Mother with new Orange campaign

After winning the pan-european account of Orange in September, London's Mother has just released its first regional campaign across Europe. To read more on Orange's creative strategy and the scripts of “Snoring”, “Architect” and “Gendarme” TV copies, check > Ad Latina

Kesselskramer, Amsterdam: "Hand Brinker Hotel"

Better Branding ...

"Building strong brands isn’t getting any easier. An explosion in the number of brands—as well as a proliferation of ways to communicate them, from hundreds of cable channels to the Internet, product placement in movies, and even mobile-phone display screens—has made it tougher to get messages through". In this article from McKinsey Quarterly the authors suggest the key to building brands more scientifically is to combine a forward-looking market segmentation with a better understanding of customers and a brand’s identity.

Digestive Reading: "Strategic Advertising Management"

This new textbook deals with advertising from a strategic rather than simply a descriptive standpoint. Percy, Rossiter, and Elliott look first at what advertising is meant to do and then go on to provide an understanding of what is necessary in the development of effective advertising and promotion, using a number of extended case histories, such as: Volskwagen, Orange, Polaroid, Nike, Bacardi Breezer, Wonderbra, Kraft, BMW, Colgate, outros - o que o torna num manual extremamente prático. Recommended reading for Agency's Directors, Creative Directors, Planners or simply curious readers. Table of Contents: Part I: Overview of Advertising and Promotion (Strategic Advertising Management) Part II: Planning Considerations (The Strategic Planning Process) Part III: Laying the Foundation (Target Audience;Positioning Strategy) Part IV: Making it Work (Creative Tactics;Creative Execution)

Pepsi: "It goes great with food"

NY Times - PepsiCo introduces its first campaign in years meant to offer rational reasons to drink its flagship beverage rather than intangible emotional ones. The campaign for the Pepsi-Cola brand, which gets under way Sunday, carries the theme 'Pepsi. It's the cola'. The television and radio commercials, online advertisements, billboards and store signs portray the product as a hero, presenting Pepsi as the perfect accompaniment to all manner of food - like hot dogs, snack chips and pizza - and all manner of fun, like football games and dates (...) Think of it as "Things go better with Pepsi," a sell almost as soft as before but with a more pointed purpose.

JWT, Portugal: "APAV - Victim Support"


"Beware of husband"

BBH, London:"Barnardo's Foundation"

Keys to a Strong Agency Relationship

Good client/agency relationships are like good marriages (...)
Both take a lot of work, especially after the honeymoon is over. - Chris Vernon

The Keys to a Strong Agency Relationship
1) Be your agency’s best client.
Not necessarily the agency’s biggest client, its least demanding client, or even its nicest client; "best" means the agency’s most respected, most professional client.
2) Communicate! Communicate! Communicate!
This means being a good listener, even to things you don’t want to hear. Encourage questions. Ask some yourself. And don’t expect simple answers.
3) Create an atmosphere of trust.
4) Think of the agency as a true "marketing partner", not as a vendor.
5) Make the agency part of the company’s team.
Make sure they get sales bulletins, internal newsletters and key correspondence. Keep the agency current about your products, distributors, competitors and markets.
6) Long-term commitment is crucial.
7) Be dependable.
Be there when you say you will. Return approved copy and layout when you say you will. When you can’t, let them know why. Don’t leave your voice mail on all the time, and do return your calls.
8) Be knowledgeable about the agency’s resources and the agency’s business. If you don’t know - ASK!
Understand what you can do to benefit the agency, and what you may be doing unintentionally which wastes their time or makes their jobs more difficult and more frustrating.
9) Treat the people who work on your account with respect.
10) Share the credit with your agency. Share the heat.
Make your team look good in front of your management and the agency’s. They’ll work to make you a hero, too!
11) Don’t cry wolf! Set reasonable expectations.
Don’t treat every job as an emergency. Your account team can become cynical amazingly fast. Give them the time they need to do the job right.
12) Create a "nuclear free" zone.
Make sure the agency knows professional disagreement isn’t dangerous. Let the agency suggest what they think you need, not just what they think you want to hear.
13) Keep the agency insulated from office politics.
Nothing can be more damaging to the agency’s credibility than getting them in the middle of office politics.

Source: Blue Horse Inc.

Leo Burnett Picks Up Global Creative on Wella

Ad Week, CHICAGO Publicis Groupe's Leo Burnett will take over creative duties on Wella's global ad account, according to an agency representative. Estimated billings are $100 million.
Burnett client Procter & Gamble bought Wella for an estimated $5.5 billion earlier this year. The shop currently handles P&G's Vidal Sassoon brand in Asia, Pert in the U.S. and Clairol Herbal Essences in Europe. It was unclear which of the Chicago-based agency's offices will handle the business.

Classic Campaign Posters

Context: In 1997 Campaign, the weekly journal of the advertising industry, named the Tory party's 'demon eyes' poster as its campaign of the year - an accolade previously accorded the lingerie campaign - claiming it was brilliantly successful in playing on public doubts about Mr Blair and achieved £5 million of free publicity on the back of a £125,000 spend.
Agency:M&C Saatchi

On Positioning and Incumbent Brands

Positioning is not something that only the new players and challengers in the market need to continuously work if they want to differentiate. For example let's look at FedEx: - FedEx first launched its service against the postal service with an emphasis on overnight delivery. - When other players entered the market offering the same service, it changed its focus to speed and dependability. - With the introduction of innovate tools such as fax and email offering quicker and less expensive 'delivery', FedEx again changed its discourse to the advantages of security and confidentiality.

What brand are you?

In a telling tribute to the vapid mentality of the advertising industry, marketers registered over 20 of 150 fake brand names from a web site poking fun at the ridiculousness of corporate re-branding. Created as a spoof by U.K. ad agency Design Conspiracy, the site, What Brand Are You, asked marketers to enter a set of brand attributes and then click a button to get an auto-generate a brand name. Rather than get the joke, over 20 marketers used the site to generate a brand name and then registered it as a real brand. Some of the spoof brand names that are now “real” are Amplifico, Integriti, Thinc and Winwin.
Source: Marketing Wonk

Del Campo Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi: "Buenos Aires Zoo"

"Buenos Aires Zoo: Get much more for much less."

Revising Concepts: The Laddering Tool

Laddering is a process of questioning which connects the attributes or characteristics of a product to the benefits that the product gives the consumer to the values those benefits serve in the customer's life.

ATTRIBUTES ------> BENEFITS -------> VALUES
| _____________ | _______________ |
What a product is » What a product means

1. An attribute is a property of a product.
2. A benefit is how a product relates to a person.
3. A value is a need internal to a person.

Mad Dog & Englishmen: "gfn.com - the gay financial network"

"You're partners?Oh!..Then this must be a business loan." ][ "Two fellas living together?Look out ladies!"

Maurice Levy (Publicis): A Frenchmen in Advertising

Foie gras and fashion? Yes, the French can handle that. But advertising? Leave that to the British and Americans, masters of understatement and the brash riposte, with their ad powerhouses, like the Omnicom Group and the Interpublic Group of Companies in the United States and the WPP Group in Britain. Maurice Levy begs to differ. In recent years, Mr. Levy bought a string of agencies, including Britain's fabled Saatchi & Saatchi, that catapulted the French agency company Publicis Groupe into the forefront of the advertising world. Then last year he helped engineer a deal to bring together Publicis, the Bcom3 Group of the United States and Dentsu, the leading agency company in Japan, to form the world's fourth-largest ad company. Source: NY Times

The Fall of Advertising & the Rise of PR

"Creativity wins awards, but does it also win sales?" This is the provocative message that marketing gurus Al and Laura Ries deliver with The Fall of Advertising. And with the following reasoning: " To be effective, advertising doesn't need creativity. It needs credibility." - the authors tells us how and why publicity will assume the major role in product launches, with advertising solidifying brands rather than creating them. It's an interesting book (we have a huge respect fo Al Ries) nevertheless it's a bit rethorical. On their conclusion that advertising has 'no role in brand building' we suggest them to have a glimpse through the IPA Advertising Works annual book.

GS&P, S.Francisco: "Porsche Cars of North America"

Brand name creation

Techniques to generate original names

Abbreviation: Fed Ex - Amex ] Allusion & Analogy: Kitchen Aid - Caterpillar - 7 Eleven
Classical Roots: Midas - Oracle - Avis ] Composition: Pagemaker - Qualcomm - PowerBook
Fusion: Nutrasweet - Eveready ] Humor & Joy: Banana Republic ] Morpheme Construction: Xerox - Qualcomm - Pentium - Viacom ] Image / Sound Symbolism: Adobe - Yahoo! ] Truncation: Fanta - Intel ] Historical: Pontiac ] Geographical: Heartland Bank & Trust

Source: Generra, Knab

Carmichael Lynch: "American Advertising Federation"

"Advertising. The way great brands get to be great brands."

CP+B: The most awarded agency

Crispin Porter + Bogusky was the most-awarded agency in 2003, according to the Gunn Report. CP+B of Miami won the lion's share of its awards for its IKEA TV spots and Mini print work. Check: CP+B

Beacon Communications, Tokyo: "Polaroid. It's sexy."

"Polaroid 1200FF. It's sexy."

TBWA Portugal hires creative top-gun

Icaro Doria who had previously worked in Portugal for Leo Burnett is back in town to join forces with TBWA's local creative team. This Brazilian copywriter has already earned a Cannes Bronze Lion (Timberland 2001) and a Silver Lion (Kellogg's 2003).