Venables Bell & Partners

Super Bowl: The only day in America where TV viewers actually want to watch commercials. This year’s NFL championship, pitting the New York Giants against the New England Patriots, is in a sense a “rematch” of the 2008 edition of the big game. Due to this unfortunate match-up (blame Billy Cundiff and Kyle Williams for their failures), it’s possible that TV ratings could actually be lower than last year’s game. This would clearly be a total bummer for advertisers who spent $3.5 million for a 30-second spot. But, on the bright side, maybe people will be talking more about the ads than the actual game at the water cooler the next day, right?

Of course, the veritable “water cooler” has evolved in the digital age. The folks at Venables Bell & Partners have decided to provide a handy infographic that maps the who, where and how of post-game advertising conversation. Out of the bevy of stats they’ve given us, a few stand out. For example, “Almost one in five (19%) Americans searched for ads before the game in 2011, about double (11%) who did in 2010. Of that group, 48% searched for ads on Facebook, putting the site just ahead of popular video sharing site YouTube, brand sites, and media sources as the lead destination to find ads.” In other words, Facebook is becoming a more popular video search engine than YouTube, a fact than is no doubt pissing off the powers that be at Google.

Also, “Americans are almost as likely to ‘like’ a brand on Facebook that advertises during the Super Bowl (20%) as they are to ‘like’ a team (29%), with 23% of young adults likely to ‘like’ a brand.” Not a bad way to measure social media ROI compared to TV ROI, is it? Well, at least it’s somewhat “believable.” Check out a full-size image after the jump.

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For its first work for Google, SF-based Venables Bell & Partners along with prodco 1st Avenue Machine went all out with the above online spot for the company’s ubiquitous Maps tool.

As you can see, VB+P decided to concoct a real life Maps equivalent, resulting in a giant, labyrinth-inspired cube that requires two people to operate. Eventually, the familiar leads to the unexpected as the cube flips and the blue marble suddenly enters a mall. Wait, Google Maps can access mall directories? And public transportation maps? And suggest alternate routes of travel when traffic becomes an issue? Well, for Maps’ less popular features, a viral spot like this is a clever way to reintroduce consumers to a product they’ve already grown to rely on.

A tipster turned us on to what looks like a legit Craigslist post from San Francisco indie agency Venables Bell & Partners, which just opened its Lumberyard unit while continuing to celebrate its 10th anniversary with perhaps one of the most economical deals we’ve seen in quite some time. According to the post (which sources say is the real deal), “…To celebrate our 10-year anniversary, we’re proposing some office space with us for $10 a year. Maybe it’s one desk. Maybe it’s 11. Who knows? Let’s see who’s out there. The price is just our gift to a few entrepreneurs out there because we know it’s not always easy to get things off the ground. We started our business during a recession too.”

There is an application process, obviously, for VB&P’s “Office Space Contest, ” which you can take a look at here. From what we gather, your $10 a year, if you make the cut, will ensure that you won’t get stuck in the basement with your Swingline.

San Francisco-based indie operation Venables Bell & Partners has opened the doors to the fourth floor as it will now house a new “integrated content studio” dubbed Lumberyard. Leading the new unit, which will handle digital, print, video production, editorial, 3D modeling, motion graphics, and “rapid prototyping,” will be VB&P’s recently hired director of content development Deva Ferar. The exec spent time as director of creative development at AKQA and served as SVP, director of digital development for a few years prior to landing at Venables. It looks like Ferar’s staff is getting down to business already judging by the pic above.

After spending five years as an art director at Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Cris Logan has joined up with fellow Bay Area agency Venables Bell & Partners as a design director. During his half-decade AD stint at Goodby, Logan (pictured) worked on the agency’s most notable past and present accounts including Hyundai, Sprint, HP, California Milk Processors Board, Haagen-Dazs and Sonic. Other agency gigs on Logan’s resume include AD/designer at McCann, where he spent three years and was involved with clients including Microsoft, the San Francisco 49ers and the Oakland A’s.

In addition to Logan’s arrival, VB&P promoted Lee Einhorn to creative director. Einhorn has been toiling at Venables for nearly two years now and in the process, has worked on the Barclays, Orville Redenbacher’s and eBay business (example here) among others. During his career, Einhorn started Arnold’s Entertainment unit, spent some time as a digital creative and Mekanism and started things off at Publicis & Hal Riney and Arnold.

“Mom jeans” are pretty bad, but as a young man frightened of losing all fashion sense with age, I have to say that I am personally more terrified of finding myself wearing a pair of dreaded “dad shorts.” At what average age do you think most women start hiking up their baggy pants as high as possible and most men think the that world wants to see their hairy thighs?

In Venables Bell & Partners’ first work for eBay, the San Francisco agency is introducing the online store’s new app for impulse shopping. The “When it’s on your mind, it’s on eBay” campaign debuts tonight with three spots from VB&P, each showing someone trying to keep up with today’s trends by instantly purchasing products from eBay. Says VB&P co-founder and ECD Paul Venables: “When the company that revolutionized how people shop asks you to do something big and new, you get excited. For this campaign, we tapped into the psyche of passionate shoppers and then demonstrated why eBay is the answer.”

In the announce, VB&G cites a statistic that says 60 percent of fashion enthusiasts and 65 percent of electronics enthusiasts own smartphones, compared to less than 30 percent of the general public. See two spots (one featuring an impulse fashion purchase and one featuring an impulse electronics purchase)  and credits after the jump

 

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Actually, when aren’t yearbook photos awkward? Anyhow, San Francisco agency Venables, Bell & Partners has found its own way to celebrate 10 years of existence by creating what it’s calling a “Facebook flashback,” whereby VB&P builds profiles (and Facebook profiles) for each of its employees based on photos taken when they were 10 years old. Ahh yes, going to the Ten Year site brings back our own memories of all those goofy, forced yearbook smiles we made through middle school and high school, the bad hairstyles and our never-ending quest to get everyone in our class to sign our books and wish us a “radical” summer…or something like that.

You can click on any one of the pics on the Ten Year page, read profiles and vote for things like “Best Hair,” “Most Likely to Hit on a Teacher” and “Most Likely Not to Get Carded for Beer.” Yep, feels just like our school daze.

Apparently, everyone in this town really reveres the Audi A7. And, what better time to do some cleaning than spring, right guys? LOL, get it? (Wink wink, nudge, nudge.)

“Spring Cleaning” is one of two new spots for Audi from Venables Bell & Partners. Along with “Car Carrier,” which advertises the Audi Q5, these new television ads paint the luxury car company as “Luxury Progressed,” and both do so in a sort of pretentious fashion. Sure, seeing an Audi cruising around your town has definitely become a much more common site as the company continues to take market share away from competitors like Mercedes-Benz and BMW. But, do the two spots really make you want to buy and Audi? Or, do they make you kind of hate Audi drivers that much more? Credits and “Car Carrier” follow after the jump.

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Not content with the current state of popcorn, the best-selling gourmet popcorn brand in America, Orville Redenbacher’s, is introducing the microwaveable bag/bowl hybrid. That’s right. No longer will you feel bad about eating the popcorn straight out of the bag, and no longer will you have to wash your popcorn bowl. Truly, the “Pop Up Bowl” is a magical innovation in the world of snacking.

And, to help promote the new product, Orville Redenbacher’s and agency Venables Bell & Partners are calling on the goth-est magician of all, Criss Angel, who is apparently still around and a thing. Observe as this unsuspecting suburban couple gets their respective minds freaked by the power of popcorn and the lamest cable magician ever. Remember, “It’s not a trick. It’s an illusion. Tricks are what whores do for money.” Credits after the jump.

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Back in January, when Osama Bin Laden remained at large and Packers had not yet won the Super Bowl, we posted a video from Intel called “The Chase,” which advertised the new Intel Core i5 processor. At two minutes long, “The Chase” did that whole movie in computer windows and different online mediums, similar to the Arcade Fire’s interactive music video for “The Suburbs.”

This time around, “The Chase” (which garnered over 2.5 million views on YouTube) is being integrated into Facebook complete with a new game, character profiles and all sort of extra downloadable goodies. Unfortunately (as I learned attempting to run the programs on a MacBook Air), you pretty much need to own a computer with an Intel Core i5, unless you’d like “The Chase” to slow your computer to a slow crawl. With the help of a MacBook Pro (which utilizes an Intel Core i5 processor), I was able to make the Facebook page work. The page also requires an HTML 5 web browser (Chrome, IE9, Safari 5 or Firefox 4) to function. If you think about it, Intel and agency Venables Bell & Partners are really targeting techno-geeks by creating a barrier to entry of sorts for its Facebook page. And, hey, at half a million “Likes,” they must be doing something right. And, on social media, isn’t a “spy story” kind of the go-to genre these days? Credits,  and that original viral video, after the jump.

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