Mercedes Benz Austria: Shadow

Mercedes Benz Austria: Shadow

Incredible acceleration: the CL 63 AMG with 514 hp.

Advertising Agency: Jung von Matt/Donau, Vienna, Austria
Creative Directors: Andreas Putz, Volkmar Weiss
Art Director: Volkmar Weiss
Copywriter: Thomas Niederdorfer
Illustrator: Dian Warsosumarto
Account Supervisors: Peter Hoerlezeder, Judith Zingerle
Production: Butterflies & Bunnyrabbits
Illustration: Busk/Cmod, Deep Inc
Published: November 2007

Centrum / Whitehall-Much: Thinker

Centrum / Whitehall-Much: Thinker

Nutrients for the brain.

Advertising Agency: GREY Duesseldorf, Germany
Creative Directors: Frank Dopheide, Lindsay Cullen
Art Directors: Eric Straub, Chris Voutsas
Copywriters: Joern Sonnenberg, Micha Walmsley
Photographer: Anja Frers
Digital Composing: Andreas Furtner, Rotfilter Wien

Urban Home Furniture: Tree

Urban Home Furniture: Tree

Solid wood furniture. Lovingly crafted from the finest ingredients.

Advertising Agency: Square One, Dallas, Texas
Creative Director: Kevin Sutton
Art Directors: Jay Russell, Scott Brewer
Copywriters: Wade Alger, Hayden Gilbert, Kevin Sutton
Photographer: Scott Harben

Urban Home Furniture: Swan

Urban Home Furniture: Swan

Down-filled furniture. Lovingly crafted from the finest ingredients.

Advertising Agency: Square One, Dallas, Texas
Creative Director: Kevin Sutton
Art Directors: Jay Russell, Scott Brewer
Copywriters: Wade Alger, Hayden Gilbert, Kevin Sutton
Photographer: Scott Harben

Urban Home Furniture: Cow

Urban Home Furniture: Cow

The leather collection. Lovingly crafted from the finest ingredients.

Advertising Agency: Square One, Dallas, Texas
Creative Director: Kevin Sutton
Art Directors: Jay Russell, Scott Brewer
Copywriters: Wade Alger, Hayden Gilbert, Kevin Sutton
Photographer: Scott Harben

GNC Names Kaplan President; Will Also Lead Marketing

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Retail marketing vet Beth J. Kaplan has been chosen to lead marketing and merchandising efforts for health-store chain General Nutrition Centers.

Microsoft Narrows to Crispin, Fallon

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Microsoft has narrowed its search for an agency to handle creative for a $200 million to $300 million consumer-products blitz slated to launch next year to two: MDC Partners' Crispin Porter & Bogusky and Publicis Groupe's Fallon.

FREAKIEST ADVERTISING MOMENT OF 2007: Dexter’s viral defeats Pioneer for the title

Dexter After two weeks of brutal competition, the viral campaign for the Showtime program Dexter, which encouraged you to send terrifying videos to friends suggesting they were about to be offed by a serial killer, has won AdFreak’s Freakiest Ad Moment of 2007 contest. Pioneer’s laughing eyeballs put up a good fight but are no longer laughing, as Dexter prevails with about 55 percent of the final vote. Kudos also go to Canada’s Lost Jaw guy and Skittles’ milked man for making impressive runs to the Final Four, despite their rather obvious physiological handicaps. (See the final bracket here.) We believe that the British digital ad agency Ralph created the Dexter viral, so we’ll get a nice champions’ package together for them. Failing that, we may just send them a threatening e-mail. Thanks to all of you for voting. And keep the freaky ads coming.

—Posted by Tim Nudd

Japanese-ness in Japanese Contemporary Art: ‘Roppongi Crossing: Future Beats in Japanese Contemporary Culture’

0aaropong.jpgPostings will be slow as i’m currently running from one exhibition to the other in Lyon, Brussels, Gent, etc. and visiting my family and friends around. Normal service will resume on December 27. Meanwhile, Vicente Gutierrez visited yet another Tokyo art exhibition and sent us a report from it:

A follow up to the 2004 version, the 36 artists featured in Roppongi Crossing were selected by a team of four curators to introduce new emergent talent from Japan while juxtaposing such work alongside influential Japanese artists from the formative decades of the 1960s and 1970s. With both group’s work spanning the spectrum of painting, sculpture, design, video, photography, manga as well as a side of traditional craftwork [with the deliberate exception of architecture and fashion], this exhibit is meant to take the pulse of the Japanese contemporary art scene.

That this team of curators brought them together for this exhibit raises a question- What unites these artists? Is there a kind of Japanese-ness that acts as a gravity? Roppongi Crossing is another high-profile exhibit grouping Japanese artists in recent months which leads me to believe it is curators who have been more focused on asserting a unifying sense of Japanese-ness in the contemporary scene rather than the artists themselves. Meanwhile, younger artists have found themselves confronted with a choice to perceive this Japanese-ness as a unifying theme or as a departure point for themselves.

Some selections on exhibit until January 14, 2008:

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Sato Masahiko + Kiriyama Takashi, Arithmetik Garden 2007. Photo: Kioku Keizo

Sato Masahiko and Kiriyama Takashi employed RFID technology into an interactive installation whereby participants select a card with a number on it to hang around their neck, essentially becoming a number themselves. Each card is embedded with an RFID chip and participants must pass through the various gates in the mathematical garden with the goal of attaining the total of 73 via various math operations before [successfully] exiting. The computer in the corner tracks user’s steps as well as their current “number.”

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Enoki Chu, RPM-1200, 2005. Hirakakiuchi Yuto courtesy of Mori Art Museum.

Viewable from within the center or from a recessed observation deck, RPM-1200 [2005] by Enoki Chu is a futuristic cityscape characterized by highly detailed craftwork with [scrap] metal. Popular since the 1960s, the veteran metalsmith crosses his highly detailed craftsmanship with a scaled-down design installation of an urban landscape right out of a science fiction film.

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Iwasaki Takahiro, Reflection Model, 2001. Photo: Tomoeda Nozomi and Nawa Kohei, Scum-Compulsion, 2007. Photo: Kioku Keizo

The traditional side of the exhibit emerges from this meticulously constructed scaled-down replica of the much-revered Kinkakuji temple [and it’s reflection, slightly offset for refraction] in Kyoto by Iwasaki Takahiro. Iwasaki’s exercise of restraint and good taste at the same time allows us to see a side of Japan’s orderliness and cleanliness in presentation. Meanwhile, Nawa Kohei’s amorphous sculptures command whatever room they are in, an embodiment of chaos in sculpture. While what is abstract makes deciphering more difficult, Nawa Kohei’s sprawl of white styrofoam is set alongside Kito Kengo’s colorful, spinning hypnosis-inducing polyhedron.

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Image on the right: Kito Kengo, Royal, 2007. Photo: Kioku Keizo

Entitled Royal, Kito’s colorful and vibrantly visual polyhedron is equipped with small propeller blades and although quietly humming, draws more attention from our eyes than our ears. That their works were intentionally juxtaposed radically reminds us of the varied directions within the younger camp of emergent artists.

Yamaguchi Takashi’s algorithm-based interactive models place us in a new environment where we question the effects of our behavior and perceptions of [virtual] data. Centered around a generative-code program, the featured physical-interaction-digital-realization, interactive model pits two drummers against each other in a virtual space where a grounded colorful grid modulates while each drummer plays.

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Yamaguchi Takashi, d.v.d.

Roppongi Crossing exhibit does say a lot about what these four Japanese curators will label as Japanese ‘art’ and as a survey show, the grouping of the 36 artists seemed to result in more fractions than a complete image. Perhaps a more apt title for the exhibit would be questioning what is ‘Japanese-ness’ is Japanese contemporary art- Where do young artists think they are coming from and going which may paint a clearer picture of the Japanese contemporary art scene, although, before we know it, will be time for the next Roppongi Crossing.

All images Courtesy of Mori Art Museum

“Roppongi Crossing 2007 — Future Beats in Japanese Contemporary Art”
Until Jan. 14 2008 at the Mori Art Museum in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo.

BBDO to Lead All-Omnicom Lineup for Braun

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Braun has become the latest Procter & Gamble Co. brand to adopt a holding-company assignment, with longtime creative shop BBDO Worldwide to lead an all-Omnicom Group cast of marketing-services agencies, according to P&G.

Hire Slowly, Fire Fast, Part 2

I obviously hit a nerve with my last posting on why you should take your time in the interviewing process. And be swift and decisive if you make a hiring mistake.

Brand Republic’s top stories of 2007

As Brand Republic takes a break for Christmas and the New Year, we leave you with a 10-part round-up of 2007 as told through some of the site’s most-read stories, from Brand Republic, Campaign, Marketing and Media Week.

Duplantinia: Yes

Duplantinia: Yes

For every single ‘no’ your creative director said, which after hard work finally turned into much more than a ‘yes’.

Advertising Agency: Duplantinia BsAs Argentina
Creative Directors: Andrés Benavides, Juan Sasiaín
Art Director: Andrés Benavides
Copywriter: Juan Sasiaín

Duplantinia: Double gay

Duplantinia: Double gay

For all those nights you spent with your creative mate, even your girlfriend tought you were gay.
Merry Christmas.

Advertising Agency: Duplantinia BsAs Argentina
Creative Directors: Andrés Benavides, Juan Sasiaín
Art Director: Andrés Benavides
Copywriter: Juan Sasiaín

Guardian Media Group and Apax land Emap B2B division

LONDON – Emap has agreed to sell its business-to-business division to Guardian Media Group and Apax for around £1.3bn, only days after stating the business was off the auction block.

Eagles take road out of Eden into Facebook

Donhenley
The Nation
has finally discovered Facebook. Ari Melber has written a lengthy piece about how the site is killing personal privacy. Of course, privacy by any reasonable definition died long ago, but the essay is thorough and well reasoned, at one point positing, “Like guests at the Hotel California, people who check out of Facebook have a hard time leaving. Profiles of former members are preserved in case people want to reactivate their accounts. And all users’ digital selves can outlive their creators.” Which made me wonder: Just how popular are the Eagles on the social networking site? Well, pretty darn popular! As a band they have 545,000-plus fans. Don Henley has 11,811 fans, but a bad ’70s ’fro. That hair can check out any time it likes. Glen Frey (with one N) has just 173 fans, while Glenn Frey (with two N’s, he’s the “real one”) has 849. As far as privacy goes, the Eagles put it most succinctly: “We are all just prisoners here, of our own device.” Think about it. Ari, by the way, has no Facebook profile I could find. Sign up, Ari! Maybe Glen Frey will poke you. It won’t be the famous one, but it’s a start!

—Posted by David Gianatasio

Christmas campaign for Pause ljud och bild.

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³UNUSUALLY² is a communication concept we have incorporated into everything we create for Pause
(an exclusive chain of HiFi stores). This campaigned was aimed at film enthusiasts, and communicates the film that should be experienced using the high-end products that Pause ljud och bild sell.

read more

Wake up to a tasty serving of Cox Sausage

Dewey Cox, soon to grace movie screens in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, wouldn’t be much of a fake celebrity if he didn’t have a fake product to shill. Hence, this spot for Cox Sausage, in which the jokes all but send a telegram to let you know they’re coming. Still, hearing about the “big Cox smoker” got a snort out of me. This actually looks like an interesting flick, and we’ll have to see if his hearty appetite for Cox Sausage contributes to the inevitable bloated, purple, dead-on-the-toilet phase of his career.

—Posted by David Kiefaber

Let the Unwrapping Begin: Day 5

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — We're at Day Five of the annual Ad Age Swag Watch, in which we share with all of you what you all have been kind enough to share with us, including some virtual swag that gives back in far-flung parts of the world. Ad Age-ers are still harassing the mailroom folks and pouncing on any packages that look like they might contain chocolate or booze, and we've been rewarded for our zeal, especially in the chocolate department. Here's a look at the final batch of gifts. And a sincere thank you to all. Happy Holidays!

Weight Watchers hands £10m media account to OMD

LONDON – Weight Watchers has awarded its £10m UK media planning and buying account to OMD, after a four-way pitch.