
MMB Perks Up Biggby

By Kyle O’Brien on Feb. 8, 2023 – 8:15 AM
-Nail Communications partnered with The Preservation Society of Newport County in Rhode Island to promote the famed Newport Mansions. The dramatic lives of the wealthy families who resided in them gets a movie trailer for a film that doesn’t exist. Dubbed “Live the Drama, the unconventional marketing approach was proposed by Nail to engage new audiences with the properties. For The Breakers, the grandest of the Newport Mansions, that meant introducing the inimitable Vanderbilts through a trailer, billboards, landing page—all the trappings of movie marketing. Filmed entirely on the grounds of The Breakers, the campaign trailer alludes to several historic storylines that affected the course of the Vanderbilt legacy.
New QB, same Joe
Has Joe Berkeley become the go-to guy for ads involving Patriots quarterbacks?
Sure looks that way. Berkeley teamed up with David Gardiner — both of them former Hill Holliday executives, before leaving to go out on their own more than eight years ago — to design the Shields Health Care Group ad featuring Tom Brady a few years back. (Movie director Bobby Farrelly actually directed the spot.)
Now, Berkeley is playing a key role behind another set of football-themed ads, this time featuring current Patriots QB Mac Jones, on behalf of Quincy’s Arbella Insurance.
The ads, which Berkeley created with Tim Foley, have been running throughout the football season. (Berkeley directed the spots, while Foley was the art director and production designer.) One features Jones moving into his new home, only to find out that the moving company accidentally swapped his stuff with an old lady’s belongings. Jones inspects random tchotchkes, fiddles with a rabbit-ears antenna to watch a game, and chills out on a pink sofa, while asking where his stuff went. “Being a rookie homeowner is full of surprises,” the narrator intones. “Insuring your first home with Arbella isn’t.”
Berkeley said Jones and Brady were both naturals in front of the camera.
“Anytime you work with a pro athlete,” Berkeley said, “if you can explain this is a game, what the rules of the game are, and how much time is on the clock, you will have good results.”
NEEDHAM, Mass. —
Sharon chef and entrepreneur Reema Chandra is hoping her product will help make spices feel less intimidating for home cooks. Magic Mix is a blend of 19 spices curated by Chandra. The debut product is Magic Mix Mumbai, which takes inspiration from the flavors of Indian cuisine. Chandra expects to release two new blends soon: Azteca and Shanghai.
Matt Shapiro is Partner, VP/Creative Director at The Republik, a group of free thinkers willing to push one another into powerful collisions of insights that dismantle the tenets of size, money, and power to meaningfully impact lives.
Tell us how and why you became involved in socially responsible communications, any thoughts on why design can be an especially effective tool for this goal, and, if you wish, give us an example of a project of which you are proud.
As creatives, we are natural problem solvers. I believe it is our responsibility to use our privilege and influence to help promote the causes we believe in and uplift our community. As a young musician, I used that platform to promote organizations and missions for good. The natural progression into my advertising and design career provided a much more useful application, to be honest. Design is a powerful tool that connects people, and can break down various barriers. Republik chooses to align itself with organizations that desire a positive social impact, such as our client Happy Dirt (www.happydirt.com), whose mission is to make healthy organic food accessible to everyone and delivered in sustainable packaging. We also recently did a rebranding and awareness campaign for Harmony NC LGBT+ Allied Chamber of Commerce, an organization that nurtures and supports the growth of LGBT+ business professionals. We find this kind of work brings a sense of pride that is incomparable. It only drives us to do more and to do it better.
Given the confluence of events and challenges our society now faces, does this moment in time present any special opportunities, urgencies, or obstacles to designing for good?
There are two main obstacles we foresee challenging creatives. The first is relevancy, as we move into next year we will continue to see the shift in how design, advertising, and marketing is consumed. The speed at which this cycle happens will continue to accelerate and we will have to find ways to cope with that. The second, an “Us vs Them” mentality has created a sense of division but as creatives, we have the power to influence positive change by using design to communicate, educate, promote good, to make this world a better place. It’s at the heart of our “job” to do some good every chance we can.
Not many vodka brands contain the word “sex.”
That’s more or less the inspiration for the producers of Iowa Legendary Rye to call their first vodka offering Sextro. It also happens to be the last name of the woman credited with creating the rye almost 100 years ago.
That fact also explains the placements of out-of-home ads in Las Vegas and select other cities encouraging people to drink the drink (or else fulfill its double meaning) with, well, just about anyone.
Examples include “Have Sextro on the first date,” “Have Sextro with yourself” and “Have Sextro with someone you just met.”
The brand’s roots date to the 1930s Great Depression era, when Lorine Sextro began producing what became Iowa Legendary Rye on a farm in Templeton, Iowa.
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When her grandson decided to expand to vodka, “We agreed to modernize the brand a bit,” David Oakley, president and creative director of the BooneOakley agency, tells Marketing Daily.
“I said you ‘don’t want people to drink Sextro. You want people to have Sextro.’ It’s a simple idea and a great way to get your name remembered.”
BooneOakley recommended OOH for the launch because “You have to be as simple as possible. The messaging we have really lends itself to outdoor.”
In addition to billboards generating awareness, they can also be used as “social objects,” according to Oakley.
“People are taking pictures of these things and sharing them on social media. So it’s a social and outdoor play.”