welcome to optimism

toon tour of wieden + kennedy london

A quick tour of Wieden + Kennedy's offices in Hanbury Street, London. Shot on iPhone using ToonCamera app. It was early in the morning, which is why no-one's around. Music is East St Louis Toodle-oo by Duke Ellington.

Bertrum's first app

Bertrum Thumbcat is back. With nothing less than a vengeance. 

He is planning to use his polydactyl power and his newly acquired doctorate in Mind Control Studies to take over the world (and steal all the Cravendale milk therein).

On his world travels he has met many cats and has been spreading the word of impending feline world domination. And official recruitment for Bertrum’s Thumbcat Army of milk-stealing world-dominating cats is now in full swing.

Join your cat up today using the Facebook app (and keep your eyes peeled for the new commercial, airing soon).

Sian's got guts

Sian proudly displays the big bag of blood and guts she got from the meat market this morning for a project we're working on. Judging by the expression of Colman (background), it looks as if Sian's entrails have put him off his breakfast.

Wieden + Kennedy: building brands, fighting crime

When not busy devising business-building strategies for our clients, Wieden + Kennedy planning director Paul Colman is a crime fighter and 'have-a-go' hero. When a violent fracas broke out on Cheshunt Station platform Paul - on his way back from a meeting with Tesco - stepped in to assist a policeman who was getting thumped by a dodgy character.

Using his trademark combination of logical brilliance and physical intimidation, Colman subdued the miscreant, who was swiftly brought to justice. Our man was happy to help but bitterly disappointed to be advised by the police that he was not authorised to use deadly force.

W+K Planning: they are The Law.

feel the power of old spice muscle music

Friends, people of the internet, co-workers, lovers, former lovers, random people who have come to this site by mistake, it is with great pride and excitement that we introduce the technological and pectoral breakthrough that is Old Spice Muscle Music, featuring Terry Crews, muscle-laden star of The Expendendables II. Never has so much stupidity and technological breakthrough been combined into one thingy. It's the first ever fully interactive and sharable music video/player on Vimeo (or YouTube for that matter).

A lot of people in the W+K Portland office worked really hard on this. Well done, them. Please take a minute to enjoy its funny stupidness and then feel free to send it to everyone you know on the internet so they can enjoy its funny stupidness.

Try it here: http://vimeo.com/47875656

Meanwhile, Terry Crews is answering questions on Reddit.

Handy keyboard guide for the Muscle Music player:

can a micro-network really handle a global account?

I noticed in last week's Campaign magazine that Jeremy Bullmore neatly summarises the 'micro-network' proposition. Since this is the model represented by us at W+K, I thought I would take the liberty of reproducing his remarks here for the benefit of anyone wondering the same thing as his correspondent.

Q: Can a micro-network of half-a-dozen offices really handle a global account, Jeremy? And, if so, why am I as a client paying for an agency with more than 150 offices?

A: I hadn't realised that agencies these days based their fees on the number of offices they have around the world. Since the very beginning, agency remuneration systems have been bizarre, so I can quite see the attraction of an office-based tariff. At least you can count offices, which is more than you can say for value delivered. But I do wonder if you've got this entirely right?

If your global account is a single brand account, which primarily requires a single, strong, brand-defining presentation rather than a lot of local-nuance translations, adaptations, modifications and exceptions; and if your brand share and competition are more or less the same in all your markets; then I can see no reason why you shouldn't be just as well-served by a micro-network - or even a single unit, come to that. Your own people on the ground, if you have them, should be able to look after everything else.

And if you go from an agency with 150 offices to an agency with just one, it presumably should be quite amazingly cheap?

While I would hesitate to describe Wieden + Kennedy as 'amazingly cheap', I can confirm that there are economies of scale available for clients who don't need or want an agency to service their outposts on a market-by-market basis, and we do this succesfully for clients including Nike, Coca-Cola, Levi's and Lurpak. And there is an additional benefit, which delivers further value for money: it's easier to maintain a consistently high standard of quality of work in a micro-network than it is when spread across 150 offices.

OK, sales pitch over. Back to what you probably came here for: more cute pictures of cats pushing trolleys...

agency summer barbecue

Belatedly sharing some pics from the recent agency summer barbecue at the Pub on the Park in London Fields. A splendid time was had by all. Above: I.T. hero Gav in buoyant mood.



Above: Katherine, Paul and Jen.
Below: the toast...



...and the quaff.

Iniesta pulls the strings for Nike in our new CTR360 campaign

Our campaign to announce the launch of the new Nike CTR360 Maestri III boot went live the other day. It features the world’s leading playmaker Andrés Iniesta, starring as a puppet master on the pitch.

The FC Barcelona midfielder expertly pulls the strings, dominating the midfield and dictating the pace of the game as a puppet on a miniature football pitch theatre set.

In the film Iniesta wears Nike’s completely re-designed CTR 360 Maestri III: the boots for the midfield maestro. Maestri – meaning Maestro in Italian – is the boot favoured by midfield players like Iniesta who rely on innovative performance features to enhance their control of the ball, and therefore the game itself.

You can watch Iniesta talking about the boots and the ad in this short film. On appearing in the spot Iniesta said: “It was fun to shoot; it is always good to do something a little different from the norm."

Our sentiments exactly.

Introducing the WK Trolley

Not only is it Friday. Not only is it Friday before a bank holiday weekend. Not only is Neil away. IT'S ALSO LAUNCH OF THE WK TROLLEY DAY.

It will appear every so often. Different days. Different times. Pushed by different people.

Today: It's a Friday PM. It's nearly bank holiday. So some drinks are in order. Ronny and Leanne are in charge.

Bank holiday vodkas (thank you Maximus). Let's all pretend we're in Mad Men and drinking in the office is once more acceptable. Next time it could be Tony and Kim doling out tea and kit kats. Or Kirsten's amazing cakes. Or Paul Colman and his stand up.

But one thing's for sure, one day Helen Foulder would like to see this

Stride Mintacular: a gum that redefines the limits of possibility. Again.

I'm over in New York today. Imagine my surprise when I opened the New York Times this morning (above) to find a big article about our new work for Stride Mintacular gum.

And then, walking over to the office, I passed this poster site. Spooky.

Here's what the NYT had to say:

On Aug. 1, a billboard appeared in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan displaying only a date, “08.13.12,” and clues seemed to point to Apple.

Consistent with the style of Apple advertising and packaging, the billboard was black type on a white background and its typeface was a version of Myriad, which Apple uses nearly exclusively. Also noteworthy was the billboard’s location: the intersection of Broome and Thompson streets, 450 yards from the Apple Store on Prince Street.

A SoHo resident, Colin Mackenzie, wrote on Twitter on Aug. 5 that a “big billboard just got put up by my apt with ‘08.13.12’ in what looked like Apple font ... iPhone5 maybe?”

On Aug. 6 on MacRumors, the popular Web site for Apple enthusiasts, “Bendrix” posted a photograph of the billboard and wrote: “What is the meaning of this? Is it Apple related?”

What they were chewing over turns out, appropriately enough, to be gum.

On Monday, the billboard will be replaced by a new one featuring Shaun White, the gold medalist snowboarder, holding a pack of Stride Mintacular, a new flavor that features his likeness on the package.

“Stride Mintacular,” reads the copy, the type treatment again mimicking Apple’s. “Chewing redefined. Again.”

An online video by Stride introducing the Mintacular flavor is shot in the same documentary style as Apple’s product debut videos.

Apple introductory videos, including one for the new MacBook Pro from June that has more than 760,000 views on YouTube, feature designers seated before a white background speaking with awe and wonder about new products. Unlike the Apple videos, Stride uses actors to depict its executives.

“From the moment you pick it up, you instinctively know how to use it,” says an actor in the Stride sendup, as a piece of the gum is shown. “There are no rules at all when it comes to holding it. I don’t need to change who I am to fit the product. It fits me.” 

The video and billboards are by the London office of Wieden & Kennedy. The video will be featured in ads on the Web site for The Onion, the satirical publication, on the Stride Facebook page, which has three million followers, and on YouTube.

“A lot of product launches treat each successive variation of their products as if they’re groundbreaking and will change people’s lives,” said Sam Heath, a creative director at Wieden & Kennedy. “They talk about them in this very grand, revelatory, almost religious way, and we thought that it would be fun to take the same approach and make a big hoo-ha over what is essentially a minor thing: a new gum flavor.”

The Stride video is “a great parody and hilarious,” said David Vinjamuri, author of “Accidental Branding” and an adjunct professor of marketing at New York University.

 
In September 2011, Stride introduced the first flavor attached to Mr. White, Whitemint, featuring his name and likeness prominently on the package. Whitemint now ranks second behind spearmint in sales among more than a dozen Stride flavors, according to Steve Siegal, the senior brand manager for Stride.

The brand, which is owned by Kraft, is aimed primarily to those 18 to 24, and along with being “the most iconic figure in action sports,” Mr. White is “a personality fit for the brand because he’s genuine, authentic and exudes a lot of confidence,” Mr. Siegal said.

On Aug. 21, Mr. White will appear at an event at a 7-Eleven on East 14th Street in Manhattan. The store will be stocked only with packs of Mintacular and Whitemint, and a batch of Mintacular-flavored Slurpees will be served.
 
From its introduction in 2006 through 2011, Stride marketed itself as “the ridiculously long-lasting gum.” Commercials from JWT, New York, part of WPP, featured misguided Stride marketers who, frustrated that they cannot sell more gum because each piece lasts so long, force consumers to spit theirs out. As the new agency for the brand, Wieden & Kennedy has replaced the slogan with “A little bit epic.” In a commercial introduced in May, a young man at a loss for how to comport himself when he sees a former girlfriend in a coffee shop pops in a piece of Stride and settles on gallantly holding the door for her as she leaves. It has 766,000 views on YouTube.



In advertising parlance, the new campaign signals a shift from emphasizing a functional benefit, persistent flavor, to an emotional one, the feeling of ease and confidence from fresh breath.

“Gum is not going to change your world or get you to win the Olympics,” said Mr. Heath, of Wieden & Kennedy. “But it might just give you a little nudge to be relaxed in a social situation.”