New Campaigns

Client: Chase Texas, Houston
Agency: McCann-Erickson Southwest, Houston
Creative Director: Mark Daspit
Copywriters: Dave Pernell, Vicki Carpenter
Art Directors: Cindy Kemble, Bob Sullivan
Ending a three-phase campaign that launched last spring, McCann-Erickson brings to fruition the client’s name conversion from Texas Commerce Bank in three new 30-second spots. Featuring various idyllic scenes of home, recreation and office settings, the ads attempt to tie the new Chase Texas name to the state’s culture and people. Previously, the agency produced work to mark the 10th anniversary of New York-based Chase’s acquisition of TCB, and later co-branded both the Texas Commerce and Chase names in a fall campaign. The key point in the third campaign rollout is that the bank’s name has changed, “but not its heritage,” according to the agency. In one of the spots, a time-lapse film of a morning sunrise is the backdrop to a voiceover: “After 10 years of sharing the same goals and visions, Texas Commerce and Chase now share the same name . . . My past is yours, as is my future. I am Chase Texas.” Another ad states, “I am Chase Texas, and while my name has changed, who I am has not.” Each ad retains the tagline employed by McCann since winning the account last year: “The right relationship is everything.” -Glen Fest

Client: Texas Scottish Rite Hospital for Children, Dallas
Agency: Publicis/Bloom, Dallas
Creative Directors: Richard Schiera, Dean Hlavinka
Art Director: James Hughes
Copywriter: Brian Ahern
Director: Louis Koerner
Producer: Meredith Williams
Bringing normalcy to ill children’s lives continues as Texas Scottish Rite’s theme in a new 1998 awareness campaign. In a pair of television PSAs, two former patients are featured to highlight the medical center’s spinal implant system for scoliosis-or spine curvature-victims. In the spot dubbed “Cheerleader,” the narrator challenges viewers to spot which of the tumbling, acrobatic girls was treated with the implant developed by the hospital. “Neither can we,” he says. The second ad features closeups of interlocking metal mechanisms and straps being placed on a male teenager, who was also a scoliosis sufferer. But rather than being a cumbersome medical device, the equipment is revealed at the end of the commercial to be the now-healthy youth’s rock-climbing gear. “So the only time he needs something like this is at times like this,” the voiceover concludes. The campaign is the second phase of Publicis/Bloom’s efforts launched in 1996 for the nonprofit operation. It will be supplemented with radio, direct mail and outdoor executions in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and throughout Texas. -G.F.