Hasta La Creative!

Matthew Litzinger, the now-former co-CCO at Quebec City’s Cossette, has joined Toronto-based Red Lion as President/Chief Creative Officer effective July 2.

The young agency’s first CCO Brett Channer recently left to join a retail consultancy, and Litzinger will replace him.

Litzinger spent nearly seven years with Cossette after joining in 2007 and ascended to the co-CCO role along with colleague David Daga in 2012; his accolades include winning the McDonald’s account in the United States, which led to the opening of Cossette’s Chicago office.

The new CCO bears no ill will toward his former shop, announcing in the press release that the move is “all about Red Lion”:
“Red Lion represents what I believe a lot of agencies are struggling through right now: how to be truly a solutions company. The agency already benefits from the talent of key strategists, industrial designers and a creative team whose primary focus is on developing a pattern of branded behavior.”

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People like crunchy cereal. Oatmeal Crisp is a cereal that is crunchy. Cossette took this idea and handed it to a bunch of deranged copy writers who escaped from a mental institution. The result is their batshit crazy new campaign, “Competition Crunch.”

The four spots that comprise the campaign all feature varying degrees of absurd, random humor. Think of recent Old Spice campaigns for a point of reference, though that only gives you the basic idea. For whatever reason, Oatmeal Crisp’s spokesman is a Scottish dude in a kilt, who introduces “Competition Crunch.” Each spot features a new opponent for Oatmeal Crisp — a hungry tortoise, a ginger wedding, an elitist marionette, and romantic robots. That should give you some idea of the kind of crazy we’re talking about. This is filed in our “What The…?” category for a reason.

The spot featured above (my favorite), “Hungry Tortoise Vs. Oatmeal Crisp” presents a hungry tortoise, for absolutely no apparent reason on a Japanese game show, eating a crunchy head of lettuce. Our Scottish spokesman admits that the hungry tortoise eating a head of lettuce is very crunchy, but it’s no match for Oatmeal Crisp. Believe it or not, this is on the less crazy side of the campaign. Out of all the spots, it comes the closest to making sense.The only tamer spot might be the “Romantic Robot” spot, in which two romantically inclined robots make a toast and break their glasses.

On the crazier side, we have “Elitist Marionette” and “Ginger Wedding.” What can even be said about these? “Elitist Marionette” centers around — you guessed it — an elitist marionette who flaunts his “100% Egyptian cotton” strings, and his overall superiority to a second marionette. Then the puppeteer controlling him loses his cool and repeatedly stomps on him. Yes, it’s as crazy as it sounds. “Ginger Wedding” almost matches its mishigas, when a wedding of gingerbread people is interrupted by the Aflack duck, who massacres the congregation. If you’ve ever wanted to hear a church full of screaming gingerbread people, this is probably your only opportunity.

These spots are worth a chuckle and/or befuddled stare, but I’m not sure what they’ll do to sell Oatmeal Crisp. Check out “Ginger Wedding” below, and “Elitist Marionette” (along with credits) after the jump.
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