In the mid-aughts, Motorola’s Razr was the it phone. Until the iPhone came along.
So, it’s easy to imagine Motorola’s excitement when the competitor that knocked it down seems to be faltering, and it can jump at the chance to fight back. That’s exactly what Motorola, now a Lenovo company, has done with a full-page print ad from Ogilvy in The New York Times.
Former Ogilvy & Mather executive creative director Tommy Henvey and executive producer Patti McConnell launched Something Different, a creative marketing boutique in Brooklyn that “will leverage a lean and flexible business structure to provide brands with the thing that agencies do well—produce great creative—while avoiding pitfalls that cause work to bog down and cost too much.”
The pair plan to avoid overstaffing and attendant layers of bureaucracy with an agency model that assembles creative, production and planning teams on an assignment basis to work directly and intimately with clients. In that respect it somewhat resembles recent project-based entities like San Francisco’s Partners in Crime while maintaining the same sort of small permanent staff as Erich & Kallman and Joan, the new shop launched by Jamie Robinson and Lisa Clunie.
“We’ll bring in the right people at the right time,” Henvey explained. “If we need a planner, we’ll pull in a great planner. If we need a designer, we’ll hire a designer who has the right head for what the project needs.”
Before launching Something Else, Henvey spent around eight years as an executive creative director with Ogilvy & Mather, working with clients such as Time Warner Cable, Kraft, NASCAR and Citizens Bank. He previously served as an ECD with mcgarrybowen and a GCD at Y&R after nine years in BBDO’s creative department.
McConnell joined Ogilvy & Mather in 2001 and served in a variety of executive producer and senior partner positions, most recently as senior partner/executive producer for North America. She also held the partner/executive producer title at JWT New York and worked as an executive producer at BBDO.
“Clients are looking for a different way to get things done, that’s why there are a billion new places popping up, trying to figure out the best way to do it. We figured a billion and one might be the magic number,” Henvey said. “The process of making things today can be tedious. Our plan is to make it smoother, more efficient and more fun.”
“Clients want to sit across the table from people they like and feel comfortable collaborating with,” added McConnell. “They want to work with people who allow them to have a voice in their advertising and branding, and who respect their voice.”
“Borders. Has anything good ever come of them?” asks a voiceover in the spot below, as gray-scale images of walls, fences and “No Trespassing” signs speed past.
“Separation? Limits? I’ve seen as many as mankind has been able to create. Invisible borders. Human ones. Between men and women. Between the thin and the fat. Between those who make decisions and those who abide by them.”
At first, it feels like a social-issues PSA, with moody footage of traffic jams, military parades, riots and even a grade-school bathroom “swirly” tossed in for good measure. Actually, it’s a commercial for a leading brand in Mexico, whose identity isn’t revealed until the final seconds of the riveting minute-long ad:
April Fools’ Day was a month ago, but KFC is only just now announcing that it has made two edible nail polishes that bring the classic tagline, “Finger Lickin’ Good,” grossly to life.
Ogilvy & Mather New York launched a new spot in its ongoing “Built for it Trials” campaign for Caterpillar, entitled “Driving Range.”
For the spot, the agency created a driving range, utilizing the Caterpillar 793F, featuring a 250-ton payload and 2650 HP, and other Caterpillar vehicles as makeshift greens. Then they asked professional golfers Erimo Ikeuchi and Marimo Ikeuchi to try to sink a hole-in-one. To make things more interesting (and infinitely harder on the golfers), they made the green portable, moving it around as the golfers try their best to sink the shot.
Eventually, one of the golfers finally sinks a shot, with a little help from the Caterpillar driver. Launched in time for the U.S. Open, the spot was designed to highlight “the capabilities and maneuverability of five different Caterpillar machines” in an entertaining way. Although it runs a bit long at over two-minutes in length (spending perhaps too long on establishing shots), it should largely succeed at delivering its message in a way golf fans find entertaining.
Credits:
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather New York
Creative: Chris Curry, Jerry Dugan, Todd Goodale, David Marino, Emily Clark, Gavin Breyer
Chief Creative Officers: Steve Simpson, Chris Garbutt
Account: Kurt Lundberg, Kate Prescott, Bret Emerson
Planning: Bryan Smith, Liz Sparkman
Chief Production Officer: Matt Bonin
Producer: Damon Webster
Client: Caterpillar, J. Archie Lyons, Deanna Dean
Executive Producer/Creative Director: J. Archie Lyons
EYEPATCH PRODUCTION
Director: Brandon LaGanke
Executive Producer: Joanne Golden
Line Producer: Daniel Lubell
DP: Paul McCarthy
EYEPATCH POST-PRODUCTION
EyePatch Executive Producer: Jay Cagide
Post Producer: Laura Shackelford
Editor: George Gross
Sound Engineer: Ken Meyer
Music Supervisor: Chris Mazur
Color/On-Line: Method/Co3
Assistant Editors: Wes Latta, Andrea Podaski
An Indian clothing company is out with an ad that news reports are billing as the socially conservative country’s first to feature a lesbian couple.
Anouk and Ogilvy & Mather Bangalore created the spot, in which the couple get ready to meet—and, the ad suggests, come out to—the parents of one of the women. Three and a half minutes long, the spot aims for a casual tone, showing the women in their apartment, putting on makeup and chatting about clothing, hairstyles and their relationship.
While LGBT themes in ads are increasingly common and overt in the U.S, homosexuality is illegal in India. Two years ago, the country’s Supreme Court reinstated the ban after a lower court had ruled it unconstitutional.
The tagline, “Bold is beautiful,” risks conflating putting on a bright-colored dress with being open about one’s sexuality in a highly hostile environment. But the brand deserves credit for aligning itself with a progressive message—the ad seems to be mainly garnering support on YouTube (where it has more than 1.6 million views), even if the spirit of it is lost on the obligatory bigots yelling in all caps in the comments section of articles.
Yogurt brand Chobani, meanwhile, is out with its own lesbian-themed ad that’s much more explicit—and ridiculous—because why not play to base instincts, too?
People aren’t the only ones complaining about potholes in Panama City. The potholes are complaining!
With so many streets in Panama City damaged, local agency P4 Ogilvy & Mather placed special devices in potholes that automatically tweet nasty messages at the Twitter account of the Department of Public Works whenever cars drive over them.
A quick glance at the @Elhuecotwitero Twitter page shows the campaign in action—scores of tweets per day asking @MOPdePanama for answers.
The campaign was done on behalf of a Panama TV station, which said potholes are a major concern of its viewers. And it seems to be working—at least, it got the attention of the minister of public works, who appeared on the TV station Monday to address the issue, which he blamed on a mix of poor construction and the failure of talks at approve money to fix the roads.
See public works minister Ramón Arosemena address the issue here:
CREDITS
Client: MEDCOM
Agency: P4 Ogilvy & Mather, Panama City, Panama
Chief Creative Officer: Edwin Mon
Associate Creative Director: Alejandro Blanc
Creative Director: Osvaldo Restrepo
Digital Creative Director: Alberto Lam
Copywriter: Edmar Quiros
Head of Art: Roberto Perez
Art Director: Edmar Quiros
Designer: Franklin Lu
General Account Executive: Monica Urrutia
Digital Account Manager: Luis Gonzales
Executive Producer: Benjamin Liao, Belisario Alvarez, Monica Crespo
Production Company: VFX Panama, SAKE Argentina
Music: Salmon Osado
Sound editing: Manuel Trejos
Post Production: Marcos Ruiz
CREDITS
Client: MEDCOM
Agency: P4 Ogilvy & Mather, Panama City, Panama
Chief Creative Officer: Edwin Mon
Associate Creative Director: Alejandro Blanc
Creative Director: Osvaldo Restrepo
Digital Creative Director: Alberto Lam
Copywriter: Edmar Quiros
Head of Art: Roberto Perez
Art Director: Edmar Quiros
Designer: Franklin Lu
General Account Executive: Monica Urrutia
Digital Account Manager: Luis Gonzales
Executive Producer: Benjamin Liao, Belisario Alvarez, Monica Crespo
Production Company: VFX Panama, SAKE Argentina
Music: Salmon Osado
Sound editing: Manuel Trejos
Post Production: Marcos Ruiz
Additional credits: Francisco Hernandez MEDCOM Digital Media Director
A new Japanese campaign aims to combat domestic violence in the country with inventive coasters that hope to tame excessive drinking, which can contribute to the problem.
Yaocho, a bar chain, and agency Ogilvy & Mather Tokyo created the coasters, each of which features a portrait of a woman’s face printed in thermal ink. When a cold drink rests on the coaster, the portrait changes to include cuts and bruises.
The visuals are—no pun intended—chilling, and it’s a clever use of media, though perhaps a touch too much so for its own good, with mechanics that may undermine the spirit and gravity of the message.
“This drink will turn the woman on this coaster into a beat-up woman—just like you might do to a real woman, if you drink too much,” is essentially the subtext of the ads. “Can you have another round without wanting to hit your significant other?”
But as Lucia Peters points out over at Bustle, while alcohol can be a factor in domestic violence, “placing the blame for domestic violence on alcohol excuses the people who commit the crimes in the first place—which is classic abuser behavior.”
Yaocho deserves credit for openly addressing domestic violence, and trying to raise awareness, theoretically at the expense of its own business. But while a drinking establishment is, on its face, the right place to reach viewers with a message about alcohol and domestic abuse, there’s also a bit of cognitive dissonance in an anti-drinking ad that requires the viewer to be drinking to deliver its full effect.
The tagline, at least in its translated version, isn’t even “Don’t drink too much.” Rather, it is “Don’t let excessive drinking end in domestic violence.” In other words, “It’s OK to spend your money on a bender, so long as you don’t beat your wife or girlfriend afterward.”
And if you are the type of person who gets violent when you drink, you probably shouldn’t be drinking at all.
More info below. Via Design Taxi.
Nationwide has selected twenty year company veteran Terrance Williams as its new chief marketing officer, replacing Matt Jauchius months after the airing of a highly controversial Super Bowl ad, AdAge reports. Joe Case, a spokesman for Nationwide told the publication that Jauchius left to pursue other opportunities, adding, “[He] accomplished a great deal during his time at Nationwide, and we wish him the very best in his future endeavors.”
Jauchius joined Nationwide back in 2006, following a stint at management consultancy McKinsey & Co. While with the company, he presided over a corporate branding strategy overhaul, including the launch of the “Nationwide is on your side” tagline and the reintroduction of the eagle into the brand’s logo. He was also responsible for increasing the company’s advertising spending.
During his tenure with Nationwide, AdAge reports Williams has held “regional leadership roles and worked in sales, claims, underwriting and operations,” most recently serving as president of Nationwide Agribusiness. He will now hold the title of vice president, chief marketing officer and be responsible for overseeing advertising, marketing, social media, research analytics, media buying and planning, communications, PR and customer advocacy. It is unclear how the appointment will impact Nationwide’s relationships with Ogilvy and McKinney.
Coca-Cola isn’t just a soft drink. It’s an essential part of the human experience—the key to true happiness—says a grand new ad from the brand in Europe. So, suck up your laziness and bootstrap yourself some soda.
The 70-second anthem by Ogilvy & Mather Amsterdam (it’s the office’s first work for the brand) introduces a new theme, “Choose Happiness,” and continues Coke’s tradition of casting itself as synonymous with joy. But it takes a more aggressive tone than usual. Not only can you be happy, you should be happy, right now, and all you have to do is reach out and grab it. That Coke, right there on the shelf, that is.
Set to a song and rap by Amsterdam-based HT, the spot (plus a more exhausting, full-blown branded music video, complete with an indecipherable hook) argues that happiness is a choice. Which is sort of true in some contexts, but is also oversimplified advertising-speak.
The broad-reaching argument rests in large part on urging you to consider all the dandy things your hands can do. They can make beats, and hold jump ropes, and give hugs. (Incidentally, Coke would also like you to know your hands can make the shape of Coke bottles, if you join them together with other hands.)
The spot deserves credit for including moments that aren’t totally pollyanna—there’s a lover’s spat, and even a pseudo-political statement encouraging protest. But it’s also a bit divorced from reality. If you have a hard time smiling with a face full of pepper spray, try washing that down with a Coke—it might settle your stomach, too.
Naturally, what Coca-Cola really means by “Choose Happiness” is that you should choose among the red, green, black and white versions of its product. The branding at the end of the spot includes four bottles—representing Coke’s Classic, Life, Zero and Diet offerings—part of a new European strategy to lift the profile of the smaller brands by attaching them to marquee advertising.
That may or may not work, but the creative approach in the anthem spot stems from a familiar problem for any soda marketer: It can’t pitch the product on the grounds that you actually need it, so it has to manufacture your desire as well. This is how you should be living, the ad says, in an overbearing, if still somewhat convincing, attempt to lift millennial spirits by pandering to vain conceptions of empowerment.
The extended version:
CREDITS
Client: Coca-Cola
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Amsterdam
Chief Creative Officer: Ogilvy Darre van Dijk
Sr. Copywriter Ogilvy: Jesse Ridder
Sr. Art Director Ogilvy: Jurriaan van Bokhoven
Agency Producer Ogilvy: Pirke Bergsma
Client Services Director Ogilvy: Annelouk Kriele
Account Director Ogilvy: Frouke Vlietstra
Director Caviar: Arnaud Uyttenhove
Executive Producer Caviar: Eva van Riet
Producer Caviar: Lynn Bernaerts
Producer Caviar: Neil Cray
DOP: Dimitri Karakatsanis
Editor the Whitehouse: Martin leRoy
Editor Gentlemen’s Club: Will Judge
Editor Kapsalon: Brian Ent
Colourist Glassworks: Scott Harris
Colourist Glassworks: Matt Hare
Flame Glassworks: Kyle Obley
Nuke Glassworks: Jos Wabeke
Executive Producer Glassworks: Jane Bakx
Producer Glassworks: Christian Downes
Sound engineer Wave: Randall McDonald
Music Ogilvy: Darius Dante
VO: Haris Trnjanin (HT)
Client Coca-Cola: Guido Rosales
OgilvyOne created an outdoor campaign for Battersea Dogs and Cats Home which promoted pet adoption with a digital dog that appeared to follow shoppers at East London’s Westfield Stratford mall from billboard to billboard.
The agency launched the effort, entitled “Looking for You” in conjunction with Framestore, RFIDiom and Exterion Media. “Looking For You” worked via interacting with a chip embedded in a leaflet handed out to shoppers, allowing the dog to jump from screen to screen as the shoppers moved through the mall. It’s a clever way to utilize digital technology and it promotes pet adoption in the best way possible: actually making people come face to face (in this case virtually) with an adorable dog. This kind of stunt isn’t new to OgilvyOne,as the campaign brings to mind “The Magic of Flying,” the agency’s 2013 effort with digital billboards of children pointing at real British Airways flights. You can see “Looking For You” in action in the campaign video above, which was produced by Creation Company Film, appropriately set to Queen’s “Somebody to Love.”
Ogilvy Brazil launched a provocative campaign for the NGO Life Support Group (GIV) featuring HIV-positive posters.
Each poster, placed around São Paulo contains a drop of blood from an HIV-positive individual. Since HIV can’t survive for more than an hour outside the human body, the posters are completely harmless, the idea being to show that, like the poster, individuals with HIV are not to be feared. This is exemplified in the tagline, “If prejudice is an illness, information is the cure.”
“The poster humanizes the problem and brings people together for the cause, showing that it’s possible to live in a prejudice-free society,” said Aricio Fortes, chief creative officer at Ogilvy Brazil. “And this thought is supported by the emotive reactions from people on the streets who read the poster and sympathized with it.”
In addition to the posters, the campaign also included an “HIV Positive Print Ad” in the Metro newspaper in São Paulo. Ogilvy Brazil wasn’t the only one to realize that HIV positive blood could be used in an awareness campaign. Vangardist, “a progressive men’s magazine based in Vienna and published in both English and German,” is running a limited-edition issue featuring a cover printed with HIV positive blood.
Billboards don’t usually ask a lot of you, beyond a cursory glance. But these Powerade boards from Ogilvy Berlin put you right to work.
They’re more like exercise installations than billboards. One of them features a scrolling climbing wall; another invites you to punch it as hard as you can. And all of them will make you work up a thirst that Powerade can then quench.
Your move, Ikea. Via Ads of the World.
CREDITS
Client: Powerade
Project: “Workout Billboards”
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather, Berlin
Executive Creative Directors: Tim Stübane, Birgit van den Valentyn
Creatives: Matthias Bauer, Janne Sachse
Call it branded oral surgery.
In a ridiculous, hilarious and, yes, very real campaign from Ogilvy Argentina, Salta beer has designed tooth implants for the country’s rugby players who have lost teeth in games. And very special implants they are—they function as bottle openers.
Check out the video below, which really goes into detail about how this is done. In other words, be warned—it’s not for the squeamish.
CREDITS
Client: Salta
Agency: Ogilvy & Mather Argentina
Executive Creative Directors: Javier Mentasti, Maximiliano Maddalena
Head of Art: Diego Grandi
Creative Directors: Juan Pablo Carrizo, Patricio Elfi
Art Director: Bruno Franchino
Copywriters: Horacio Sormani, Damian Martinez, Alejandro Juli
General Account Director: Natalia Noya
Business Intelligence Director: Carolina Coppoli
Head of Planning: Rodrigo Garcia
Responsible for the Client: Nicolás Rubino
Head of Production: Valeria Pinto
Agency Producer: Alejandro Travaglini
Production House: Huinca Cine
Director: Fernando Roca
Executive Producer: Diego Turdera
General Production: Merlina Scalice, Cristian Izzi
Postproduction House: ControlZ
Postproducer: Cristian Martino
Director of Photography: Martin Nico
Editor: Rulo Gomez
Locution: Juan Antonio Middleton
With Mother’s Day around the corner, the timing seems about right for this effort from Ogilvy Brazil that focuses on a special set of moms who just want to increase the peace at a major soccer game.
Fan-on-fan violence is particularly rampant in soccer, so 30 women who happen to be mothers of fans of hometown team Sport Club do Recife decided to take action at a game against rival Nautico at Arena Pernambuco on Feb. 8. After training with military officers and private security guards, these moms took to the Arena to not only do their jobs but, hopefully, to inspire their overzealous children to calm down a tad.
In a statement, Sport Club do Recife VP of social responsibility Fábio Silva says:
“It is the sort of action that takes everyone by storm. Not in your wildest dreams would you picture coming across your mom at a football game. And, most interestingly, there she was working to promote peace at the stadium…It is the club’s belief that such a beautiful spectacle cannot be destroyed by few individuals that insist on marring it.”
At least for one night, their mission appears to have been accomplished; whether the good will sticks is another story. “Security Mons” marks Ogilvy Brazil’s second fan-focused collaboration with Sport Club in recent years, following the “Immortal Fans” campaign from 2013.
Client: Sport Clube do Recife
Agency: Ogilvy Brazil
CEO Ogilvy & Mather: Fernando Musa
Chief Creative Officer: Aricio Fortes
ECD: Paulo Coelho, Paco
Art Director: Alexandre Fernandes, Ale Koston
Copywriter: Bruno Brux
Head of Broadcast Production: Rafael Rosi
RTV: Andréa Consoleto/ Sônia Cremerius
Planner: Bruno Cunha, Thiago Krafzik
Account Executive: Luis Carlos Franco, Ana Paula Perdigão, Mauro Frota, Luiza
Varges
Production Company: Academia de Filmes
Director: Caio Rubini
Executive Producer: Paulo Schmidt
Director of photography: Felipe Meneghel
Montador:? German Espiaut
Finishing: ?Academia de Filmes
Production Sound: Jamute
Music: Corre Corre Erê
Artist: Karol Conka
Client Executives: João Humberto Martorelli, Fábio Silva, Sid Vasconcelos
Thinking of littering in Hong Kong? You could soon be a poster child for the problem.
A remarkable campaign from Ogilvy & Mather takes DNA from trash on the ground and uses Snapshot DNA phenotyping to generate physical likenesses of the litterers, who then end up on outdoor ads telling people not to litter. (DNA phenotyping is the process of predicting a person’s physical appearance based on their DNA alone.)
The legalities of labeling people as litterers this way must be awfully complicated, and it’s not entirely clear how close the images might be to the real people. But the campaign is certainly fascinating in a CSI kind of way.
“This campaign is one of a kind,” says Reed Collins, chief creative officer at Ogilvy Hong Kong. “It’s interactive. It’s innovative. It’s our own science experiment that we’re using to create social change. Litter is such a major problem in Hong Kong, and thanks to technology, we can now put a face to this anonymous crime and get people to think twice about littering.”
Read more at Ecozine. Via Laughing Squid.
Here’s an odd one from Ogilvy’s Spanish office in Madrid.
First, a very British gentleman reminds us that the “a” in “Mather” is as long as the agency’s (storied) history:
Then, said gentleman provides a bit of context for the Spanish speakers in the audience:
The nice balding man doesn’t have a lot of confidence in your ability to get it right:
He also wants to remind us that the “G” in Gyllenhaal is a soft one:
The purpose of the project becomes a bit clearer as Lord Ogilvy shifts from telling non-English speakers how to pronounce his name to noting that Ogilvy is, in fact, very “coooooooooooool”:
This keeps going. Finally, the man does what he calls singing:
We remain perplexed, flummoxed, mystified, and confounded by this downright colonial effort, but it’s good to see the “lesser” Mather getting a little more love.
Now here’s an alternate pronunciation of the “Ogilvy”:
We prefer that one.
Do the Spanish have a tough time pronouncing “Ogilvy & Mather.” Apparently so, judging from this comical video series from the agency’s Spain operation—aimed at getting people to pronounce the agency’s name “like a lord.”
Along the way, we get a little bit of Ogilvy history and one unexpectedly swift kick in the balls. There’s also a website, ogilvyandwhat.es. A funny and peculiar campaign, indeed. See, your work isn’t over when you get that Induction Box.
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