Hasta La Creative!

Today in news we missed because of all the Super Bowl nonsense, FCB apparently lost the KFC creative account to Wieden+Kennedy after more than ten years — a period during which the agency produced a wide variety of work for the client.

A source who didn’t speak to us told Maureen Morrison of AdAge that the two agencies faced off in a closed pitch from which Wieden emerged victorious.

No one involved would confirm the story, but one year ago KFC’s parent company hired a new CMO — a move that often portends doom for a client’s agency of record. Coincidentally, that very CMO spent many years at Procter & Gamble and served as the North American marketing director for Old Spice when W+K launched “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like.”

The internal memo from CCO Todd Tilford and Chicago President Michael Fassnacht reads as both disappointed and puzzled:

“We have done incredibly strong work for KFC over the last 10 years, especially over the last 24 months…In 2014, KFC was the most social [quick-service restaurant] brand in North America, was ranked as the second most engaging QSR brand by Forbes in November 2014, and enjoyed very strong sales results over the last nine months that outshine the rest of the QSR category. We expect this trend to continue in 2015 while our new work runs nationwide.”

The news marks Wieden+Kennedy’s biggest win since Verizon less than three weeks ago.

In other KFC news, McCann Erickson continues to serve as the brand’s AOR in Romania, where “Rich Kids of Instagram” remains a topic of considerable interest among young people. To promote the client’s new Smart (read: cheap) Menu, the agency challenged Romanian teens and others to “recreate” the most popular shots to appear under that hashtag…minus all the money and expensive crap it buys.

Here are a couple of selections from the resulting tumblr page with a hashtag that translates to “little money, big fun”:

The kids are clever, but without formal training they probably won’t get hired by W+K.

Coca-Cola has released a series of teasers for its “Make It Happy” Super Bowl ad from Wieden + Kennedy which manage to keep the spot a bit of a mystery.

In the 30-second “Reactions” (featured above) for example, people are showed reacting to the ad with what we assume is meant to be a kind of surprised awe, ending with the line “The Internet May Never Be The Same.” The other two trailers, coupled with the #MakeItHappy hashtag and a rather cryptic press release make it clear that the brand’s big game ad will address “online negativity” (we have no idea what they could be referring to by this term) and position Coca-Cola as an opposing force to “Make It Happy.”

The brand will run its 60-second ad during the first quarter of the Super Bowl. Leading up to its unveiling, the brand will release four online vignettes featuring “personal stories of online negativity from teens and adults who have experienced it up close.” The first of these, focusing on Kid President, has already been uploaded to the brand’s YouTube page with Danica Patrick and Michael Sam set to appear as well. We’re also told the teaser clips, which will begin broadcasting today, offer glimpses of material that will appear in the final ad.

“We’re all surrounded by stories of online negativity, and it’s a concern that only continues to grow within society,” said Andy McMillin, VP and GM,Coca-Cola Trademark Brands, in a statement. “We hope this campaign inspires people across the country and around the world to show more positivity in their online actions, and to stop and think before posting a negative comment.”

This morning we learned that Weight Watchers, which made news last April by leaving McCann New York for Wieden+Kennedy after seven years with the former agency, will run its first-ever Super Bowl ad during this year’s game on February 1st.

The decision to advertise during the Big Game marks the latest step in Weight Watchers’ marketing shift, which includes the new logo seen above. The client’s first Wieden+Kennedy campaign debuted in November, eschewing previous celebrity-heavy messaging tactics in favor of an emotional appeal to its members and their very human desire to “eat a snack.”

At the time, the company’s president told The New York Times that the decision to part ways with spokesperson Jessica Simpson reflected its efforts “both to distinguish itself from competitors and to better reflect the challenge of weight loss.”

Given the fact that Weight Watchers spends approximately $150M on measured media each year and that the NFL’s fastest-growing demographic is young women, the Super Bowl XLIX news does not come as a complete surprise — but this year will mark first time in the company’s 50+ year history that it has paid the more than $4M required to score a spot during the game.

In addition to Weight Watchers, W+K will run ads for TurboTax, Squarespace, and (possibly) Coca-Cola during Super Bowl XLIX.

We’ve reached out to both agency and client for comment; updates when we receive them.

The Amsterdam offices of Wieden+Kennedy and AQKA recently launched a new campaign to promote client Netflix in the UK, Ireland, The Netherlands and “The Nordics.”

The first spot aims to answer some of its own titular “Big Questions” with some hopeful maybes:

The second, more recent spot — first in a series of three — serves as another promo for Netflix original programming:

Future work will expand upon the “big questions” theme to reinforce the personalization available with the service. From Sean Condon of W+K Amsterdam:

“Some of the spots dramatise these moments of change in everyday situations; others tell bigger stories about how entertainment can have a profound effect on viewers’ lives – and diets. But they all build upon Netflix’s brand personality by bringing to life the brand’s fun, entertaining and unique personality through these compelling stories.”

Additional spots will launch later this month.

WIEDEN+KENNEDY AMSTERDAM

Executive Creative Director
Mark Bernath & Eric Quennoy

Creative Director
Sean Condon

Art Director
Jordi Luna

Copywriter
Diaa Mohamed & Evgeny Primachenko

Head of Content Production
Joe Togneri

Broadcast Producer
Ross Plummer

Planning Director
Martin Weigel

Group Account Director
Clare Pickens

Account Director
Eleanor Thodey

Account Manager
Charlotte Jongejan

Project Manager
Emma Williamson

Business Affairs
Emilie Douque

FILM PRODUCTION

PRODUCTION COMPANY
BISCUIT

Director
Aaron Stoller

Director of Photography
Henrik Stenberg

Producer
Mala Vassan

Executive Producer
Kate Taylor

EDITING COMPANY
PEEPSHOW, LONDON

Editor
Andrea Macarther, Amanda Perry.

AUDIO POST
WAVE SOUND STUDIOS, AMSTERDAM

Sound Designer/Mixer
Alex Nichols-Lee

MUSIC – BIG QUESTIONS

Artist / Title
Harry Lightfoot / “To Glory”

Music Company
Woodwork Music, UK

MUSIC – SARA

Artist / Title
Beacon Street Studios / “Jaunty”

Music Company
Beacon Street Studios, LA

POST PRODUCTION
GLASSWORKS AMSTERDAM

Colourist
Scott Harris

Lead Compositor / Supervisor
Morten Vinther

SR. VFX Producer
Anya Kruzmetra

Compositors
Kyle Obley, Jesper Nybroe

On-set VFX Supervision
Naomi Anderlini

3D Lead & Character Design
Simon Glas

Animation
Thomas Hinke

Additional Modelling & Rigging
Rudiger Kaltenhauser

Surfacing, light & rendering
Florian Breg

INTERACTIVE

DIGITAL AGENCY
AKQA

Creative Director
Ivar Eden

Associate Creative Director
Kim Baffi

Copywriter
Rachael Kendrick

Planning Director
Laurence Parkes

Senior Project Manager
Mikaela Westerberg

Production Manager
Dorothy Bany

Account Director
Cecile Desmarest

Client Partner
James Scott

Director of Delivery

 
Kristopher Smith

Film Director
Quentin van de Bossche

DIGITAL PRODUCTION
MEDIAMONKS

POST-PRODUCTION
GLASSWORKS AMSTERDAM

SOUND DESIGN
WAVE SOUND STUDIOS, AMSTERDAM

In anticipation of tonight’s matchup between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors, ESPN is airing a new “This is SportsCenter” spot from W+K New York featuring Warriors star Steph Curry.

Curry joins SportsCenter anchors Stan Verrett and Neil Everett in the ESPN cafeteria, where he thanks two cooks for (accidentally) celebrating his recent performance on the court by serving chicken curry. The anchors try to convince Curry it’s a coincidence, but he’s not buying it, even after the cooks’ confused glances. It’s one of the more fun SportsCenter spots in a while, as, even if the premise is a little obvious, Curry plays his part well enough to make it work.

There’s also a “Kitchen Warriors” installment in which Steph squares off against his wife, Ayesha Curry, to see who can make the better chicken curry. With their daughter Riley as the judge, it soon becomes clear Steph’s skills are on the court, not in the kitchen.

Note: credits only apply to the first spot; “Kitchen Warriors” was created by the client.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

W+K finds a unique and amusing way to call for entries to the 2015 Andy Award in a new campaign featuring a a member of a bomb squad, neurosurgeon and firefighter all discussing a career that takes real courage: advertising. Each spot ends with the tagline, “Where only the bravest get rewarded.”

In “Neurosurgeon” the discussion happens during brain surgery, as the surgeon in question asks, “How do you know when you sell an idea to a client that the idea is actually going to work?” He asks for the scalpel and then continues, “It’s like its one big conceptual umbrella and then what do you do with that?” He goes on with his hypothetical scenario, in which the client kills the idea in favor of a brand manifesto with “hard hitting VO,” he sighs. “And then wait ’til AgencySpy gets it,” the surgeon ads. “It’s brutal.”

In the other spots a firefighter marvels at the difficulty of balancing TV, digital and social, and the bomb squad member trembles at the thought of having to “come up with a groundbreaking social media campaign in a week.” Obviously the point of the ads is to point out that advertisers aren’t doing anything as courageous or important as saving lives, knocking down the self-importance of award shows a peg or two in the process. The videos are supported by display and social media ads depicting big name creatives like Gerry Graf, Susan Hoffman, Jeff Benjamin and Dan Wieden being congratulated by firefighters, astronauts, surgeons and the like. Stick around for “Hurt Locker” and “Firefighter” after the jump. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Old Spice this week unveiled “Dadsong,” its second lunatic 60-second musical via Wieden + Kennedy—the sequel to the award-winning “Momsong” from a year ago. Clearly, the music on a commercial like this isn’t just an important component—it’s the main component, around which everything revolves.

AdFreak caught up with Sara Matarazzo, owner of music company Walker, which coordinated the scoring and recording of the music, to ask how it all came together.

AdFreak: What was the brief for “Dadsong”?
Sara Matarazzo: We worked on the “Momsong” campaign, so the idea for this one was to create the second single off the “album.” The challenge was to create a track as good as the first while keeping the campaign consistent and cohesive.

Sara Matarazzo

How is “Dadsong” different from “Momsong,” creatively?
The key difference with “Dadsong” is that we introduced a new perspective to the story. We needed to juxtapose the moms’ feelings with the dads’ through the music. The main melody of “Momsong” was written in an unusually low female vocal range, which contributed to our purposefully homely performances. However, “Dadsong” utilizes a more traditional female range in order to allow the full male register to shine through. The new arrangement of voices helped accentuate that back and forth and allowed us to build the song up to a bigger climactic moment with voices hitting notes all over the pitch spectrum.

Walk us through the creative process.
We worked with Bret McKenzie and Mickey Petralia from Flight of the Conchords on board to compose the music. We have worked with Bret and Mickey on several ads over the years, so this was a nice reunion. We actually wanted to work with him on the first Old Spice spot but he was busy writing music for Muppets Most Wanted [following his Oscar-winning work on 2011’s The Muppets]. I told him, “We have the perfect campaign for you,” and he was available. Of course, he nailed it.

The process started with Bret and I going back and forth with the creatives at the agency to refine the music, melody, chords and arc. When we got to a place where the team was happy, Old Spice gave us the green light and production on the spot began in Prague with director Andreas Nilsson. Once we had rough picture, our music producer Abbey Hickman worked on [voice] casting with the agency to match our actors. Walker engineer Graeme Gibson oversaw working with our casting and creating demos to show all the possibilities and different directions our vocals could be, which helped to choose our favorite takes and piece together the elements. After the singers and musicians were selected, we went to Vancouver to direct and final record with them.

Musically, the spot feels a bit like the end of a big musical, when the entire cast does the last song. Is that something that was mentioned?
Yes, that was a reference. Mainstream musical theater nowadays is largely based off the past century of popular music (except for Stephen Sondheim and Jason Robert Brown musicals). Take Spring Awakening or Mama Mia, for instance. Both infuse contemporary rock and pop styles with dramatic content to be more relevant to the modern musical watcher … and sell more tickets. Furthermore, the most passionate songs in a musical are the numbers that bookend the acts and those songs usually utilize the entire cast. “Dadsong” is like the end of one of these musical numbers because it’s passionate, dramatic, musically modern and features a large ensemble.

Which particular musical styles or genres is the spot based on?
Classic rock ballads and operatic recitative.

How is working on a project like this different from other ads you do?
These spots are special because we are involved not just in post but from the beginning of the job and throughout the process. You collaborate on ideas that end up in the campaign. Music can be subjective and go through many mutations, but with this campaign, the song and the spot are one and the same.

Wieden + Kennedy recently created a pretty incredible out-of-home tourism installation for Travel Portland: the tallest freestanding cuckoo clock in the U.S.

Chainsaw sculptor J. Chester Armstrong carved the clock, made from a single Oregon maple, in the national forest just outside Portland. It took three months to make—with help from metal sculptor Nicolas Gros, clock designer/gear consultant Laurent Worme, electronics consultant Mark Keppinger, and local illustrator Patrick Long (who did the illustrations for the clock face). The clock features references to a number of Portland icons—Mt. Hood, Portlandia, beer, wine, bikers, farmers markets, roses, rivers, bridges and even Sasquatch.

W+K recently took the clock—which thematically ties into the “Portland Is Happening Now” campaign—to Seattle and Vancouver for tourism events in those cities. Every hour on the hour, hand-painted, wood-carved miniatures appear when the clock chimes. The events also featured “Portland-themed surprises, like coffee and donuts, a poet reading, a comedian performance, a tax-free tea party and naked bike riders,” the agency says.

The clock is 24.1 feet tall by 9.5 feet wide and weighs more than three tons. W+K is now looking for an indoor location in Portland to house the clock through the winter months. Check out more images below, all courtesy of the Portland Oregon Visitors Association/Travel Portland.

CREDITS
Client: Travel Portland
Project: “Portland Is Happening Now”

Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, Portland, Ore.
Creative Directors: Hal Curtis / Antony Goldstein / Jeff Gillete
Copywriter: Becca Wadlinger / Jared Elms / Ian Fairbrother
Art Director: Nate Nowinowksi
Designer: Patrick Nistler / Cassandra Swan
Media Team: Wieden + Kennedy
Interactive Strategy: Jocelin Shalom
Media/Comms Planning: Stephanie Ehui
Strategic Planning: Lisa Prince
Account Team: Ken Smith / Kristin Postill
Production: Byron Oshiro / Kristin Holder / Heather Hanrahan
Project Manager: Danna Dolich / Shannon Hutchinson
Studio Manager: Abby Marten
Executive Creative Directors: Joe Staples / Mark Fitzloff

Event Partners
Social Agency: Edelman Digital
Public Relations Agency: Lane PR
Digital Agency: Rally Group
Event Producer: Sue Cool

Design & Construction Team
Project leader and metal sculptor: Nicolas Gros (Nico),
Chainsaw carving: J. Chester Armstrong
Clock and gears design development / consultant: Laurent Worme
Microprocessor and pneumatic consultant: David Butts
Electronic consultant: Mark Keppinger
Welder: Cameron Visconty
Lead Carpenter: Matt Sykes
Fabricator: James Harrison
Lighting and carpentry assistant: Julia Zell
Carpenter: Dave Laubenthal
Sign paint: Ardis Defreece
Miniatures and Clock Face Painting: José Solis

Heard of Oculus Rift but still not sure what it is, exactly? Now you can become a little more familiar with the experience thanks to Wieden+Kennedy Portland.

But first, this September entry from W+K for client Chrysler is less an ad than a short “making of” documentary about the company’s interactive factory tour project:

New work after the jump.

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

W+K Portland launched a campaign for Nike’s Hyperwarm line with the 60-second broadcast spot “Choose Your Winter.”

The spot enlists an unexpected guest for the brand in Chris O’Dowd (who you probably remember as Kristen Wiig‘s love interest in Bridesmaids). O’Dowd plays an alarmist newscaster making dire predictions about a “snow-mageddon” or “snow-tastrophe” — even claiming that ancient man went extinct during the Ice Age. His over-the-top warnings about the cold and snow are contrasted with images of athletes — including NFL stars Aaron Rodgers and Jordy Nelson, figure skater Gracie Gold, soccer players Clint Dempsey and Brad Evans, middle distance runner Mary Cain and snowboarder Johnnie Paxson — decked out in Nike Hyperwarm and powering through the cold. The message is clear and effective: you can exaggerate the effects of the cold and use it as an all encompassing excuse or you can tough it out with help from Nike. 

Nike told Adweek the spot is the first in a series. Athletes who will appear in future spots include NHL star Dion Phaneuf and Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig, who is currently playing in the 2014 Major League Baseball Japan All-Star Series.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.