Only in a woman’s world

The second campaign that we’ve just launched is for a few other Frito-Lay brands.

Frito-Lay is introducing some new products and reorganizing some of their their packaging and in-store shopping experiences to appeal more to women. As you can imagine, it’s a massive project for them.

To support those initiatives, we’ve created a new web video series called “Only in a woman’s world.“

We launched it with a trailer last month that shot up to about a million views on YouTube.

On the heels of that trailer, the official launch of the series was this past weekend, with a red-carpet premiere in LA with a sprinkling of celebrities and invites to a great group of awesome female bloggers who helped us cover it. The first three episodes of the series are up today, with lots more to come.

The press is starting to roll in on this stuff, and there was a nice write up in the NY Times last week that delves into some of the upfront learning that was done to really understand women and snacking, work that took over a year and ranged from ethnography to neuroscience. Even better, it has the distinction of being the first campaign I’ve ever been involved with to be covered on entertainment news shows. The NYT is nice and all, but The Insider FTW!

One of the best things about this campaign was that the team, both client and agency, who worked on it was entirely female – and I think that played a massive role in it actually working.

Big congrats to everyone who worked on it for pulling this together, and especially to our clients who have been incredibly passionate about truly and deeply understanding the mindsets of women around snacking and media, and for being willing to step outside the confines of traditional advertising when it came time to do the communication.

UPDATE: Oh yeah – how could I forget – you can follow the series on Twitter too…

Filed under: Juniper, ads

Happiness is simple

We’ve had a couple of big new campaigns launch in the US over the past few weeks. These have both been in the works for ages so it’s nice to finally see them out there and getting some positive response. And both are the kind of stuff that I’m honored to just have been in the same building with.

The first campaign is for Lay’s potato chips. This has been a great brand to work on. It’s huge (by some measures it’s the largest food brand in North America) and pretty much ubiquitous, which makes for an interesting challenge: how do you reintroduce people to something that they’re already deeply familiar with?

This is how we chose to do it:

The response has been great so far, both from industry press like Adweek (here and here) and Shoot Magazine who awarded Fireworks the ‘best music track of Winter 09′, but also from friends I have mad respect for like Charles and Paul.

And more than just these ads, I really like “Happiness is Simple” because it’s a great platform to build lots of stuff from, with a tonality that seems to fit well for today’s cultural climate.

Big props need to go to the whole team who worked on it, including some amazing clients for being brave enough to make some big changes on their biggest brand.

UPDATE – If you like the Lay’s work, the “Happy” spot is up for AdWeek’s “Freakiest ads of the month” - go vote!

Filed under: Juniper, ads

The next level

My favorite Nike ad in years, and what every soccer/football player who’s ever played has secretly dreamed of. Directed by Guy Ritchie.

It’s lovely. And exactly what TV is still great at.

Filed under: Sports, Television, ads

Politics & the herd

The current US election cycle makes an interesting analogue for learning about brands and communication, because we get to see in a very short period of time a system with substantial advertising, quickly evolving candidate brands, and the ultimate measurement system, a public vote.

As an op-ed piece in the NY Times points out today, the outcome of the Iowa primaries a few days ago had little to do with the level of advertising spend. Mike Huckabee won the Republican vote over Mitt Romney, despite having been outspent 6 to 1 in TV advertising. John Edwards finished a close second despite being outspent 3 to 1 by the winner Barack Obama, and more than 2 to 1 by the third place finisher Hilary Clinton. The op-ed writers (political pollsters) conclude that advertising is less important than – wait for it – personal conversations: “we have to recognize the power of individuals to influence one another.“

The writers make it sound like this is some huge discovery, which is kind of amusing. Someone should send them a copy of Herd. Still, if anyone is struggling with clients who still default to heavy TV spending it makes a nice soundbite for your next media planning discussion.

Filed under: Current Affairs, Trends, ads