TBWA/Chiat Day

Those of you ad folks who’ve been playing in the Twitterverse for the last few years have probably grown familiar with Midwest creative director/writer Jason Fox, or perhaps more so with his Twitter alter ego, @leeclowsbeard. Well, Fox, who has been tweeting out pearls of wisdom under the guise of said TBWA legend’s famous facial hair since 2009, has grown popular enough (25,000+ followers and counting) to merit bitter knockoffs and most significantly, both a book and an app. The title? You guessed it, @leeclowsbeard, which will hit bookshelves on June 12.

To promote the app and book, which you can pre-order here, Mr. Fox offers a slideshow that gives you the history of his Twitter effort. We’ve been told that Lee Clow himself flew Fox out to meet in person before deciding to go ahead and publish the title under the banner of TBWA\Chiat\Day LA’s content innovation studio, Let There Be Dragons.

Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews.

Let’s flashback to the ’90s and refresh the phrase, “things that make you go hmmm.” Well, we’ve received several tips that Eliza Esquivel, who was promoted just over a year ago to the position of director of planning at TBWA\Chiat\Day New York, has turned in her resignation after spending nearly four years at the agency. We contacted Esquivel directly to find out if she’s indeed leaving, and the rather soft-spoken exec in turn offered us a curt “no comment.”

We will let you draw your own conclusions on that one, and since TBWA still seems to be boycotting officially communicating with us (we think), we’ll have to wait for the newswires or the other pubs to find out where she’s headed to next. Wherever she lands, Esquivel carries quite the resume on the planning side, having worked at the likes of W+K Amsterdam, DDB and JWT New York prior to joining Chiat NY.

On Sunday, Anomaly debuted the above Super Bowl spot for Budweiser, “Eternal Optimism.” In 60 seconds, Budweiser parallels its own history with that of the country of its birth, starting from the end of Prohibition and concluding in the era of pop-up hip-hop concerts aka “present day.” Yes, it’s a bit silly to imagine that Budweiser was the drink of choice for patrons of Studio 54, but it’s always fun to see how advertisers choose to depict (or rewrite) U.S. history. It’s also interesting to note that, as one tipster suggests, Anomaly’s representation of the last century closely resembles TBWA/Chiat/Day’s 2009 Obama inauguration spot for Pepsi.

Before we turn to you, dear readers, for finger pointing/waving, let’s discuss the similarities and differences of these two spots.

Similarities: Flapper girls, the end of WWII, greasers, Studio 54, break dancing, and grunge body-passing.
Differences: Hippies vs. Moon landing, Berlin Wall vs. the “Miracle on Ice,” and Budweiser’s use of the dance party.

Given this evidence, is this case an ad ripoff? Is this a case of coincidence? Or, is this, as they say, “just what happens?”

Last year, the folks at TBWA\Chiat\Day LA used animated, biographically-focused TV spots to preview the 53rd Grammy Awards. Judging by the above spot, the agency seems to be employing “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mantra when it comes to marketing the 54th installment of music’s biggest night.

Though Bon Iver is not performing at the Grammys, the band is nominated for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist. Also, the band’s history is one that quickly found its place in folk music lore. Even passive fans know how singer/songwriter Justin Vernon started his project in humility, writing mournful songs from his parents’ cabin during a cold Wisconsin winter. To the ghostly sounds of the band’s track “Holocene,” a snowy scene evolves into a silhouette of Vernon and his guitar.

Could this be the year that Bon Iver becomes a pop sensation, played on Top 40 stations around the country? Well, you have to remember that the Grammys are now finally attempting a stab legitimacy, and Arcade Fire’s Album of the Year victory last year could be a sign of things to come. Bon Iver’s “We are Music” spot is one of four, with the others focusing on pop crooner Adele, middle-aged rockers Foo Fighters, and the worst thing to happen to music in 2011, dub-step phenom Skrillex.

The glut of agency holiday card delivery continues as it always does and just as a quick example of what we’ve received thus far, here are two completely different pieces of work that caught our eye, one from TBWA\Chiat\Day NY and the other from Design Kitchen. The former has released the “Holiday .GIF Giver,” which as you can see above celebrate. The list of .GIF’s that were uploaded, created or just chosen continues to blow up, though we’d be appreciative if someone could just pass us an Advil after peering through this image overload.

On the flipside, we have an interesting effort from Chicago-based, WPP-owned Design Kitchen for the holidays, which is basically a Twitter-based, live-streaming card that lets you watch a “Holi-Cray-Matic” celebration unfold in its conference room after every 40 tweets it gets.

We expect more agency holiday submissions to pour, though we’ll do you the favor of just compiling what sticks out in one post moving forward.

After a ten-year absence from the TBWA\ network, Laurent Janneau has returned to assume the title of worldwide managing director for the agency’s global Infiniti account. During his decade away from TBWA, Janneau first worked as an international account director at W+K Amsterdam on Nike, which called for him to lead creative development and global implementation of soccer–er, sorry, football–campaigns tied around the World Cup, Euro Cup, etc.

Janneau  split from W+K in 2005 and returned to Paris to join up with O&M as group account director for Nestle Waters and GlaxoSmithKline. Two years later, he moved up the ladder at Ogilvy to take on the role of global business director for the agency’s Louis Vuitton account and most recently served as executive director at the Paris office. In his second tour of duty at TBWA (his first lasted from 1995-2001 at BDDP\TBWA Paris), Janneau will report directly to the Worldwide CEO/president Tom Carroll.

TBWA\Chiat\Day LA creative director Tito Melega has a new partner-in-crime on Nissan as Karl Dunn has now joined the agency to serve as a fellow CD on the automaker’s account. Dunn is no stranger to the TBWA network as he had creative stints at \Hunt Lascaris Cape Town and Johannesburg early on in his career. Along with his TBWA experience, Dunn has worked as a senior writer and digital creative director at BBH and Leo Burnett’s Singapore offices, respectively, was a senior CW at StrawberryFrog Amsterdam (on Heineken) and has auto experience with the likes of Plantage Berlin/BSUR Amsterdam as a creative director on MINI (“Love Is in the Air,” anyone?).

Chiat LA CCO Rob Schwartz says of his new agency’s new hire, “He’s done great work on brands like Mini, Levi’s and BMW Motorcycles. And he’s working right now on developing iconic ideas for Nissan against our highly successful Innovation For All creative platform.’

 

After our original post about TBWA\Chiat\Day LA creative director Nobbie Kim and his sworn oath to rock the house at the agency, what was said sparked some sort of media firestorm (well, within the insular world that the ad community lives in). Here is a response to what’s not being referred to as a “gimmick.” Read in full here.

We’re not sure if this is just a bold declaration or required documentation, but TBWA\Chiat\Day LA creative director Nobbie Kim has set some high standards for himself in this, your image of the day. We can’t recall how this fell into our laps, but in any case, it’s quite the ambitious goal for a guy who just joined the agency nine months ago after a yearlong stint at Innocean. We wish you the best, Mr. Kim.

If the two-minute clip offering insight into its culture and view of the office space wasn’t enough, TBWA\Chiat\Day LA gets a nice lathering from MSN UK, which has named the agency’s office one of the 10 “world’s coolest” spaces. According to the site, the LA digs “…plays host to a kaleidoscope of creative flourishes. These include a bar made out of surfboards, a full-sized basketball court and even trees growing inside to give employees that ‘outdoorsy’ feel.It’s so cool we don’t know why you’d ever want to go home.” Well, we can think of a few things but can’t say we don’t disagree with the “cool” factor. Other inclusions in this particular top 10 list include both Mother and Nike’s London offices. Peep the slideshow here.