Hasta La Creative!

Erwin Penland has hired Scott Voege to serve as senior vice president, group account director in its Greenville, South Carolina headquarters.

In the new role, Voege will be focus on leading and growing the agency’s Denny’s and Pilot/Flying J accounts, while reporting directly to managing director Karen Mawhinney, who was promoted to that newly-created role last month.

Voege joins Erwin Penland from McKinney, where he has served as an account director since November of 2010, focusing on the agency’s Nationwide Insurance business.

For context, Nationwide ended its 7-year relationship with McKinney in February and — as we reported the following day — sent the entirety of its business to legacy agency Ogilvy & Mather after that shop fired the top two creatives on the account.

Prior to joining McKinney, Voege served a short stint as vice president, account director on Allstate Insurance at Leo Burnett, following a year as an account director with Chicago agency twoxfour advertising, working with clients including Bridgestone/Firestone and Grainger. Before that he spent time nearly two years with Lisa P. Maxwell as group client partnership director and then director of client partnership, working with clients such as Boyd Gaming, Blue Chip Casino, David Barton Gym and Waterton Residential. He has also held account director and account supervisor positions with the Chicago Creative Partnership and Campbell-Ewald.

“It makes great cocktail napkins, bookmarks, facial tissues. But you know what’s best to do with it!” Yes, Durham, N.C., agency McKinney knows where its home state’s controversial House Bill 2 belongs—in the toilet.

The Charlotte City Council passed a nondiscrimination ordinance in February that included a rule allowing transgender people to use public restrooms assigned to the gender with which they identify. Furious opposition groups supported by Gov. Pat McCrory then ran ads arguing that the ordinance would make it easier for male sexual predators to get closer to victims by posing as women. 

The state legislature later called a special session to pass “HB2,” which requires all North Carolina residents to use the public restrooms associated with their birth gender. The move has enraged civil liberties groups nationwide, and North Carolina has been the focus of plenty of backlash over HB2. 

McKinney proposes a solution to the HB2 problem: Flush it. And they mean this quite literally, as you’ll see in the video below.

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Following “Home for the Holidays,” McKinney’s holiday spot for the Samsung Galaxy Tab S starring Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard, the agency has brought the Hollywood couple back for a pair of spots showing off Samsung’s home appliances.

In “Crushing Dinner Parties with Samsung Home Appliances,” Kristen and Dax frantically prepare for a dinner party for “six adults, four toddlers and a baby” (or, as Dax puts it, “We’ll host a circus.”). The 60-second spot shows how, with help from Samsung appliances, the seemingly impossible task is not all that hard. In fact, it’s easy enough that when all their friends cancel on them, Kristen and Dax don’t even seem to mind. Another spot shows Samsung’s Activewash Top Load Washer coming to the rescue when their baby’s stuffed doll, Lamby, takes a juice box to the face. The approach is very much the same as with McKinnney’s previous spots starring the couple: integrating Samsung products into snippets designed to portray the couple’s everyday life. If you found the cuteness overload too much to take before, you’d be advised to skip these. If, on the other hand, you can’t get enough of Kristen and Dax, there’s also a behind-the-scenes clip that runs almost ten minutes long (featured below, following the Samsung Activewash spot).

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.

McKinney has recently been pushing its creatives to work on projects that have nothing to do with clients in an effort labeled “McKinney Ten Percent.” Past work has included the Twitter influencer tool Crows Nest and SPENT, an interactive game simulating homelessness. (Tagline: “It’s Just Stuff. Until You Don’t Have It.“)

The agency’s latest such work is a Valentine’s Day-themed stunt to help bitter exes get over their recent breakups. The idea is that you send a pic to @ShredYourEx and watch it get, well, shredded.

Here’s the first contextual video, which appears to be a case study of a failed relationship between a copywriter and an account manager (just kidding):

Because this project is all about charity, here’s a mention of cat poop:

McKinney Copywriter Dylan Meagher told us more about the project:

“We realized that Valentine’s Day sucks for a lot of people. We created ShredYourEx.tv to give all those cold hearts the chance to warm up by a fire — a fire fueled by spite.”

Sounds perfect for our readers.

“Using Instagram or Twitter, simply send @ShredYourEx a picture of your ex tagged with #ShredYourEx to watch it print directly into our commercial-grade shredder on ShredYourEx.tv. And if that wasn’t enough, all shreds are donated to Paws4Ever, a local animal shelter, and used as litter for their kittens.

Just let that visual sink in.

McKinney’s #ShredYourEx provides a public service to the broken-hearted living in a digital world.  In the old days, you could burn or rip those pictures of your ex stashed under your bed. You can’t do that with a digital photo, and simply deleting it doesn’t offer the same satisfaction as physically destroying it. So on a day when you’re bombarded with sad reminders of old flames, we’re here to help.”

On the “how we did it”:

“In order to take Instagram and Twitter information from the Web directly to a printer, we hacked the printer API, which uses the Common Unix Printing System (or CUPS).

A thin PHP wrapper checks Instagram and Twitter user information for three things: mention of the @ShredYourEx handle, the hashtag #ShredYourEx and an image. If a post contains all three, ShredYourEx sends the image directly to the printer.

True heartbreak deserves more than deletion. Experience the kind of catharsis possible only through physical ruin with #ShredYourEx.”

The project unfortunately appears to have grown a bit too popular for its own good:

Annnd we’re back up and running! You guys almost broke the machine last night with all the posts. Keep it up! pic.twitter.com/SJuN8LEHA1

— ShredYourEx (@ShredYourEx) February 12, 2015

And so our lonely stock photo of Mila Kunis waits to be shredded.

Maybe the algorithm doesn’t consider what we had together a “relationship.” Our faith in artificial intelligence has been restored.

Over the past several months we’ve received a stream of tips regarding Nationwide, one of the country’s more generous advertisers with a measured spend upwards of $300M per year.

First, we learned that Nationwide had signed Ogilvy, which created its classic “on your side” tagline, for a campaign starring Peyton Manning that would run throughout the football season. The first ad in that series debuted, along with the client’s new logo, in September.

We continue to receive a number of tips regarding the client, and “mum” remains the word on its upcoming Super Bowl spot, which will mark the brand’s return to the big game after eight years.

One thing is clear: as per our headline, Nationwide is making changes to its agency roster. Many of the recent tips concerned Moxie, and here’s the corporate statement:

“We continue to have a relationship with Moxie. They are currently working on other projects for us and, like all companies, we evaluate work scope in a flexible manner throughout the year.”

The agency has not responded to repeated requests for comment, but this quote reads as if the client has transferred some aspects of its work with NASCAR from Moxie to an unnamed party. For context, the agency produced a series of ads starring driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. in recent years and the brand will continue to sponsor him. Sources tell us that the change will almost certainly affect staffers at the agency’s Columbus, Ohio office; Nationwide is currently its biggest client.

McKinney refrained from commenting on the business other than to restate its status as the client’s official creative agency of record.

Given Manning’s cachet and the recent rebranding, odds regarding Nationwide’s Super Bowl ad lean strongly toward Ogilvy.

Back in September, McKinney created an ad for Samsung starring the almost-too-cute Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard preparing for a night out only to stay in wasting time on their Galaxy Tab S. Now the couple has returned in a holiday effort for Samsung, presumably also from McKinney that sees Dax decorating the house with a little help from a very pregnant Kristen.

In the spot, entitled “Home for the Holidays,” the couple communicates via video as Dax scours the attic for decorations and goes to the store for holiday treats and Dax shows off Samsung’s smart watch when he takes a call from Kristen while setting up lights on the roof. When they finally complete decorating and switch the lights on Kristen says suggestively, “You know what this gets me in the mood for?” — but it’s not what you think. Viewers who enjoyed the cutesy appeal of the couple’s previous Samsung ad will find plenty to like here. Those who found that spot a little cute for its own good will probably want to skip this one.

If you’re wondering how close to real life the couple’s antics in the spot are, the answer is pretty close. According to Todd Pendleton, chief marketing officer at Samsung Telecommunications America, “Kristen and Dax go big for the holidays and their traditions from wearing matching pajamas and sweaters to decorating the house Griswold style are all true to what they do in real life.”

(more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Samsung finally lets up on Apple in its latest spot, instead getting cozy with cute real-life couple Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard.

In the 90-second spot, the couple continuously ditch other plans in favor of staying in and entertaining themselves with the Samsung Galaxy Tab S. It’s a clever idea, and both the execution and the decision to go with an actual couple lend it an air of believability.

The spot begins with Shepard marveling at Bell’s tiny fingers. “How do you even hold things with these little guys?” he asks. This gives an indication of the tone for the rest of the spot, which may spell cuteness overload for some but has already picked up over 5 million views on YouTube in three days. “Hey, we promised we’d hike,” he then reminds her, only for the couple to spend the rest of the day on the Galaxy Tab S wasting time. (The only time either ventures outside the house is when Shepard picks up food to satisfy Bell’s pregnancy cravings.) At one point the couple dress up for an event, but get distracted and soon realize it ended hours ago.

It’s a refreshing approach for Samsung, and a welcome departure from what has become routine Apple-bashing. No word yet on whether this was created by Samsung’s agency of record 72andSunny or in-house, but we will update with that information when we receive it.

Update: We’ve received word that the spot was in fact created by McKinney.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

McKinney has launched a new campaign courting millenial ears for Sennheiser, focusing on the company’s Urbanite brand.

The campaign is centered around  series of videos featuring a man with a German accent in a Sennheiser Urbanite costume and a giant ear. Both the headphone costume and the giant ear (which weighs in at 200 pounds) were created by Legacy Effects. In the 90-second launch spot, the Urbanite-dressed man professes his love for ears, and things get a little creepy as he demonstrates the various ways he pleasures ears on the giant ear prop. He assures viewers that he will lavish just as much attention on their ears. Other spots, all of which are hosted at Sennheiser’s campaign landing page, see him singing to an ear and explaining that he’s often asked to leave public places.

Starting today, Sennheiser will also be giving away 1,000 “Golden Ears,” which they’ve hidden around New York City, “on 11”x17” posters hanging in record stores, restaurants, boutiques and other locations frequented by millennials.” Each poster contains a removable golden ear, which can be redeemed for a pair of Urbanites “at the Ear Love Palace, a pop-up experience store at 1 Rivington Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.” Participants can also visit http://sennheiser-urbanite.com and share one of the campaign videos using the hashtag #EarLove for clues on the whereabouts of the Golden Ears. So what is listening to music on Sennheiser Urbanite’s like? Stay with us after the jump to find out. (more…)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Do you enjoy looking at adorable animals and singing along to “Thank You for Being a Friend,” the Andrew Gold song whose cover by Cynthia Fee rightfully belongs to Blanche, Rose, Sophia and Dorothy from The Golden Girls?

Then ESPN’s new spot by McKinney is for you.

Well, you and the mascots for Mississippi State (“Bully”), Arkansas (“Tusk”), Texas A&M (“Reveille”), Auburn (“War Eagle”), Louisiana State (“Mike”), Georgia (“Uga”), South Carolina (“Sir Big Spur”) and Tennessee (“Smokey”).

The ad, “Animals,” features the mascots for the Southeastern Conference schools to help launch the SEC Network, a new national sports network from ESPN that debuts Aug. 14.

Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: ESPN
Spot: “Animals”
Agency: McKinney
Chief Creative Officer: Jonathan Cude
Associate Creative Director: Matt Trego
Art Director: Jordan Eakin
Copywriters: Roger Fish, David Sloan
Agency Producer: Naomi Newman
Director: Michael Lawrence