McDonald’s is reviewing its creative account for the New York region—one of its largest in the country—but is only considering roster agencies.
The region encompasses New York City, the lower Hudson Valley, New Jersey and a sliver of Connecticut. Arnold has handled the business—with revenue estimated at less than $2 million—for about a decade.
Review decision-makers, including franchisee owners, met with a half-dozen roster shops before narrowing the field to Arnold and Moroch. The remaining contenders are now preparing for final presentations, with a decision expected next month.
Shops that participated in the earlier round included DDB, Leo Burnett, TBWA and GlobalHue. Each works for McDonald’s either nationally or outside the U.S. The agencies either declined to comment or did not return calls.
Arnold handles some 14 McDonald’s co-op accounts. The Havas shop also creates national work, such as the current “The Egg McMuffin of” ad. The agency referred calls to McDonald’s, which had no immediate comment. The chain’s media spending in the New York Metropolitan area totaled more than $29 million in 2010 and about $25 million in the first 10 months of 2011, according to Nielsen. Those figures don’t include online spending.
The review comes about six months after McDonald’s reviewed its Chicago region creative business. In that pitch, which was contractually mandated, incumbent Leo Burnett retained the account.
Resist the urge to salute as you admire jcpenney's spanking new logo, a lovely red square with a superimposed blue square that's intended to evoke JCP's proud American heritage and commitment to treat customers "fair and square." (Ha! It's a pun, get it?) In a statement, the company adds: "The new jcpenney logo, which combines the elements that have made jcpenney an enduring American brand, by evoking the nation's flag and jcpenney's commitment to treating customers Fair and Square. The square frame imagery will be evident throughout all of jcpenney's marketing, to remind customers to frame the things they love." I think it's a good change from one of the worst logos of 2011. The last logo (at left) was designed by graphic design student Luke Langhus from the University of Cincinnati. His entry, while it may have been the best of the 200 submissions, was just plain bland. The new version is simple, modern, iconic, and harkens back to that old ugly red square they hauled around for a few decades that we all still remember. The logo change is accompanied by a new ad campaign from Mother New York, launching Feb. 1, which includes the teaser spot below and a "No Meter" that frustrated shoppers can scream into on the Facebook page. Now, JCP, you can turn your attention to selling better clothes.
Outdoor TV manufacturer SunBriteTV has hired independent shop The Buddy Group as its digital agency of record. The Irvine, Calif.-based agency is charged with handling social media for the company’s first consumer-facing integrated campaign to launch in the spring.
“We’re doing a complete brand makeover. We’re rebuilding the website, making it very consumer friendly,” said Tom Dixon, vp of marketing at SunBriteTV. The Buddy Group’s first work is to build Facebook pages that will go live in connection with the site’s expected February relaunch.
But the bulk of The Buddy Group’s work will debut in April to support the launch of SunBriteTV’s signature product line that Dixon said will be more affordable for the average consumer. Social media will be the campaign’s primary channel, but SunBriteTV will also run print ads in luxury lifestyle magazines and target initiatives to consumers in California, southern Florida, New York, Chicago and Texas.
Sporting venues featuring the company’s products include Gilette Stadium, Wrigley Field and Soldier Field, but Dixon said “our biggest challenge is people just don’t know these products actually exist. Conventional wisdom says thou shalt not mix electronics with water.”
The Buddy Group was the only agency SunBriteTV considered for the role, Dixon said. He had worked with the agency while serving as vp of marketing at audio technology company DTS.
So, this mysterious Super Bowl teaser popped up on YouTube today, with Matthew Broderick reprising his role as Ferris Bueller, 26 years after his fateful day off. Says the YouTube blurb: "We hate to be such a tease, but on a day like today, we just have to. Stick it out until the Super Bowl, or take a 'day off' on Monday and catch the big reveal." It could be for sausages, although Abe Froeman might not have $3.5 million lying around. He seems to be in a hotel room—so, perhaps a hotel chain or a vacation marketer? Any other guesses? UPDATE: Jalopnik says the Bueller spot is for Honda: "A source familiar with Honda's operations hinted to us earlier this year that the company was going to do a Ferris Bueller-style ad for the Super Bowl starring none other than Matthew Broderick. The source also added that the spot was going to mimic much of the original film, except this time prominently featuring Hondas. The big jump the two valets do in Cameron's dad's Ferrari? We hear this time it's going to be a Honda CR-V. Honda is pouring a lot of money into this ad and, according to our source, hired The Hangover writer/director Todd Phillips to put it all together."
This is a direct quote from the first line of Adweek's Trailer Mash" is what you'll read should you find this story via a retweet bot on Twitter. Our mash this time (above, by Kate Rose) unites Sam Worthington and Katherine Heigl as though the worlds of Man on a Ledge and One for the Money were the same, which in a real way they are. And to spare you the moil of sitting through every trailer, here are a few ideas of what to expect from the new releases based exclusively on their own advertising.
According to the uncommonly precious trailer for How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?, the Christ was not a Nazarene carpenter's son living under Roman occupation a couple thousand years ago but a bald old Englishman who walks among us today, in a very fine suit. Filling space with structures of purpose that not only tell the story of our times but ineluctably describe how beauty is a mere aspect of good design, Foster's works could inspire despair among any mighty who happen to look upon them. All it would take to topple this artfully constructed edifice is the possibility of an encomium from Bono. Oops.
The trailer for The Grey is one of those object lessons in brevity that the industry graces us with every now and again. So deft in its presentation, so confident in its storytelling, it leaves one struggling to imagine what more entertainment might be wrung from the movie's remaining 115 minutes and 33 seconds. At the very moment we realize Liam Neeson is mourning the apparent death of his wife in a snow-related accident (touchingly authentic or creepily exploitative, your call), we find ourselves in a classic man-against-nature stand off—specifically, Liam, fingers bedecked in a broken bottlenecks knuckleduster, about to have a fistfight with a pack of wolves. We must pity the wolves even as we chortle away at broken bottleneck knuckledusters.
There are some, no doubt, who have held off on making the major decisions of life until the time came when Sam Worthington would appear onscreen in a mullet. For them, that happy day has come. In this trailer for Man on a Ledge, Sam and his mullet stand on a ledge to provide a distraction so that Jamie Bell from Billy Elliot and King Kong can do a robbery to clear his name. Ed Harris is in there, too, apparently impersonating a 300-year-old skeleton who set the mullet up, while Elizabeth Banks is the smart but hot negotiator duped into talking him down. Such a preposterous name for a movie, Man on a Ledge, it demands to be put through an Internet anagram generator, and the best result is "Lemon Agenda." For those still undecided about those key decisions, be assured that the Worthington mullet will return, in Wrath of the Titans, or White Hot Ant Farts.
Insofar as she never seems as though she will transcend the material, Katherine Heigl might well be the female Sam Worthington. Luckily for Katherine, her new vehicle, One for the Money, doesn't require her to. It appears to be a dopey and happy-to-be-so romantic comedy about a newly appointed New Jersey bailbondswoman tasked with bringing in her old high school flame, and it's all pleasingly random. Debbie Reynolds fires a gun at a roast dinner, Katherine's clothes fall off quite a bit, and there's even a female best friend, or sister probably, to exchange frustrations with at the end of a phone. As for her quarry, Jason O'Mara is yet another of those production-line slender and twinkly Irishmen with instant female appeal, the kind of fellow all us other men just love to be around. Michael Fassbender is already consulting with his agents.
Opening a trailer with Laurie Anderson's "Oh Superman" is like finding a hidden armor cache at the beginning of the video game Doom—unexpected protection against what is to come. But follow this with a French couple so perfect you immediately want to be one-half of one just like it, cinematography so discreetly glamorous you can barely tell how cleverly you're being seduced by it, and then a moment to do with a baby that makes your stomach drop like a rock down a well, all in the space of 90 seconds, and it's apparent that no armor will defend you, and you instantly understand why the first thing you saw when the trailer for Declaration of War began was Official Entry France Best Foreign Language Film Academy Awards 2012.
Around the world there are a number of well-attended and established horror-movie festivals, a few listed at the beginning of the trailer for The Theatre Bizarre. As though only to keep these festivals going, some 1 million or so cheap and tacky horror movies are made every week. Some—few—are not even about zombies. The Theatre Bizarre is one such film, and promises to be a charming medley of horror's greatest hits that meshes in a modernly self-aware plot of some kind. Just to hammer the gag home, bloodily, a woman occupying the Christ position in a Last Supper tableau bats a gigantic eyelash and mews, "It's all about moderation." Yawn. Whatever happened to exploitation films with brains in the script as well as sprayed up the walls? In fact, don't even bother watching this trailer, watch this one instead. Where are Brian Yuzna and Screaming Mad George when you need them?
In England, the 1973 movie The Wicker Man is part of the cultural heritage, a much-loved artifact reflecting a national psyche that never quite lost its urge for the paganism that prevailed before Joseph of Arimathea docked at Albion's white cliffs. You can see this sense memory carved into the green men on the bosses of churches up and down the length of the land, those vinous creatures hauling good Christian souls back into the immoral flesh of the earth. It's the England of Druids, the Great Beast Aleister Crowley, and Alan Moore, who worships a snake. For this reason alone, the American and sometime Mormon Neil LaBute's 2006 re-interpretation of the story as another chapter in his life's work of rationalizing misogyny was doomed from the off. (And don't let's even start on the incongruent idiocies of the annual Burning Man self-indulge-athon.) But now the director of the original, Robin Hardy, never entirely happy with it, as decades of interviews have revealed, has returned with a reboot, The Wicker Tree. The silence that precedes the film's imminent release is not a good augury, but when Christopher Lee explains mankind's relationship with fate, you'll be hard pushed not to feel a catch in your throat. As for the rest, it could be heaven or hell, at least according to this trailer.
FirstBank's regional Super Bowl debut (the ad will air only in Colorado) via agency TDA in Boulder, touting superior service, features a banker type who sits in a comfy chair and says, "If you’re a FirstBank customer worried about missing one of the exciting commercials, or the game, now would be a great time to go to the bathroom." He takes a long pause before adding, "Seriously." The commercial is, as we've been known to say in Boston (home, more or less, of the soon-to-be NFL champion New England Patriots), a wicked pissah. That's a good thing—usually. I guess folks in the other 49 states will have to make their own decisions about when to take a bathroom break. For me, Go Daddy's ads present the perfect opportunity. They're always piss poor, and even the company name suggests making a dash to the can.
Coca-Cola rolled out the details of its Super Bowl advertising on Thursday, and compared to what else we've seen, it looks pretty good. At first blush, the campaign, by Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Ore., is just another take on the brand's classic arctic mascots—the polar bears. But the whole concept is built out around tying into the game itself, in real time—aiming to enhance the overall experience by adding a little topical extra entertainment value. The TV work focuses on two polar bears, chilling out on their "snowfa" and watching the game, rooting for opposite teams. Each sports a colored scarf that denotes its wearer's allegiance—red and white for the Giants, blue and white for the Patriots. A 30-second ad in the first quarter will introduce them. One of two different versions of a 60-second ad will air during the second quarter—which, exactly, will be a game-time call based on how the drama between the two teams is unfolding.
The idea extends nicely across digital and mobile media with a second-screen social campaign: A live stream housed on CokePolarBowl.com and in rich-media banners on sites like ESPN.com will feature animated versions of the bears reacting to the game and the commercials as they play out. (The bears will be controlled by a pair of W+K creatives.) Coke's Twitter account and Facebook page, meanwhile, will be churning out notes to fans in the voices of characters designed to represent the bears, and clips extracted from the live stream. For technical reasons, the brand's marketing team—which also includes 360i and Framestore—won't extend the live stream to tablets and smartphone executions, which will stay focused on the social elements. Sure, most viewers won't be glued to their laptops during the game. But the brand is hoping fans will check in for a minute or two here and there—and promising enough Easter eggs to make it worthwhile.
Specs Who Carson Daly Age 38 Accomplishments Host Last call With Carson Daly and The Voice (returns Feb. 5 after the Super Bowl), both on NBC; DJs morning show on Los Angeles' AMP Radio 97.1 Base Santa Monica, Calif.
What’s the first information you consume in the morning?
I have a My Yahoo page that I probably developed 10 years ago. It was one of the first websites that you could really personalize and build out. I’ve got my stocks in there, my weather, and all of the websites I go to, like gossip blogs and The Hollywood Reporter and HuffPo.
What do you read or watch or listen to at the breakfast table?
From around 4:30 a.m. to 11 a.m., I’m at work, so I don’t really have a traditional breakfast. I eat a banana and some yogurt while I’m on the radio, and I play a lot of Top 40 music—Drake, Jay-Z and Kanye West, Bruno Mars, Gaga. I also like to read the New York Post in the studio.
What occupies your mind in the car, on the subway, train or bus?
Howard Stern—I have XM in my car specifically for Howard. I’m a big listener, except when my son’s in the car. Then it’s DVDs of Thomas the Train.
Are you a TV junkie or on an airtime-restricted diet?
I would say I’m on an airtime-restricted diet. I have a 3-year-old, and I get up at 4:30 in the morning, so I don’t have a lot of time to just watch TV.
If you’re a couch potato, what do you watch, and how: TV, laptop or tablet?
Most of my media consumption is directly correlated to doing interviews with guests on my late-night or radio show. But on the weekends, I watch a lot of sports. And Sons of Anarchy on FX is my one must-watch show. Thanks to Hulu, I probably watch more TV on my computer than on my television.
Before bed, do you bite into a novel, graze on Twitter or fast until morning?
I’m guilty of Twitter. I followed everyone who followed me when I first joined in ’08, but now there are so many people . . . I just discovered how to make a list of my friends, so before I go to bed, I’ll read through that.
Which is more nutritious: print or Web?
I would love to just be old school and say print is better for you. TheNew York Times and L.A. Times are getting smaller and smaller—it’s like I’m holding a comic book at this point—but I love flipping through a paper and reading the headlines.
Give us the skinny on your favorite app.
My favorite app is also my least favorite app. It’s a game called Cut the Rope. I’m like Alec Baldwin; I would miss my flight for Cut the Rope.
What’s your biggest digital indulgence?
I’m constantly in pursuit of new music, so I spend hours on various sites like BrooklynVegan, My Old Kentucky Blog, Pitchfork and Stereogum.
With such a bloated media universe, how do you cut out the fat?
I only go online when I know what I’m looking for; otherwise, I overeat—it’s like Sizzler.
AdMedia Partners’ annual poll of marketing agencies and media outlets reveals a healthy appetite for acquisitions, with 59 percent expecting to participate in a deal this year—up significantly from 40 percent a year ago.
In particular, respondents expect much more activity among strategic buyers. Seth Alpert, a managing director at AdMedia, a boutique M&A firm in New York, discussed the poll findings and why, despite the anticipation of more deal-making this year, agencies and media companies remain anxious about the economy.
Adweek: What’s driving the significant uptick in the percentage of respondents who expect to sell their businesses this year (48 percent versus 36 percent a year ago)?
Seth Alpert: It’s indicative of sellers who’ve been on the sidelines through what looks like tough times in terms of multiples. Multiples have come back, activity is up and if I’ve been waiting since 2009 to sell because the environment wasn’t great, I’m probably feeling pretty good about being a seller in 2012.
Do you agree with the finding that valuations will remain strong?
Valuations in 2012 will be just as good as or maybe even slightly better than in 2011. We all have in our not-to-distant memory times when valuations were completely meshuganah—if you can tolerate a New York word. I don’t think they’re going to be meshuganah (this year), but clearly there will be deals where there are remarkable valuations in certain arenas and not in my view for agencies. There will deals that are emblematic of fantastic multiples of revenue—not in EBITDA—in tech. When I say, “tech,” I mean media and advertising tech. And I think there will be potentially some similar deals in the content arena. If you think about Huffington Post going for about seven times revenue to AOL, it really feels like an outlier. But I think there will be other deals in 2012 that involve public companies paying multiples of revenue for hot online content companies.
On balance, will 2012 be more of a seller’s market?
It will be more of a seller’s market than it had been. Yeah, absolutely. There will be a greater diversity in kinds of buyers. As we discussed earlier, the multiples will be the same or better than they were last year. So, it’s probably a better time to sell than it has been for a little while, relatively speaking.
Why are strategic buyers expected to be more active than financial buyers?
Strategic guys have been the ones who have been more on the sidelines. So, the growth from them year over year would be naturally higher. The private equity world—which is the synonym for financial buyers here—has been extremely active and has taken advantage of the fact that the strategic competition has been largely absent since Q4 2008. So, it doesn’t mean that the respondents felt that there would be more M&A by strategics than by financials. It just means that there will be more growth in strategic acquisitions.
Why is it a good time to buy?
There’s a lot of cash sitting around. The buyers are feeling more secure about their own businesses. Things are stabilized. The economy looks like it’s not going to go to hell—this week. Don’t ask me about next week.
In a recent RSW/US poll, agencies were more optimistic about the economy and client spending than marketers. Your poll draws a flattish picture of the economy, with maybe a modest upward bump.
Yes. People are cautious because they’ve had some bad experiences over the last couple of years. And we’ve watched and waited for the economy to improve and it hasn’t been the way we all hoped that it would. So, after you’ve gotten punched a couple of times, you’re probably a little shy about sticking their neck out.
So, we’re not on the ledge like we were a few years ago, but we’re not out buying new houses and expensive cars either.
No, we’re not. … In fairness, I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going to happen in 2012. But the mood is cautious and understandably so because of a lot of unpredictable things that could happen. There are things outside of the control of anyone in the U.S. that can have a big impact on the U.S. economy. I’m not surprised (that) clients are talking cautiously and planning cautiously and I think that the agencies really would like something different. So, they are comforting themselves by saying, “It’s going to be better.” And for some of them, it will be better. And for others, it will be worse.
What's the difference between an advertising campaign and a startup accelerator? In the case of "Intel Innovators," there isn't much of one.
Launched by the tech giant in December, “Intel Innovators” is a Facebook marketing push in the form of a contest for young tech entrepreneurs seeking cash to bring their ideas to life. On Thursday, the brand announced the winner of the campaign's second round—a 23-year-old computer engineer whom the brand will give $100,000 to develop software that is designed to make tablets more friendly for people with fine motor disabilities like cerebral palsy.
“Assistive Scanning Keyboard,” created by Chris McMeeking, is a visual aid that tracks through a tablet keyboard, highlighting rows and letters that also turns the entire screen into a trigger, so users can spell out words by touching anywhere. “With our mobile app alone we can allow [users with disabilities] to text/call their family, read a book, browse the Internet, and much more,” reads a description of the idea. The technology has already been tested with cerebral palsy patients at a school and children’s hospital, and McMeeking’s company, ASK Interfaces, is working towards releasing iOS and Android versions of the application.
The idea technically won two $50,000 prizes: One from an expert panel that heard pitches from five entrepreneurs culled through fan feedback from twenty committee-selected submissions, and a second awarded by a “Top Fan.” (The “Top Fan” is a Facebook user who invested the most "Social Currency" during a given round. Points are earned by using the app, nominating friends’ ideas, sharing submissions and otherwise participating in and amplifying the campaign, and then spent to push ideas up the leader board into the five finalist slots).
The first round pot of $100,000, announced in late December, was split between two winners. One was “LoginWill,” a tool that lets users assign beneficiaries for their online logins and passwords and instructions on how to handle a Facebook account in case of death, for example. The other was “Cosmic Cart,” a video ecommerce technology that lets viewers buy products from online clips.
The campaign taps into the excitement over startups using trendy advertising techniques like crowd-sourcing and gamification. And, it appears to be working—Intel said it’s generated thousands of ideas and created hundreds of thousands of "engagements" in its target demographic, 18- to 24-year-olds. Created by youth marketing agency Noise, the campaign limits contestants to people in the same age range. While that decision was driven in part by legal considerations—Intel maintains it can’t award cash to under 18-year-olds—the upper cap has invited minor grumbling from entrepreneurs too old to participate. Limiting eligibility to those 24 and under was driven by Intel’s desire to focus on college-aged students, the brand says.
Users can still participate in the investing portion of the third round, but any would-be contestants looking to submit are out of luck, at least for the time being. So far, the campaign is only scheduled to run for three rounds. Submission for the third closed on Jan. 16th, and Intel has yet to publicly announce any plans for an extension. But, the app’s submission page does promise to inform would-be contestants when submissions open for a fourth round. So there may be hope yet—for anyone who doesn’t turn 25 first.
2008 scandalz.net
