Nike | Muse by Clios

How Retired Nike Historian Preserved the Brand’s History

Christine Champagne — Mon, 26 Aug 2024 00:00:08 +0000

If it wasn’t for Scott Reames, the history of Nike, especially the early days, might have been lost.

But as Nike’s first brand historian, Reames researched, fact-checked, confirmed and preserved the story of the world-famous shoe and apparel company for posterity.

Now retired, Reames recently chatted with Muse about how he spotted information gaps, pitched Nike higher-ups on the need for an in-house historian and eventually landed the post.

IT’S ALL IN THE DETAILS

Reames started working for Nike in 1992 and retired in 2021. “I had four different roles at the company over those 30 years, and each sort of led to the next one, which ultimately led to the historian role,” reflects Reames, who did stints in retail marketing, sports marketing and communications.

At the outset, Reames served as a marketing coordinator tasked with putting on events at the Niketown stores in Portland, Ore., and Chicago featuring athletes who worked with the brand. In that position, Reames first made his mark as someone who saw the value of having easily-accessible information available for use inside Nike.

“In the ’90s, before the advent, or at least the ubiquity of the internet, it was really hard to get current information about an athlete,” he recalls. “If an athlete’s coming to your store, you want to know how many strikeouts he has, or how many marathon’s she’s run, if they’re allergic to strawberries, what size they wear. And it was really a pain in the butt to look this information up.”

Reames believed that Nike needed a database with all of this information in it. So, he brought the idea to the company’s director of sports marketing. “I said that Nike needed its own version of a sports information department, like universities or professional teams. He liked the idea. And the next thing you know, they wanted me to start managing the database.”

GETTING THE FACTS STRAIGHT

By 1997, Reames was working in public relations. While sitting in on press interviews Nike co-founder Phil Knight and other senior execs, he noticed that they sometimes got facts wrong about their own company.

“They’d say something like, ‘We opened our first retail store in Eugene.’ And I was thinking to myself, ‘I thought we opened our first store in Santa Monica.'”

The errors weren’t intentional. It’s just that no one had been documenting the company’s history. Yes, there were archives, but the archives were a collection of items.

In Reames’ mind, that wasn’t enough. So in 2003, he began putting together a proposal for an in-house historian position at Nike “to augment, or complement, the archives.”

Reames suggested that an in-house historian could oversee the Department of Nike Archives—DNA for short—”because I liked the acronym, and I liked the image it came with.”

He drove home the point that the stories behind the formation and history of the company—as well as how products evolved—shouldn’t be lost. “Otherwise, it’s just a shoe, or a piece of apparel. But if you know the context, who wore it, when they wore it, what they did in it, who designed it, why they designed it, what it inspired, what it was inspired by—all that continuity of the product makes it much more interesting,” Reames says.

In 2004, Reames had lunch with Knight and pitched the idea. “Three months later, I get a call from the director of the archives department saying he understands I had lunch with Phil. And I was like, ‘Uh-oh, I’m going to get in trouble.’ But he said, ‘We’re going to get a headcount approved for history. Are you interested?'”

LEARNING FROM OTHER BRAND HISTORIANS

Reames left Nike’s communications department and officially assumed the role of historian in 2005. One of the first things he did was organize an educational tour for himself and colleagues to meet historians at other companies.

First stop—Atlanta, where they met with Phil Mooney, the archivist/historian at Coca-Cola from 1977 to 2013. Next, Reames and his team dropped by CNN in to learn how they archived their video content. Then, they headed to Milwaukee to meet the Harley-Davidson folks, who were developing a brand museum at the time.

“Best practices are something we love to share as brand historians,” he says, “because why reinvent the wheel.”

MINING THE MEMORIES OF NIKE’S FOUNDERS

Reames made it a priority to interview everyone involved with Nike’s founding. “I focused on what I would call the first generation—the employees that either founded the company, or were hired very soon after the company started. “Jeff Johnson, Bob Woodell, Del Hayes. These people were all the first of their kind. So it was very helpful to get their stories,” he says.

Next, Reames interviewed current and former employees, athletes who worked with the brand and creatives, including Dan Wieden and David Kennedy from Wieden+Kennedy, Nike’s long-time ad agency, as well as Jim Riswold, the W+K copywriter behind so many iconic Nike ads, including the “Bo Knows” campaign, who recently passed away.

Reames believes he interviewed close to a thousand people to get the full Nike story. “I’ve always believed in Nike. I’m not an athlete by any sense of the imagination, but I very much love sports, and I love competition. So, just to be a part of that and to essentially have the privilege to be trusted to do this…”

“Right?” he marvels.

ESTABLISHING A TIMELINE

Another must-do was creating an official DNA timeline of company events and milestones—from scratch. Reames was particular about what he included. His approach was “nothing will go in that I can’t 100-percent corroborate with annual reports, or memos, or data.”

This timeline became “the Bible for our company,” and Knight relied on it when he was writing his memoir Shoe Dog.

“I gave him that timeline,” Reames recalls. And he said, ‘Oh my gosh, this lays everything out. It’s so clear here. This is how it happened—not what you heard.’”

SO YOU WANNA BE A BRAND HISTORIAN?

While some of his employees were assigned to his department, every person Reames personally hired was a journalism major. All were deft writers with demonstrable storytelling skills.

The ability to communicate a story effectively is a must for any brand historian, though Reames admits it isn’t easy to distill the story of a storied company like Nike into quick bites.

“I used to tell my wife, ‘I wish when somebody asks me a question about Nike, I could answer it in one sentence.’”

The post How Retired Nike Historian Preserved the Brand’s History first appeared on Muse by Clios.

Survivor Star Creates Art for Brands Like Nike, N.Y. Rangers

Muse — Mon, 03 Jun 2024 14:00:00 +0000

Tiffany Nicole Ervin is getting a lot of attention for competing on the most recent season of the CBS’ Survivor. But the New Jersey native is also an accomplished artist known for creating colorful acrylic paintings and digital artwork as well as apparel.

“I like to consider myself an all-around creative,” Ervin tells Muse. “It’s whatever the spirit moves me to do in that moment—that’s what I go for.”

Here, the self-taught artist discusses how her positive personality drives her work. She also highlights projects for brands like the New York Rangers and Knicks, Jordan and Nike.

MUSE: How did you get on Survivor 46?

Tiffany Nicole Ervin: I started watching in high school. I applied when I was in my early twenties, and I never heard back. I kind of went, “Okay, I guess that’s that.” And somewhere along the line, 10 years later, I decided I was going to go for it again. After watching some of the new-era seasons, I was like, “You know what? I feel like I’m in a difference place in my life because 33-year-old Tiffany and 23-year-old Tiffany have lived two different lives. I’ve been through a lot more. Maybe I’m a little more prepared to go on the show now.” I submitted the audition tape, and got a call right back. I think the universe was just waiting for me to be ready before it put me on the show. Because now, knowing what I had to go through, I know 23-year-old me would have been chewed up and spit out.

Your fellow competitors included rocker Ben Katzman. And lots of other creative people, including writer/actor Mike White, who developed the HBO series White Lotus, have competed on Survivor over the years. Do you think there is a special place on the show for creative types?

Absolutely. You have to have some element of a free spirit. You have to be able to move, have a certain fluidity about you. And people who are artists and creatives tend to fit into those categories. I feel like it’s something that any person with an adventurous spirit would want to try to accomplish. And artists, by nature, we have adventurous spirits. We’re curious. We want to explore. And Survivor is the ultimate adventure.

When you got home from Survivor in Fiji, did you get back to making art right away?

I wasn’t in a rush to create. It took me about a week-and-a-half to decompress. I came home, got my phone back, I didn’t even use it. I texted my parents and siblings like, “Hey, I made it home safe, but give me a week to learn how to be human again.” And it wasn’t until I had the chance to digest what the experience that I was able to make some doodles. And then I did a really cool painting. But it took me a while to jump back in.

Did you know from a young age that you were going to be an artist?

In school, I was into the ceramics, the painting, the drawing classes. I took it all. But career-wise, I never thought I’d be an artist because everybody always scared me when I was growing up, saying things like, “Oh, artists are poor. Artists don’t make any money. It’s such a hard field to break into.”

So, when I went to college, I was a political science major, and I was quickly humbled by that because I did not enjoy it at all. Then I got into the entertainment industry doing video production. It wasn’t until about 2016 that I started doing artwork for fun again. I started showing my paintings to my friends, and they were like, “Tiffany, we had no idea that you were this good.” And I started sharing [my work] on social media. And people started reaching out, and it kind of took off.

Your paintings and prints are vibrant and joyful. Where does that come from?

The joy is heavily influenced by my personality. I would also say it’s influenced by my perspective on the world, and I think that’s a good and a bad thing at times, because I’m a person who is really optimistic about everything, about people, about situations. My friends kind of warn me, “You’re so nice. You always see the best in people. You always see the good in every situation. Sometimes, you’ve got to learn to see the bad a little bit.” They describe me as a unicorn, or somebody who walks around with her head in the clouds. But those are just the things that I gravitate towards—color, liveliness, brightness. That’s what makes me feel the most alive.

Your work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions, and you’ve created art for major brands, including the Rangers. Tell me about that project.

That project was amazing and echoes a lot of the reality of how I have worked with a lot of brands. Most of the time they just find me on Instagram [Ervin’s handle is @tiffycrazycool]. They’ll reach out, and they’ll give me a prompt or a project, and I’ll get started from there.

It was actually Madison Square Garden that reached out to me, and for the Rangers I designed a custom hockey jersey and a puck for a Black History Month game. They were reaching out to Black artists, and they wanted our perspective on what we would want the players to wear and do and feel in that moment, in that celebration.

I also did some work with the Knicks. I was able to make some digital work they put on the Jumbotron during the game.

After I saw your work for the Knicks, I was thinking I would love to see you work with the N.Y. Liberty.

I would love to, because I used to play basketball. That would be the perfect alignment of the stars.

You’ve also done some cool projects with the Jordan Brand.

Jordan had me design 50 custom art pieces. I designed them digitally. They were art prints. I designed the art prints, and I signed and numbered them 1 through 50, and each print was placed in a box that was sent out to some of their influencers to promote the new Jordan’s women’s line that was coming out.

And you’ve created art for Nike.

I’ve done a ton of digital work for them across different brands like Jimmy Jazz and the proper Nike account. What I do is usually digital imagery that they’ll put on their website and in stores.

Every year, Nike has Air Max Day. They celebrate the Air Max sneaker, one of the most popular Nike sneakers. They sent me a couple of sneakers, and I was able to create artwork inspired by the sneakers. They put that on their social channel, and they put some of the branding in Jimmy Jazz stores. They sent it out to a few influencers and celebrities.

I have seen and admired your sneaker collection on your Instagram account. Do you have dream clients that you would love to work with?

Yes! Two of my biggest dream clients are Apple and Target. Apple specifically because I use all of their technology to create my art. And Target because I absolutely adore the collaborations that they do with independent artists and women, whether it be custom prints or merchandise or clothes.

Now that you’ve been on Survivor, have you heard from any new brands that want to work with you?

I did a speaking engagement for Adobe, which is another dream client of mine. It was amazing. They had me come in and speak to some of their college ambassadors. I ran them through my artistic journey, and then I held a contest where each of the college ambassadors used Adobe Express to create their own Survivor tribe flag. I was able to pick a couple of winners, and they won prizes through Adobe. That was just one of the beautiful opportunities I’ve had so far.

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Refugee Olympians, UEFA EURO 2024 and More Campaign Highlights

Muse — Fri, 31 May 2024 09:00:00 +0000

Eurovisions is back! We hope you missed us.

Our European ad of the week comes from France’s Aides, known for its beautiful, often provocative HIV awareness appeals. “Fighting HIV for 40 Years,” by fledgling agency Strike, is no exception. It’s a prettily-lit montage of people with HIV observing, with touching solitude, the banal ravages of time on their bodies. “Aging isn’t always easy. Yet we couldn’t wish for anything more beautiful,” the ad concludes, before a drag queen blows the candles out on her birthday cake. We’re not crying! You are.

“Fill the fridges with drinks and the hearts with hope.” That’s a statement we can get behind. This rallying cry hails from Bitburger’s ahead of the UEFA EURO 2024 competition. Titled “Bitte: Let’s Celebrate What Brings Us Together,” and created by Serviceplan Hamburg, it features fans throughout the country and reminds us that nobody adores soccer quite like Germans. (Perhaps for good reason. English striker and broadcaster Gary Lineker famously called it a simple game: “You need eight people, and the Germans always win.”)

Children go missing every day. In Belgium, Liam Vanden Branden vanished in 1996. This remains an open case, and his father still holds hope that his child will be found. But searches have grown sparse. Child Focus worked with VML Belgium to re-up the quest: They helped Liam’s father get his son’s name legally changed to Thibaut Courtois—a famous Belgian goalkeeper who racks up a whopping 450,000 queries per month. Now, searches for the soccer legend also feature missing persons information about the child formerly known as Liam. (The agency also did this for a girl called Juliette Goormann, who went missing in 2022. Her name is now Nafi Thiam, shared by an Olympic heptathlon champion.)

We love when advertising uses left-of-center creativity to do good in the world. For nonprofit Laut Gegen Nazis (Noise Against Nazis), Jung von Matt Berlin addressed an insidious problem: Lots of online stores sell Reich-themed merchandise, which can profit extremists. To flip the script, the agency started trademarking right-wing codes, such as “Enness” (phonetic spelling for “NS,” or “National Socialism”), so they can’t be freely used any longer, impeding the sale of hateful paraphernalia.

We’ll wrap with something timely, given world events and the upcoming Paris Olympic Games. Alongside Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam, Nike is introducing the IOC Refugee Olympic Team with “Watch Where We’re Going.” The subtext, of course, is that we can never know where we’re headed until we reckon with where we’ve been.

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In China, Jordan Brand Treads a Stunning Stop-Motion World

Muse — Thu, 23 May 2024 10:00:00 +0000

In a world with sneakers as the dominant—indeed, perhaps only—life form, kicks visit barber shops for quick shines and hot-towel treatments, drive skateboards instead of cars and raise their laces for high fives.

Jordan Brand and Nike Greater China bring such scenes to life in impressive work from Studio Nowhere, Loft Films Shanghai and acclaimed Blinkink directors Jonny & Will.

Combining old-school puppetry, advanced stop-motion techniques and CGI sets built with Unreal Engine, the team transports viewers to a place ardent sneaker-heads have heretofore only seen in their dreams.

Video Reference

May 23 2024 – 5:57am

David Gianatasio

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Poster Reference

Jordan Brand | Barber Shop x Handshake

The work seeks to show a soulful universe designed by the sneakers themselves, where the shoes set the pace and create a street culture all their own.

Of course, it’s a celebration of Nike fandom, a nod to Jordan obsessors who eagerly await each drop and unbox styles on TikTok for all to see.

Jonny & Will broke down their approach for Shots, noting that they strove to create believable characters and push the envelope just so far.

“It made sense to us for this project to use actual trainers and create expressive characters by manipulating the shoes in ways they naturally flex and move,” they said. “We didn’t want to make silly, wacky trainer guys with stuck-on eyes or flappy mouths; we wanted to keep the characterization more subtle.”

The shoot took just two days. with Jonny & Will manipulating the shoes with rods against green screen backgrounds. A section of sidewalk and the barber chairs were real. All other details were added in Unreal.

Their results look fanciful in the best possible way. Jordan meets consumers where they live, with content and commerce in perfect step.

The post In China, Jordan Brand Treads a Stunning Stop-Motion World first appeared on Muse by Clios.

Billie Eilish, Erling Haaland and Drake Star for Nike Air Max

Muse — Mon, 01 Apr 2024 19:25:00 +0000

To mark the 10th anniversary of Nike Air Max Day, the brand debuted fresh kicks, along with a short film packed with celeb appearances.

The story begins at 3:56; basketball tryouts begin in four minutes, and Max is still napping. He throws on his new Air Max DNs, runs out the door and lets the “magic” of his shoes save the day. Anything seems possible, as Max tears through the city, passing track phenom Sha’Carri Richardson and Billie Eilish, who’s tending her roses.

Footballer Erling Haaland plays a swim coach, surprised when Max walks on water. Drake stars as a teacher of aerodynamics.

The tag “Feel the Unreal,” closes the ad, as Max makes it to tryouts on time. We bet he makes the team!

Video Reference

Apr 01 2024 – 12:32pm

Amy Corr

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Poster Reference

Nike Air Max Dn | Feel The Unreal

The ad was created in-house and directed by Petra Collins.

Nike Air Max Day is celebrated globally every year. Here’s a look at Japan’s incredible 3-D billboard from 2022.

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Nike and Tiger Woods End Their Game-Changing 27-Year Run

Muse — Tue, 09 Jan 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Tiger Woods and Nike—a duo that reshaped sports marketing over their 27-year relationship—generated global headlines together for perhaps the final time yesterday, as Woods announced his breakup with the brand.

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A post shared by Tiger Woods (@tigerwoods)

He thanked Nike founder Phil Knight and hinted at an upcoming announcement with the sign-off: “See you in LA!”

The brand responded in kind:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Nike (@nike)

Woods’ countless ads for Nike and his branded spikeless shoes helped the company rise to global heights in golf apparel. Such initiatives helped accelerate golf’s trajectory into the mainstream of popular culture. Only Nike’s work with Michael Jordan has been more significant in setting the pace and establishing style for a sport in the public eye.

This Nike-Tiger campaign from 2019, celebrating his last major title, at the Masters, captures the intensity and depth of their epic association:

Video Reference

Apr 14 2019 – 2:51pm

Tim Nudd

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Poster Reference

Nike – Tiger Woods Same Dream

Nike – Tiger Woods | Same Dream

The post Nike and Tiger Woods End Their Game-Changing 27-Year Run first appeared on Muse by Clios.

Michael and the New Crew Star for Jordan Brand

Muse — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 13:00:00 +0000

Living legends are rare, and Michael Jordan is assuredly one of them.

Produced by Birth in Paris and directed by IllimitéWorld—a collective that started out as a Baltimore hip-hop group—”Beyond” for the Jordan Brand is a shot of fan service. The new generation appears in force. Shannon Watkins, global CMO of Jordan, thanks them by name: basketball players Gabby Williams, Jason Tatum, Luka Doncic and Zion Williamson; artists Teyana Taylor and Rema; French footballer Youssouf Fofana … and, of course, No. 23 himself.

Jordan creates a bridge between fashion and sport. But he’s also bridging time. Most of these upstarts weren’t around to see him fresh-faced. He is the godfather of their affinities.

We roll up in Paris for “the greatest pickup game in the world.” The stars first appear by their shoes, representing as Jordan Fam. The court is epic, but the moves … well, the game remains the same, part of what makes it so great.

Jordan launched his career in the ’80s and went on to change not only basketball but street style; luxury’s urban-laced codes, from collectors kicks to the normalization of drops, owe him a debt. His dunks, like Nike’s Swoosh, are globally recognized. Seeing the new kids replicate that style emphasizes his broad impact on the culture.

At the end of the ad, Jordan rolls up in a white suit like a deity. Photos and hugs ensue. We switch from HD-clear to old-school grainy. This is pure fan service, brand reinforcement represented by the passing of the baton—or, rather, the ball. We wish MJ’s “retirement” in the ’90s went this smoothly.

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A post shared by BIRTH (@birth_productions)

CREDITS

Campaign name: Beyond
Brand: Jordan Brand
Creative Studio: Uncommon Creative Studio
Production Company: Birth
CCO: Hugo Legrand Nathan
EP: Hugo Besson
MD Birth UK: Kate Elson
Line Producer: Carl Cohen
Director: IllimitéWorld
Photographer: Campbell Addy
DOP: Mathias Boucard
Steadicam Operator: Aymeric Collas
Roller Blade / Movie Operator: Myron Mance
Movement director: Yagamoto (Abdourahman Njie)
Set Designer: Gwendal Bescond
Stylist: Mobolaji Dawodu / Damise Savidan
Editor: Uncommon Creative Studio
Grade: ETC
Sound: 750MPH
Retouchers: Touch Digital
Bts Directos: Valentin Becouze, Theo Le Sourd, Jaqueline De Grother, Lucas Werner, Laetitia Ramamonjisoa
Bts Photographer:Ojoz
Soundtrack: Mathé Altéry, « Mes Joies Quotidiennes » (My Favorite Things)

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Innovative Ads From South Korea Feature K-Pop, K-Food and Car Parts as High Fashion

Muse — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 19:00:00 +0000

This week, Muse sibling Ads of the World shines the spotlight on South Korea. We discover the secrets of Tiger Beer, explore a captivating K-pop dreamscape and immerse ourselves in gaming culture.

Lineage W, ‘New Class: Gunslinger’

Victory must come at all costs and above fear. Uncover the significance of this mantra in a fab campaign developed by Lineage and QUAKERS.

Bibigo, ‘Live Delicious’

K-fashion, K-beauty, K-pop, K-cinema and all the rest have made a huge global impact. Now it’s time for K-food, and a message that melds taste and convenience for those with busy lifestyles.

Tiger Beer, ‘The Brewery’

Seven Sunday Films and Le Pub present an epic journey. This extravagant film celebrates Tiger Beer’s Southeast Asian roots, painting a vivid picture of its heritage and global allure.

Hyundai, ‘Move With This Vibe’

Builders Club teams up with Hyundai for the 4th edition of “Re:Style,” in collaboration with fashion designer Jeremy Scott. This platform annually reimagines car materials, promoting sustainability and innovation. The 2023 campaign hypes avant-garde looks crafted from discarded auto components.

HYBE x Geffen Records, ‘Dream Academy’

K-pop powerhouse HYBE (home to legendary group BTS) and Geffen Records unveil the finalists for their “Dream Academy” competition. The reality show puts winners in a global girl group.

Nike, ‘A New Day’

From 2021, but more relevant than ever. This work aims to amplify voices, rewrite the rules and reclaim joy to forge a fresh sports future. Created by Wieden+Kennedy.

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Go Places With Robert De Niro. Also, It's Never Too Late to Bust Out Your Ribbon Dance

Muse — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 19:30:00 +0000

This week is hefty on fantasy, maybe because the veil is thin, as people get so fond of saying before Halloween. We’ve got a dad who doubles down on his 15 minutes of fame, a young actor who scores the ultimate bestie in Robert De Niro … and even a dose of dark, spiralling rumination, with an ad about postnatal depression. Bonus points if you catch the (only partly) gratuitous mention of LSD.

Our European ad spotlight falls on “MobilePay Makes Difficult Easy,” by &Co. for Nordic company Vipps MobilePay. Parents in an auditorium muse that they should start collecting money for summer camp … but gosh, how will they? One dad proposes MobilePay, which lets you pool cash. You know that fantasy where you save the day in a mundane manner, but everyone sees you differently afterward—heroic, brimming with hidden talents? The work gives over to this guy’s version of that. It involves ribbon dancing, gymnastics, raucous applause and kids nearly weeping from joy. It’s Flashdance fatherhood in a red sweater.

“It’s Sweden, Not Switzerland!” A prime minister figure for Visit Sweden appears in this piece by Forsman & Bodenfors, proposing once and for all that the two countries disambiguate their oft-confused identities. The PM suggests doing this by defining which topics they’re going to own in public discourse. If you’re wondering who got LSD, it was Switzerland. (But they also got yodeling, so pick your poisons carefully.)

“A lot of people don’t realize that I started out as a magician.” That’s something we didn’t know about Robert De Niro. We learned it in this long but entertaining ad, where he becomes ultra-besties with Asa Butterfield, who we will forever remember for his awkward slide-projector moment in the last season of Sex Education. But back to the ad: It’s quirky. It’s romantic. It’s, improbably, for Uber One: “A membership for people who eat food and go places.” Brought to you by Mother London.

ChatGPT can help make chamber music now! “The Tapestry of Spaces,” an art project for Serviceplan Group’s Innovation Day conference on Oct. 10, included an AI-composed performance. No artists were harmed in its making. In fact, the collab included cellist Jakob Haas of the Munich Symphony Orchestra.

It turns out Mercedes-Benz is the most mentioned car brand in music history, clocking no less than 16,415 songs. In partnership with Radio Nova, Universal Music in France and Omnicom’s Team x, the automaker created “The Iconic Playlist.” On Nov. 7, from 7 a.m. to midnight, songs mentioning the brand will be dissected on Radio Nova. The collab will also produce a limited-edition double vinyl, with artists ranging from Kendrick Lamar to Ella Fitzgerald. A showcase evening is planned for Nov. 28. Supporting collateral will appear online, in dealerships (where you can hear the songs in cars!) and on the métro.

We always wondered how Marvis would position itself ad-wise relative to its category, where brands can’t stop harping about how much whiter they’ll get our teeth. Marvis didn’t disappoint. “Marvel Your Routine,” an illustrative explosion conceived by LePub, is as random as expected. We’ll think about it when gargling out the remains of its Creamy Matcha Tea flavor (a weirdly delightful toothpaste, but maybe not for everyone).

“Reconnecting,” created by Calling for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) in the U.K., and featuring Eastenders’ Louisa Claire Lytton, is a bleakly realistic take on postpartum depression. Not much happens; you don’t even hear a baby cry. That’s the point: “Not much” becomes the abyss you stare into until it starts staring back. The agency says demand for perinatal mental healthcare rose 40 percent between August ’22 and March ’23. The NHS reports that 30,000 women are on waiting lists.

Hosiery shop Calzedonia worked with LePub to celebrate every step forward a woman might make, even if it looks like a step back (as illustrated by a bride sneaking out a window in Converse kicks). Forward is whichever direction you decide. Cool idea, very much of its time. It’ll go live throughout Europe.

Goings-on: 57 percent of U.K. teen girls drop out of sports—twice the rate of boys—because of low body confidence. (53 percent have also been body shamed.) Hence Dove and Nike are combining powers to create a coaching initiative called, on-the-nosishly, Body Confident Sport. (73 percent of girls say their confidence was positively impacted by a coach.) Venus Williams will bring star power and sympathetic capital to the cause, which stems from two years of work alongside the Centre for Appearance Research and the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport. Agency: Halpern.

Givenchy launched a new perfume, L’Interdit Rouge, in Madrid with a Callao City light show on El Corte Inglés screens. It was performed on four occasions last weekend, during which street lamps were switched off and fog cannons were fired.

Desperados wants to make dance floors throughout Europe safer with an initiative called F.R.E.E., created with We are Pi in Amsterdam. It kicks off with the “Doorperson Diploma.” Launched alongside Good Night Out, it’s designed to train bouncers and other nightlife security staff in developing “soft skills” for making party people feel safe.

Moving, shaking: Marcel Paris appointed Léoda Esteve as managing director. Digitas in London hired Eric Chia as ECD of design, the first senior hire by chief creative officer Carren O’Keefe, who joined the agency a few months ago.

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Take a Few World Tours, for Love or Sport. Make a Run for It! No Sacrificial Lambs Here

Muse — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 17:35:00 +0000

Our Euro ad of the week is this serotonin-swathed ’80s style video, “Together We Go Further,” by adam&eveDDB for Eurostar. Two women lock eyes on the train and transform into cartoons à la a-ha!, adventuring from Amsterdam to Brussels to London to Paris to Cologne—cities now serviced by the newly-combined Eurostar and Thalys. Their trip promotes the Eurostar Club program. It’s like a sweet and colorful cereal.

There’s a Jean de la Fontaine fable in France called “The Wolf and the Lamb.” It doesn’t end well for the lamb. To promote its Fall ’23 collection, Coperni adapted the tale to depict a utopian relationship between humans and machines, using a polymorphic video featuring Lila Grace Moss and “Spot” robots from Boston Dynamics.

This whole thing is designed to make us feel more comfortable with the relationship between AI and creativity. That’s why there aren’t any sad lamb hangovers in its depiction (because between robots and people, nobody doubts who the lambs would be). On a website powered by Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, endlessly different algorithmically-generated versions of the story spool out. Each last 40 seconds, and riff on both the fable and Coperni’s latest designs.

In Argentina, gas and electricity company EDP collabed with Havas Lisbon to make “United For a Wonderful World,” which depicts astronauts crooning the Louis Armstrong classic to our little blue dot. Its depiction of the “Overview Effect” gets pretty close to giving it to us until the jarring CTA voiceover at the end. The only thing we ended up doing collectively was wincing.

Idris Elba zips through London with his progeny—on loveseats!—to promote some Sky Cinema subscriber bait: Two free movie tickets every month! (We’d take those.) Not much else here, just some gratuitous fun Elba. (He’s been doing Sky Cinema ads forever, so this relationship is like an occasional snack drop. Expectations ain’t high, it’s very chill.) The piece was conceived by Sky Creative, and directed by Rodrigo Valdes of Birth’s U.K. office, led by Kate Elson.

It’s not often that suicide prevention work feels cinematic and fun. Yet that’s what we get in this not-very-PC offering by agency Great Guns, for the U.K. charity Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM). The latter appointed comedian Romesh Ranganathan as their ambassador and he is *chef’s kiss.*

For client Triumph, which it won late last year, Herezie Paris created a print campaign where the rotations of women athletes and dancers, seen from above and mirrored, invite one to consider breasts (but in an artful way?). This backs the brand’s Triaction Sports Bras. It’s pretty and we wish we had a more graceful description for it. Alas, life is compromise.

Let’s stay on-topic: For Alexander Monro Hospital in The Netherlands, TBWANeboko teaches you the alphabet all over again. With boobs. This is, of course, for breast cancer.

Iconoclast and Halal Amsterdam made a visually pleasing video to promote a ”Culers del Món” (“Colors of the World”) capsule collection from Patta, FC Barcelona and Nike. Throughout the world (and somewhat in the style of “It’s a Small World”), fans of FC Barcelona communally sing the club anthem “Cant del Barça.” X-ray shots show the club colors running through their veins (blue) and arteries (green)—what the agency calls their shared Barçablood. The collection was released in Patta stores on Oct. 13, and can be found on the SNKRS app, fcbarcelona.com and certain Nike partner stores soon.

If you can steal something from a French Distance shop—then outrun distance sprinter Mickael Zeze, who’ll be hot on your heels—you can keep what you’ve purloined. That’s “Rob It to Get It” by BETC Paris.

Alongside the Association of German Advertising Film Producers, Akkurat Studios in Berlin launched Pitchstandard 2.0, an initiative designed to make pitch culture more fair. “The entire market of advertisers will benefit from these standards, since the effort of customers and agencies in the areas of producing, creation and cost control will also be reduced,” they write. We’d love to peep some pitch reform, and we’re glad to see prod companies giving it a go. Production often gets short shrift in the creative sector.

Moving, shaking: Mother London won the M&S Clothing business, following House 337’s loss of it. Over at Alexander McQueen, Seán McGirr was appointed creative director, succeeding living legend Sarah Burton, who elaborated the brand beautifully after McQueen’s death. McGirr was the creative force behind J.W. Anderson, which has a very cute Wes Anderson vibe. We’re curious to see what he contributes to McQueen’s intentionally vampy DNA. Right now, with nothing but speculation at hand, it all feels very “leathery nightlife meets Wednesday afternoon tea.” Marcel Paris has two new co-presidents: Youri Guerassimov and Gaëtan du Peloux, who’ll be working with Pascal Nessim. (A triumvirate! That historically works so well).

The post Take a Few World Tours, for Love or Sport. Make a Run for It! No Sacrificial Lambs Here first appeared on Muse by Clios.