En France on a surtout MANIX et DUREX, les Brésiliens ont JONTEX.

Décidément que de “X” pour les marques de préservatifs…

JONTEX est donc une grosse entreprise de préservatifs située au Brésil. Egalement connue sous le nom de Johnson & Johnson, ce nom est moins répandue, pas très significatif seXuellement parlant…

Comme en France, les marques de préservatifs masculins se doivent d’innover, et, “surprendre” au bon sens du terme est également un mot d’ordre pour les agences de communication. Jontex fait alors appel en 2007 à l’agence : McCann Erickson, au Brésil. Ils lanceront une première: Jontex, le “parapluie-capote”…

Et oui, quelle bonne idée, puisqu’on a tous compri l’utilité primaire d’une capote, celle de PROTEGER! Cette agence décide alors de détourner non pas l’objectif, mais l’objet! Les capotes JONTEX nous protègent donc, ici, de la pluie. Belle campagne puisque ce street marketing va constituer un véritable buzz au sein de la ville de Rio. Bon je vous l’accorde, ce moyen n’est pas évident pour se déplacer non, et encore moins pour…. enfin vous m’avez compris quoi ! En revanche, on peut garantir le double objectif de la marque, celui d’accroître sa notoriété, et celui d’être associé à la “protection”.

Pour info: les préservatifs coûtent 1 Réal les 3 au brésil. Sachant qu’ 1 € = 2.53 real, ca fait les 3 préservatifs à 0.40€.
 Nous, Français, vendons 5 préservatifs pour 1 euro (les moins cher en france).

Maintenant vous savez ou trouver les moins chers! Direction Rio de Janeirooooo

Ação de marketing de guerrilha da McCann Erickson dentro de um centro empresarial.

Na ação eles colocaram um cofre como se tivesse caido do teto, com entulhos em volta e o chão quebrado.

As pessoas ao verem isso automaticamente olhavam para cima e viam um anúncio falando que mortes acontecem e divulgando o site da seguradora de vida.

Ação inteligente e simples que faz o público ver a publicidade.

Fonte: http://presidencialeold9.wordpress.com/

Per certi versi richiama alla memoria la fortunata serie di spot Lavazza con Paolo Bonolis, Luca Laurenti e… San Pietro. Però volete mettere il confronto con George Clooney e John Malkovich? Quest’ultimo, in veste divina, regala al primo una seconda chance di vita – il povero George è stato ucciso da un pianoforte caduto chissà come dall’alto – in cambio di… una macchina Nespresso!
Molto divertente. La campagna è firmata McCann-Erickson.

The Apprentice

Today there are many instances where people take things that happen on the Internet, radio or television a little bit too far, and it starts to effect life in “the real world”. I’m told it is this magical place where people interact on a human level, completely devoid of technology. Hmm, if only.

One such example involves something I have already blogged a little bit too much about, Tumblr. I only bring it up again because yesterday, someone proposed, via Tumblr. Yes, PROPOSED. Their proposal was posted in banner form above the Tumblr log-in where every user could see it. I snapped a photo for your viewing pleasure.

There were many, many posts about this on Tumblr after it happened. And just as many people found it adorable as found it atrocious. Propose over the Internet? What kind of memory of the proposal does that leave you with? How will you describe it to your Grandkids? They probably won’t even know what a Tumblr is. And I must say, I agree. While I give this dude points for being creative, it is a little creepy to propose over the Internet.

Secondly, I wanted to discuss an article I found in The New York Times the other day about the advertising company McCann Erickson. This real-life company has been name dropped on the hit AMC show Mad Men and, SPOILER ALERT: in the season finale last week, the fictional advertising company in the show, Sterling Cooper, is revealed to have been bought out by McCann, against the will of Sterling Cooper’s employees. And thus, for this week only, McCann’s website features an intro with the show’s characters talking about the merger and then is concluded with a banner reading “Welcome, Sterling Cooper.” Check it out now, it is only up on the site for a week!

I find this kind of integration of television to a real world company a bit more understandable than the Internet proposal, almost cute and kitschy in a way, as if to say, “Yes, we can have a good time and poke a little fun at ourselves and the TV show we have been mentioned on,” but it still doesn’t completely fit this serious advertiser’s model. What about clients who don’t watch the show and see it? Won’t this just seem a bit out of place? Does this kind of media placement mean we should all be paying a lot more attention to hit TV so we can feel more in the loop, more than we already do, when even advertising company conglomerates are using it regularly? Hmm.

Molto concettuale. Complessa. Sicuramente mai vista prima. È la campagna RE_ promossa da Acciona, colosso spagnolo che si occupa di ingegneria civile, costruzioni, infrastrutture ed energie rinnovabili. RE_: un’attitudine, un invito ad agire. Sta infatti per Re_nace, Re_sulve, Re_inventa, Re_clama e per molto altro. Il concept è di McCann Erickson Italia. Per chi ha un po’ di tempo e vuole vivere un’esperienza diversa, d’obbligo sono una visita a http://youtube.com/experiencere e a http://www.re.acciona.es.

The Apprentice

Bevor alles in Schutt und Asche liegt, hätte man wohl lieber Acciona gefragt. Dieses spanische Bauunternehmen geht mit einem noch nicht da gewesenen dem Konzept des Wario Land Spots an den Start. Roland Emmerich zerstört vielleicht die Welt aber an Youtube hat sich noch kaum keiner gewagt. Bitte klicken…

Werbeagentur: McCann Erickson, Italien
Regie: Marcel Burgos

via Very Short List

Sometimes stories get written that are based on such a flimsy premise that they are almost too transparent to be credible. Here is one which should have clearly been strangled at birth as an illustration of ‘oh dear we have not got enough copy to fill the news pages’ journalism, which I so detest…

Story begins:

The agency appointed to lead marketing for the 2012 London Olympics has refused to endorse the official logo for the event.  McCann Erickson won the account in April after beating WPP to the account. Today, Brett Gosper, the chief executive of McCann Worldgroup, was lukewarm when asked by the Financial Times if he liked the logo.

He told the paper: “For us, it’s irrelevant whether we like it or not. My personal opinion is not that relevant.” The logo caused a storm of controversy when it was released by the design agency Wolff Olins in 2007. However, Gosper did say that the logo had had a huge impact and had garnered a lot of publicity for the Games.

http://www.brandrepublic.com/BrandRepublicNews/News/967510/Olympic-agency-lukewarm-London-2012-logo/?DCMP=EMC-DailyNewsBulletin

Después de una semana más desaparecidos, hoy viernes os dejamos con una pieza de McCann Erickson Londres para Xbox. La realidad virtual como extensión de ¿la realidad real? Vivimos en un mundo de bits.  Y quien no lo vea así, que chute la primera bola. Lo hemos visto en  Advert Lover.

“Shut the Door”

November 8th, 2009

“I’m not going…I’m just living elsewhere.”

Every episode of television is a collection of scenes, individual set pieces designed to present a particular moment or to evoke a particular emotion or feeling. The scenes serve one of many potential purposes, whether it’s establishing a standalone plot within a particular episode, calling back to a previous scene or event in another episode, or even simply being placed for the sake of foreshadowing. A scene can change meaning as a season progresses, an awkward encounter with an overly touchy politico turning into a legitimate affair by the addition of new scenes that speak to the old one, for example. And, at the same time, other scenes are simply brief thematic beats designed to give the viewer the sense of a particular time or place, with nothing more beneath them than the aesthetic value apparent in the craftsmanship involved.

A great episode of television, however, is where every single scene feels purposeful, and more importantly where there is no one type of scene which feels dominant. There can still be scenes designed to engage with nothing more than the viewer’s sense of humour, just as there will be scenes that feel like the culmination of two and a half seasons worth of interactions. In these episodes there is a balance between scenes which unearth feelings and emotions from the past that have been kept under wraps all season and scenes which create almost out of thin air entirely new scenarios that promise of an uncertain future.

In a season finale in particular, this last point is imperative. A great season finale assures the reader that, as the quote above indicates, the change which is going to take place in the season to follow is both fundamental (in presenting something which surprises or engages) and incidental (in maintaining the series’ identity), both chaotic (in the context of the series’ fictional universe) and controlled (within the mind of the show’s writers). It is an episode that must feel like the fruit of the thirty-five episodes which preceded it while also serving as the tree for the twenty-six episodes which will follow. It is the episode that, for better or for worse, will be more closely scrutinized than any other, and for which expectations are exceedingly high.

“Shut the Door. Have a Seat.” is more than a collection of scenes. It transcends the concepts of script and screen to capture characters in their most vulnerable states, in the process tapping into the viewer’s emotions with a sense of purpose that the show has never quite seen. Where past amazing episodes have sometimes hinged upon a single scene or a single moment, or on the creation of a particular atmosphere, this finale is like a never-ending stream of scenes that we have been clambering for all season: characters say everything we wanted them to say, do everything we wanted them to do, and yet somehow it never felt like puppet theatre where the characters would follow the whims of Matthew Weiner more than their own motivations.

It is a finale that never wastes a single scene, and which marches towards an uncertain conclusion with utmost certainty. Somehow, in a finale which does not shy away from scenes which are both disturbing to watch and destructive to the show’s tempestuous sense of balance, it maintains a cautious optimism by demonstrating that not everything will fall apart at once, while retaining the right to have everything in shambles by the time we return with Season Four. It’s a singular achievement, an hour of television which sits perfectly in the gap between the past and the future while never feeling as if it takes us out of the present, the moment in which these characters are captured in these scenes.

So, shut the door and have a seat: we’ve got some discussing to do.

There’s so much going on in this episode that to boil it down to a single image seems false, but I’m going to follow the episode’s lead on this one. In this, the show’s third season finale, two families are fundamentally changed: the Draper family becomes the sort which has two Christmases, and Sterling Cooper becomes the sort who wakes up and discovers that their parents and some of their siblings have left them behind to fend for themselves. At the heart of both families, as the finale crystallized but has been clear of all season, is the fact that neither of them was secure to begin with. For all that we are meant to care for the Draper family and hope they stay together (as we, like the State of New York, don’t want divorce), and for all the ways we enjoy the dynamics of Sterling Cooper, from the beginning of the season they have been shells of their former selves simply waiting for their expiration date.

I think, to some degree, this explains why the season as a whole felt off in certain ways. Last week, especially, felt less dramatic than it should have: JFK’s death destroyed the fabric of a nation, and yet somehow its impact on the Draper family didn’t feel organic, didn’t feel real. The reason isn’t that the episode was a failure, but rather that it had been broken long before that moment, and Betty’s decision is more a delayed reaction than a sudden realization. The season has used a baby and the truth about Dick Whitman to patch up a relationship that was perhaps shattered the moment Betty slept with Captain Awesome, or perhaps even back when Don first began keeping a mistress. In fact, it is entirely possible that the marriage only exists in a hotel room in Rome where the original infatuation still lingers, and where Don’s idea of the marriage is something more than providing all that Betty ever wanted while retaining the right to satisfy his own needs outside of the marriage.

When Don and Roger are leaving Sterling Cooper for the final time, and Roger asks when they’ll ever work in an office like this again, Don points out that he never expected he would ever work in an office like this one. It’s one of the moments where the parallel between his two families becomes apparent, as the Dick Whitman we saw witness his father’s death by frightened horse is not the Don Draper who stands beside Roger saying goodbye to Sterling Cooper. He bought into the lifestyle of being an Ad Man, and the lifestyle of being a Husband/Father, because he was doing what society expected, and what allowed him to continue living a lie. And yet, as the episode quite clearly points out, his limitation has always been his ability to deal with people: Roger argues that Don doesn’t value relationships, and that this is why he isn’t an Accounts man by any stretch of the imagination.

This, ultimately, was the point of the Conrad Hilton experiment. The season’s largest flaw, in my book, is the out-and-out replacement of Connie Hilton with Miss Farrell, Don’s latest mistress. There is something fascinating in the Hilton relationship, especially the idea of Don being placed into the same category as a self-made billionaire and being pulled under his wing. When that story effectively died and became an excuse for Don to be spending time away from home, it seemed as if an important part of Don’s journey this season died with it. Don has always been stuck in the past, but what Hilton offered was a future. Even after they part ways on less than amicable terms, Hilton having dropped the news about the sale of PPL and Don having questioned Hilton’s manipulative treatment, Connie notes that some other time they might try again. This implies that at some point in time things might be different, and that Don might perhaps some day be ready for something beyond his current station. It’s an impulse that has Don trying to control his future as opposed to suppressing his past, the exact opposite of his affairs (which are about evading the present).

You could argue that Don throws himself into his plan to leave Sterling Cooper behind because he has no other family to go home to, sleeping in Gene’s room with a broken alarm clock and being told that he needs a divorce attorney. And there’s evidence of this in how he starts the project off with the sense that he has something to prove, and with an assurance that he isn’t just doing this because he doesn’t want to go to McCann Erickson. It’s important to make the distinction, however, that Don is not evading Betty and the kids, and the episode doesn’t seek to so either. Even as the project ramps up and things go from harebrained scheme to actual reality, the episode does not present it as an escape for Don. In fact, far from an escape, in many ways his departure from Sterling Cooper only heightens his emotional response to Betty’s decision. Don initially responds to Betty as if she were crazy, even suggesting that she repeat the first season’s trip to the doctor’s office, but his passive approach disappears to the point where he allows his emotions to burst to the surface.

And when they do, the episode becomes all about the juxtaposition of the electrifying feeling of building something new and the horrifying glimpse into something falling apart. When Don discovers that Betty is not simply responding to his own infidelities, but has in fact committed her own of sorts with Henry Francis, he becomes unhinged. Yes, he was drinking, but the scene was nonetheless the most lucid perhaps we’ve seen Don within this marriage in quite some time. He’s spent so much time keeping his own secrets that he never quite bothered to ask whether Betty had any of her own, and seeing him wrench her from the bed (as if pull away the covers to discover the truth) so violently was painful. And then we have the tragedy of the next morning, as Don and Betty sit and tell their children that there will be two Christmases. Bobby was right: the living room is never good news, and unfortunately Sally is more acutely aware of what this particular news means. She knows that Don isn’t just leaving but rather being told to leave, and while Bobby mourns the loss of a father Sally mourns the loss of a family (which isn’t new for Sally, who had to deal with both Gene’s death and baby Gene’s disruption of the existing family unit). And we, as the audience, are left giddy with excitement over the potential of Sterling Cooper Draper Price while nearly in tears over the dissolution of our central family.

There are an absolutely ludicrous number of amazing scenes with Don in this episode, to the point where I will be absolutely shocked if this episode doesn’t win Jon Hamm an Emmy. However, what makes the episode so stunning is how we can see the changes in Don within those individual scenes. When he first calls Peggy into his office, his worth has been placed under the microscope and he has something to prove, which leads to his arrogant presumption that Peggy will simply follow him like a poodle. In that scene, Peggy says everything we’ve wanted her to say, standing up for herself and her worth while challenging Don’s assumption that she is an extension of him more than an individual person. Peggy’s character has always been one for brooding, for having to deal with things in her own way (like going to Duck as a new surrogate father of sorts) and not being able to come out into the open, but Elisabeth Moss perfectly captured just how much Peggy has changed. Perhaps it’s sleeping with Duck that finally gave Peggy the perspective to be able to speak her mind, a connection I wish had been made more clear in previous episodes but which was nonetheless subtly indicated here.

And yet, beyond Peggy’s own story, her two scenes with Don are important bookends for his character’s change in the episode. When he shows up at her apartment on Sunday, he is a broken man who finally understands what Peggy brings to the table: she is someone who, like all of these people who have taken JFK’s death to heart, has lived through adversity and managed to persevere to the point of being able to see how they’ve changed. This, Don senses, is what he has been missing. Peggy was brought on as a copy writer because she had good ideas, and Don latched onto her in some ways because he knew it would piss other people off and he got off on that. However, the argument he makes here is that he kept her in some ways because she is able to rewrite his own past, having experienced a life-changing event but managing to continue on living with a new sense of self-awareness. Don never got that chance, forced to live a complicated lie to the point of losing some sense of his own identity, and between their two conversations he seems to have come to terms with it. He seems to have lived far enough on the edge, and seen deep enough into the precipice that is his family’s demise, to understand that he needs Peggy because she understands how people respond to things in a way that other people, including in many instances himself, do not.

However, as noted, the chain reaction of events resulting from Connie Hilton breaking the news that Putnam, Powell and Lowell will be sold as of January 1st is both an exercise of Don Draper’s emotional turmoil and an absolutely thrilling ride for the audience. There was something electrifying about the entire storyline, as it played into the sense that the Sterling Cooper drama has been somewhat lacking ever since a lawnmower ran over someone’s foot. As opposed to creating more drama, it was as if that event halted it entirely: Lane Price remained in charge, the status quo was maintained, and nobody talked about how the company was not the same was it was before. Even Roger and Don’s relationship, once so foundational to the setting, is in shambles when we begin, so the opening plays into all of that tension. Don doesn’t trust Roger, nobody trusts Lane, and someone like Pete is downright disgusted at the whole operation.

But yet when all the pieces start to fall into place, it becomes almost (I probably already used this word, but it’s what kept popping into my head while watching) electrifying. It’s not often that a show like Mad Men has you on the edge of your seat, but this story was hitting all of the right notes to have me legitimately excited. I’ve loved Jared Harris in the role of Lane Pryce, so seeing him be spurned one time too many by London and joining forces with the turncoats was worthy of a cheer had I not been afraid of waking up others, and the moment when it becomes clear that Roger is going to call Joan in for service I’m pretty sure that I was downright giddy. Heck, there was a beat where the Art Department being locked felt like an opening to bring Salvatore back into the fold, and the way the episode was going I half expected him to get called into the office. Some on Twitter have compared it all to a heist film like Ocean’s 11, and I think that’s a fair comparison: there was definite tension in whether the plan was going to be successful, and yet to some degree you always knew that they would make it in the end.

What I loved about the story were the little moments, like Peggy refusing to get Roger coffee, or Cooper freaking out over the moving of his precious office furniture, or Trudy bringing everyone sandwiches at the new office. The storyline, by necessity, introduced some levity into the proceedings. While there was a definite sense of retribution in Pete’s recruitment scene, as everything Don said about him being ahead of the curve and seeing the future are the kinds of things that we critics have been writing about all season, there was also the sense of humour of him being in a robe, or Trudy standing within earshot and getting a goodbye from Don. As much as what Don said was true, appealing to Pete’s ego is very different from appealing to Peggy’s, and the episode used this distinction to its advantage. I loved scenes like the awkward elevator ride where Pete isn’t sure how much Harry knows, leading to the great “Hey everybody, Harry Crane is here!” delivery from Vincent Kartheiser where he talks as if he’s worried the bug planted on him won’t pick up his normal speaking voice. I love that Harry, when told the plan, has to ask his wife about it first. And while I was always somewhat paranoid there would be a leak (like Duck finding out about the plan, or something else fouling things up), the sense of fun within the storyline kept turning me back into an excited kid at Christmas waiting to see what happens next.

There is a sense of sadness in the storyline, without question, considering that this means that people like Paul Kinsey and Ken Cosgrove were left behind, along with the entire secretarial staff and Moneypenny. I don’t quite know what to think about this, especially considering the episode played it both for comedy (“We’ve been robbed!”) and for drama (Kinsey’s anger at discovering that Peggy, too, is gone with the rest). The episode gets away with the airy idealism of the journey from idea to reality because the news won’t break until Monday morning, and in some ways the conclusion is all about the way Monday morning feels: one moment you’re remembering the weekend that was, and the next you’re stuck facing a new reality. For Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, it’s the fact that their clients have jumped ship to an agency running out of a hotel and that their only phone call is their Head of Media wondering what room they’re in, and for the former remnants of Sterling Cooper it’s a ship without a captain, a rudder, or a sail (take your pick of who best represents these particular parts of a ship amongst the departures).

The finale is very careful not to paint a picture in its conclusion that is in any way dire. The tension in the conclusion is drawn not from a sense of failure but by testing unknown waters in an effort to see if one should, or can, swim in them. This is not a show to create action-packed finales where characters are taken to wit’s end and placed in some sort of cliffhanger, which would have resulted from the plan failing. Instead, it wants its characters to have to live with their actions, and it wants the series to follow their efforts to do so. As such, we find Don Draper walking towards his temporary apartment as he starts a new life to the sound of Roy Orbison’s “Shahdaroba.” It is a life where he is still a father but no longer a husband, and a life where he is still an Ad Man but no longer one who can say that he is safely employed.

And, as such, Mad Men is now a show about a man who is still a father but no longer a husband, and about Ad Men (and Women) who are stepping out into uncharted territory. The show’s challenge moving forward is finding its axis, discovering how to have a character like Betty Draper (on a plane to Reno with Gene and Henry Francis to ensure the divorce goes through) remain central, and how to potentially keep the remnants of Sterling Cooper (Kinsey, Cosgrove, etc.) within the series. Or, perhaps, it could excise elements of them all together and adopt an entirely new structure that reflects this new period in their lives. What it does make clear, though, is that unlike the second season finale’s complete uncertainty there is now a clear setup for the fourth season, and while there will still be speculation over how far forward in time we leap (joining the new agency in progress down the road) there is no question that the central question will be the success of this new venture within a changing global climate.

But for this hour, there was little sense of the global climate, and no scenes that felt (relatively) wasted on historical reference or period setting. This was a finale that told a story about characters and which delved into their past, present and future in order to create an almost seamless experience. From one conversation with Conrad Hilton came a series of events which managed to solidify themes that the season had perhaps overlooked, depict scenes that we knew have been coming since perhaps the show’s first season, and also gave us a glimpse into the future that was both tragically uncertain and, perhaps best of all, legitimately exciting. “Shut the Door. Have a Seat.” is simply a masterstroke of storytelling, elevating both the season and the series to foreseen, but still stunning, heights.

Cultural Observations

• Don’s treatment of Betty, calling her a wore and pushing her around a bit, is not the first time this has happened, and evokes a scene like the one with Bobbie in the restaurant. However, that was Don being in control, and Don is never really in control in this scene: he is broken down, and it shows in the explosiveness behind his anger.
• The idea that it is the death of Dick Whitman’s father that has been the purpose behind all of this season’s flashbacks to Dick’s childhood made sense in the context of this episode, where Don has to question the impact of a father on a child’s life considering his family is leaving him, but at a certain point the flashbacks became a bit strange in the context of the season. I think they work in the premiere and the finale, but their overall impact in the middle portion of the season was negligible.
• Any Canadian viewers get a total “Heritage Minute” vibe from the Wheat Co-Operative sequence?
• It’s interesting that the new agency never once considered Ken Cosgrove. I don’t disagree with the decision, but we never saw why Don’s thought process went right to Pete (although the evidence is there in the fact that Pete, unlike Ken, has reason to be upset with his current station). It seems like they chose people based on how close they’d be to the chopping block within a merge, to some degree, with makes sense.
• Lane Price’s phone conversation with London, in particular “Happy Christmas!,” was stunning. Seriously, while I’ve been missing Jared Harris in the back half of the season, he was so darn great in this episode that it’s like he’s been around forever. The only thing we were missing was a glimpse at how his homesick wife is going to deal with the decision, although I understand why the episode didn’t go out of its way to answer that question.
• Between this episode and “A Guy Walks into an Advertising Agency,” John Slattery might as well submit in Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy.
• You can check out other great reviews from Alan Sepinwall, James Poniewozik, Keith Phipps, and Mo Ryan (who gets props for “Sterling Coup”).

Advertising Agency: McCann Erickson, Skopje, Macedonia
Creative Director: Ivica Spasovski
Art Directors: Vladimir Manev, Ivica Spasovski
Copywriter: Ivica Spasovski, Vladimir Manev
Photographer: Tomislav Maric, Boro Rudic
Additional credits: Ilija Iko Karov, Aleksandar Achko Krstevski, Verigo

RETT SYNDROME RESEARCH TRUST WEBSITE

McCann Erickson graciously created this 90-second awareness video.  We are indebted to Steve Levit and Kenny Gilbreath for the pro bono effort.  Steve, who is chief creative officer of McCann Erickson recently joined the RSRT Professional Advisory Council (PAC).

The awareness video was launched at the recent Hope for Hannah event which was held in the home of FOX CEO, Jim Gianopulos and his lovely wife Ann, both members of the PAC.

[To share this video on Facebook, etc use this link: http://blip.tv/file/2756182]

Han inundado las ciudades con vallas, marquesinas, mupis…, con las letras ‘Re_’ sobre fondos de diferentes colores. Después llegó el anuncio de televisión, que incidía todavía más en el misterio. Pero aún seguiamos sin saber quién era el anunciante. Hoy, por fin, gracias a este spot emitido sobre las 22h00 en todas las cadenas de televisión, hemos descubierto a los responsables de esta amplia campaña de publicidad. ¿Quieres descubrirlo?

Seis meses han tardado Acciona y sus agencias colaboradoras (McCann Erickson, Universal McCann y Porter Novelli) en confeccionar ‘Re_’, una campaña que quiere convertirse en un plan estratégico de Comunicación cuyo epicentro es el desarrollo sostenible de la compañía y su interacción con sus stakeholders.

Desde el 20 de octubre, una sílaba se apoderó de las marquesinas españolas. Comenzaba así la primera fase teaserde ‘Re_’. Desde entonces, más de 7.000 vallas han ido desgranando un poco más acerca de una campaña creada por McCann Erickson y que pretende erigirse como el nuevo plan de Comunicación de la compañía de José Manuel Entrecanales. ‘Re_’ no es sólo una sílaba, sino la primera de cerca de 250 verbos en castellano y 450 en inglés, así como el inicio de una nueva manera de comunicarse con la sociedad, en la que el entorno digital será clave.

Sin embargo, antes de dar el paso definitivo al mundo online, Acciona ha preferido ‘tirar’ de los medios offline para generar la viralidad esperada en la Red. Marquesinas, inserciones en diarios generalistas, spots de 10 segundos en televisiones nacionales se han unido a una presencia en Internet que contará en su fase final con acciones especiales en Youtube, Tuenti o la tecnología Vibrant Media (busca en las webs contratadas los verbos que comienzan por ‘Re_’, los resalta y los enlaza al microsite creado, www.re.acciona.com).

Así mismo, la campaña no ha querido olvidar a dos grupos de Stakeholders, los medios internacionales y los propios empleados de la compañía. En el ámbito de la Comunicación Interna, Acciona ha rebautizado su intranet bajo el nombre ‘We’Re’, así como la edición de un número especial de la revista corporativa de la compañía, que también pretende implicar al personal menos ‘ejecutivo’ con la impresión de la campaña en las vallas de las obras más representativas actualmente en marcha.

Respecto a la Comunicación internacional, un collage del Re_ se insertará en las publicaciones como el Herald Tribune o el Financial Times, entre otros. Además, está previsto desarrollar una campaña de marketing de guerrilla durante la próxima cumbre del cambio climático que se celebrará en Copenhague el próximo 15 de diciembre.

Por último, y a pesar de que desde Acciona no se ha querido revelar el montante total de la Comunicación, lo que sí han querido destacar ha sido que esta nueva manera de relacionarse con los medios ‘puede suponer un antes y un después’: muestra de ello es que el presupuesto manejado está en torno a 4 o 5 veces por debajo de lo que habría costado una campaña convencional centrada en televisión.

Vía | prnoticias.com

El reciente pitch de la cuenta de Volkswagen, fue motivo de muchos comentarios desde su inicio. Lo retrató claramente Ad Age en el titulo de un artículo que publicó parafraseando las declaraciones de Tim Ellis, vicepresidente de Volkswagen Of America Inc: “Domination Wanted: VW Dumps Crispin in Bid to Triple U.S. Sales“. Triplicar las ventas en diez años y llegar a una posición dominante en el mercado norteamericano es un objetivo tan exuberante, que diarios, revistas y blogs replicaron con todo tipo de comentarios, haciendo algunos una correlación hitleriana (incluidos los símbolos) de los deseos de dominación de la marca alemana y otros, como Alan Wolk y el propio Ad Age, analizando lo imposible de la tarea. Tienen razón. Empezando porque el producto —el auto en diferentes modelos— tiene serios problemas de calidad y son frecuentes las devoluciones. Por ejemplo, en una sola semana de agosto la empresa retiró 13,500 vehículos incluyendo los modelos Jetta y GTI por problemas en la transmisión. Y terminado porque no es una agencia de publicidad la que tiene la magia que pudiese hacer realidad una tarea tan inverosímil. Quizás en tiempos de Don Draper —los sesenta y los setenta— el publicista de la serie Mad Men, pero no cincuenta años mas tarde.

La frase genial de Bill Bernbach para VW tiene ahora otras resonancias: la empresa debe rebajar sus aspiraciones y hacerlas razonables; la agencia estar dispuesta a reducir su remuneración hasta niveles vergonzosos.

Es un secreto a voces que Deutsch de Los Ángeles consiguió, hace unos días la cuenta, solo a punta de rebajar el precio de sus servicios a niveles que otros dicen que tiene que implicar, invariablemente, una pérdida. Lo sugiere, hoy mismo (26/10/09), Ad. Age y lo pregona el irreverente George Parker en su blog AdScam/The Horror!. Pero parece ser cierto también que el responsable de una de las agencias, al salir de la extenuante reunión con los responsables de VW, en la que tuvo que presentar detalles de la cantidad de personas a emplear la cuenta y discutir la compensación,  le susurró a los colegas de la agencia, que hacían antesala:  “Don´t cave”  que es algo así como “¡No sucumban, no cedan!”.

Se refería el colega a la presión que ejercen en las negociaciones los responsables de lo que en inglés se llama procurement y que se puede traducir por “gestión de adquisiciones, compras” que son ahora los encargados de negociar la remuneración de las agencias, inmiscuyéndose en cada detalle de sus costos y ajustando las cifras de acuerdo con sus propio criterio de lo que debe costar un servicio, que, en el caso de las agencias donde los costos son fundamentalmente en salarios y honorarios, implica valorizar lo que deben ganar sus especialistas. Sobre esto he publicado varios posts pero está mejor reseñado en La compensación por performance a toda vela, pero se está convirtiendo a la agencia de publicidad en un/una commodity.

Dice Ad Age en Unmasking the Procurement Executive, que los nuevos invitados a las negociaciones, antes encargados de comprar “cosas” y materiales de oficina, ahora tienen la responsabilidad de comprar el trabajo creativo de la empresa. O de ponerle precio a los medios y a la remuneración de la central de medios respectiva. Solo uno de cada diez “procuradores” en actividad, en la actualidad, de acuerdo con una investigación de Ad Age en LinkedIn, tenía experiencia previa en marketing. Incluso el más importante de todos, Stewart Atkinson, responsable de la compra de medios y otras comunicaciones para P&G como “manager-global marketing purchases”, tiene en su pasado inmediato haber sido el responsable de la manufactura de detergentes en Europa.

Russel Wohlwerth, fundador de Ark Advisors, una empresa de asesoría especializada en relaciones entre la agencia de marketing y el cliente comenta: “… a pesar de las dificultades que han afrontado en los últimos 12 meses (por la crisis) entienden que no es posible mantener una relación en la que desde el principio se pierde dinero. Las empresas tienen que respetar que las agencias ganen dinero. Ni más ni menos que como ellas mismas.”

JWT, filial del grupo WPP, anunció la semana pasada que abandonaba la licitación de UPS (una cuenta de unos $200 millones al año, que fue finalmente ganada por Ogilvy & Mather, también de WPP que fue en pareja con la agencia de medios Maxus).

Bob Jeffrey CEO de J Walter Thompson declara en un mail interno “ UPS es un negocio grande con un problema muy grande que afrontar. Tienen que tratarnos, a nosotros o a cualquier otra agencia, como a un socio y eso no parece estar dentro de su cultura. Hemos invertido una considerable cantidad de tiempo y energía en este proyecto y por lo tanto está claro que no hemos tomado la decisión (de retirarnos) a la ligera”. La agencia que tenía la cuenta The Martin Agency (con McCann Erickson, Universal McCann y MRM en la parte internacional), que en un principio había decidido participar en la licitación, se salió de ella pronto. La negociación fue mucho mas lenta de lo previsto y se dice que se debió a que los “procuradores” estuvieron fuertemente involucrados en el proceso.

Algo parecido sucedió con la cuenta del Grupo Danone ($100 millones) que escogió continuar con MPG de Havas a pesar de una negociación de 4 meses en la que estuvieron involucradas otras dos agencias, una de las cuales declaró: “desde el principio fue obvio que el tema crítico eran los fees y los precios de los medios” y la cosa era totalmente evidente porque las preguntas propuestas eran todas sobre precios “¿Puede asegurar una flexibilidad de presupuesto que mantenga estas garantías a lo largo del 2010”?, ¿”las mejoraría más allá del 2010”?, ¿”puede mejorar los GRP’s netos”?, ¿puede mejorar el nivel de garantía y penalización que está dispuesto a alcanzar para llegar al acuerdo financiero?, ¿puede confirmar que su método garantizado es válido para cada país más allá de los costos 2010?.

Es decir, exclusivamente cuestiones de dinero aunque la licitación fue presentada como para parecer que era sobre estrategia que se iba a discutir y un grupo importante de cada agencia perdió una buena cantidad de tiempo preparando las partes que no tenían ninguna importancia.

Dice Tom Finneran, el VP de servicios de gestión de agencias de la American Association of Advertising Agencies, que ese tipo de RFP (Request For Porposal) “se han vuelto cada vez más comunes y cada vez más un punto de desconcierto para la comunidad de las agencias”. Y ha agregado que en los últimos 12 meses se ha discutido mucho, entre las agencias en torno a estas nuevas practicas desbordantes, en algunas de las cuales ha habido RFP verdaderamente estrambóticas en las que de 300 preguntas solo 10 estaban relacionadas con el marketing de la marca. “Es probable que estén tomando el formato de RFP que usan para proveedores de productos manufacturados o de investigación y tecnología y lo estén usando con las agencias”. “En estas prácticas, concluye, el departamento de marketing ha quedado prácticamente aislado por los “procuradores” a cargo de adquisiciones”. Una auténtica aberración.

Lo cierto es que desde tiempos inmemoriales, las agencias han tenido márgenes con buenos colchones de seguridad y  no le ha resultado demasiado difícil, a los clientes, bajar sus costos. Pero este nivel de reducción de remuneración y confundir los servicios de una agencia con los de otra (la comoditización) va a tener que llegar a un fin y será necesario reacomodar las funciones, las responsabilidades y sin duda, los márgenes. Y como dice Finneran, el VP de la AAAA, “tiene que establecerse una discusión de dos vías; dos RPF, una por cada lado. Y la posibilidad de que la agencia le diga al cliente ‘nos encantará responder a las preguntas que ustedes han hecho pero también tenemos un cuestionario para ustedes. Y no tenemos ningún interés en competir por el manejo de su marca sin tener previamente sus respuestas’.”

Jonah Bloom, el editor en jefe de Ad Age, que fue el que denunció la comoditización en su artículo Agencies and Media Brands Turning Into Commodities, cuyo pensamiento planteamos en este blog, ha escrito un artículo con siete recomendaciones, emanadas incluso de sus propios lectores, para combatirla. Será objeto de mi siguiente post.

Hay que negociar y ponerse de acuerdo.

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I took six pages (!) of notes at the seminar “Stepping Up to Larger Production Commercial Shoots,” which was moderated by PDN features editor Conor Risch. The panelists: photographer Kareem Black; Celeste Holt-Walters, senior art producer at McCann-Erickson; Stockland Martel photo agent Kathryn Tyrrel; and Bette Wilkes, executive producer for her husband, photographer Stephen Wilkes. I can’t re-create the seminar, which covered a whole lot of ground in two hours. But I can give you these nuggets to ponder:

…

And you thought it was just about taking photos:

Bette: It is a business. A lot of people feel like you have a cellphone, a camera, and you’re going to be okay.

Kareem: You can’t discount how important good marketing is to you career. (There’s a good article from 2007 on Kareem’s ambitious marketing efforts here, at Format Magazine.)

…
On promos:

Celeste: “I get bombarded every day with dozens and dozens of mailers, and I look at all of them.” Celeste said she files the ones she likes. She also said that the image on the mailer should be representative of what’s on your site. (Shocking to think that it wouldn’t be, no?) And she said that in an e-blast, the recipient should be able to click on the image and be taken straight to the photographer’s site.

Celeste also said that when she’s looking for a photographer, she first reviews her files of promos and at agents’ sites. The “last resort,” she said, is sourcebooks.

…

On treatments and the creative call:

Celeste: “[A treatment] can help… But if it has the wrong images, it can hurt you.”

Kareem showed a treatment he did a while back for a Kool-Aid campaign that was inspired by old-school hip-hop. He showed the palette, the shots, and the inspiration, which in his case was photographs by Jamel Shabazz.

Celeste: “A creative call is more for the photographer, to show that they get it.” She also said it’s a good thing if the photographer and the art director are “vibing off each other” and personalities are “clicking.”  She added, “Some people just don’t work well together.”

Kat noted that she and the other Stockland Martel agents always do a pre-call with their photographers. “Have some ideas, be enthusiastic, but listen,” she advised. The concept can go a different way than you expected, and you have to balance being ready with ideas for the original plan with being open to anything new the art director may introduce in the call.

Celeste: “If you have a producer you think you’d want to work with, have them sit in on the call.” You’re going to be busy being enthusiastic, and everything [the art director is saying] might not be sinking in.” It’s best, she said, that the producer hear it all directly from the art director.

…

On estimating:

When Kareem started landing bigger jobs, he soon saw that he couldn’t do it all himself and needed help. But he didn’t have an agent. His solution was to hire established agents to bid jobs for him on the side, separate from wherever it was that they worked. He gave them 10% of his creative fee in exchange.

Celeste explained that she needs to see how a job will be executed “down to the penny.” This statement might inspire some defensiveness form photographers, but Celeste explained that she knows the sensitivities of the client. So you might list wardrobe at $200, but she knows that the client is very particular about the clothing and will want that figure to be $1,000 (this is the example she gave), so she can work with you on that. The estimate goes “many rounds,” she said. “Just because someone’s questioning an item doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” she said. “But there should be a reason for everything.”

Celeste also explained that McCann-Erickson has its own estimate form, and the art buyers transfer the figures from a photographer’s estimate into this proprietary form. (The ASMP offers guidance on estimates here.)

…

On diverse versus specialized portfolios:

Celeste likes to see portfolios edited by genre. “If I know that I’m looking for a great portrait photographer, then I think it’s important to have those photos in a specific portfolio…. It’s okay to have more than portfolio.”

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Tomorrow: highlights from “Starting Today, You’re a Brand: Building Your Brand & Your Business.”

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Pentru aceia dintre voi care nu si-au tras cont pe adsoftheworld.com, m-am gandit sa va arat cele mai votate lucrari publicate pe site-ul lor.

Agentia: Spilberg, Oslo, Norvegia
Creative Director: Jørgen Marthinsen
Art Director: Celine Sagenes, Jørgen Marthinsen
Copywriter: Hedda Marie Kaupang
Foto: Anders Flatland
Directors: Lasse Gretland, Kristoffer Carlin

Goldul si silverul la print:

Agentia: Y&R Brazil, São Paulo, Brazilia
Creative Director: Marco Versolato
Art Director / Copywriter: Rafael Segri, Fernando Mattei, Natan Magalhães, Leonardo Brito
Foto: Roberto Donaire, Art Luz

Agentia: Shanghai J&J Advertising Co., China
Creative Director: Aaron Cheng
Copywriter: Chen Rui

Goldul la outdoor:

Agentia: TBWA\Thailand, Bangkok, Thailanda
Executive Creative Director: Veradis Vinyaratn
Creative Director: Tarakorn Kamolprempiyakul
Art Directors: Aekalak Kitdusitpong, Kanon Umpornsirirat
Copywriter: Krisorn Srisai
Foto: Kanon Umpornsirirat, Chalotorn Nuanthong

Goldul la ambient:

Agentia: Tank, Chicago, USA
Art Director: Neal White, David Yeouze
Copywriter: Owen Irvin, Neal White
Foto: Kelly Stephens

Silver la DM:

Advertising School: Art Center College of Design
Art Director/ Copywriter: David Styler
Instructor: Dennis Lee

Best use of media:

Advertising Agency: McCann Erickson Romania
Creative Director: Adrian Botan
Art Director: Razvan Chifu
Copywriter: Catalin Dobre

Petar Pavlov, currently completing his degree in Graphic Design & Visual Communications at Accademia Italiana, is a graphic designer at McCann Erickson where he works for clients such as Coca-Cola, Fanta and Bacardi amongst others.
‘This project was based on one of the YCN briefs where they asked from designers to create a totally new packaging concept for Doritos. Unfortunately, when I saw the brief the deadline was very close, but nevertheless I developed it.’ (http://www.behance.net/petar_pavlov)
This packaging style is too fantastic. Also, it may attract more attention than other in hte supermarket.Because these colors and style is so amusing. Children will love these designs.

Pe scurt, s-a făcut cam așa…

Pentru mai multe detalii…aici.

For quite sometime now, everyone’s been talking about reality television and how it’s taken over our lives. But the new set of campaigns for Dove got me thinking about reality advertising and how it’s so much more effective at getting people to listen and, well, be a part of it.

I suppose if we are speaking of Dove, the whole aspect of “reality advertising” is not exactly new. Dove has, for almost always now, harped on its “real beauty, real women” aspect in all of its communication. Its “Campaign for Beauty” has known its share of success by just making women feel good about themselves.

So sometime early in 2009, Dove in India brought in its classic “Half Face” challenge, asking women to share their experience in switching from soap to “one-quarter cleansing cream”.

A billboard asking women for half their face

Of course “real” women participated and got to feature on the TVCs, with a few teasers prior to the actual revelation showing the women fumbling as they delivered their shots. I don’t have the set of these commercials, so you’ll just have to make do with these:

Then there’s the Damage Care Expert set of commercials, also adapted from the US. Although the TVCs don’t offer much to write home about, I did like the copy on the print and outdoor advertising. Here’s one of them:

A Dove print ad

Following suit in the same category, Pears is asking for mom’s to send in photos of themselves with their kids to indicate the innocence & purity of the soap is like the mother-child relationship. Not half as effective in my opinion, at least from where I’m standing.

A Pears print ad

And I just haven’t been able to make any sense of the TVC that talks about Humayan and Babar and whatnot. Please let me know if you can:

At the other end of the spectrum is reality advertising that has tried to become a movement of sorts, while pushing the actual product somewhere in the background. After the whole noise Jaago Re raked up around the elections, it’s now back with the”Khilana bandh, pilana shuru” campaign. Even thought I really like the commercial, I don’t see it creating as much of a stir. Perhaps it’s because there’s only so much of it that people can take, these causes, or perhaps it hasn’t gone as all out as the previous campaign. Whatever the reason, I do hope it evolves further. ‘Cause I just don’t think taking a pledge online is going to be enough to do this.

But I suppose looking at the certain campaigns that have done well while adopting this “real” approach, you can only wait for more advertising that will do the same. Because it’s really just a win-win situation for everyone. The people forget that advertising is advertising as they finally want to believe what they hear, and for the advertiser, it quells the existential brouhaha that arises ever so often about why we do what we do and what good will come off of it.

]]> http://jellylondon.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/hottest-spot-on-mccann/ Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:51:53 +0000 jellylondon http://jellylondon.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/hottest-spot-on-mccann/

Work spotting is our favourite sport in the jelly house. We get really excited with billboards, online banners, blog mentions… pretty much anything!

So, you can imagine how much we were bouncing around the office when we saw that our friends at McCann Erickson London had put our Fatville illustrations and animation pride of place on their website homepage!!

If you have no idea what we’re talking about, either go to our previous blog here or click on the image to take you straight to the McCann Erickson website!

National Geographic Magazine readers were treated to this ad in 1959

Some tourism industry leaders, hospitality business owners, employees and citizens are biting their nails as Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and state legislators decide whether they will find money in the budget to support the one industry that couldn’t leave the state if it tried. Afterall, it’s not easy to relocate the Sleeping Bear Dunes, or Mackinac Island.

Mackinac Island's Grand Hotel has welcomed guests since 1887

Tourism has been important to the state since the late 1800s when Victorian city dwellers escaped to Michigan’s clean air, fresh waters, scenic sights, and fudge shops.

An ad from 1954

In 1959 the Michigan Tourist Council promoted “the magic holiday funland called Michigan” in The National Geographic Magazine, and an ad in a 1954 issue touted the state’s “inland seashore” and thousands of “forest-ringed lakes…well-stocked fishing streams…historic landmarks…thrilling scenic routes…”

The essentials haven’t changed since those ads ran. Four Great Lakes still lap against Michigan’s shore, the rivers and 19-million acres of forest continue to roll out recreational opportunities, and the historic landmarks are just that much more historic.

Other industries boom and bust, build and abandon factories, flirt with and desert the state. But the freshwater beaches, fishing streams, wineries, ski trails, lighthouses, and institutions like The Henry Ford (Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village) remain. Today, the experts count some 200,000 tourism-related jobs across the state; a Return On Investment study calculates that for every dollar spent promoting travel to Michigan, visitors drop $2.86 here.

Travel Michigan, the state’s tourism office, has built awareness of the state’s charms through its award-winning, heart-tugging, tear-inducing, Web hit-generating Pure Michigan campaign created by the McCann Erickson agency. The radio and television advertising (voiced by Michigan talent Tim Allen), print ads, outdoor boards, social media, public relations and promotional programs cost $30 million over the last year. Was it worth it? Time will tell. There will be studies and surveys. I know that as I traveled across the state this summer everyone I asked credited Pure Michigan for bringing more visitors to their doors (and cash registers).

Yet the new fiscal year begins on October 1 and our elected officials still haven’t committed to supporting one of the state’s major economic contributors with a repeat of those promotional dollars.

Upper Peninsula waterfalls are Pure Michigan

Check out the latest Travel Michigan TV ad and let Lansing know that “the magic holiday funland called Michigan” will be here long after they leave the hallowed halls of the State Capitol.

And that for them not to support Pure Michigan is pure folly.

Full disclosure: I am a contributing writer on the michigan.org Web site and Michigan Travel Ideas, the state’s official visitor magazine, published by Midwest Living Magazine.