Search Results for: Leo Burnett

Winning advertising competitions are so indispensable to the advertising business that agencies have been known to go to extreme measures to attempt to win those shiny gold trophies at prestigious festivals.

For the past 11 years, the Gunn Report keeps track of this multi-million dollar, worldwide industry, by tracking and analyzing the best-regarded advertising or countries which produce it.

It names the year’s most awarded production houses, directors, agencies, spots, interactive projects and integrated advertising.

Leo Burnett, the agency whose signature was big bowls of apples that greeted guests, has hired a Big Apple creative star and modern Peggy Olsen story as its chief creative officer.

Susan Credle joins the Publicis Groupe-owned agency Oct. 5 after 24 years at BBDO, New York, the last 10 as its high profile EVP/executive creative director.

She was hired after an eight month aggressive internal and external search to succeed John Condon, who left the agency last February.

At Burnett, she will oversee the creative output at both the agency and its Arc Worldwide subsidiary.

As of Monday, April 28, Audio Producers Group (APG) will conduct its first session in a studio across the street from the Leo Burnett building, after four years as an outside-operated, in-house production service within the Burnett agency.

Partners Mindy Verson and David Kaplan purchased a new, 1,500-sq. ft. condo at 200 N. Dearborn, a 309-unit building recently converted to condos from rentals by American Invsco.

APG offers voicecasting, Verson’s expertise, voice recording, sound design, sound effects and manipulation, digital sound mixing and duplication.

Two DraftFCB commercials led the 43rd Hugo Awards last week, where Chicago ad agencies dominated the awards, marking a nice change from Chicago’s near invisibility in other competitons, with notable exceptions, of course.

The Hugo Awards, the television component of the Chicago International Film Festival, were presented before a sell-out audience at the Cultural Center.

DraftFCB’s corporate identity spot, “Babysitter,” won the Audience Choice Award as voted by 100,000 viewers of Ch. 11’s “Image Union,” which screened all spot finalists.

Two business friends have launched an idea whose time has come: An outside-operated in-house production service within a major agency. Chicago Recording veterans Mindy Verson and David Kaplan own-and-operate Audio Producers Group (APG) on the second floor of Leo Burnett’s offices on Wacker Drive. Engineer is Donovan Weyland, another CRC ex-staffer, and his assistant is Jeff Leibovich.

DIGITAL KITCHEN’S EXPANSION into all things digital started with the hiring of interactive heavy-hitter Jeff Brecker for the newly created position of executive producer/general manager. He starts June 21.

Brecker has been on the internet side of advertising since he entered the adbiz in 1996, after graduating from UW-Madison. He moved to Digital Kitchen from three years at Leo Burnett, where he’d been SVP/creative director.

THE COLONIE’S BOB ACKERMAN edited a Joe Pytka-directed 11 spot mixed media package of Hallmark spots, with a sound track backed by the Grammy winner John Mayer’s song, “Say,” for Leo Burnett.

In the package were 15-second value spots, two 30s, a long-format, 1:45 spot for the Hallmark Hall of Fame, and spots comprised of the 15s for the web.

“The nice thing about Hallmark is that, contrary to trends, they still concentrate on storytelling to elevate their brand,” says Ackerman, who has edited Hallmark commercials for the past seven years.

When it comes to TV commercial awards shows, the number of Chicago winners is usually in the low single digits, and those winners tend to be the big, familiar names.

While the big, familiar agencies swept last week’s Chicago-based 2009 Hugo Television competition, this time the number of local winners was huge — an incredible 33 out of 85 awards!

Leo Burnett was Hugo’s mighty top dog. It won the single Gold Hugo award for Best Commercial for McDonald’s “Kung Food” spot, plus seven other prizes, edging out worthy competitor DDB by only one award.

Dear Ruth: I am deeply concerned with the story you ran and I’d like to request that you correct all the factual inaccuracies contained therein immediately, namely:

• We have donated a significant amount of our agency’s time and talent to bringing the Olympics here to Chicago and we’ve been honored to do so.
• While every hiring decision is ultimately determined by the 2016 Olympic Bid Committee, we have worked together to ensure that every effort has been ? and will continue to be – made to use not only local suppliers, but also minority and diversity suppliers.
  

Leo Burnett imported Los Angeles directors and personnel to shoot footage for Chicago 2016 Olympic “bid films” aimed at showing the International Olympic Committee’s Evaluation Commission that Chicago is a city worthy of hosting the Olympics.

Although Leo Burnett and its Chicago 2016 Olympic (OC) client bypassed Chicago production companies to shoot beauty shots of their city, they twisted some local vendors’ arms for the lowest possible rates for last week’s shoot.

What also stung was that the L.A. production companies sent in L.A.

It was no contest Wednesday night as Leo Burnett pulverized its nearest competition to take home 14 individual and two Best of Show awards at the 3rd Annual Chicago Creative Club awards at the Auditorium Theatre.

DDB Chicago was a distant second with half of Burnett’s prizes.

Leo Burnett scored two Best of Show prizes, Altoids, television and McDonald’s, print. DDB/Anheuser-Busch won a Best for radio.

Leo Burnett/Altoids mopped up television awards: 30-second Single, 30-second Campaign, Cinematography, Direction and Editing, plus Music for Pontiac.

“Milan is a beautiful city. It’s a true European working city, very much like Chicago,” said director/DP Michael Neumann of One World Productions.

He recently shot a neo sci-fi style commercial for Italy’s IMITEC home products on a set 60 feet below the surface in Passante Ferroviario, Milan’s high-tech subway system.

“It looked a lot like a wind tunnel, very modern and huge,” said Neumann. “The Milan subway just makes you gasp, puts you in awe.”

A nutshell visual: Three models in custom leather skintight jumpsuits, standing in the vast wind tunnel.

Voiceover superstar Harlan Hogan has returned to the legitimate theatre for the first time in more than 25 years. Looking very dapper and trim in a well-fitted double-breasted suit, Hogan plays Edvard Lunt, a famous novelist and a bridegroom, in “Impossible Marriage,” a comedy by Beth Henley.

Nothing goes according to plan in this Southern Gothic comedy, set in a splendid garden (kudos to scenic designer Joey Wade).

But Hogan does get the much-younger-girl before the final curtain, even if her wedding gown includes giant, iridescent butterfly wings.

Call it the battle of the big agencies shooting it out for honors at the recent second annual Chicago Creative Club Awards show. Four big agencies won 29 of the 32 categories of awards, while Leo Burnett won half, with 16 prizes mostly for Altoids gum.

DDB brought home seven Bricks (the award trophy) for Anheuser-Busch/Budweiser and Young & Rubicam won six awards mainly Miller Brewing.

Joe Pytka departed from his signature grunge look to deck himself out in a tux, his long blondish-gray flowing around his shoulders, to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Hugos at Park West March 11.

Pytka, the Pittsburgh director who made good in Hollywood and the undisputed master of 30-second storytelling, has directed 5,000 commercials, many of them for long-time clients DDB and Leo Burnett, which were represented by top creatives Bob Scarpelli and Cheryl Berman, respectively.

An estimated 150 school and college students demonstrated March 28 outside the Leo Burnett building at Wacker and Dearborn, protesting the agency’s “Army of One” ad campaign, which they charge is deceptive and aggressively targets low-income African American and Latino youth for U.S. Army recruitment.

John Ennis is the ‘Man With A Van’

Come March, “Man with a Van,” a comedy short with sitcom ambitions, starts out on the festival route. The Aspen Comedy Festival was scheduled to be its first stop, but the festival rejected its application.

A MAJOR AGENCY CHANGE is at hand as Bob Winter will join Y&R as chief creative officer of the Chicago office, starting in December. He moves over from Leo Burnett where he was SVP/ECD for more than three years on Altoids, Kellogg’s, Greenpeace and Caesars Palace.

Winter succeeds Ken Erke whose departure shocked Michigan Avenue when he joined digital agency R/GA a few months ago as executive creative director. Erke joined Y&R in2000 from Cramer/Krasselt.

Composer/musicians Frayne Lewis and Mike Middleton have a lot in common. They both grew up in their fathers’ music and were mentored by their fathers: Frayne by jazz legend Ramsey Lewis and Mike by Kent Middleton, a Leo Burnett EVP and head creative on the Phillip Morris account.

“Mike’s like an industry photo negative of my own personal experience,” Lewis says of the latest addition to OneSun Entertainment Group, CRC’s fast-growing composing division.

Middleton says he was hired “for two tasks at hand.

A MULTIMEDIA WHIRLPOOL PROJECT for Leo Burnett turned out to be STORY’S biggest job in terms of duration ?- 17 days of shooting stills and motion for the appliance manufacturer that began July 19 and concluded Aug. 10.

STORY’S Laurie Rubin, a prominent still photographer, shot the stills and directed video from which four spots will be edited.

Rubin worked at Essanay Studio & Lighting and at her own photo studio. For Leo Burnett, Patrick Smith produced, Daniel Holmes the art director and Denis Giroux, executive producer. STORY’s line producer was Michelle Breger.

A remark made by Leo Burnett executive director Vincent Geraghty, producer of the recent Samsung 3D TV commercial, and reported online, brought attention to 3D stereoscopic work in Chicago into the open.

In an online recap of a producers meeting in New York, “Geraghty pointed out that there are currently no post houses in Chicago capable of displaying 3D content.”

While he said “my remark was taken out of context,” it had validity, as no local post house as yet has engaged in stereoscopic 3D (S3D) finishing.

It’s an understatement to say that it was Chicago’s night at the 2010 Hugo International Awards for Television Excellence.

DDB, Draftfcb and Leo Burnett didn’t just win big — they swamped the awards: a staggering total of 23 top Hugos and gold and silver plaques out of out of 29 commercial awards — plus eight Certificates of Merit.

Either other local agencies don’t enter television competitions, or apparently not this one, or the Big 3 simply turn on the juice and submit in quantity. Or perhaps that ? Never mind.

At the 2009 World Tour of New York Festivals Advertising Awards in Chicago last month, Leo Burnett won an impressive 10 World Medals at a gala presentation at the Cultural Center, which was highlighted by a Lifetime Achievement Award to legendary Chicago comedy director Joe Sedelmaier.

Burnett won a Gold World Medal for Hallmark’s “Brother of the Bride,” and five Silver and four Bronze medals.

The agency also won the Silver United Nation’s Dept. of Public Information Award (UNDPI) for their mixed media campaign for the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

TYLER JAY, recently with the 2016 Committee, joined Dictionary Films as an executive producer of content.

While he was with the 2016 Committee, Jay oversaw the 22 bid films that were produced here over two weeks in July. He continues to contribute the Chicago Olympic efforts and maintains his seat on the Committee.

Before that, he was a senior producer with Draftfcb and a producer with Leo Burnett. Earlier, he worked in L.A. as a freelance producer/director for major advertisers.

SOME POSITIVE PRODUCTION NEWS. Judging by how busy casting directors are right now, late summer spot production for the city is lookin’ good.

For instance, casting director Mickie Pasal of Tenner, Paskal & Rudnicke, reports a torrent of casting calls for commercials, including those for Leo Burnett clients Secret, McDonald’s and Eggo; Budweiser, DDB and the Illinois Lottery/Energy BBDO.

Paskal is most pleased at having cast six Chicago actors for a Blue Cross-Blue Shield shoot in New York Aug.

Jamie King and Joy Schwartz were named co-presidents of Euro RSCG Chicago. King returns to Chicago from serving as president/CEO of Publicis & Hal Riney San Francisco. Schwartz was promoted from executive director.

They report to Ron Bess, Euro Chicago CEO and North America COO, the architect of Euro RSCG Chicago’s dramatic double-digit growth over the past several years.

King started his career and spent a decade at Leo Burnett developing strategic programs.

ACCORDING TO RELIABLE SOURCES, one of the A-List L.A. directors, who came here for the Leo Burnett/Olympic Committee shoot last week, got into a bit of trouble at the wrap party at a local club and ended up in the ER.

It seems the director got into an altercation with the club management over the tab. Things got heated and an altercation with the bouncer ensued.

The bouncer removed the director from the premises. Because of a neck injury that the dust-up might’ve caused, the director was rushed to Northwestern Hospital.

Dear Abby: It is very admirable of Leo Burnett to work with the Olympic Committee to help bring the 2016 Summer Games to Chicago, a civic endeavor subsidized by many businesses and individuals who share your enthusiasm for the event.

I was also glad to hear from you, since your Email is the first response to the many phone calls I placed to your agency and to the Olympic Committee. Had anyone for whom I left detailed messages returned my calls, my story could have included more details.

But Abby, I maintain my story is neither inaccurate nor misleading as you charge.

3D animator/director Paul Griswold has to his credit projects involving Cate Blanchett, Coldplay, Shepherd Fairey, David Bryne, and RZA without leaving his home town of Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Griswold, president of Fusion Digital, is on a hot streak after co-directing the music video “Money” for hip-hop group N.A.S.A, and animating the World Wildlife Federation’s “Vote Earth” video for Leo Burnett.

He claims his success comes from never turning down a project. It also helps that he’s in the midst of a 3D animation boom and lives in a city with one of the lowest costs-of-living.

DRAFTFCB ADDED TWO TOP CREATIVES, industry veterans Doug Behm and Jon Flannery as SVP/CDs to work on the agency’s KFC account.

Since 2001, Behm was SVP/group creative director at Element79, on brands including Gatorade, Propel and Tropicana. Earlier he was a CD at FCB on Coors Light, Kraft BBQ sauce and Handi-Snacks, among others.

Flannery was most recently SVP/group CD at Leo Burnett and held the same position earlier at Element79, working on Gatorade, Propel Fitness Water, Quaker and others.

The best of Chicago’s advertising is apparently created by a handful of major ad agencies, if the number of prizes they won at the recent Creative Club Awards is any indication.

The big agencies won almost all of the awards in 34 categories at the recent CCC Awards show held at the United Club at Soldier Field and attended by 400 adpeople.

And if Leo Burnett’s 10 awards and DDB’s four weren’t enough glory for one night, they were also named Agencies of the Year and their respective clients, Altoids and Anheuser-Busch, were declared the Clients of the Year.

When Mindy Verson learned that pop sensation Backstreet Boys were going to perform at Ravinia in late August, she picked up the phone and called her old friend, their manager.

The day after Ravinia, where the band played to a sell-out audience of 18,000 screaming fans, the Boys were performing for a smaller, but no less rapt audience.

Verson, partner with David Kaplan in Audio Producers Group (APG), had arranged for the band to spend an hour each the creatives at Leo Burnett and DraftFCB.

MIGHTY JOE PYTKA, the brilliant, irascible, multi-honored spot director returns to Chicago this week after a long absence to direct Hallmark spots for Leo Burnett.

ALSO SPOTTED?Dennis Manarchy directing Panasonic TV set spots, one of them 103-inches, or a monstrous 8×5-feet and costs $70,000? Digital Kitchen shoots for Target.Both at Essanay.

FOR A MERE $15 aspiring screenwriters can learn about the craft, art and business of screenwriting Nov. 10 from Paul Peditto, one of Chicago’s best teachers.

Radar editor Greg Somerlot’s fifth spot for McDonald’s Mighty Kids campaign/Leo Burnett widens the spotlight from individual youths to group activities showing the ever-changing definition of a “mighty kid.”

Girls are featured in the fast-paced, double dutch jump rope game in the new “Double Dutch” spot, directed by Lesli Linka Glatter of Venice-based Philsfilm.

Glatter used four different camera formats?35 mm, 16 mm, 8 mm, and a mini DV?to capture the girls in a variety of locations, high-rise rooftops, school gyms and the streets of L.A.

SCOTT SMITH of Fulton Market Films, formerly a creative director at Leo Burnett and Element 79, is in preproduction on his first feature, “INK,” slated to begin in October. Casting is underway.

“INK” tells the story of a desperate Chicago newspaper editor who finds himself in dire straits when his paper folds around him.

continues with “Dojo Kid,” edited by Radar’s Greg Somerlot for Leo Burnett’s fourth spot in the series.

Believe Media of L.A. filmed New York’s Mighty Kid Adjenai Worrell as she goes to karate practice, jogs and meditates along the Hudson River, taking a different approach from the previous Mighty Kids in their sport environments.

“While the treatment and direction for this project were very tight, there were no storyboards or script to speak of,” said Somerlot. “The agency allowed me to experiment and play more than usual because of the format of the spot.

THE VENERABLE JOE PYTKA scored his 15th nomination from the DGA’s 26th annual Best Commercial Director Awards.

The other nominees were Dante Ariola and Tom Kuntz of MJZ; Bryan Buckley and David Gray of Hungry Man. Winners will be feted at a gala Feb. 3 in L.A.

Buckley is a three-time nominee and 1999 winner; Kuntz and Gray were nominated for the first time.

Pytka’s nod was based on spots that include Chicago work — for Budweiser/DDB and Disney/Leo Burnett, and also the World Trade Center’s Memorial/TBWA/Chiat/Day.

An audience of 2,000 adfolk attended the 15th annual AICP Show at the Museum of Modern Art last week to applaud the 82-minute reel of the best commercials of 2005.

Unlike in years past, no Chicago agency, a la perennial winners Leo Burnett and DDB, was among the top honorees, ironically, as Chicago is North America’s second largest advertising market.

In the new Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes commercial from Leo Burnett promoting posters with sports figures, Radar went on location to film kids trying harder to do their best at sports.

See the spot for yourself by clicking HERE.

CLINT EASTWOOD AND RYAN PHILLIPPE are in town through next week to wrap “Flags of our Fathers,” the tale of the soldiers who raised the flag at Iwo Jima in WWII.

NAMES IN THE NEWS: Leo Burnett’s production head Jonathan Davies departs the agency in December to assume the same role at Radical Media back in his native London. No replacement named as yet … Ann Brown joins FCB Nov. 3 as director of creative administration, from Element 79 Partners.

McDonald’s/Leo Burnett promotes an expanded Happy Meal Menu in a combination animation and live action spot produced by Radar.

Radar’s Don Hoeg directed the live action at Essanay. DP was Russ Harper. Brian Willard was editor/effects supervisor and Joey Depakakibo, designer and lead animator. Lisa Masseur was executive producer.

Bridget McHugh produced for the agency; commercial created by VP/CDs Keith Hughes and John Hansa.

GRANT/JACOBY CLOSES. Mid-size, independent Grant/Jacoby has ridden into the sunset after 62 years on Michigan Ave. The agency employed 25. Inability to lasso new business was its biggest problem. But possibly the most serious blow to the agency was the loss of creatives Bernie Pitzel and Denny Hebson to form their Romani Bros. agency.

Andrea Murphy (an Ad Woman of the Year) had been president since 1997. Fred Smith was a majority owner. He is a one-time spot producer at Leo Burnett and DDB and later cashed in on the now-defunct Leap Partner’s IPO.

GLANT COHEN, Leo Burnett’s SVP/associate director of TV production, retired from the agency after “23 spectacular years” at the agency. He joined Burnett in 1981 to work on McDonald’s and was named an executive producer five years later. “My joke for years has been to retire before anyone asks ?is Glant still there?'” he joked.

Led by head of production Jonathan Davis, Burnett has a massive production department; a total of 80 persons include 30 odd producers.

AN ENVIABLE PROJECT. A post job for Leo Burnett and client Philips Sonicare dental hygiene that Machete editors started in May and kept growing and growing finally ended two weeks ago.

“Philips is an international player,” notes Machete partner Luis Landgraf, “and the number of spots kept growing and they were sent back and forth to Germany, Holland and Japan.” Everybody edited, he says, meaning: Marty Bernstein, Scott Cohen, new addition Kenan Legg and Mary Roland.

Leo Burnett’s new national “Action Ronald” commercial is a departure for the brand in several ways. For one, the spot promotes an active, healthy life ? no stores, no food, no promotions. For another, this is the first time a national Ronald spot has been completely produced in Chicago.

The point of the spot is to convey that “life is an adventure, not a video game,” said Don Hoeg of Radar, which created and produced the “experimental mixed media” spot now airing.

Swell’s newest editor is Masayo Kaneko, who since 2001 was assistant editor in apprentice-like style under ace editor Ed Maroney. Originally from Kawasaki, Japan, Kaneko moved to the U.S. to attend Columbia College, graduating with a film degree.

At the same time, Swell hired creative assistants Matthew Stewart from Leo Burnett and Nikki Mueller of The Whitehouse.

Kaneko joined Swell as an intern and was quickly hired as an assistant editor.

PENCILS? DDB and Leo Burnett, high-ranking winners in every competition they enter, were the only Chicago agencies to win prestigious Pencil Awards from New York’s One Show honoring creative excellence in advertising.

DDB won a gold and silver for Anheuser-Busch and Burnett took home a silver and bronze for the U.S. Army. The two Michigan Avenue biggies won out of a field of 12,900 tough competitors from 54 countries.

AND POLLIES. Three Pollie awards from the American Assn.

Changing spaces. Popular FCB/Chicago president/CEO Dana Anderson is DDB’s new CEO, reporting to chairman Bob Scarpelli. Former agency president Ray Gillette will head a yet-to-launch Chicago office of Downtown Partners DDB, the Toronto- based agency that has become increasingly visible in the U.S. through its work for Anheuser-Busch.

Swell new people and titles: Producer Christine Johnson, from Cutters; assistant directors Jared Sirota from Optimus, Nicole Mueller from Whitehouse and Matthew Stewart who’d been J.R. Porzel’s assistant at Leo Burnett.

THE WAGE TAX CREDIT BILL (HB 5180) is en route to a five-year extension, having passed the Illinois house and is now under consideration by the state senate. Originally a sunset bill, it was due to end Dec. 31.

NOBLE BBDS’ new EVP/CD is Allyson Hunter, who left Leo Burnett after 17 years where she worked on McDonald’s, P&G, Kraft et al.

VP STRIPES for DDB’s Mike Schif, CD on Home Depot.

THE TRIBUNE’S search for a new agency is down to Burnett, DDB, Draft and Y&R.

ARMY ON THE MARCH. Leo Burnett’s Ray Swift produced a five-minute Army Special Forces recruitment video called “Surveillance” and a 60 and 30 that was edited Optimus’ Craig Lewandowski. Earhole’s Eric Lambert and Eric Sproull provided original music for the video and commercials, and Pat Yacona did the sound design, Foley and mix.

WHODUNNIT? Roseanne DiMesio’s Chicago Screenwriters Network has come up with a pip of a guest for the April 4 meeting ? Kara Stefanson, a forensic DNA expert with the Illinois State Police ?

Lapiz Integrated Hispanic Marketing topped the seven Chicago winners who were among the 68 U.S. winners of top prize Golden Statuette winners in the recent 2003 Mobius Advertising Awards.

Lapiz took a total of eight awards — five Golden Statuettes and three Second Place certificates. Cramer-Krasselt, Another Country and Leo Burnett each brought home two and Campbell Mithun one for TV. Grant-Jacoby won a Golden Statuette for mixed media and The Monogram Group for direct mail. Cramer-Krasselt also was one of six U.S.

JWT wins the $12 million Illinois Tourism account, resigned last year by BBDO.

Tom Bernadin is Leo Burnett’s new president, from Interpublic’s Lowe’s/New York — the first non-Burnetter to have that post in the agency’s 70 year history.

DDB resigned the Lottery account, citing a difference of opinion over marketing and creative.

Marguerite Juliusson has added director Dennis Manarchy and Big Deahl Productions to her representation roster.

Oh-oh!