time the brand is advertising the whole brand rather than a single product, according to Catherine Roper, director of brand marketing for Delta Faucet. It aims to celebrate the product innovations — such as the detachable shower head with temperature indicator, and motion sensor touch-free faucet — but these can be easy to miss over the course of the ad. Stick around for credits after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Leo Burnett gets emotional for Ronald McDonald House Charities with their new spot, “Dad’s Voice.”

The 60-second ad highlights the emotional impact of the charity providing home-to-home accommodation for families with a child in the hospital. “It’s only a voice, everyone has one,” a narrator intones at the opening of the spot. “But this, this is dad’s voice. Dad’s voice is, well, dad’s.” Going on to list some of the voice’s idiosyncrasies, the spot concludes, “Dad’s voice is the sound of home, even when they’re not at home.”

It’s a pretty straightforward approach, but it makes a real emotional impact, delivering on a relevant insight for the charity. It helps that the approach is tender without being cloying, choosing not to oversell the drama of the situation but rather sticking to what viewers can relate to. Stick around for credits after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

The World Cup has been over for nearly twenty-four hours, but, knowing a tiny bit about sports, we’d guess that many in Germany, Brazil and Argentina are still celebrating/consoling themselves with the appropriate spirits.

On that note, the creative team at Leo Burnett London wants to remind footie fans around the world that driving under the influence is never an appropriate response–no matter whose team won or what the final score happened to be.

While the spot for road safety charity client Brake is, of course, very of-the-minute, its message is timeless: most cases of drunk driving have absolutely nothing to do with any given sporting event.

Also: fans will never forget that spray foam.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Sometimes experience proves more powerful than youth. That’s certainly true in this new long-form spot for Pfizer’s Centrum from Leo Burnett in Chicago, which pairs middle-aged basketball players against a group of twenty-something guys.

We won’t spoil what happens, but you can probably guess.

Yep, it’s not surprising that in a film made for a multi-vitamin, we’d see the older gents have still got game. Though that doesn’t make it any less entertaining to watch the young punks get schooled.

The film was shot in Goat Park in Harlem and has already garnered half a million views online. Maybe the appeal of watching real people play basketball has something to do with it. Or maybe we’re a bit sick of the soccer.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Pfizer/Centrum
Agency: Leo Burnett Chicago
Ad or Campaign: Stay on Top of Your Game
Chief Creative Officer: Susan Credle
Executive Creative Director: Jeanie Caggiano
Creative Directors: Amanda Butts, Nuno Ferreira
Associate Creative Directors: Dave Derrick, Stephanie Simpson
Creative Team: Roberto Blanco, Javier Valle, Lauren Wetula
Digital Strategist: Ian Beacraft
Executive Producer: Juan Woodbury
Producer: Mark Phan
Production Company: Greenpoint Pictures
Directors: Michael Kuhn & Niles Roth
Executive Producer: Tatiana Rudzinski
Producer: JP Bouchard
VFX/SPX: Utopic
Editorial: Utopic
Editor: Tim Kloehn
Music Company: Jira Productions
Composer: Dejion Madison
Director of Photography: Nate Corbin

Leo Burnett has unveiled the latest in their “Favorites” campaign for McDonald’s UK with a new spot entitled “Hunter Gatherer.”

“Hunter Gatherer” — which will appear in a 60-second version online (above) and a 40-second broadcast version — follows a man as he attempts to satisfy his pregnant partner’s food craving while their city is shutting down. He goes to several groceries and convenience stores, all of which are closed, just shutting down for the night, or don’t have what he’s looking for. Finally, the man spots a 24-hour McDonald’s. He returns, McDonald’s bag in hand, to his skeptical partner. When she opens the box, however, it’s filled with the pickles she’s craving. It’s a cute concept, and highlights McDonald’s’ “Hey, we never close” selling point in an imaginative way. (Although it does also raise the question: Can you really go to McDonald’s and order nothing but a box of pickles?) Stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Behold Coca-Cola’s newest happiness machine: the Bio Cooler, a soft-drink dispenser that doesn’t need electricity or batteries to run.

The unit, developed by Leo Burnett Colombia and the International Physics Centre in Bogota, uses two cooling methods based on ancient technology. Watering the plants atop the device produces evaporation, and a mirror at the top is used to convert gas into liquid inside the cooler. Coke claims the cooler works better the hotter it gets, and the brand chose to demonstrate in Aipir, Colombia, where temperatures can approach 115 degrees Fahrenheit and residents travel 12 hours to fetch ice.

Some commenters have questioned whether it’s crass to provide a thirsty population with a fridge that dispenses Coca-Cola, which, let’s be honest, isn’t exactly the healthiest beverage choice. That point would apply if this were a purely altruistic endeavor. Since it’s a promotional exercise, however, such arguments don’t really hold water.

True to its marketing mantra, Coke’s peddling a feel-good vibe—just as it did with those sharable cans that split in half and friendly bottles (also from Burnett Colombia) that can only be opened when joined with other bottles.

Via Ads of the World.

Re/Max's first ads since it went public are here, and they're Zooey Deschanel-grade quirky.

Four new spots by Leo Burnett in Chicago, which the 40-year-old company tapped in August, feature eager people looking for their dream homes and Re/Max agents guiding them to something even better—though in a different way—than what they'd imagined.

The tagline is, "Dream with your eyes open," but one spot puts it best: "With a Re/Max agent, you'll see how much better than a dream home the right home can be."

While the ads have an odd (and vaguely annoying) rhyming pattern in the voiceover, there's something endearing about the heart of the message. Re/Max is pitting expectations against reality, and trying to show that sometimes the reality can be better.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Re/Max
Agency: Leo Burnett/Lapiz USA
Ad or Campaign: “Dream With Your Eyes Open”
Executive Creative Director: Laurence Klinger
Creative Director: Manuel Torres
Associate Creative Director, Art Director: Flavio Pina
Associate Creative Director, Copywriter: Lizette Morazzani
Executive Producer: Ken Gilberg
Producer: Mariana Perin
Senior Music Producer: Chris Clark
Executive Vice President, Director of Planning: Wells Davis
Vice President, Strategy Director: Howard Laubscher
Strategy Director: Felipe Cabrera
Executive Vice President, Account Director: Richard Roche
Vice President, Account Director: Ernesto Adduci
Account Supervisor: Sara Abadi
Account Executive: Spencer Colvin
Production Company, Visual Effects: MPC
Directors: Paul O’Shea, Dan Marsh
Executive Producer: Asher Edwards
Line Producer: Zak Thornborough
Post Producer: Diana De Vries

The compressed hydrogen-powered Honda FCX runs so clean, its exhaust contains only water—and it's so clean, it's drinkable. To celebrate this, Honda Australia and Leo Burnett Melbourne came up with a memorable stunt—creating a new bottled-water brand, H2O.

As seen in the case study below, the automaker gave the water away in movie theaters around Australia (as free samples, no less) as a way of showing people what they're doing for the environment. There are also plans to make the water available at Honda service stations and dealerships.

Copy on the bottle reads: "Delicious, fresh H2O from a pristine mineral spring, cool mountain glacier or … the exhaust pipe of the Honda FCX. The world's first hydrogen-powered car that emits only water. Water so clean and pure, you could put it in a bottle and drink it. Now isn't that refreshing?"

Note the use of "could." It doesn't appear that this water is actually the by-product of FCX. Still, a neat idea. The product is nicely designed, too, with an effective minimalist aesthetic. I really like how well the Honda logo works as the hydrogen symbol in H20.

Via Popsop.