What's New: Portfolio

STARLUXE LABELS AGENCY Bill Brokaw Advertising, Cleveland CLIENT MACtac, Stowe, Ohio MEDIUM trade print CREATIVE DIRECTOR Greg Thomas ART DIRECTORs Steve McKeown, Kim Rowland COPYWRITER Erin Friedman PHOTOGRAPHy DESIGN PHOTOGRAPHY Carl Fowler That's No. 368 of the 500 ideas this campaign gives paper merchants to increase their sales of the client's labels. Some of the suggested uses are serious; others are fanciful. Among the latter: fake measles, fat-free bagels, mime cheek decals and bald-spot concealers. A small-type disclaimer helps readers put No. 368 in the proper category: "This is a fictional use of label stock and not recommended by MACtac. (If you really need to be told that, we are a little worried about you.)" No doubt there are grumpy paper merchants who wish the client would stick to business and skip the jokes. And the campaign's jocular approach does have the effect of obscuring rather than illuminating some real (but unobvious) uses for the client's wares. But you can't give the sourpusses veto power over ideas that will get other potential customers interested in the company. The campaign doesn't merely entertain readers; it implicitly flatters them, treating them as fun people engaged in a lively business. That's a good start toward winning their orders. MAINE WOODS BOOTS AGENCY Needleman/Pilla, New York CLIENT Pentland USA, New York MEDIUM consumer print CREATIVE/ART DIRECTOR Bob Needleman COPYWRITER David Warren PHOTOGRAPHY Garry Wade (shoes), stock And likelier still to climb into your La-z-boy. While populists fret over growing inequality in wealth, the sharpest divergence between haves and have nots has come in personal fitness. Decades ago, even professional athletes were often in middling shape--much like the fans who came to watch them. Today, we see a physical elite of people who obsessively work out and strictly regulate their diets, while the torpid general public adds a chin every year. For that very reason, fitness chic has evolved as a phenomenon distinct from any particular physical activity. For lots of their readers, fitness magazines probably function as "wish books" just as fashion and shelter magazines do. With its slyly ambiguous motto, "they look the part," this clever campaign taps into consumers' desire to have the outward insignia of vigorous exercise, even if they seldom lift anything heavier than their eyebrows. Instead of suggesting that you fall short of the modern ideal, the ad repositions that standard as a fantasy--making you feel that you're as entitled as anyone to clomp around in these boots. CANDLE'S ROMA AGENCY Anderson & Lembke, San Francisco CLIENT Candle Corp., Santa Monica, Calif. MEDIUM trade print CREATIVE DIRECTOR Adam Kaufman ART DIRECTOR Ernie Lageson COPYWRITER Adam Lau PHOTOGRAPHy Stan Musilek It's one of the most familiar themes in computer advertising: Our gizmo will get all your other gizmos to work together. It's an important message, obviously, but its familiarity makes one's eyes glaze over. Let us drink a toast to Candle, then, for finding a way to enliven this dead horse. Even before reading the copy, you grasp what the ad is talking about--which is good. But the oddball inventiveness of the photo pulls you further into the ad and gives a memorable edge to Candle's sales pitch. Body copy states the case in language that is lucid without sounding dumbed down. Candle's Roma "provides a standard middleware API for all distributed applications. So now, rather than having to program multiple disparate interfaces, application developers can write to a common one. This saves time. It saves money." And if the ad's target readers are prompted to make up jokes beginning, "Computer walks into a bar," so much the better for Candle. JOHNSONVILLE BRATWURST AGENCY Clarity Coverdale Fury, Minneapolis CLIENT Johnsonville Foods, Kohler, Wis. MEDIUM 30-second TV CREATIVE DIRECTOR Jac Coverdale ART DIRECTOR Sharon Azula COPYWRITER Kelly Trewartha AGENCY PRODUCER Jenee Schmidt PRODUCTION CO. Plum Productions, Santa Monica, Calif. DIRECTOR Bob Rice The host walks onto the set, greeted by an ecstatic studio audience whose waving hands are clad in barbecue mitts and/or brandishing tongs. This could only be "Brat Talk," a fictitious cable-access show devoted to bratwurst and the people who love it. Familiar to brat aficionados from earlier Johnsonville commercials, host Charlie Murphy has a question for the wives in the audience: "How do you get your husband to cook dinner?" He's got the answer, too: "Buy some Johnsonville bratwurst!" Illustrating Charlie's point, the spot cuts to video of a wife holding a package of Johnsonville brats and addressing her husband thusly: "Honey, nobody grills like you do. You're such a man!" The spot is quite funny. But what's more important--and trickier to accomplish--is that the humor is carefully modulated. It pokes good-natured fun at Johnsonville (and the male mystique of the grill) without puncturing the target audience's genuine enthusiasm for the stuff. The brand gets to have its pork and eat it, too, presenting itself as the stuff of legend in the nation's Bratwurst Belt while ingratiatingly mocking itself for doing so. What's New submissions should be in the form of proofs, slides or (for TV spots) videotape. Please list creative director, art director, copywriter, agency producer, production company (and its location), director and illustrator or photographer. Describe the media schedule, including break date for the ad. Preference will be given to the newest work. Materials cannot be returned. Send submissions to: What's New Portfolio, Adweek, 1515 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10036.

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What's New: Portfolio

Mark Dolliver

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Mark Dolliver