Surprise Resignation of Top 3 Executives Rocks Grey London

Grey London is reeling in the wake of three executive departures, all chairmen. CCO Nils LeonardCEO Lucy Jameson and managing director Natalie Graeme have all resigned.

“Nils Leonard, chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Grey London, and Lucy Jameson, CEO, will be leaving the agency to start a new venture,” Grey EMEA president and CEO David Patton said in a statement. “They have our most sincere thanks and best wishes for continued success.”

In the statement, Patton also announced that Leo Rayman will become CEO of Grey London, effective immediately. “Leo has done a superlative job as Chief Strategy Officer of the agency and brings a stellar background from his days at Adam & Eve and DDB,” he added.

More About Advertising reports that executive creative directors Vicki Maguire and Dominic Goldman will lead creative at Grey London going forward. 

Rayman joined Grey London as head of planning at the beginning of 2013, following a little over a year and a half in that position at Adam & Eve London. He was promoted to his position as CSO last March after Jameson became CEO in the wake of former CEO Chris Hirst‘s departure for Havas. Last December, global CCO and New York president Tor Myhren also left the agency, to join Apple as vice president of marketing communications and last month, 13-year agency veteran, executive creative director Stephen Krauss left Grey New York to become CCO at The Wonderful Company in Los Angeles. 

The departure seems to come as a surprise to the agency, as well as holding company WPP and the larger agency world. Adweek’s Tim Nudd had dinner with the three departing executives last week at Cannes. They mentioned nothing about their pending exit, and neither did the other Grey employees who attended the dinner.

Wheaties Is Now Making Beer, for Those Who Want a Different Breakfast of Champions

Wheaties is wheat cereal. Hefeweizen is wheat beer. Now, General Mills has done the inevitable and created a Wheaties-branded Hefeweizen in partnership with Minneapolis craft brewery Fulton.

“We were intrigued from the get-go on this idea for many reasons, including that we’re both Minneapolis companies, and that the beer and the cereal both started from the same place in terms of raw ingredients and the same city,” Fulton president and co-founder Ryan Petz says in this General Mills blog post.

“We had been sampling a number of Hefeweizens, so we had been discussing with the Wheaties team what we liked,” says Petz. “Someone on the team said HefeWheaties, and it kind of sprung out from there.”

Everything from the recipe to the can design was a collaboration, which came about simply because some General Mills employees are friends with some of the folks at Fulton. (Petz even worked at General Mills for a while.)

At least for now, you’ll have to travel to Minnesota to sample the stuff. Beginning Aug. 26, it will be available in the Twin Cities market in 4-pack cans of 16oz. tallboys. it won’t be available for shipment or purchase outside Minnesota.

“We’ll see how people react to it,” says Petz. “If it’s something everybody loves, we’ll obviously consider doing it again in a bigger and more widely distributed way in the future.”

Any Idea What These Remarkably Subtle Mercedes-Benz Ads Are Trying to Say?

Subtlety is a valuable thing in advertising, as consumers will always feel better about a brand that lets them connect the dots instead of hammering them over the head. But there is such a thing as too subtle, as well.

Mercedes-Benz rides that line in these ads from BBDO Chile. We stared at them for a few minutes trying to work out the message, and not just because the copy has been translated.

We spoke to BBDO art director Leonardo Rocha about the ads. But before we give away his explanation, let us know what you think they’re about.

Click to enlarge. Via Adeevee.

CREDITS
Client: Mercedes-Benz
Agency: BBDO, Santiago, Chile
Executive Creative Director: Jorge Espinoza
Creative Director: Rodrigo Peralta
Art Director: Leonardo Rocha
Copywriter: Felipe Araya
Photographer: Javiera Eyzaguirre

VW Designed a Baby Stroller With Automatic Braking After Joking About It in an Ad

Volkswagen Netherlands aired a TV spot in April in which VW owners had great expectations for their other possessions—including one mother who couldn’t understand why baby strollers don’t have automatic braking.

The automaker posted the ad on Facebook, and the most-liked comment came from a fan who suggested that VW actually build just such a futuristic stroller.

And so, VW did.

Check out the video above, in which a joke from a commercial (by ad agency Achtung!) becomes a prototype in just a few short weeks. It includes a cameo from the Facebook fan himself, and also shows some humorous footage of the stroller in action.

Sorry, moms, it seems lazy dads will be the biggest market for this new vehicle.

A Fascinating, Step-by-Step Look at How This Trippy, Drippy Ice Cream Logo Was Designed

The process of logo design is pretty intriguing, particularly when a designer takes you step by step through the development of a mark. The video below is a great example, as Kath Tudball of design firm Johnson Banks explains the creation of a gourmet ice cream startup called Mr. Cooper.

The logo uses negative space to great effect, and also has a nice drippy quality that fits the brand well. But the mark you see above was the end point of a very involved process, which Tudball shows in great detail.

The video is longish, but worth it. Via Creative Bloq.

Old Spice Creates a Loony Sci-Fi 'Choose Your Own Adventure' Game on Instagram

Wieden + Kennedy has hacked the tagging function on Instagram to create an amusingly absurd “Choose your own adventure” social game for Old Spice, filled with robots, retro monsters and meta jokes.
 

 
The story opens with the post above. Clicking on it reveals tags that function as the navigation, leading to a maze of newly created Instagram accounts where the story continues. Clicking on the Old Spice body wash in the first scene reveals the first of many comical dead ends, from which you have to backtrack and continue.

The game is pretty much one big joke, undermining itself at every turn and parodying the genre rather than presenting a real “adventure.” The ending, in particular, is intentionally anticlimactic, centered on an inside joke about the ad budget for the project—very much in keeping with the brand’s self-aware ethos.

Give it a spin, or click here to choose a different AdFreak story.

Actor Enacts a Whale Killing, With Himself as the Whale, in Shocking PSA

The killing of majestic animals is big news this week. And now, the marine conservation group Sea Shepherd has unveiled a brutal PSA protesting the slaughter of whales by demonstrating how they die at the hands of humans—as acted out by a human.

The spot is skillfully horrific, as Australian character actor David Field mimics getting shot, convulsing, choking and coughing up blood. The PSA aims to draw attention, in particular, to the method of using an explosive harpoon to shoot the mammals, which causes massive internal injuries, and to the time it takes for them to die, which can be up to an hour.

“The cruelty inflicted on whales is shocking, and while most people abhor whaling, I think many don’t realize just how brutally these sea mammals are butchered,” Field said in a statement. “As a supporter of Sea Shepherd, I want to bring this barbaric practice to the attention of as many people as possible in the hope that we can get it stopped.”

As with many animal-rights PSAs, this one aims to evoke empathy by inviting people to imagine how they’d feel in the animal’s situation. This spot goes further by imagining the outcry if whaling were to happen to humans on a large scale. That’s a rhetorical device, yet it undermines the message a bit because it’s so easy to refute—it’s not happening to humans, after all. Yet that kind of hyperbole isn’t surprising following such violent imagery. (The excessive nature of the campaign also extends to the hashtag, #UltimateDeathScene.)

“Those who care about marine wildlife really feel something deeply when they see whaling taking place. We sought to harness this feeling to generate the maximum impact,” said Paul Swann, creative partner at Sydney agency The Works, which created the campaign. “The idea of a human experiencing what a whale does, combined with a graphic execution, will come to life across video, social, radio and print.”

CREDITS
Client: Sea Shepherd
Aegncy: The Works
Creative Partner: Paul Swann
Creative Leads: Adam Bodfish and Leo Barbosa
Digital Strategy Director: Damien Hughes
Planner: Leo Hennessy
Head of Digital Production: Dave Flanagan
Content Production Manager: Tristan Drummond
Senior Digital Designer: Kim Sanders
Social Media Strategist: Vanessa Hartley
Social Community Manager: Anna Lai
Project Management: Catriona Heaphy, Gillian Snowball and Juliette Hynes

Director: Tony Prescott
Director of Production: Robert Morton
Post Production: Method Studios
Sound: Nylon Studios

Sorry, USA. It's Jamaica in the Gold Cup Final, and They're Celebrating With This Ad

Fans of the U.S. Men’s National Team are still reeling from the team’s shocking semifinal loss to Jamaica in soccer’s Gold Cup. But you can’t stay mad at Jamaica for long. And this ad from FCB Garfinkel for the Jamaica Tourist Board, created on the fly to cheer on the team, is simple and fun and reminds you of Jamaica’s remarkable achievement—the island nation is the first Caribbean country to reach a Gold Cup final. The match against Mexico will be broadcast tonight on Fox Sports 1 and Univision beginning at 7:30 p.m.

Honey Maid's Latest Wholesome Family Features a Disabled Aunt and Her Niece

Honey Maid’s campaign featuring inclusive depictions of American families takes another step forward today with a spot showing a disabled aunt and her niece making apple and cheddar melts together on their graham crackers.

It’s a simple, quiet 30-second spot, Cheerios-like both in its simplicity and its unspoken embrace of all types of families. Honey Maid has become one of the most famous brands embracing such diversity in its ads with same-sex couples, mixed-race, blended and immigrant families, and more.

The aunt in the ad is Stephanie Woodward, a disability rights lawyer and activist who is currently director of advocacy at The Center for Disability Rights. She signed on for the project, Honey Maid says, because she—and many in the disabled community—want real disabled people featured on TV and in the media, not actors playing disabled people.

Here is the 30-second online version of the spot:

Woodward was also drawn to the simple realism of the ad in a media landscape where disabled people are often portrayed “in either a pity or a superhero light.” (By the way, while there is much debate around the language of disability, Woodward prefers the term disabled person to person with a disability. “I am a proud disabled woman and prefer not to identify with ‘people first’ language as it separates me from my disability identity,” she says.)

The latest spot coincides with this weekend’s 25th anniversary of the signing into law of 1990’s Americans with Disabilities Act. Honey Maid says the ad is also one of the first to include audio descriptions on the 15-second TV version—describing what’s happening on screen for blind and low-vision audiences—along with standard closed captioning. The audio description will run on Bravo, E!, Nick @ Nite, Lifetime, LMN, CBS and ABC.

“The ‘This Is Wholesome’ campaign launched in March of 2014 and has been committed to featuring a cross-section of the American family,” says Gary Osifchin, portfolio lead for biscuits at Mondel?z International. “From a same-sex couple and single dad, to a mixed-race military family, a blended and an immigrant family, the sweet moments between a disabled aunt and her niece are just another example of Honey Maid’s commitment to feature real American families and the wholesome connections they share.”

Here is the 15-second TV version:

CREDITS
Client: Honey Maid / Mond?lez International
Senior Director, Biscuits North America: Gary Osifchin
Senior Brand Manager: Mikhail Chapnik
Senior Associate Brand Manager: Jared Moran
Campaign: “This is Wholesome”
Title: Honey Maid: How to Make Apple & Cheddar Melts
Agency: Droga5 NY
Creative Chairman: David Droga
Chief Creative Officer: Ted Royer
Executive Creative Director: Kevin Brady
Associate Creative Director: Tara Lawall
Associate Creative Director: Devon Hong
Copywriter: German Rivera Hudders
Art Director: J.J. Kraft
Chief Creation Officer: Sally-Ann Dale
Associate Broadcast Producer: Goldie Robbens
Global Chief Strategy Officer: Jonny Bauer
Group Strategy Director: Matt Springate
Senior Communications Strategist: Taylor Hines
Senior Social Strategist: Kat Popiel
Social Media Manager: Rob Engelsman
Data Strategy Director: Katty Lein
Data Strategist: Annie Corbett
Group Account Director: Brett Edgar
Account Director: Amanda Chandler
Account Manager: Jasmine McDavid
Associate Account Manager: Amy Rosenberg
Project Manager: Andra Johnson
Production Company: Variable
Director: Jonathan Bregel
DOP: Stuart Winecoff
Executive Producer: Tyler Ginter
Producer: Alex Friedman
Production Supervisor: Paige DeMarco
Editorial & Post Production & Audio: D5 Studios
Music: de Wolfe Music

Taylor Swift Stars in Global Rebrand for Keds: 'Ladies First Since 1916'

A year ahead of its centennial, footwear brand Keds is launching a global brand platform and fall 2015 ad campaign around female empowerment, and has gotten one of the world’s great trailblazing women, Taylor Swift, to headline it.

Print ads from kirshenbaum bond senecal + partners show the pop star, 25, posing against artistic backdrops with headlines like “All dressed up with everywhere to go” and “There’s no such thing as an average girl.” The tagline is, “Ladies first since 1916.”

Click the ads to enlarge.

“A new generation of women has been leading an exciting cultural shift redefining the conversation about equality and female empowerment,” Keds president Chris Lindner said in a statement.

“Keds was originally created in 1916 to provide ladies with accessible, fashionable footwear to allow them to be who they wanted to be, and go where they wanted to go. ‘Ladies First’ is a celebration of amazing women like Taylor Swift who are blazing new trails every day. From CEOing to BFFing, these ladies are doing it all.”

The campaign features other female talent, both on and off camera. In addition to a few other models, the ads employed notable female artists to make the backdrops—including illustrator Priscilla White, surface artist and pattern designer Kendra Dandy, and street artist Paige Smith.

Keds said the combination of poppy, street-style photos and empowering headlines is meant to deliver a “one-two punch of fashion and emotion” and capture “what is means to be a lady in 2015.”

The media plan combines retail, social, print and digital (with publishers including Nylon, Paper, Interview, Refinery29 and WhoWhatWear) with wild postings, bus wraps and subway media “in many of NYC’s most artistic neighborhoods.”

AT&T's Latest 'It Can Wait' Ad Shows a Brutal Crash in Reverse, but There's No Going Back

AT&T’s “It Can Wait” texting-and-driving campaign from BBDO New York has included many notable executions, including the painful Werner Herzog documentary from 2013. And the latest spot is no exception, featuring quietly gripping storytelling from Anonymous Content director Frederic Planchon that suddenly explodes with horror.

The almost four-minute film is remarkable. (It’s supported by three 30-second spots, one of which will run on TV.) Slow-motion cinematography, shot at 1,000 frames per second, captures the brutal consequences of taking your eyes off the road to glance at your smartphone, even briefly. The footage then plays in reverse, ending on the cause of the terrible crash.

That cause, notably, isn’t that the driver was texting. The “It Can Wait” campaign has always focused on texting, but it’s is now evolving based on new research that revealed the prevalence of drivers engaging in other smartphone activities, like social media, web surfing, video chatting and more.

The campaign is evolving in other ways, too. AT&T, working with Reel FX, has developed an app called the It Can Wait Driving Simulation that uses virtual reality to give an immersive view of what it is like to text, post or video chat while driving. The VR simulator is freely available for iOS and Android and works with Google Cardboard.

A souped-up version of the simulator—running through the Samsung Gear VR headset, with premium sound from Bose QuietComfort 25 acoustic noise canceling headphones—will soon go on tour, visiting schools, fairs and partner companies in 100 U.S. cities.

CREDITS
Client: AT&T
Title: Close To Home

Agency: BBDO New York
Chief Creative Officer, Worldwide: David Lubars
Chief Creative Officer, New York: Greg Hahn
Executive Creative Director: Matt MacDonald
Senior Creative Director: LP Tremblay
Senior Creative Director: Erik Fahrenkopf
CD/Art Director: Grant Mason
CD/Copywriter: Kevin Mulroy

Director of Integrated Production: David Rolfe
Group Executive Producer: Julie Collins
Executive Producer: Dan Blaney
Music Producer: Melissa Chester
Senior Integrated Business Manager: Cristina Blanco

Managing Director: Mark Cadman
Senior Account Director: Brian Nienhaus
Account Director: Gati Curtis
Account Manager: Johnny Wardell
Account Executive: Sigourney Hudson-Clemons

Production Company: Anonymous Content
Director: Frederic Planchon
Executive Producer: Eric Stern
Producer: Paul Ure
Director of Photography: Jody Lee Lipes

Editorial: WORK Editorial
Editor: Rich Orrick
Assistant Editors: Adam Witten and Trevor Myers
Executive Producer: Erica Thompson
Producer: Sari Resnick

Visual Effects: The Mill
EP/Head of Production: Sean Costelloe
Line Producer: Nirad ‘Bugs’ Russell
VFX Supervisor : Gavin Wellsman
2D Leads: Gavin Wellsman; Krissy Nordella
2D Compositor: Michael Smith; Chris Sonia, Keith Sullivan
2D Assists: Heather Kennedy; Sungeun Moon, Yoon-sun Bae, Marco Giampaolo
3D: Yili Orana , Corey Langelotti
Pre Vis Artist: Jeffrey Lee
Editor: Charlotte Carr
Designer: Clemens den Exter

Color:  The Mill
Colorist: Aline Sinquin

Music House: Grooveworx
Executive Producer: Dain Blair
Sound Design: Brian Emrich
Original music composed by Rob Simonsen

Sound: Sonic Union
Sound Mixer: Steve Rosen

Motions Graphics and Titles: Polyester

McDonald's the Musical Is Finally Here, and Leslie Grace Is Lovin' It

If you ever wanted to see a musical set in a McDonald’s, your ship has come in.

McDonald’s lead Hispanic agency, Alma in Miami, on Friday will roll out “A Little Lovin’,” a three-minute bachata musical starring the 20-year-old Dominican American singer Leslie Grace. At the beginning, she is seen sitting in McDonald’s with a case of writer’s block, but a McDonald’s employee (played by Daniel “Cloud” Campos, who also was the director and choreographer) soon inspires her to find “A Little Lovin’ ” all around.

As musicals do, it gets wildly and ridiculously energetic from there.

Alma repurposed Grace’s “Solita Me Voy” song for the spot. “About a year ago, Leslie was warming up for an interview and reminiscing about her happy childhood and going to McDonald’s with her dad, which was down the street from her mom’s salon,” said Luis Miguel Messianu, president and chief creative officer at Alma DDB. “She didn’t know she was being recorded, but my friend from Sony shared the sound byte with me and we’ve been working on an idea for her to partner with McDonald’s ever since.”

CREDITS
Talent
Leslie Grace: As Herself
Danny: Daniel Cloud
Dad: Cris Judd
Daughter: Tatiana McQuay

Film Crew
Director: Daniel Cloud
Executive Producer: Danielle Hinde
Producer: Courtney Davies
Production Supervisor: Rose Krane
Assistant Production Supervisor: Josh Reed

McDonald’s Marketing Team
VP Brand & Marketing Content: Joel Yashinksy
Director of Hispanic Consumer Marketing: Patricia Diaz
Manager of Social Engagement- US: Jenina Nunez

Alma Agency
President/Chief Creative Officer: Luis Miguel Messianu
VP Executive Creative Director: Alvar Sunol
Creative Director: Iu La Lueta
Associate Creative Director/Art Director: Beatriz Torres-Marin
Senior Art Director: Luis Aguilera
Art Director: Andres Schiling
Director of Production: Adrian Castagna
Producer: Diana De La Parra
Account Director: Karen Udler
Account Supervisor: Cristina Lage
Senior Strategic Planner: Tamara Sotelo

Sony Music Entertainment US Latin
Senior Director of Business Development: Melissa Exposito
Business Development Analyst: Isabelle Duran
Manager: Jose Behar
Management: Lorena Fusilier
Management: Larissa Leal
Road Manager: Francisco Martinez

VH1's New Ad for Dating Naked Is All About Jumping Naked (in Super Slow Motion)

Coming up with fun ad ideas for a show like Dating Naked isn’t exactly Pluto-level rocket science. You think of fun things naked people can do besides dating, and you film them doing it. Then you blur their privates and watch the YouTube count rise.

Last year, VH1 got Los Angeles agency Mistress to make a Dating Naked ad with people dancing naked. Now, agency and client have followed that up with an ad showing people jumping naked. The twist: It was filmed in super slow motion at 1,000 frames per second.

Check out the spot below, which the agency describes as “a graphic visualization of the insight that it is all about our true selves, finding true love—without all the bullshit.”

CREDITS
Client: VH1
Agency: Mistress
Production Company: Bastard
Director: Bob Hope
Editorial: Bastard
Editors: Kyle Stebbins and Ian Kalmbaugh
VFX: Kyle Stebbins
Sound Design: Lime Studios
Engineer: Sam Casas
Partner/CD: Damien
Art Director: Rachel Guest
Copywriter: Celine Faledam
Producer: Kay Lynn Dutcher
Brand Director: Tor Edwards
Brand Manager: Kylie Wu
Project Manager: Alex Clewell 

Southern Comfort Wants You to Tan Your Giant Belly (and Your Lemonade) This Summer

The hirsute, rotund free spirit from Southern Comfort’s famous “Beach” ad in 2012 may have been harboring a dirty secret—his famous tan might have been at least partly self-inflicted—judging by the brand’s new spot, which goes to great lengths (and widths) to celebrate artificial bronzing.

The latest spot in the “Whatever’s Comfortable” campaign, from Wieden + Kennedy New York, shows three blokes in hairnets—and what frankly look like diapers—lacquering their pasty exterior Britishness in a golden hue. This is because the weather in Britain is terrible, and they can’t achieve a more natural summer glow by natural means.

Not that they’d want to. This spray-tanning business is borderline orgasmic, judging by their quivering reaction to the spray gun’s feathery touch. Comfortable is putting it mildly.

Tanning oneself is only part of the story, though. Viewers are also encouraged to “tan” their lemonade this summer by spiking it with Southern Comfort & Lime.

“Following the popularity of our previous ads, we’ve leveraged that momentum into a new chapter, one that not only heroes our ‘Whatever’s Comfortable’ attitude but also the drink itself,” says client marketing manager Gwen Ridsdale. “Southern Comfort lemonade and fresh lime, the brand’s recommended serve, is integral to the story in a unique way, which adds a whole new dimension to the campaign by encouraging consumers to ‘tan your lemonade’ this summer.

The spot breaks today online and will appear in cinemas and video on demand through the summer in the U.K.

CREDITS
Client: Southern Comfort

Spot: “Spray Tan”
Agency: Wieden + Kennedy, New York
Executive Creative Directors: Jaime Robinson & David Kolbusz
Creative Directors: Jimm Lasser, Caleb Jensen, Mike Giepert
Copywriters: Laddie Peterson & Rajeev Basu
Head of Content Production: Nick Setounski
Producer: Cheryl Warbrook
Strategist: Tom Gibby
Account Team: Toby Hussey, Katie Hoak, Kerry O’Connell
Business Affairs: Sara Jagielski, Justine Lowe

Production Company: Biscuit Filmworks
Director: Andreas Nilsson
Executive Producer/COO: Shawn Lacy
Executive Producer: Colleen O’Donnell
Line Producer: Mirka Taylor / Jay Veal
Director of Photography: Sebastian Wintero Hansen

Editorial Company: Arcade NYC
Editor: Geoff Hounsell
Post Producer: Cecilia Melton
Post Executive Producer: Sila Soyer
Editorial Assistant: Sam Barden

VFX Company: The Mill
VFX Lead Flame: N/A
VFX Supervisors: N/A
VFX Compositors: Tomas Wall, Rob Meade
VFX CG Artists: Andrew Bartholomew
Producer: Colin Moneymaker

Telecine Company: CO3
Colorist: Tim Masick

Mix Company: Heard City
Mixer: Phillip Loeb
Sound Designer: N/A
Producer: Natasha Alden & Sasha Awn

Song: All Gold Everything
Artist: Soulja Boy

 



This Agency Ran a Print Ad About How Angry It Was That No One Ran Its Print Ad

Here’s the moment when spec advertising finally digests its own tail.

The Open Collaboration (aka, OpenCo), a South African agency majority owned by TBWA, whipped up what it apparently considers a masterpiece of social-cause messaging—a print ad showing side-by-side photos of Hitler and Mandela in prison. Hitler served nine months, the copy explains, while Mandela served 27 years.

“People do not always get the justice they deserve,” says the copy below. “We’re doing everything we can to change that.”

Here’s the proposed ad. Click to enlarge:

As you can see, there is a blank space where the logo should go. That’s because it’s a spec ad, done without client approval—indeed, without a specific client in mind here. But OpenCo hoped some group devoted to righting unnamed injustices in the world would, after initially fainting at the ad’s brilliance, slap its logo on there.

That didn’t happen. So OpenCo, feeling offended, decided to do something even more solipsistic than regular spec work. It went and made another ad about the first ad, describing it in detail—to call attention to this fresh injustice, and hopefully get the spec ad in front of someone “brave enough to run it.”

Here’s that ad. Click to enlarge:

There’s so much that’s odd about this, even if you accept that it’s not just a cynical PR play (though the whole “This is not a print ad” thing does seem aimed at ad people).

First of all, the creative is provocative—it would be offensive to many—and might not align at all with any organization’s marketing needs. Not many people, after all, are all that fond of using Hitler in their ads.

Also, its internal logic is thorny at best. Hitler killed himself in disgrace, his dream destroyed, while Mandela was lionized. Focusing on the prison terms is a simplistic take on whether justice was served in either case. (Mandela’s family, by the way, would surely balk at seeing his image paired with Hitler’s under any circumstances—particularly when the message is how he got a raw deal compared to the Nazi leader.)

The bigger issue, though, is the arrogance. This is spec work. Getting indignant when no one buys it makes you look like a fool. And in this case, it’s worse than that. OpenCo isn’t just complaining about intransigent would-be clients rejecting its work. It’s flat-out calling them cowards. That’s a pretty rich point of view for an ad agency to take of nonprofits doing real social work.

Let’s assume this stunt was well meaning. (We emailed OpenCo a while back, but haven’t heard back yet.) Maybe next time, if they really want to fight injustice in the world, they can start by not publicly shaming organizations that do so every day.



Orange Is the New Black's Latest Inmate Is a Character From a Virgin Ad Campaign

Last year, Virgin Media in the U.K. introduced an ad character who’s literally a night owl, staying up late to binge-watch show after show on Netflix. Now, that owl—who goes by the name Ally McNab—is one step closer to her anti-heroes on Orange Is the New Black.

A new campaign from BBH London, pushing Netflix streaming on Virgin, actually sends Ally to Litchfield Penitentiary, where she becomes the latest orange-clad newbie inmate. And the show’s famous characters even filmed scenes with their freaky new cellmate. (Not surprisingly, Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren takes a shine to her new feathered friend—either because they have a similar stare, or because Crazy Eyes befriends everyone.)

The spot actually combines new and existing footage. It’s an interesting bit of film, considering all the players involved.

“It’s a piece of content involving an entertainment property, a subscription streaming service and a broadband provider,” says Jeremy Ettinghausen, innovation director at BBH and BBH Labs. “It stars characters from a TV show interacting with characters from an advertising campaign, in an advertising campaign for a TV show, a broadband provider and a subscription entertainment service. Is this a new content type? We don’t know. Is it interesting? We think so, maybe simply because we can’t put it in a box.”

The campaign is running online, on social media, in retail, and on video on demand. The third season of Orange Is the New Black hits Netflix on Friday.

CREDITS
Client: Virgin Media
Head of Brand Advertising & Sponsorship: Ellie Tory
Partnership Marketing Lead: Rob Cannon
Agency: BBH London
Creative Team: Dan Morris & Charlene Chandrasekaran
Creative Director: Tom Drew & Uche Ezugwu
Strategist: Elle Graham-Dixon
Account Team: Phil Lloyd
Production Company: Black Sheep Studios
Editing House: Black Sheep Studios
Post Production: OutpostVFX
Sound: Factory



Ogilvy Gets Potholes to Tweet, Asking to Be Fixed, Every Time They're Run Over

People aren’t the only ones complaining about potholes in Panama City. The potholes are complaining!

With so many streets in Panama City damaged, local agency P4 Ogilvy & Mather placed special devices in potholes that automatically tweet nasty messages at the Twitter account of the Department of Public Works whenever cars drive over them.

A quick glance at the @Elhuecotwitero Twitter page shows the campaign in action—scores of tweets per day asking @MOPdePanama for answers.

The campaign was done on behalf of a Panama TV station, which said potholes are a major concern of its viewers. And it seems to be working—at least, it got the attention of the minister of public works, who appeared on the TV station Monday to address the issue, which he blamed on a mix of poor construction and the failure of talks at approve money to fix the roads.

See public works minister Ramón Arosemena address the issue here:

CREDITS
Client: MEDCOM
Agency: P4 Ogilvy & Mather, Panama City, Panama
Chief Creative Officer: Edwin Mon
Associate Creative Director: Alejandro Blanc
Creative Director: Osvaldo Restrepo
Digital Creative Director: Alberto Lam
Copywriter: Edmar Quiros
Head of Art: Roberto Perez
Art Director: Edmar Quiros
Designer: Franklin Lu
General Account Executive: Monica Urrutia
Digital Account Manager: Luis Gonzales
Executive Producer: Benjamin Liao, Belisario Alvarez, Monica Crespo
Production Company: VFX Panama, SAKE Argentina
Music: Salmon Osado
Sound editing: Manuel Trejos
Post Production: Marcos Ruiz

CREDITS
Client: MEDCOM
Agency: P4 Ogilvy & Mather, Panama City, Panama
Chief Creative Officer: Edwin Mon
Associate Creative Director: Alejandro Blanc
Creative Director: Osvaldo Restrepo
Digital Creative Director: Alberto Lam
Copywriter: Edmar Quiros
Head of Art: Roberto Perez
Art Director: Edmar Quiros
Designer: Franklin Lu
General Account Executive: Monica Urrutia
Digital Account Manager: Luis Gonzales
Executive Producer: Benjamin Liao, Belisario Alvarez, Monica Crespo
Production Company: VFX Panama, SAKE Argentina
Music: Salmon Osado
Sound editing: Manuel Trejos
Post Production: Marcos Ruiz
Additional credits: Francisco Hernandez MEDCOM Digital Media Director



3M Makes Retargeted Banner Ads Less Annoying by Turning Them Into Post-it Notes

Retargeted banner ads are the sledgehammer of the web, bashing you again and again with the same random product you looked at once, whether you like it or not.

But 3M figured it could use the retargeted banner’s weakness as a strength. If the same banner comes up again and again, the company figured, why not make it a Post-it note where you could jot down info that might be useful later—when the ad pops up again?

Proximity Russia did just that in a recent campaign. Check out the case study below. It seems like ad-blocking software, but it’s not. 3M simply used retargeting technology and gave it an interactive spin.

The agency collaborated with several banner networks to get the Post-its on top websites in Russia. Clicking on the banners led you to a Post-it page, where you could create more stickers, edit or delete them all.

CREDITS
Client: 3M
Marketing Supervisor: Sergey Smolentsev
Marketing Coordinator: Yulia Smirnova
Agency: Proximity Russia
Creative Director: Andrew Kontra
Senior Copywriters: Polina Zabrodskaya, Anna Migaleva
Senior Art Director: Fernando Muto
Business Development Director: Mikhail Vdovin
Digital Director: Alexander Makarovsky
Senior Account Manager: Polina Zvereva
Digital Production House: INDEE Interactive
Producer: Alexey Zinchenko
UI designer: Egor Bernikov
Coders: Arina Vernidub, Andrey Zakurdaev, Oleg Nikanorov



Kyra & Constantin's Hilarious Round Animals Roll Their Way Into British Bread Ads

The young Swiss-German directing duo of Kyra Buschor and Constantin Paeplow are famous for their hilarious “Rollin’ Wild” videos—showing how tough life would be for animals if they were completely round. “If all animals became round overnight, would their daily life still run that smoothly?” the directors asked.

The original “Rollin’ Wild” video (comprising four short clips) got the loudest applause at the Saatchi & Saatchi New Directors’ Showcase in Cannes last summer, and the directors have vowed to continue the series. And now, they’re doing so for brands.

Three new short films show spherical ducks, robins and a hedgehog navigating the world poorly in ads by adam&eveDDB for Genius Foods in the U.K., whose bread apparently won’t make you feel bloated. They’re pretty funny—and part of an integrated campaign that brings the visual style to all platforms.

The concept could work for plenty of brands. Hopefully the Imodium people are watching.

Via The Inspiration Room.

And here’s the original “Rollin’ Wild” video:



This Household Cleaning Brand Has the World's Most Immaculate Twitter Feed

If you’re a cleaning brand, you’d better have your house in order—which means making your social media feeds as spotless as possible. French brand Spontex has done just that on Twitter, with a whole feed of white space.

Actually, though, the brand somehow hid images in that white space, which you can discover by clicking on the tweets. (Try it on the embedded posts below.) A fun idea from ad agency Kids Love Jetlag in Paris.