Hasta La Creative!

Remember The Red Baloon? The 1956 short by French director Albert Lamorisse has become something of a childhood staple and the film, which won both an Oscar for best original screenplay and a Palme d’Or, is generally remembered fondly by kids and film students everywhere.

TBWAMedia Arts Lab seems to have looked to the film for inspiration (we’re not the only ones to make the comparison) in its new spot promoting the iPhone 7’s new expressive messages capability, allowing users to send animated messages including, yep, balloons.

The spot opens on a solitary red balloon, which floats out a window, across mountains and forests to the city. There it is met by a swarm of balloons of all different colors before reaching its ultimate destination.

That description probably sounds pretty familiar if you’re acquainted with the aforementioned Albert Lamorisse film, but the 60-second spot comes across as an homage rather than a mere rip-off. Its cinematic scenes are well constructed and ultimately in service of a message that is well tied to a feature of the product. If it takes “Baloons” awhile to get to the point, its eye candy should entice viewers enough to get them there.

The spot is the latest in the brand’s “Practically Magic” campaign for the new iPhone, which launched earlier this month with TBWAMAL’s “Midnight” and the in-house effort “Morning Ride.”

This isn’t the first ad to focus on a red balloon, though the homage in W+K’s 2014 animated Coca-Cola spot was a little less direct.

TBWAMedia Arts Lab launched its first big effort for the new iPhone 7, focusing on the phone’s low-light camera in the 60-second broadcast spot “Midnight.”

The spot shows off the new iPhone’s low-light camera via a boy skateboarding around town and taking photos in the middle of the night. Set to “In A Black Out” by Hamilton Leithauser and Rostam, the spot follows the young photographers as he takes shots of moths around a lightbulb, sprinklers going off in a yard (touching on the phone’s water resistance as well), a deer roaming around a gas station and the moon over a cityscape below.

As you would expect from an centering on the phone’s perks for photography, it’s all very beautifully shot. The attention to detail in the lighting and cinematography is a step up from Apple’s usual offerings and the scene is paced well to the musical selection. It’s also not hard to see why Apple and TBWAMAL chose the approach, as the iPhone’s camera has consistently been a selling point for the brand.

“Midnight” made its broadcast debut last night during the Emmy’s and was joined by another spot promoting the iPhone 7, “Morning Ride.” The 30-second, in-house spot gives the water resistance feature center stage. It focuses on a bicyclist preparing to go out on a morning ride, in the middle of a thunderous rainstorm, concluding with the “Perfectly Magic” just as his garage door opens.

Water resistance is also one of the features promoted in “Go Time,” the brand’s in-house production for the Apple Watch Series 2. Set to the Nina Simone classic “Sinnerman,” the spot features a montage of users showing off various features, among them the aforementioned water resistance (up to 50 meters) and built-in GPS. The usual crowd is targeted, with Apple Watch users in the ad including both dedicated workout enthusiasts and young people who just want the latest accessory.

Back in March, we posted on chief strategy officer Rebecca Stambanis and executive creative director Jorge Calleja joining TBWAMedia Arts Lab following the departures of Marc-Antoine Jarry and Eric Grunbaum the previous month.

Now, less than six months later, both Stambanis and Calleja are no longer with the agency.

Executive director of integration Kaitlyn Wilkins, who joined TBWAMedia Arts Lab in March after overseeing strategy and integration for all brand and product marketing campaigns at Burberry London, has also left the Apple shop. A spokesperson for TBWAMedia Arts Lab confirmed the departures, but declined to comment further.

Before joining TBWAMAL, Stambansis spent over five years at W+K Portland as global group strategy director on the Nike account. That followed over two and a half years as deputy director of brand strategy at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, working with clients including Nintendo, Comcast and Haagen-Dazs.

Calleja joined TBWAMAL following several years as executive creative director at The Martin Agency, leading the agency’s Tic Tac, Stoli and Mondelez accounts. He also spent time as a creative director with Sid Lee and W+K, where he focused on the Coca-Cola business.

The quick exits of Stambansis, Calleja and Wilkins mark the latest in a series of executive departures at Media Arts Lab. In addition to Jarry and Grunbaum leaving in February, worldwide managing director Dave Dreyer and executive creative director Steve Turner both left TBWAMedia Arts Lab in April.

Multiple parties alerted us to the pending news, but we have not yet received any word as to why they left the agency or why their departures came so soon after the initial hiring news.

Today TBWAMedia Arts Lab launched “The Human Family,” the latest in its “Shot on an iPhone” campaign for Apple.

The spot takes a different tone then past efforts in the campaign with narration Maya Angelou, who reads from her poem “Human Family.”

In its images as well as the words, the spot celebrates the similarities of that family, underscoring how “We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.” Set to a dramatic piano score, Angelou’s narration is paired with a series of images shot, of course, on the iPhone 6S, which represent people’s differences, similarities and human connections.

It’s quite the departure from “Onions,” the 60-second spot TBWAMedia Arts Lab released to promote the iPhone 6S back in April.

At the time, we appreciated that the agency was keeping things light for Apple, but while “The Human Family” takes a more serious approach for the brand, it works. That’s largely thanks to Angelou, whose words and strong narration make what is otherwise just a slide show of photos and video seem like something more substantive.

We do still kind of miss Cookie Monster, though.

In case Lee Clow‘s commitment to Apple’s advertising weren’t already clear enough, he’s officially made it permanent.

A new video shows the industry icon getting inked by well-known tattoo artist Scott Campbell, to mark the 10th anniversary of TBWAMedia Arts Lab, the Omnicom agency’s dedicated Apple wing.

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TBWA/Media Arts Lab launched a new spot celebrating the popularity of Apple’s iPhone among its userbase, entitled “Loved.”
The spot even claims that “99 percent of people that have an iPhone, love their iPhone,” which it claims makes the device unique. Without going into detail about what sets the device apart, the 30-second spot champions the device as the smart phone to have. It does show off the phone in action, in split-scene shots of two, three, four and then dozens of the device all engaging in related tasks before ending with the unfortunate tagline, “If it’s not an iPhone. It’s not an iPhone.” Still, it would have been nice if TBWA/MAL could have done a little more to point out what exactly makes the phone so “Loved” as the action of the spot is ambiguous and a bit flat. Surely some of those iPhone-lovers could offer some insight into what sets the device apart from the rest. As it is, detractors can point to the lack of substance as indicative that it’s the hype itself that makes people flock to the iPhone, but perhaps TBWA/MAL will get more specific in future ads.

In case you caught some of Apple’s super epic product launch event yesterday amidst all the Chinese translations and tech glitches, the company announced new versions of its signature product along with the much-discussed Apple Watch. Apple and its AOR TBWAMedia Arts Lab also launched a couple of new spots to promote the iPhone 6 and the slightly larger iPhone 6, which includes the “Plus” designation.

The celebrity hand models are Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake. In the first spot, the two break it down in what we choose to read as a (slightly off-key) a capella tribute to the late, great Stanley Kubrick:

The second spot is more straightforward, and it’s less a collaboration than a competition. (Spoiler: JT wins.)

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Only Child, aka the directorial project of former DDB creatives Mike Andrews and Daniel Mabe, is one of the many parties merging to form newly launched L.A. production studio Joinery.

Principals include veteran director Paul Dektor, producer Richard Gladstein (“Pulp Fiction”, “The Bourne Identity”), and Leslie Dektor, all of whom will work under former Believe Media executive producer Gerard Cantor.

On the directorial front, the lineup also includes Lasse Hallstrom (“What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”) as well as John Curran, Rob Feng, David Masters, Bo Platt, filmmaking/motion design studio ‘weareflink’ and video artists ‘Objective.’

Peter Mertz and Alvaro Chacon, both of whom spent time at TBWA/Media Arts Lab, will serve as digital producers.

The agency’s name comes from the tradition of “joiners” who used carpenters’ raw material to create new pieces without using nails, screws or other fasteners.

Current clients include HP, Bayer, Bombay Sapphire and McDonald’s.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Apple's ads haven't been the gold standard for a while, and "Metal Mastered," the first TV spot for the iPhone 5S—following several for the 5C—won't make anyone think different.

The 30-second commercial, which broke Sunday during Fox's NFL coverage, shows liquid gold forming into an iPhone. "Ohh La La" by Goldfrapp, which has been used in ads for other brands, including Motorola, plays on the soundtrack. This is apparently an edited version of a video shown at the big iPhone unveiling last month. On the one hand, it's a good-looking piece of work, and it scores by reminding folks that the iPhone 5S comes in gold (jokingly dubbed "The Kardashian Phone" by some Apple employees), and by dropping the oft-derided tagline "Designed by Apple in California" that graced some recent ads. Still, such swirling-fluid imagery is nothing new. It would look equally at home in spots for chocolate, cola, motor oil, liquor or Velveeta.

Overall, "Metal Mastered" feels like a quickie placeholder tossed into the mix while the company and its lead agency, TBWA\Media Arts Lab, strive to unlock the deeper magic of the brand.

Apple has always been all or nothing when it comes to color. "1984" was all doom and gloom with just a flash of red running shorts. "Think Different" was mostly black and white. The TV work, from "Switchers" to "Get a Mac" to most iPhone demos, has been lots of stark white. And yet Apple loves color—from the five hues of the original iMac through all the gloriously vibrant iPod advertising. Now, Apple can celebrate color again, with the iPhone 5C (the C itself stands for color), and here's the first commercial for it—a trippy, drippy little production that visually enlivens a brand that's seemed quite ashen of late. Seemingly taking its cues from candy advertising, the spot shows the phones solidifying into shape out of flowing liquid—in footage that would make Nestlé proud. Perhaps this is why the phone is priced lower. In a pinch, you could try eating it.