IDEA: Twist endings aren't always the best idea for commercials. Ads need staying power, and relying too much on a surprise can ruin them after the first viewing. BBH London got around this quite skillfully in its wonderful new spot pitching Robinsons juice as the thirst quencher after a day of energetic family play. Yes, there's a major reveal at the end: The two boys we've seen playing together turn out not to be friends but father and son. (The dad is depicted as a child until the final frames to show he is his son's friend as well as his father.) But the agency sprinkled clues to their real identities throughout the spot, making subsequent viewings almost as rich as the first.

"As a parent, when you play energetically with your kids, you're more like best mates. This gave us an interesting way into the schmaltzy, familiar area of 'kids and parents having fun together,' " said BBH creatives Matt Moreland, Chris Clarke and Hamish Pinnell, who answered questions as a group via email. Disguising the father as a kid was the eureka moment, they said, but "the trick was not giving the game away too early."

COPYWRITING: It's all there if you look closely. The one boy throws rocks farther into the river than the other; he teases him about girls; he even shouts "I am your father!" (à la Darth Vader) as they play lightsabers with sticks. "Subtlety was key," said the creatives. "We created lots of carefully orchestrated clues … that we wanted people not to pick up on the first time around. Getting the order right was a constant headache during editing."

Major clues surface toward the end, as the one boy puts the other to bed. "We loved the idea of the boy carrying his pal up to bed and tucking him in. It's not just a nice, tender moment, it's also something only a father would do—an emotional way of giving the game away," said the creatives. "Night, dad," the boy says, and finally we see the father. "Night, pal," he replies, and switches off the light. "It's good to be a dad. It's better to be a friend," says on-screen copy next to a bottle of Robinsons orange juice. The tagline is: "Play thirsty."

ART DIRECTION/FILMING: Directing duo Si & Ad of Academy Films shot the spot over three days in Cape Town, South Africa. The creatives wanted the visual look to feel "timeless" so that both kids and parents could relate to it. The directors pushed for more spoken interaction in each scene to enrich the narrative. "We always knew there was going to be a bit of dialogue in the film but were really surprised when the first edit contained so much dialogue," the creatives said. "Suddenly it wasn't just an ad, it was a little film."

TALENT: The agency looked far and wide in casting the lead roles. "We scoured the country until we found Tom and Callum," the creatives said. "You'd never guess that they'd only just met. They immediately struck a bond that continued throughout the shoot. The boys really didn't need that much coaching—just the odd reminder to stop singing Dizzee Rascal all day long!"

SOUND: The music is the 2011 track "July" by Youth Lagoon. "The trick was to find something with emotion and that would build and wouldn't get in the way of the boys' dialogue," said the creatives. "Lyrical tracks just made the film feel a bit flat and a little obvious." All the dialogue was recorded on location, giving the sound an immediacy that would be hard to capture in the studio.

MEDIA: The spot broke May 4 during Britain's Got Talent on ITV1. It is airing nationally in 30- and 60-second versions, and online.

THE SPOT:

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

'Tis the season for male-grooming brand extensions. Old Spice introduced its shaving gel last week. And now, Axe has updated its range of hair products for men. It's advertising them with four new 20-second ads from BBH London that have launched in Europe and will reach North America this weekend. The creative idea is that well-styled hair is crucial when you meet someone for the first time. The spots present various quirky first-meeting scenarios—the most faux-provocative of which is probably the home-invasion scenario, in which burglar seduces buglee with his perfectly slicked 'do. "We wanted to capture a simple truth about guys and their grooming habits," says David Kolbusz, deputy executive creative director at BBH. "Whenever a man sees a woman he fancies, he tends to touch up his hair before making the initial approach. We dramatized this behavior by setting it in the most extreme of circumstances." More spots and credits below.

CREDITS
Client: Lynx/Axe
Agency: BBH London

BBH Creative Team: Matt Fitch & Mark Lewis and Harry Orton and Robin Warman
BBH Creative Director: David Kolbusz
BBH Producer: Charlie Dodd
BBH Strategic Business Lead: Ngaio Pardon
BBH Strategy Director: Dan Hauck
BBH Strategist: Tim Jones
BBH Team Director: Heather Cuss
BBH Team Manager: Cressida Holmes Smith

Production Company: Outsider and Station Films
Director: Harold Einstein
Executive Producer: Eric Liney
Producer: Jon Stopp/Richard Packer
DoP: Danny Cohen
Post Production: The Mill
Editor/Editing House: The Mill
Sound: Factory

Sources describe Diageo’s global review of its Smirnoff vodka brand as a roster shop affair.

Longtime incumbent JWT is expected to defend. Global media spending on the brand was not immediately available, but in the U.S. alone, spending approached $23 million last year, up from nearly $20 million in 2011, according to Nielsen. Those figures don't include online outlays.

JWT's relationship with Smirnoff extends beyond to the U.S. to markets such as Japan, China, India, Singapore and Australia. The agency referred calls to a Diageo representative, who confirmed the review, adding that the company already drew up a short list of contenders. The rep did not, however, identify them.

Other Diageo roster shops include Bartle Bogle Hegarty, which works on Johnnie Walker scotch whiskey and Baileys liqueur; Anomaly (Captain Morgan rum); Mother (Tanqueray gin); and Grey (Crown Royal whiskey, Ketel One vodka).

In a statement, Edward Pilkington, Diageo’s global category director for vodka, rum and gin, acknowledged Smirnoff’s “long and successful” relationship with JWT, which dates back to 2000. During that period, the vodka’s annual sales volume has grown from 15.1 million cases to 26.3 million cases, making it—by Pilkington’s own account—the largest premium spirits brand in the world.

Nonetheless, Pilkington said that “the time is right to refresh the thinking” on Smirnoff. 
 

It was a long haul of judging for Sir John Hegarty, Joe Pytka and their jury teams at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity last week.

Hegarty's Film Lions jury watched 3,125 commercials. Pytka's Film Craft Lions jury watched 2,029. In total, they awarded three Grand Prix, along with 21 Gold Lions, 38 Silver Lions and 70 Bronze Lions.

The Grand Prix and Gold Lions went to 21 different spots or campaigns. That work represented just 0.4 percent of all Film submissions this year—truly the cream of the crop.

See all 21 campaigns below:

Video Gallery: The World's Best Commercials, 2012-13

The Martin Agency has filled its top business development role with an executive from Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

Julie Levin, head of business development at BBH in New York, becomes chief growth officer at Martin in Richmond, Va. She starts Aug. 5.

"We interviewed a variety of smart, impressive candidates for this position, but Julie really stood out as having the right combination of intuition, intellect and energy," said Matt Williams, Martin's CEO.

Levin fills a vacancy left by the November exit of director of business development Dan Sutton. Sutton, who held the role for 18 months, became a senior product marketing manager at Google+.

Levin, 41, spent nearly three years at BBH, where she also was a global business director. Earlier in her career, she was a managing partner at mcgarrybowen, a senior account director at BBDO and the director of client services at Laird & Partners.

Levin's move to Martin represents a reunion of sorts, as she's a graduate of the University of Richmond, where she earned a bachelor's in speech communication and rhetoric.

In a statement, Levin described herself as a "longtime fan of The Martin Agency culture and work." In her new job, she'll report to Williams.

Chobani has cut participants in its agency review to four finalists: Wieden+Kennedy, Droga5, The Martin Agency and Bartle Bogle Hegarty.

The finalists will be briefed this week at the Greek yogurt maker’s New Berlin, N.Y., base. The company expects to make a decision by late August. Chobani has been working with independent agency Boathouse of Boston.

Chobani had earlier narrowed its list, paring the contenders down to these agencies plus Goodby Silverstein & Partners, TBWA\Chiat\Day and Anomaly. Meetings were held last week as the company's marketing and brand chief Peter McGuinness was coming on board.

“As we enter the second half of what has been a record-breaking year for our brand, we chose to evaluate our partners during a time of momentum,” said McGuinness. “Doing so has allowed us greater objectivity and will give the agencies participating more time to show their stuff. We were fortunate to have some of the best agencies in the world passionately present their credentials to us last week, a testament to the love of our products and sheer potential of our brand.”

Chobani has also launched a search for a PR agency. Incumbent FleishmanHillard will defend.

Summer suddenly feels like airline review season. Just as Lufthansa confirmed a global review of its media business, British Airways acknowledged that it is reviewing its global creative account.

Mindshare is the incumbent on the Lufthansa account and is defending, according to sources. The carrier spends an estimated $90 million in media worldwide each year.

Mindshare’s relationship with Lufthansa dates back to 2000. In 2010, Lufthansa reviewed the business but, in the end, kept it at the WPP Group shop.

The agency referred questions to the airline, which confirmed the search. The process seems to be well underway, as Lufthansa expects to complete it next month.

BA’s global media spending total hovers around $100 million annually. Its creative responsibilities are divided chiefly among Bartle Bogle Hegarty (traditional ads); OgilvyOne (direct marketing, customer relationship management); and OgilvyOne offshoot 12th Floor (digital ads). Other creative roster shops include e-Dialog (email marketing), M-is (events) and BJL.

BBH has worked on BA since 2005, and OgilvyOne, since 2008. Both shops are defending.

BA is looking closely at agency capabilities, with its eye toward consolidating some of its creative assignments at fewer shops, according to a source. “It’s more sort of a structural than strategic” review, the source added.

A BA representative said simply, "We're looking to review the model as the marketingplace has changed."

A London-based consultancy, Oystercatchers, is helping to manage the search, which is expected to conclude by year’s end.

BA’s creative contest follows a global media review, which included responsibilities for sister carrier Iberia. Dentsu’s Carat won that account.

Being a creative leader means taking a bullet for an underling and identifying other leaders. Rarely does the job involve actually making ads, but it’s healthy to do a bit of that too.

Those were among the key points that creative chiefs like Wieden + Kennedy’s Mark Fitzloff and TBWA\Chiat\Day’s John Norman made today during an Advertising Week discussion about creative leadership. The chiefs also stressed that chief creative officers need to contribute to business conversations and focus on what Paul Venables described as the soft stuff: human values like honesty, empathy and respect.

Paraphrasing poet Maya Angelou, Venables, the co-founder and executive creative director of Venables, Bell & Partners in San Francisco said, “People aren’t going to remember what you said. They’re not even going to remember what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel. And that’s how you manage, from that standpoint of how are these people feeling?”

Fitzloff, co-global ecd of Wieden + Kennedy, knows this lesson first-hand, having worked under legendary cd Jim Riswold, who, although crotchety, understood the importance of backing his troops.

Fitzloff, then a copywriter, created a long copy print ad for Nike that many found offensive, including an executive at Nike, who called Dan Wieden to suggest that he fire the writer. “And Jim went into Dan’s office and said, ’If anyone should be fired over this, it should be me.’”

“In Jim’s mind, it’s my job to push the boundaries and it’s his job to decide whether the boundaries have been passed. Therefore, it wasn’t my fault,” Fitzloff explained. “That was the type of leadership that you can learn by example.”

Riswold, who had been at Wieden about 20 years at that point, was taken off the Nike business.

Big picture, creative people need to be central to running agencies, not just creative departments, stressed John Patroulis, the CCO at Bartle Bogle Hegarty, New York. On a finer level, Norman, the CCO at the Playa del Rey, Calif. office of TBWA\Chiat\Day, likened his role to being a teacher, adding that it’s important to “be yourself, be who you are.” Sometimes, however, creative leadership is less explicit.

Rei Inamoto, CCO at AKQA, said the design of his agency’s offices underscores its approach to creativity. “It’s one open floor and nobody has an individual office,” Inamoto said. “It’s a very physically and visibly flat seating arrangement and I think that intrinsically and metaphorically says that creativity can come from anywhere, right?”

Newell Rubbermaid is consolidating its lead global agency roles for advertising and media buying.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty will lead creative for the conglomerate out of its New York office, with help from the shop's offices in London, Sao Paolo, and Shanghai. PHD will handle media buying.

Atlanta, Georgia-based Newell Rubbermaid owns a broad range of brands, including Sharpie, Paper Mate, Rubbermaid, Irwin, Lenox and Calphalon.

The new relationships span all of Newell Rubbermaid's advertising for all of its brands, including business-to-business marketing. The brand spent more than $265 million on global advertising and promotions expenses in 2012, according to its 10-K filing.

The company sells products in more than 100 countries, but the United States is its core market.

The shift impacts dozens of agencies that had worked for the company around the world. In the U.S., for example, Interpublic Group's Carmichael Lynch created ads for Rubbermaid and Calphalon, as well as home decor brands Levelor, Kirsch, and Amerock. IPG's DraftFCB worked on Sharpie and Omnicom's Energy BBDO handled Paper Mate. Roth Partners was the agency for Graco, Gyro created ads for Rubbermaid Commercial Products and Sullivan Higdon Sink handled Lenox, and Hilmor, a tool brand.

The move follows the entrance of a new cast of characters atop Newell Rubbermaid. Michael Polk, a veteran of Unilever, joined Newell Rubbermaid as its CEO in 2011. In fall of 2012, Richard Davies, another Unilever alum, arrived as its chief marketing officer. Unilever is a client of both BBH, which works with Axe, and of PHD, which plans and buys media for a range of the packaged-goods giant's brands.

"For the first time, we are aligning all our brands and categories behind one set of agency partners to drive big ideas that create a strong point of difference for consumers," said Davies, in a statement. "BBH and PHD are the best in the business at what they do."

Newell Rubbermaid plans to invest more in marketing more of its brands globally, added spokseman David Doolittle, especially in emerging markets like Brazil and China, as well as Mexico and other parts of Asia.

"We have good footholds in those markets but we're not there with all our categories," said Doolittle. "We're making significant investments to either introduce our brands in these markets or grow the brands that are already there. One of the ways we're going to do that is with bigger more global campaigns through our new partners."

For the second time in as many years, TBWA is recasting at the top of the creative department of its largest office, according to sources.

David Kolbusz, a partner and deputy executive creative director of Bartle Bogle Hegarty in London, is in advanced talks to share the top creative role at TBWA\Chiat\Day in Playa del Rey, Calif., sources said. Plans call for him to partner with Stephen Butler, one of the office's three ecds. The duo will succeed John Norman, who is exiting after just 16 months and joining Translation.

TBWA declined to comment but sources said that the move was imminent.

At BBH, Kolbusz has played a leading role in many of the shop's most high-profile ads in the past three years, including "Three Little Pigs" for The Guardian, "Lifeguard" for Unilever's Axe and most recently, "Make Love, Not War," for Axe. The Axe ads ran on the last two Super Bowls.

Before BBH, Kolbusz was a group cd at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, where he worked on brands such as Häagen-Dazs, Denny's and Nintendo. Earlier in his career, he was at Mother in London.

Butler joined TBWA\C\D in August and works on Nissan, among other accounts. He knows Kolbusz from Mother, where he too worked, from 2005 until last year.

The move comes as Playa del Rey aims to rebound from business setbacks in the past two years, including the loss of Visa in 2012 and Pepsi shifting its brand advertising work to shops like Mekanism. On the plus side, however, the office added brand image responsibilities on Southwest Airlines in 2012 and is a finalist in Wells Fargo's current creative review.

Other key clients in Playa del Rey include Pepsi's Gatorade, Nissan, Adidas and Energizer. The office, long considered the epicenter of TBWA, employs some 550 staffers and is home to global chairman Lee Clow.

In recent years, Clow has stepped back from day-to-day operations, though he remains close to Adidas and Apple, which is run by the TBWA\Media Arts Lab next door. So, the Kolbusz hire and pairing with Butler is crucial not only to growing the Omnicom Group agency but also its reputation as a top creative player in the industry.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty retained its creative lead on British Airways and added responsibility for loyalty and digital marketing.

BBH is teaming with Simon Hall and Warren Moore, current owners of London e-commerce consultancy Seven Seconds, to form a joint venture to handle the additional work.

In August, BA confirmed it was reviewing global creative duties on its account. In expanding its BBH relationship, the U.K. flagship airline, which spends around $100 million annually, moved its direct marketing and customer relationship management business, which had been at OgilvyOne, and digital ads previously handled by OgilvyOne offshoot 12th Floor. BBH has been the creative lead agency on BA since 2005.

Incumbent e-Dialog, responsible for BA’s email marketing chores, successfully defended its role on the account.

SapientNitro was the other finalist in the six-month review, which, in earlier rounds, also involved Ogilvy & Mather, Grey, Anomaly and Mother.

“We launched this pitch in order to explore the agency market place and see what was on offer, as we had had some of our larger agency contracts for many years,” said Abigail Comber, BA’s head of marketing. “Being conscious that the agency marketplace and consumer consumption of advertising has changed, we set out a challenge to put engaging content at the heart of every piece of communication, whatever the channel.”
 

John Hegarty is an advertising icon, as co-founder and creative leader of Bartle Bogle Hegarty. And with that comes many honors, like getting inducted into the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame. That happens on Monday night.

Also, Hegarty has written a new book about—what else?—creativity. "Hegarty on Creativity. There Are No Rules" is blissfully concise and even fits into your coat pocket. As an Adweek public service, here are Sir John's five most provocative thoughts in the book:

1. Collaboration is great for sex, not so much for creativity. In short, groupthink breeds blandness.

2. Bollocks to failure. Yes, it happens, but don't dwell on it. Move on.

3. Nothing is original, so strive for something fresh instead. After all, it's how others respond to your ideas that counts most.

4. Take your headphones off. Being creative means being connected to the world around you.

5. And finally, like Paul McCartney, everybody needs a Lennon—a partner who can challenge your thinking, and in the process, produce better art.

Now let's hear from the icon himself, shall we?

David Kolbusz, the Bartle Bogle Hegarty creative leader that TBWA\Chiat\Day tried to recruit, has landed at Wieden + Kennedy instead.

TBWA\C\D sought Kolbusz to help lead its office in Playa del Rey, Calif., offering to partner him with Steven Butler, one of three executive creative directors in the office. Instead, Kolbusz will become half of a creative leadership duo atop Wieden's New York office; the other leader has yet to be named.

Kolbusz, a deputy ecd at BBH in London, will join Wieden this summer and work alongside managing director Neal Arthur. The hire fills one of the roles that Ian Reichenthal and Scott Vitrone vacated in November when the duo departed for Barton F. Graf 9000.

At BBH, Kolbusz has been behind some of the agency’s most well known ads in past three years, including “Three Little Pigs” for The Guardian as well as the “Apollo” and “Peace” campaigns for Axe Unilever.

Before BBH, Kolbusz worked as a group cd for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, working on brands like Denny’s, Häagen-Dazs and Logitech. He also worked at Mother in London earlier in his career.

W+K has clients including Delta, ESPN, and Nike—the agency just found its first ads made for Nike on dusty old tapes—and it recently won global creative responsibilities for Gap.

After first looking outside, TBWA\Chiat\Day has filled the top creative role in its Playa del Rey, Calif. office with insider Stephen Butler.

The chief creative officer position had been vacant since John Norman left for Translation in March. Norman held the role for less than two years.

Butler previously was an executive creative director, working on accounts such as Nissan. He joined the Omnicom Group agency in July 2013.

Before TBWA\C\D, Butler was a creative partner at Mother in London, where he created ads for brands as diverse as Orange telecommunications, Coca-Cola, Ikea, Motorola and the London 2012 Olympics. Before Mother, he was a creative director at Bartle Bogle Hegarty in London, working on Levi's.

At TBWA\C\D, Butler will manage a department that works on Gatorade, Southwest Airlines, Adidas and Energizer. He also becomes part of a new management team that includes president Luis DeAnda, who replaced longtime office chief Carisa Bianchi this month.

In a statement, director of media arts Lee Clow cited Butler's past iconic work.

"Clients want to work with him, agencies want him on their team," Clow added. "His brave, groundbreaking and unforgettable ideas will help push our creative boundaries."

With the appointment, the agency also promoted group cds Fabio Costa and Brent Anderson to ecds under Butler.

Bartle Bogle Hegarty has cast a new role at the agency with an executive from McKinney.  

Michael Densmore, chief marketing officer at McKinney, will become the chief global growth officer for BBH. He'll be based in New York and start next week.

"We're pretty picky," said Patrick Lafferty, North American CEO of BBH. "But Mike has had a lot of great experience at a lot of great agencies. The combination of those experiences brings expertise in what we're asking him to do and valuable perspective about what works and what doesn't work both within an agency, with clients, with consultants. There's a rich perspective and set of experiences that are best-in-class in this business." 

Densmore is charged with driving global growth for BBH, working across the agency's seven offices—New York, London, Los Angeles, Singapore, Sao Paulo, Shanghai and Mumbai—with a focus on North American-based opportunities. Densmore also becomes part of Publicis Groupe shop's global leadership team. 

"BBH is one of the best creative agencies in the world and has an excellent ambition of wanting to be the best," said Densmore. "I'm excited to be asked to help them achieve that. It's a great honor."  

Densmore spent just eight months at McKinney. Before that, he was head of business development and a group account director (on Kraft Foods) at Droga5. Earlier in his career, he was chief marketing officer at Integrated Beverage Group, chief talent officer at Arnold and held account management roles at agencies like JWT, Modernista and Wieden + Kennedy.

Densmore's new position expands on Julie Levin's former role as head of business development for New York. (Levin left last summer for a similar job at The Martin Agency in Richmond, Va.) Densmore will report to Lafferty, with a dotted line to global CEO Gwyn Jones.

Some recent case-study videos have become just as creative—sometimes more so—than the campaigns they tout. As award show entry numbers swell—the Cannes Lions festival got 37,427 submissions this year, up 5 percent from 2013—agencies are fighting to stand out.

For example, Droga5 used the voice of a guy with a fake Scottish accent in a 2-plus-minute video about its Facebook campaign for Newcastle beer, and BBDO featured close-ups of hands smashing food in a 2-minute video about its Mobile TeleSystems effort. For its Jean-Claude Van Damme “The Epic Split” Volvo Trucks ad, Forsman & Bodenfors kept it simple, showing behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot.

The long-form explanations may just be practical, as not every juror will know your campaign. “It used to be that everyone would be anticipating the new Nike commercial because you’ve seen it and go, ‘This thing is so good it’s going to win everything,’” said Jeff Goodby, co-chairman of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. “Now you see a lot of things you’ve never seen before, and you have to have them explained.”

And while absurdist tactics can get attention, too much polish can be a turnoff. “The slicker they are, the less effective they tend to be in front of a jury,” said John Butler, ecd at Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners. Added Bartle Bogle Hegarty CCO John Patroulis: “There aren’t too many people that are tricked by a beautifully crafted case study that’s selling a crappy campaign.”

Newcastle, Droga5

“The best ones make a poignant cultural point. Not a business problem, but cultural tension that you find. This one is a little meta and about advertising. If it’s great work, you can see exactly how it affects the culture,” said Jason Marks, executive creative director of Partners + Napier in New York.

“It’s a little too long,” said Kevin Swanepoel, president of The One Club. “It did use humor to good effect. It would probably have been better if it had been cut at 1:40.”

Mobile Telesystems, DDBO

#MOBILE TELESYSTEMS - #SEXY #OILED #MYSELF #SIX #HOT ... from Alexey Starodubov on Vimeo.

“The hands thing—it’s kind of a gimmick,” said Marks. “If you see a couple of these, you’re probably going to see hundreds. Then you’re not looking at the work but commenting on the triteness of hands in case-study videos.”

“The issue with this film is that it takes them almost 30 seconds to get to the point,” said Butler. “I don’t think the effects stuff, the confetti, the fruit, the whipped cream are needed to tell this story. ‘I get it, I get it’ kept running through my mind watching it.”

Volvo Trucks, Forsman & Bodenfors

“This one isn’t about the case study itself, but it’s the idea that’s coming through,” said Patroulis. “It’s an interesting story, a nice idea that was well-executed, and they use the film as part of that.”

Said Butler: “They used the assets of the campaign and brought their idea to life that way, without shooting a bunch of extraneous borrowed stuff, or trying to make the piece a creative execution unto itself. They simply told the story by leveraging its assets.”

It has been a busy 18 months for luxury players and ad agencies. First, Christie's hired Bartle Bogle Hegarty, then Tiffany tapped Ogilvy & Mather, and now Sotheby's has hired TBWA.

TBWA\London will handle creative responsibilities for the auction house globally, including in core markets like the U.S., U.K. and China.

Media spending on the assignment is relatively modest at an estimated $15-20 million, but Sotheby's is the kind of high-end brand that agencies love to be associated with. As TBWA\London CEO Rich Stainer put it: "Sotheby's is an iconic brand with an incredible legacy."

The business came without a pitch and after the Omnicom Group agency did project work for Sotheby's. The shop is developing a global image campaign and will create ads and other marketing around key auctions.

In making the hire, Alfredo Gangotena, CMO of Sotheby's, cited TBWA's experience in building iconic global brands. The agency's global accounts include Apple, Nissan and Energizer.

Wieden + Kennedy has reached into JWT to fill one of the top creative roles in its Shanghai, China office. 

Yang Yeo, North Asia ecd and China chairman at JWT, will become an executive creative at W+K in Shanghai. He'll start Aug. 1.

Yeo represents one half of a new top creative duo, as current co-ecds Michael Simons and Achilles Li prepare to leave the agency. Simons is exiting next month and Li, later in the summer, according to an agency representative.

"I feel now is the right time to return to an independent setup where the creative project is at its core," said Yeo, in a statement.

Yeo has worked on brands like Adidas and Samsonite, with the former's Beijing Olympics campaign winning China's first Cannes' Gold Lion and the latter's "Heaven and Hell" campaign nabbing China's first Cannes' Grand Prix. 

"Yeo represents a new kind of leader for us," said Mark Fitzloff, W+K's global co-executive creative director. "He is deeply immersed in the business and creative communities of the region. His experience, including the last eight years in China, expands the possibilities for W+K and our Shanghai office."

Before JWT, Yeo worked at Fallon and Bartle Bogle Hegarty. W+K Shanghai's accounts include Clinique, Jeep and Nike. 

Pelle Sjoenell, chief creative officer of Bartle Bogle Hegarty in Los Angeles, has taken on a new, secondary mission: leading agency contributions to a new joint venture with Scooter Braun's SB Projects.

The venture, a production company called The Creative Studio, will create music videos, ads, B-roll and marketing and promotional videos for the clients of BBH and SB Project. The studio also will work with new brands, and down the line may produce long form content for television and feature films. 

BBH and SB Projects have worked together for three years and Sjoenell and Braun have already proven to be a good team with Justin Bieber's Girlfriend fragrance launch. The partners unveiled their new venture at Cannes.

BBH global CEO Gwyn Jones said his shop was delighted to partner with Braun in bringing a similarly fresh perspective to the business of content creation in film, broadcast and video. The shop will share the studio's approach with its clients and other partners soon. 

"With this partnership we can be as creative as we want to be and hopefully affect culture," added Braun, in a statement. "Not a bad reason to wake up and go to work in the morning.”

Infiniti Motor Co. will meet with more than a half-dozen agencies before selecting a handful of finalists to pitch its global creative account.

The meetings are taking place this week, with Infiniti now on track to complete its search by August. Global media spending on the luxury brand totals $450 million annually, according to the automaker's initial request for proposals.

The semifinalists include big shops like Publicis, FCB and Havas Worldwide (which is pitching with sister shop Arnold) and smaller global players, including Bartle Bogle Hegarty, M&C Saatchi and Crispin Porter + Bogusky, according to sources. There's also a wild card: domestic player Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, which is partnering with incumbent—and Omnicom Group sibling—TBWA to achieve global reach, sources said.

Bottom line: Infiniti vp of global marketing Vincent Gillet has a broad range of options to chose from. Roth Observatory International is helping to manage the search. Roth did not return calls and Gillet declined to discuss specific candidates, though he did characterize them generally as "very strong, highly talented."

After the meetings, Infiniti executives will narrow the field to three or four agencies, sources said. That cut could come as soon as next week.

In its RFP, Infiniti, a unit of Nissan, identified its priority markets as the U.S., China and Hong Kong, though the brand also is sold in Europe, the Middle East, Russia, South Africa, Mexico, Canada and seven other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. So, having a global footprint is key to servicing the business.

Overall, the document stressed that Infiniti needs a "foundational" creative idea that can work across all media channels and consumer touch points. Indeed, while TV ads remain important, "alternative approaches are paramount as Infiniti cannot outspend its competitors in broadcast," the RFP noted. Experiential marketing, for example, may also play a role.

Infiniti's goal, the RFP added, is to be the "provocateur that owns the future of the premium car category by winning the hearts of young-minded premium consumers [by] featuring seductive styling, attitude, exhilarating performance, emotive design and intuitive technology."