Hasta La Creative!

This past September, Brigham Young University challenged the University of Texas to an “AdFight.” When the University of Texas backed out, Brigham Young University challenged Colorado University, and now CU is letting BYU know that it’s totally on with the above video and accompanying website, which the Denver Egotist reports “students of the senior Portfolio Ad Class at CU — taught by Barrett Brynestad and Austin O’Connor” launched yesterday.

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BBDO associate creative director Diego Contreras (formerly of Anomaly) is making the jump to directing music videos with his cinematic video for Kool Head’s “Leon,” which he also wrote.

Contreras matches the late-night neon vibe of Kool Head’s dance-y, 80s synth laden track, while at the same time managing to tell a story over the course of the 5:30 video. To get the distinct visuals for the video, Contreras filmed in New York, utilizing “Lomo anamorphics on the Arri Alexa 4:3.”

The “Leon” video came about as a result of the friendship that developed between Contreras and Jason Nitti (producer/songwriter of Kool Head) while Nitti was an art director at Anomaly. When Nitti sent Contreras a folder of Kool Head tracks, Contreras loved the project so much he asked if he could shoot a video. Nitti told him to pick whichever track he wanted, and Contreras instantly gravitated toward “Leon.” As for the idea behind the music video, Contreras told The Music Bed it developed from “a weird TV spot for Converse [he wrote] about kids waking up in the middle of the night and sleepwalking to a basketball court to play ball. It was about loving something so much that you do it in your sleep. But like 98 percent of our work in advertising, it went into the horrifying black hole of dead ideas. So I brought it back out and used it as a starting point…which quickly evolved into a new story for the video.”

Initially funded via Kickstarter, Diego and producer Will Mahr “pitched in to double the budget” so that they could make the music video they wanted. Check out Contreras’ “Leon” video above, and stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

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Yes, San Francisco-based Goodby Silverstein & Partners has hired Eric Kallman as a creative director. In case you don’t recall, Kallman is one of the creative minds who was behind the now-ubiquitous, award-winning Old Spice “Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign who was poached by Gerry Graf and Barton F. Graf 9000 nearly three years ago. During his time at said agency, he helped win and worked with clients ranging from Little Caesar’s, DISH, Finlandia to Disney among others. Anyhow, he’s now headed to the Bay Area to join up with GS&P co-founder/co-chairman Jeff Goodby, who says in a statement, ““I think Eric will be an inspiration to our clients, to our people and, frankly, to me. I’m looking forward to watching how he sells such challenging, distinctive work.”

Along with his time with Gerry Graf and W+K Portland, Kallman served at TBWA\Chiat\Day New York. According to Goodby, the CD will work on accounts including fast-food chain Sonic and “got milk?” for California Milk Processor Board  as well as helping to lead various new business pitches.

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Production company B-Reel recently premiered their film “A Living Soul” — directed by noted commercial and music video director Henry Moore Selder – at the Gothenburg International Film Festival, receiving an honorary mention from a jury who declared ““For a film with outstanding use of visual effects, it manages to visualize mind-boggling existential questions in a manner equally playful, hilarious and poetic.”

Selder was pleased with the film;s reception, stating that it was “great that the jury motivation highlights the seriousness of the questions that the film poses, while acknowledging the humour involved. This is the exact combination that drew me to the source novel in the first place!”

“A Living Soul” will make its international premiere at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival in France this weekend. Based on P.C. Jersild’s controversial 1980s sci-fi novel, the film “follows the subjective perspective of Ypsilon, a human brain being kept alive artificially.” B-Reel is calling the film a “Novella Film” (which is not a term I’ve ever seen before, but I’m assuming means it’s longer than a typical shorter and shorter than a typical feature length film). The production company worked in collaboration with “Hungarian prosthetics and [animatronic] master-minds Filmefex Studios” and VFX production company Swiss and Chimney. Head here for the trailer, and stick around for credits after the jump. continued…

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We’ve received confirmation from Wunderman that Nick Moore, who has been with the agency since 2006 and has served as chief creative of the New York office of the WPP Group/Y&R agency. From what we’ve been told, and as you see below,the parting is “amicable.” Here’s a statement from Wunderman below.

“After eight years, Wunderman has amicably parted ways with Nick Moore. We thank him for his contributions and leadership during his time as creative director for the New York office.  In the interim, Global Chief Creative Officer Lincoln Bjorkman will take up the reigns with the New York creative leaders reporting directly to him until the appropriate replacement is found.  We wish him well in his further endeavors.” Prior to his joining Wunderman, Moore helped build that was responsible for BBDO’s global Proximity network, worked at what became Tequila\London and won Cyber Lions among accolades in the process.

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Sources familiar with the matter tell us that Chris Garbutt, who has been with Ogilvy & Mather for the past seven years, has joined up with the WPP-owned East Coast operations, has joined up to head up its East Coast U.S. operations. Prior to this time at O&M, Garbutt worked for several years at TBWA\Paris and South African-based TBWA\Hunt Lascaris. We’ll await for a statement soon from Ogilvy on the matter. From what we’ve been told, Garbutt will be moving to the agency by year’s end. Here’s a comment from those in the know:

“The multi- award-winning creative director of Ogilvy Paris would he desires elsewhere? If the rumor begins to swell in advertising world, it is because it is founded. According to our information , a transfer of the “chief creative officer” to Ogilvy New York is under consideration. It could be done ‘ by the end of the year ,’ said a spokesman for the agency , insisting on the “quite natural” character of this movement, in an international group where “offices in New York Paris and work closely in the management of brands”. In fact , functions and especially the title of Chris Garbutt in the New York cousin had not yet been determined, as well as the conditions for eventual succession in the Paris office. If this departure became effective – he is still there to manage teams, Ogilvy would have to work hard to find the equivalent of South African hunter Lions (18 in 2013, including a Grand Prix Outdoor) , like a fish in the water with the digital , which led twice Ogilvy France on top of Eurobest . It is for this young successor of Bernard Bureau that the function of “chief creative officer” for all of Ogilvy France had been specially created in mid-2012 . He knows O & M long : it started at Ogilvy and Mather MTSR , South Africa in 1995 , before joining France and especially TBWA \ G1 on Nissan budget. Then return Ogilvy in 2008 as Creative Director of Ogilvy Paris .

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Gavin McIness, the Rooster creative director who last November taught us all how to fight a baby, wrote an article explaining ten reasons why old punks make great dads, and it’s pretty convincing.

Among McIness’ arguments are that old punks are used to having roommates who puke on them, don’t mind looking like shit, are never embarrassed, understand insane ideas, and are better able to explain to their kids why drugs are bad: “Pot makes movies funny, but it kills your ambition. One Molly pill makes music better, but you’ll bad-trip when you get older. Adderall is just speed, and we saw what that did to Lemmy. Cocaine won’t kill you, but it will turn you into a paranoid douche. Oh, and don’t pour hard liquor up your ass. It will give you alcohol poisoning.”

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After spending the last four-and-a-half years at R/GA’s New York hub, where he served as senior strategist, working with clients ranging from Nike to Unilever to Samsung in the process, Jon Jones has left the agency for the digital age to assume the chief digital officer position at The Incite Agency. In case you don’t know what Incite is, it’s the communcations firm co-founded by Robert Gibbs, President Obama‘s former press secretary. Jones has some history with Obama as he served as his first digital strategist for his 2008 presidential campaign. During his career, Jones has also worked for trades like The New Republic.

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You probably saw the trailer for U2′s new music video, directed by Mark Romanek, for their latest release “Invisible” during the big game last night, but here it is in case you fell asleep during one of the most boring Super Bowl games in recent memory.

“Invisible,” which was produced by Danger Mouse and mixed by Tom Elmhirst, is available for free on iTunes today until 11:59 PM (the track first became available for download last night following the Super Bowl). While normally that would still be too much to pay for a new U2 song, for every download Bank of America will be making a one dollar donation to the Global Fund via RED, Bono‘s organization set up to channel funds to the Global Fund to Fight Aids. This new partnership “sees Bank of America committing $10m to (RED), and has resulted in a $10 million match from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as $1 million each from both SAP and South Africa’s Motsepe Family – bringing the total commitment to $22 million.” So the latest development in the “Well his music really sucks, but at least he does all those nice things for AIDS relief in Africa,” sees Bono attempting to guilt you into downloading U2′s latest snoozefest so that you can make a contribution to RED free of charge. Or you could just go ahead and make a donation, essentially paying a fee to avoid having anything to do with U2′s music. Credits after the jump. continued…

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Fresh off of nabbing general market ad duties from Mother NY for Burger King earlier this month, Culver City, CA-based agency Pitch has made some moves within its creative department. Most notably, the agency has promoted Xanthe Wells, most recently executive creative director, to the role of chief creative officer. Wells (pictured above) joined Pitch as ECD in early 2013 after spending over seven years at TBWA\Chiat\Day L.A., where she worked with clients ranging from Kraft to Pepsi. The new CCO replaces Eric Springer, who left Pitch for the top creative gig at Draftfcb last year.

Along with the Wells promotion, Pitch has also welcomed aboard fellow Chiat LA alum Gage Clegg, who, along with his significant other, Becca Morton, parted ways with the latter agency last spring (but subsequently stayed on as GCD). Clegg joins up with Pitch as group creative director.

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