IDEA: For its new Axe spot, BBH in New York wanted to dramatize the idea of the girl who got away—and warn its young customers not to let it happen to them. The agency thought it would be most compelling if a celebrity told the story of a lost chance from high school. "It doesn't matter how charismatic or handsome or funny you are. Everybody has had that person who renders them useless," said BBH executive creative director Ari Weiss. The agency got Kiefer Sutherland on board to tell the tale of Susan Glenn, his (fictional) girl who got away, in a stylish, surreal spot that plays like a memory—with poetic narration and quietly fantastical dream sequences that lend the sometimes meatheady brand an air of sophistication.

COPYWRITING: Peter Rosch wrote the script; hardly a word was changed from his draft. "I remember her. Not a girl but the girl," Sutherland says in voiceover, as the camera moves down a high-school hallway to find Susan standing with a friend. "The brains behind the all-time top-10 comic-book vixens only wish they could conjure a siren the likes of Susan Glenn." The ad proceeds with supernatural visions—a lecture hall shaking and crumbling; Susan floating through the air, pyrotechnics erupting behind her. "Beneath my feet my own private earthquake registered an 8 when Susan Glenn was near," Sutherland says. "In her presence, all that was beautiful before she arrived turned grotesque. And in her shadow, others became goblin-esque. … In my mind, I was a peasant before a queen."



At the end, we finally see the actor, looking at himself in the mirror. "If I could do it again, I'd do it differently," he concludes. An Axe bottle appears with the tagline, "Fear no Susan Glenn." The narration, like the visuals, is meant to leave you a little dazed—and not be "too rhymey or gushy poetry," said Weiss. The name Susan Glenn, he added, has "a timeless quality—unique enough but generic enough that it becomes ownable and memorable."

ART DIRECTION/FILMING: Ringan Ledwidge, who directed The Guardian's celebrated "Three Little Pigs" spot, shot this one over three days in Los Angeles. Set in the '80s, when Sutherland would have been in high school, it has that washed-out, vintage look. "The reference we talked about was an old Polaroid—before Instagram," said Weiss. The transitions are ethereal—borderless and blurry. Most of the visuals were captured in camera. "We didn't want the effects to take you out of the memory," Weiss said.



TALENT: Sutherland has "an incredible voice and a presence that matches that," said Weiss. The actress who plays Susan auditioned for a different part but became the star. "We wanted a beautiful girl, but with a girl-next-door quality," Weiss said. "It's what makes Susan Glenns Susan Glenns. They're not unapproachable. It's you that gets in the way."

SOUND: The sound design is dreamlike, too. Sounds come and go unreliably. "The girls' laughter in the hallway, early on in the film, was a moment we all loved, but it was fairly muted," said Weiss. The music is a plaintive piano. "Against Kiefer's voice, which is music in its own right, it needed to make you feel a bit of regret but not break the romance of it, either," said Weiss.

MEDIA: The spot began running in cinemas on July 13 and will break on television July 30. A social/digital element will launch soon. Weiss acknowledged the spot is more highbrow than usual for Axe. "This particular idea required this look and feel," he said. "But it's a wonderful brand in that it can go in many different directions."

THE SPOT:


CREDITS:
CLIENT: Unilever
Brand: Axe

AGENCY: BBH New York
Chief Creative Officer: John Patroulis
Executive Creative Director: Ari Weiss
Associate Creative Director: Nate Able
Copywriter: Peter Rosch
Art Director: Nate Able
Head of Broadcast: Lisa Setten
Agency Producer: Calleen Colburn
Business Affairs Manager: Laurie Litonjua
Business Director: Armando Turco
Account Director: Mandy Dempsey
Strategy Director: John Graham
Strategy Director: Griffin Farley
Strategist: Eric Fernandez

PRODUCTION COMPANY: Rattling Stick
Director: Ringan Ledwidge
Production Company Partner/EP: Jennifer Barrons
DP: Matthew Libatique
Line Producer: Pat Frazier

VFX Company: The Mill NY
Producer: Charlotte Arnold
VFX Supervisor: Iwan Zwarts
Colorist: Fergus McCall
Lead Flame: Iwan Zwarts
Flame Assist: Albert Cook
CG product : Isaiah Palmer
Editorial: Work (NY)
Editor: Rich Orrick
Assistant Editor: Healy Snow
Editorial EP: Jane Dilworth/Erica Thompson
Music Composer: Phil Kay
Music Company: Woodwork Music
Sound Designer: Brian Emrich
Mix Company: LIME
Mixer: Rohan Young

In today's world of 7 billion people, you rarely see ad campaigns that encourage people to fire up the baby cannon. However, Singapore has a low birthrate. So, to goose the population, the country is offering financial incentives for giving birth and has declared this Thursday, Aug. 9, to be "National Night" for gettin' it on. To help out, candy brand Mentos has whipped up a super-groovy national baby-making anthem. Ad agency BBH is responsible for laying down the boot-knockin' track with a seductive beat, set amusingly to kinetic type in the video below. The Mentos Anthem is available for free download on the brand's Facebook page, where it is specified via asterisk that "financially secure adults in stable, committed, long-term relationships" should be the only one making these babies. So, stock up on Mentos, Singapore, and get ready to give birth to a nation.

The correct mode of transit to a Caribbean island goes something like this: You are standing, chest forward and chin up, on a speedboat. It is part of a triangular formation of speedboats making a beeline through azure waters toward said island. The speedboat's captains are distinguished men wearing neat beards, rich ascots and sharp linen suits. These men are singing, in chorus, a song that does not need words, to announce your approach. The speedboats are filled with essentials to ensure a perfectly decadent island vacation. Those essentials include a live band, tuxedo-clad bartenders shaking martinis in rhythm, and masseuses with folding tables and body oil at the ready.

These are some of the supplies in "Supplies," a nicely epic new ad from BBH London (and director Tim Godsall) for deodorant Axe Anarchy. The particularly fun bit: The brand actually does have an island, and is running a Facebook sweepstakes to send seven British fans—and a guest for each—to a lush holiday in the Caribbean. The concept is strong: The agency smartly focuses on the anticipation of the journey, rather than the blur of the party itself, and the execution is mostly on point, and on brand. The model types in bikinis presumably could represent contest winners themselves, or their plus-ones. Either way, they check off a box on Axe's list of must-have visuals. And despite the brand's general shift to a position that includes products and messaging aimed at women, the sexy-pillow-fighting girls tip its hand. It's still focused mainly on resonating with hormone-addled young men.

Some of the details are a little lackluster on follow-through. Ninjas are a cliché symbol for a type of "awesomeness" that feels too out-of-place—a hamfisted way for Axe to signal that it gets the random humor of kids these days (a little like a distant, middle-aged cousin tossing around lingo to impress a mortified teenage relation). Disco balls: also kind of obvious and not particularly compelling. The pizza-delivery guys, on the other hand, are a clever, counterintuitive tidbit. Pretty much anyone could admit to wanting them on call during a tropical getaway.

As for the overabundance of the body spray itself … why not? It will wash right off in the water, anyway. 



CREDITS
Client: Unilever, Axe/Lynx
Agency: BBH, London
BBH Creative Team: Wesley Hawes, Gary McCreadie, Dan Bailey and Brad Woolfe
BBH Creative Director: David Kolbusz
BBH Producer: Ryan Chong
BBH Team Manager: Keral Petal
BBH Team Director: Jen Omran
BBH Strategy Director: Tim Jones

Production Company: Biscuit Filmworks
Director: Tim Godsall
Executive Producer: Orlando Wood
Producer: Rick Jarjoura
DoP: Terrence Maritz
Post Production: The Mill, London
Editor/Editing House: White House, London
Sound: Factory Studios
Music Composition: Nylon Studios, NY

For those who were concerned that Axe's "Susan Glenn" spot represented a concerted effort by the brand to renounce its moral turpitude and embrace a measure of sophistication, fear not: This new Axe spot from BBH, New York, reaffirms the brand's worldview by literally reducing a woman to a headless, walking pair of breasts. It's hard to think of an Axe spot that so blatantly claims men see nothing else. The ad tries to get away with this by being cutesy and cartoony, and also, amusingly enough, suggesting that it's actually women who objectify men—as we see the disembodied breasts fall in love with her male counterpart: an unruly tuft of hair, who is also disembodied and walking around forlornly on stubby little legs. By the end, the man and woman finally become whole to the plaintive strains of "True Love Will Find You in the End," by Daniel Johnston. "Hair. It's what girls see first," says the on-screen copy. BBH and Axe have been down this road before. The spot echoes, more than anything, the agency's Pitman work for the client from the early 2000s, featuring the disembodied armpit who gets the girls because he smells so good. In the Axe universe, people aren't greater than the sum of their parts—they are their parts. So, you'd better make them look and smell desirable.



     Below, check out another new spot, also a return to more classic Axe messaging, with a woman who has apparently watched plenty of Olympic action—and uses her shot put and pole-vaulting skills to convene with her nerdy Axe-using dude.



     Not that Axe is completely ditching Susan Glenn. In fact, it's hired New Girl's Max Greenfield to write, direct and star in a series of "Finding Susan Glenn" Web clips. Check out the first four below.

Ecce Homer. The patriarch from The Simpsons is just one image created by participants in BBH London's sarcastic Cecilia Prize competition, honoring the world's most infamous amateur art restorer, Cecilia Gimenez of Spain, who made headlines for ruining Ecce Homo, a 19th-century church fresco of Christ she was attempting to, um, resurrect. Folks looking to waste time online—that means all of us—can have a go at "restoring" Elías García Martínez's religious painting themselves, thanks to a simple and fun site engineered by Viv Yapp and Ak Parker. Visitors can "paint over" the masterpiece in any way they see fit, and tweet the results (along with #ceciliaprize) for a chance to win a poster of Gimenez's version. To my eye, her effort is pretty striking, like a post-modern, neo-expressonistic reappraisal of its subject, open to many interpretations, scarred by the irony surrounding its creation. Or else it's a ruined picture of Jesus. I say tomato, right? The Cecilia Prize entries are a mixed bag, with less random weirdness than I'd have expected, and lots of humor, horror and some surprising social commentary (insights, perhaps, into our collective consumerized, celebrity-obsessed psyche). So far, visitors have drawn heavily on pop-culture and media references, with some themes—such as Batman and related characters—appearing numerous times. They've also re-imagined Christ as Superman, Spider-Man, the Mad Men Draper silhouette, the white-skull-masked killer from Scream, Peter from Family Guy, Kenny from South Park, Ronald McDonald, Google's Android icon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Darth Vader, Robert Smith of The Cure, TV clown Bozo (Ecce Bozo!), and a great many more. One submission is literally Divine—with a capital "D," as in the cross-dressing star of John Waters' cult films. Aging (but heaven knows, eternally relevant) rockers Kiss seem disproportionately represented. There were, when I last checked, three likenesses of Gene Simmons and a Paul Stanley. What, no Ace Frehley? Blasphemous! Via Creative Review. Also, after the jump, check out an image from Reddit explaining how advertising is like the Ecce Homo disaster.

Peter McGuinness poached a trusted lieutenant from his previous agency to drive integration at the Chicago office of DDB.

Alan Snitow was director of strategy and innovation at Gotham in New York, where McGuinness was CEO from 2008 to 2011. At DDB, Snitow becomes director of integration, a new position.

The new hire is joining a leadership team that includes McGuinness, the president and CEO; chief creative officer Ewan Paterson; and chief strategy officer John Kottmann. Each has joined DDB in the past two years and collectively they steer an office of about 375 whose top accounts are McDonald’s, State Farm, Mars and Safeway.

Snitow, 36, spent more than 3½ years at Gotham, where he worked on brands such as Denny’s, Best Western and Hitachi. Before that, he was a group planning director for Ally Bank and Miller Lite at Bartle Bogle Hegarty in New York. Earlier in his career, he held account planning roles at SS+K, Deutsch and Saatchi & Saatchi.

McGuinness, who just completed his first year at the helm of Chicago, described Snitow as a “talented, competitive guy” who “brings an entrepreneurial spirit, an innovative drive and a passion for creativity in all its forms.”

Primarily, Snitow will focus on existing business. As such, he will work across all agency departments. That said, he'll also contribute to new business pitches, according to McGuinness. 

In accepting the offer, Snitow cited DDB’s leadership team, “iconic” brands and “depth of talent and resource.” He added that his goal is to “contribute to the development of a culture that celebrates the primacy of the idea and is open to exploding that idea creatively.” He starts Sept. 24.
 

This latest Chrome spot from Google Creative Lab and BBH in New York—part of the brand's long-running and generally excellent "The Web is what you make of it" campaign—doesn't skimp on the pathos. At first it appears to be your prototypical 21st-century off-to-college ad, showing a daughter getting through her freshman year with virtual help from her dad (and his suite of Google products!). It's a pretty common setup that would seem to naturally contain enough emotional touch points for 60 seconds. But then BBH ups the ante by making Mom recently deceased—forcing father and daughter to learn how to connect in her absence. (In the end, they end up connecting mostly through her.) Clearly, this is a gamble. There's a reason there aren't many dead parents in advertising—they're a downer! Chrome has always gone for the real tear-jerkers in spots that have ranged from awkward to almost perfect. What about this one—over the top, or just right?

Few things build sympathy for a character quite like a battle with cancer. Such a battle encompasses three-quarters of this hard-hitting new PSA from BBH London for St. John Ambulance—beginning with a man's diagnosis and continuing through his recovery. But then, without warning, tragedy strikes.

The whole point of this spot is to blindside people, so we won't spoil the plot. Suffice it to say, the irony of the film's final frames serves as a reminder that the most exhaustive medical care can sometimes amount to nothing without knowledge of the simplest treatments around—a lesson the viewer learns the hard way, having traveled, with the patient, some treacherous terrain (the spot is nothing if not emotionally manipulative), only to get pushed off a cliff when safety seemed most imminent.

The PSA, which broke Sunday in Britain during the season 3 premiere of Downton Abbey (sorry, U.S. viewers will have to wait until January for that), is nicely shot by director Benito Montorio, who also did last year's wonderful KFC backyard-picnic spot, likewise through BBH. The captivating music is a spare piano-and-vocals version of Australian singer Sia's 2010 track "I'm in Here." The cancer plot also isn't as gratuitious as it first seems—cancer statistics are at the core of the final message here, even if the PSA is about something else entirely.

This agency and client are no strangers to ambushing viewers, as this cinema stunt from 2010 proved. But, as gloomy as they are, shock tactics make sense for these campaigns, given that the issue is so invisible to the public, particularly compared the Big C and other more pressing medical concerns.

Few "gotcha" PSAs are as expertly made as this one. Let's hope it makes a difference.



CREDITS
Client: St John Ambulance

Director of Marketing, Communications and Fundraising: Scott Jacobson

Campaign: Helpless


Agency: BBH, London
BBH Creative Team: Dan Morris & Charlene Chandrasekaran
BBH Creative Director: Matt Doman & Ian Heartfield
BBH Producer: Matthew Towell
BBH Team Manager: Katie Beevers
BBH Team Director: Emma Brooker
BBH Strategist: Carl Mueller
BBH Strategic Business Lead: Ann-Marie Costelloe

Production Company: Blink
Director: Benito Montorio
Executive Producer: James Studholme, James Bland
Producer: Josh Barwick
DoP: Federico Alfonzo

Post Production: MPC - Jean Clemont
Editor/Editing House: Andy McGraw
Sound: Will Cohen, Factory Studios

The best alcohol ads are the ones in which the booze is made of little people all dressed up the same and doing an elaborate dance number together. This truism is proven once again in this ludicrous yet undeniably entertaining Baileys Irish Cream spot from BBH in London. The guys at Megaforce, who directed this extravaganza, are apparently big Busby Berkeley fans. (Indeed, they also directed Madonna's "Give Me All Your Luvin' " video, which had more than its share of mind-bending geometrical overhead shots.) Particularly awesome is the opening shot of the ice cube dropping into the Baileys, which suddenly blossoms into a three-ringed group of tiny dancers holding hands and pulsating—a vision Hunter S. Thompson surely saw a few times while staring down into his drinks. The tagline is, "Cream with spirit." (Get it?) Better make it a double. Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Baileys
Spot: "Pour Spectacular"
Global Brand Director: Garbhan O’Bric
Agency: BBH, London
BBH Creative Team (film): Kat Bojcuk, Steve Sorec
BBH Creative Director: Rosie Arnold
BBH Producer: Victoria Baldacchino
BBH Commercial Strategy Director: Heather Alderson
BBH Strategic Business Lead: Richard Lawson
BBH Team Director: Rachel Parry
BBH Team Manager: Lucy Nebel
Production Company: Riff Raff Films
Director: Megaforce
Executive Producer: Matthew Fone
Producer: Michaela Johnson
Director of Photography: Dan Landin
Editors, Editing House: Paul Watts, Scott Kato, The Quarry
Sound: Soundtree/Wave
Postproduction: The Mill
Lead Flames: Ben Turner, Gary Driver
Flame Assistants: Grant Connor, Hugo Saunders, Bevis Jones
Visual Effects Shoot Supervisors: Ben Turner, Francois Roisin
Telecine Artist: Mick Vincent
Computer Graphics Image Lead: Francois Roisin
Visual Effects Production: Chris Baten
Computer Graphics Image Team: Dan Moore, Emily Medger, David Knight, Chris McDonald, Stuart Turnbull, Jake Flint
Concept Art: Jimmy Kiddell
Matte Painting: Antoine Birot, Callum Strachan, German Casado
Print Photographer: Norman Jean Roy, CLM
BBH Art Director: Charlene Chandrasekaran
BBH Creative Director: Rosie Arnold
Print Producer: Rachel Wickham
BBH Designers: Dominic Grant, Rich Kennedy
Packshot Photographer: Laurence Haskell

Call it the umbilical cord syndrome. The New York office of London-based Bartle Bogle Hegarty continues to rely on home turf clients like Diageo and Unilever and mostly imported CEOs, including Cindy Gallop, Gwyn Jones and Emma Cookson.

That would be understandable for a startup, but BBH New York opened 14 years ago last month. In that sense, it has broken the cardinal rule of agencies entering foreign markets: hire local leaders with proven track records and get out of the way. The U.S., after all, is a daunting market, particularly when you drop anchor in New York.

Now, in the wake of a 25 percent staff cut that shrank New York’s staff to 95 and yet another reshuffling at the top—Cookson has taken the reins again after the exit of CEO Greg Andersen—former BBH New York execs are questioning the agency’s casting, strategy and culture. In short, they think BBH has misread American marketers, overrelied on its mothership and let its strongly held beliefs interfere with becoming a big player in the U.S.

When BBH first arrived in New York, for example, the agency declined to present speculative creative work in new business pitches, despite it being common practice in the U.S. Office leaders subsequently bent on this principle, but it took years for the shop to change.

“BBH has a set of beliefs and behaviors that are revered in the company, and they really tried to transfer that culture to every office in the network,” said one former BBH exec. “That’s a strength, but it’s also a weakness. It’s a double-edged sword because it can lead to inflexibility. And if you’re inflexible and you don’t adapt to local culture, you have a harder time.”

That’s not to say that BBH has floundered in the U.S. Hardly. Its provocative ads for Axe and emotive work for Google have garnered awards and further burnished BBH’s global creative reputation.

Also, through the years, New York has punched above its weight class, winning big accounts like Miller Lite, Cadillac, Ally Bank and Levi’s. Each account has left, however, creating the impression of a shop that has had as many downs as ups.

Gwyn Jones, who’s now global CEO, could not be reached last week. Three weeks ago, though, he attributed the business swings of the New York office to the vicissitudes of the U.S. market. “It’s much more of a roller-coaster ride. The highs are higher and the lows are sort of big blows,” he told Adweek.

Another former exec blamed the stumbles on poor casting at the top. “Many of those [hiring] decisions have been flawed. It’s in part because they’re leaning ...way toward British people,” said the ex-exec, who added that successful shops “have somebody in their management team who is adept at [managing marketer] relationships, and BBH has overlooked that aspect of life.”

That said, yet another ex-exec remains bullish that BBH will eventually break through in the U.S. “I bet you any amount of money that they crack it,” said this exec, though he admitted, “It might take a bit longer” than expected.

IDEA: It's no secret that holiday shopping, particularly offline, can be hell. Britain's Barclaycard, a credit- and debit-card company, doesn't claim to ease all the pain—just a portion of it. "Our personal view was that [Barclaycard's] previous ads depicted the whole purchasing process to be effortless just because the payment was. Well, that wasn't true," BBH copywriter Tom Drew and art director Uche Ezugwu told Adweek in an email. "Sometimes shopping can be a bit much, though Barclaycard always makes their bit easy." In 90 seconds of pandemonium, the company's new Christmas spot from BBH follows a father on a solo expedition through a toy store—its bright lights and jolly music concealing a heart of darkness where panic lurks. There, he is practically assaulted by toys pleading to be bought—and finds that using his phone to pay with Barclaycard is the only stress-free moment of his visit.

COPYWRITING: Inside the shop, Dad discovers a hidden world of human-size toys, all clamoring to be taken home. "Having three children and seven nieces and nephews between us, we understood that particular pain firsthand," the creatives said. Escorted by a friendly stuffed orangutan, the man meets a robot, a macho action figure, Bumblebee the Transformer and a baby doll—all of whom have pithy one-liners. A Barbie lookalike on a motor scooter prefers a pickup line. "Daddy, hop on," she purrs. ("They're plastic," the orangutan whispers.)



After zooming around in a toy car and dangling from a helicopter, man and ape fall on a whoopee cushion and the spot crashes to a halt. "OK, I've made up my mind!" Dad declares. After a quick swipe of his phone at checkout, he leaves with … his orangutan guide. "I wasn't expecting that!" the ape gasps happily. "A new way to pay. From Barclaycard," says the voiceover.

ART DIRECTION/FILMING: Chris Palmer, who famously baked a giant car cake for Czech automaker Skoda and also directed T-Mobile's "Royal Wedding," shot this ad at Ealing Studios over two weeks. "We had a warehouse full of toys that Chris could decorate the spot with. We felt a little like our protagonist—we had too much choice," said the creatives. Toy Story is the obvious reference. "No commercial is ever going to be as good as the Toy Story trilogy, so we knew we had to steer ours away from it," the creatives said. "As long as we kept our story rooted in truth and revolving around the dad, we thought we'd be OK." To be more charming, they stayed away from CGI—every toy was puppeteered except the orangutan (a man in suit) and Bumblebee (stop motion). Each toy or group of toys was filmed on a separate layer and then composited in post by Framestore.



TALENT: The dad is good looking yet an everyman with a nice frazzled look. The orangutan worked well as the other main character because he isn't the obvious choice for a gift. "He had to be loveable, but maybe not at first sight—a grower," the creatives said. For his voice, they tried a bunch of comedians before finding "the perfect fit" in James Corden, best known from the BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey.

SOUND: The agency had a whole original track scored. "It all worked, but something was missing. It left us a little cold," said the creatives. Instead, they used a version of "Sugar Plum Fairy" from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. "From its mystical beginning to its emphatic crescendo, it's as if it was written for it," they said.

MEDIA: The spot launched Nov. 10 on ITV1 during The X Factor. Viewers can use Shazam to tag the spot and win prizes, each of which includes a £5 donation to Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity.

THE SPOT:




CREDITS
Client: Barclaycard
Global Brand Director: Gary Twelvetree
Spot: "Toys"

Agency: BBH, London
Copywriter: Tom Drew
Art Director: Uche Ezugwu
Creative Directors: Matt Doman & Ian Heartfield
Executive Creative Director: Nick Gill
Producer: Rachel Hough
Head of Film: Davud Karbassioun
Team Manager: Claire Carpenter & Rebecca Levy
Team Director: Paisley Wright
Strategic Business Lead: Paul Matuszczyk

Production Company: Gorgeous
Director: Chris Palmer
Producer: Rupert Smythe
Production Company: Passion Pictures
Technical Director: Neil Riley
Producer: Patrick Duguid
DoP: Jess Hall
Post Production: Framestore
Editor/Editing House: Jonnie Scarlett, The Quarry
Sound: Factory: Sam Robson, Factory Studios. Ben Baird/Nick Roberts, The Quarry

Hey, ad industry, stuff this in your holiday stocking!

"Warm Wishes From Ad Land" presents some choice anonymous comments left on ad blogs AgencySpy, Ads of the World and Campaign Brief. (None are from the Adland blog itself, or from AdFreak for that matter.) The potty-mouthed trolls spew syntactically daring slime of a frequently scatological nature in response to blog posts about new campaigns, executive hires and account moves. Deadpan recitations of the rants are accompanied by jolly seasonal graphics and a tinny version of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas."

"Wow, that is so bad it makes me want to punch myself in the cock," reads one entry. Another: "Nice junket. Zero idea. Shit stunningly bad." And this instant classic: "This is the type of ad that makes me drag myself down the steps, crawl across the yard, whimpering, in the pouring rain, struggling to my knees, and raising my fists in the air, I scream, 'WHY, WORLD WHY?!' " (Click through to the ad in question: Watta Pure Water "Upskirt." That appraisal's actually pretty generous.)

"Warm Wishes" was created by a bunch of staffers at BBH in New York. Tim Nolan, the interactive group cd who heads up BBH Labs, tells AdFreak: "As we approach that time of year where we all wish each other the warmest, we thought we would look at how we, as an industry, extend our 'warm wishes' throughout the year and under the veil of anonymity. After carefully curating some of the worst 'semi-safe-for-work' comments from around Ad Land, we picked our favorites and gave them all a dip in holiday cheer."

He adds: "Traffic has been pretty steady since launching [Tuesday] afternoon. Most of the original visits came in from Twitter and Facebook, since each 'Warm Wish' is individually sharable. I'd say we are more pleased with the 'trending-ness' of it all, rather than being surprised. I mean, everyone likes to share a bit of 'naughtiness' around the holidays."

AdFreak discourages anonymous comments, but thankfully, all the feedback on our site is always of the highest intellectual and literary merit, unfailingly courteous. (You heartless monsters, STOP HATING ME!)

 
UPDATE: We reached out to Adland's Åsk Wäppling for her response to the campaign. She sent us her own visual reply below.

The Guardian wants Britain to know it's taking over the weekend.

No, literally taking it over, to the point where Brits will soon be forced to refer to their days off as The Guardian and Observer Weekend.™

In this wonderfully over-the-top new clip below for its weekend publications, The Guardian envisions a world in which it "owns" all weekend activities and conversations. "Never before has a company owned a day, let alone two days together at the end of the week," intones the faux trailer's Hollywood-esque narrator. "How do you 'own a weekend'? You don't. We do."

While BBH doesn't deliver the kind of gravitas here that earned The Guardian top ad honors last year—Adweek chose "Three Little Pigs" as the best commercial of 2012—this spot is still a great example of how its approach to marketing is keeping the newspaper front and center in the cultural conversation.

I'm not sure an introduction from an aging Hugh Grant really helps them in that, but hey, at least he worked for free.



CREDITS
Client: Guardian

Campaign: "Own the Weekend"
Agency: BBH, London


Client Credits
Chief Commercial Officer: David Pemsel

Director of Brand and Engagement: Richard Furness

Product Marketing Manager: Charlotte Emmerson



BBH Creative Team: Wesley Hawes, Gary McCreadie

BBH Creative Director: David Kolbusz

BBH Head of Film: Davud Karbassioun

BBH Producer: Chris Watling

BBH Assistant Producer: Pia Ebrill

BBH Head of Strategy: Jason Gonsalves

BBH Strategic Business Lead: Ngaio Pardon

BBH Strategy Director: Agathe Guerrier

BBH Strategist: Lynsey Atkin

BBH Team Manager: Jonny Price

BBH Team Assistant: Rishi Patel



Production Company: Biscuit Filmworks

Director: Tim Godsall

Executive Producer: Orlando Woods

Producer: Kwok Yau

Director of Photography: Daniel Bronks
Editor: Bill Smedley
Edit House: Work

Postproduction: The Mill

Sound Design: Sam Brock, Factory

Sound Mixing, Arrangement: Sam Brock, Sam Robson

Music: Library TBC 



Media Agency: PHD

On the list of sexy male professions, fireman is a perennial top pick. Just ask any male stripper (or the audience at Magic Mike). But according to Axe, the maker of pungent body sprays favored by junior-high boys, there's one hot-dude job that beats all the rest: astronaut.

This hierarchy is deftly illustrated in Axe's latest spot from BBH London and  Biscuit Filmworks director Tim Godsall, in which a handsome fireman braves a burning building to save the pretty girl trapped within. He removes his fireman's coat, wraps it around the damsel in distress (this initially appears to be a segue into a striptease routine, but alas, it's just an act of kindness) and carries her out of the building. At this point the woman appears suitably love-struck—until, that is, a fully suited astronaut approaches out of nowhere. The damsel immediately abandons her rescuer to go flirt with the man in the big white onesie, because, as Axe informs us, "Nothing beats an astronaut. Ever."

So, what's an astronaut doing in an Axe commercial? Oh, just recruiting some people for the Axe Apollo Space Academy. The company this week launched a contest to gather 22 people for a trip to space—"as in, actual space," the brand says, in case you were confused. Axe even managed to get Buzz Aldrin, the legendary astronaut (and probably one of the few you can actually name), to announce the campaign. (A second spot, "Lifeguard," will launch soon and also be tagged with the invitation to space.)

Go to this website to apply for the Axe Apollo program between now and Feb. 3 (when Axe will air its first Super Bowl commercial). And hope to god that in space, no one can smell your Axe.

CREDITS
Client: Axe
Agency: BBH, London

Client Credits
Tomas Marcenaro - Global Brand Director
Jim Brennan  - Global Brand Manager
Michael Coden - Global Assistant Brand Manager

BBH Creative Team: Wesley Hawes and Gary McCreadie, Diego Oliveira and Caio Giannella
BBH Creative Director: David Kolbusz
BBH Producer: Ruben Mercadal
BBH Assistant Producer: George Ancock
BBH Head of Strategy: Jonathan Bottomley
BBH Strategic Business Lead: Ngaio Pardon
BBH Strategy Director: Tim Jones
BBH Team Director: Tom Murphy
BBH Team Manager: Jennifer Omran

Production Company: Biscuit Filmworks
Director: Tim Godsall
Executive Producer: Orlando Wood
Producer: Rick Jarjoura
DoP: Jess Hall
Post Production: Framestore
Sound Design: Phaze UK / Raja Sehgal @ Grand Central Studios, London
Sound Mixing / Arrangement : Raja Sehgal @ Grand Central Studios, London
Music: Human (Los Angeles / New York)

About five years after hiring Deutsch/LA as its lead agency, the company is considering a change. The incumbent is defending its turf against three other shops; sources identified them as 180LA, Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Anomaly.

The four contenders are now developing ideas for final presentations, which are expected to take place in late January or early February.

PlayStation spent about $56 million on media in 2011, down slightly from nearly $58 million in 2010, according to Nielsen. Those figures don’t include online spending.

Deutsch handles both creative and media responsibilities on PlayStation. The marketer’s plans for the media business were not clear.

A key decision-maker in the review is Guy Longworth, svp of brand marketing. Longworth joined SCEA in October 2011. Early in his career, he worked in brand management at Kraft Foods and in marketing at Kellogg. 

In a statement, Longworth acknowledged the review, saying, "We are always looking for ways to improve our advertising and we are conducting conversations with potential agency partners as well as Deutsch for future work."

A representative for PlayStation parent Sony Computer Entertainment America declined to answer questions about the process.

Before Deutsch, TBWA\Chiat\Day was PlayStation’s lead creative agency in the U.S. TBWA\C\D handled the business for 13 years.

Just three weeks after Sony PlayStation shifted its creative business to Bartle Bogle Hegarty, the marketer is moving its media planning and buying to Carat, sources said.

The shift came after a review. The other contenders could not be ascertained.

Carat succeeds Deutsch LA on the business. Before the shifts, Deutsch had handled both creative and media efforts on the brand. The Deutsch relationship began in 2007.

PlayStation spent about $12.5 million on media in 2012, according to Nielsen. That amount does not include online spending.

Execs at Sony and Carat could not immediately be reached for comment.

Mark Hunter, the chief creative officer at Deutsch LA, is out at the agency he joined in January 2011, sources have confirmed.

Deutsch executives could not be reached for comment and it’s not clear how quickly the agency will replace him.

Hunter moved to the Interpublic Group shop from TBWA\London and had previously held senior creative roles at the London offices of Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Euro RSCG and the Amsterdam office of Wieden+Kennedy. At Deutsch, he succeeded Eric Hirshberg, who became CEO of Activision Publishing in September, 2010.

Hunter's tenure at TBWA lasted about 1 1/2 years. (He joined that agency in mid-2009, filling a vacancy created by the July 2008 exit of Steve Henry.)

Earlier in his career, Hunter was ecd at Havas’s Euro RSCG where he worked on brands like Evian and Citroen. His other brand experience includes Nike, from his time as cd at Wieden, and Levi’s, Audi, Lynx and Johnnie Walker--accounts he worked on at BBH.

A key player in Bartle Bogle Hegarty's recent Sony PlayStation win is assuming a bigger role.

Julian Cole, a strategy director at the New York shop, is now head of communications planning. In his new position, he continues to report to both chief creative officer John Patroulis and chief strategy officer Sarah Watson, who oversees a 10-person department.

"A big part of how we won PlayStation is how we drove the idea through in all the different channels," said Watson, who also noted the complexity of working across different game titles and aspects of the console brand. "The challenge they laid down to us: How do we all make it build one idea, one thing?"

"[Cole] was a very big part of how we made sense of all that backend," Watson explained. Bigger picture: Watson cited Cole's knack for working more closely with creative teams than many in his discipline.

"Planners don't always get invited right into the heart of the creative process. We're always involved in very strong partnership, but sitting with teams at the moment where they're literally writing ideas…Julian really won their trust," Watson said. "People really started to use him if they wanted to architect a digital idea or anything nontraditional."

Cole joined the Publicis Groupe shop two years ago after stints working on social and digital strategy at Sydney, Australia, shops The Conscience Organisation and The Population, and Naked Communications in Melbourne.

His latest role is designed to help BBH better incorporate numerical discipline into the development of creative ideas, Watson said. “From our perspective, it's going to be very powerful in that it's going to tighten up how we can sell different types of work,” she said.

Dude's got the right stuff! Talk about a payload specialist! No "Houston, we've got a problem" for this rocket jockey! Etc.! BBH London and Blink director Tom Tagholm score with its latest, interestingly shot "Nothing beats an astronaut" spot for Axe's Apollo and Deep Space body washes, thanks to playful morning-after imagery. A woman's clothing and underwear are strewn around an apartment, along with astronaut gear like boots, a helmet and a spacesuit. She wakes up looking supremely satisfied, while her lusty inner-space traveler showers with Axe, all systems presumably "go" for re-entry. Remember to practice safe sex, people, and keep your helmet on! Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Axe
Agency: Bartle Bogle Hegarty, London
Creative Director: David Kolbusz
Creative: Gary McCreadie, Wesley Hawes
TV Producer: Ruben Mercadal
Production Company: Blink
Director: Tom Tagholm
Producer: Bruce Williamson
Executive Producer: James Bland
Photography: Vincent Warin
Production Designer: Andy Kelly
Production Manager: Ellie Britton
Postproduction: Framestore
Editing House: Stitch
Editor: Tim Hardy
Audio: Wave
Sound Designer: Aaron Reynolds
Music Production: Beacon Street Studios

I'll admit to not seeing the twist ending coming in this evocative new spot by BBH London for fruit-drink brand Robinsons. You could quibble with the end lines, perhaps—and here's why—but that's overthinking it. It's an extremely sweet ad, expertly shot by the directing duo of Si & Ad at Academy Films. The commercial breaks Saturday in the U.K. during Britain's Got Talent and will run in 30- and 60-second executions. Credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Robinsons
Agency: BBH, London

BBH Creative Team: Matt Moreland, Chris Clarke, Sarah Hardcastle, Elliot Shiels
BBH Creative Directors: Hamish Pinnell, Justin Moore
BBH Producer: Glenn Paton
BBH Strategic Business Leads: John Harrison, Becky Russell 
BBH Strategist: Lilli English
BBH Team Director: Alex Monger

Production Company: Academy Films
Director: Si & Ad
Executive Producer: Lizie Gower
Producer: Dom Thomas
Director of Photography: Barry Ackroyd
Postproduction: The Mill
Editor, Editing House: Joe Guest @ Final Cut
Sound: Nick Angell