Campaign for Wrangler Jeans

… Portrays People Getting in Touch With Their Inner Animals

Press Grand Prix Goes to Paris Hotshop Fred & Farid

Print is France’s forte this year. Two-year-old Paris hotshop Fred & Farid has won a press Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival for its European campaign “We Are Animals” for Wrangler jeans. The idea is that people have lost touch their animal instincts, buried in daily urban life.

Different executions portray young people in nature-filled settings posed like animals in the wild. Some ads show people in Wrangler jeans or denim shirts. In “Dakota on Road,” a woman clad only in white jeans stands in the middle of a road’s yellow lines, caught like a deer in approaching headlights. In “Dakota 1,” a woman is submerged in water up to her nose, like a crocodile or a hippo.

The Ad Campaign for a ‘New’ G.M.

Can General Motors make up for decades of mistakes and misfires in a minute?

That is the ambitious goal of a 60-second commercial to begin running on television on Wednesday. The spot is already available on a Web site (gmreinvention.com) and on YouTube.

The commercial is part mea culpa, part gauzy paean to the concept of a “new” General Motors. Although portions seem self-serving, there are moments when a viewer may think, “Hey, maybe G.M. deserves another chance.”

Dell Bows India Campaign

First Big Brand Work From WPP’s Enfatico

Global Idea Network

PC giant Dell is rolling a big campaign aimed at small- and medium-size business in India. The new effort, which runs the media gamut from print and digital to broadcast, represents a shift from the previous strategy of targeting large organizations.

FULL ARTICLE

McDonald’s Gives Packaging a Flashy Update New Look Highlights Food Pictures, Plays Down ‘Lovin’ It’ Slogan

CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — McDonald’s is scrapping its package design across 118 countries and 56 languages in what Global Chief Marketing Officer Mary Dillon called the “biggest packaging initiative in the history of the brand.” The new look puts more emphasis on product and less on the brand’s iconic “I’m lovin’ it” tagline.

FULL ARTICLE

PomX Iced Coffee Targets College Crowd

New Energy Drink Counting on Irreverent Humor to Get Noticed

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — The company that popularized pomegranate juice, Pom Wonderful, is looking to stake its claim in the energy-drink arena, introducing PomX Iced Coffee with an irreverent marketing campaign targeted to 18- to 24-year-olds with taglines such as “Wake the F Up” and “Yes officer, I’m completely buzzed.”

FULL ARTICLE

Microsoft Enlists Public to Create Latest Ads Crispin Uses Homemade Videos Uploaded to Windows.com for ‘I’m a PC’ Campaign

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — First it was Jerry Seinfeld, then it was Deepak Chopra. Now, Microsoft is introducing another star as part of its new consumer ad campaign: you.

FULL ARTICLE

Another Proxy for the Dem Nominee Makes Memorable Ad

Grassroots Group Mamas for Obama the Latest to Create Pointed Ad as Campaign Sticks to Talking Points

Garfield’s AdReview

Unlike the ad campaigns of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, Obama’s will be remembered not for its power but for its astonishing discipline. Indeed, in terms of memorable advertising, the Obama campaign has left it to proxies.

FULL ARTICLE

Hiring the Right People Is a No-Brainer Finding Them Is Like Brain Surgery

Small Agency Diary

When it comes to staffing, I’ve learned that it pays to do without rather than settle. But there are times when you don’t know you are settling.

FULL ARTICLE

Stocks Take Another Dive; AdMarket 50 Down 6.2%

Standard & Poor’s Puts GM and Ford on Creditwatch

LOS ANGELES (AdAge.com) — The Dow today plunged 7.3% to 8,579 points as frightened investors ran for the exits. This was the biggest one-day percent drop since the October 1987 crash (when the Dow plunged 22.6%). The Dow Jones Industrial Average is at its lowest point since 2003. Meanwhile, the Ad Age/Bloomberg AdMarket 50 tumbled 6.2% today, reaching its lowest point since 2003, as 39 of the index’s 50 members — major marketers, media and agency firms — hit 52-week lows.

FULL ARTICLE

Obama Buying Half-Hour Block of Prime-time Broadcast Network Buy Will Air Oct. 29

Campaign Trail

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) — In what is likely become biggest network-TV buy of the presidential campaign, Sen. Barack Obama is buying 30 minutes of time on major TV networks for a program to air from 8 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. on Oct. 29.

FULL ARTICLE

Ad Agency Diversity Hearing Goes Sweet and Sour

A 3 Minute Ad Age Video Report

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — What a difference two years can make. At the first hearing of New York City Council’s Civil Rights Committee on ad agency diversity-hiring practices in 2006, no agency executives deigned to show up. But at the second hearing this week, no less than the new 4A’s President Nancy Hill led a supplicant coterie of top agency officials into the council’s chambers. Their public interaction with Committee Chairman Larry Seabrook was a sweet and sour affair that mirrored the contentious history of the issue.

FULL ARTICLE

The Debate Debate: Is McCain Putting Country First or Running Scared? And Does Obama Run Risk of Looking Like a Typical Politician?

Campaign Trail

I’m fully aware that McCain is weak on the economy. I’m also inclined to agree with Obama’s assessment that the next president will have to be able to juggle more than one crisis at a time. I just think John Q. Public might be inclined to buy McCain’s storyline on this one.

FULL ARTICLE

Mother Picks up $60 Million Coke European Campaign

Summer Branding Effort Adds to Agency’s Portfolio of Coca-Cola Accounts

LONDON (AdAge.com) — Coca-Cola Europe has handed a $60 million assignment to Mother, London, with instructions to create a long-running pan-European campaign promoting Coke as “the drink of the summer.”

FULL ARTICLE

Euro’s Esther Lee Steps Down CEO for North America Leaves Shop After Little More Than a Year

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — After scarcely more than a year, Euro RSCG North American CEO Esther Lee is exiting the agency because of what several industry insiders have billed as a clash of egos in the C-suite.

FULL ARTICLE

Doner to Take Over As Amazon Agency

Independent Shop Chosen to Create Brand Campaign, Promote Kindle

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Following a quiet pitch, Amazon.com has chosen Southfield, Mich.-based independent shop Doner to devise new ways to market the e-commerce brand, executives familiar with the matter said.

FULL ARTICLE

You Tell Me How Barack Obama Did Are Any Swing Voters Switching Sides?

Campaign Trail

DENVER (AdAge.com) — Let me be the first to admit when I’m wrong. As much as I thought the whole Invesco field thing would look like a Riefenstahl production, it didn’t strike me as such . . . even though I was sitting with 60,000 Barack Obama supporters. (I know Invesco holds more than that, but I’m accounting for the approximately two million journalists who tag along for conventions.)

FULL ARTICLE

Nike Hires Don King to Trumpet Tennis Showdown

New Campaign Portrays Nadal and Federer as Boxing Rivals

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Tennis has always had its share of loudmouths, some of the more memorable being Ilie Nastase, Jimmy Connors and, of course, John McEnroe. But for its most “significant” tennis campaign in years, Nike is bringing out the most loquacious and vociferous loudmouth of them all — Don King. Tennis will never be the same.

FULL ARTICLE

P&G Taps Bloggers, Moms for Unconventional Product Launch Word-of-Mouth, Buzz Push for Crest Weekly

BATAVIA, Ohio (AdAge.com) — Procter & Gamble Co. is trying something decidedly new with toothpaste: launching a product designed to be used once a week. And Crest, long one of P&G’s biggest-spending media brands, is also taking a different tack in its marketing approach for the brand.

FULL ARTICLE