15.06.2009 | New Work
Wieden + Kennedy London has created a new campaign for Honda to celebrate the re-opening of its Swindon production line, and the positive effect this will have on British industry as a whole.
The print, radio and poster campaign, created by Ida Gronblom and Fabian Berglund and creatively directed by Tony Davidson and Kim Papworth champions the return to work of the Honda associates, and utilizes the phrase ‘The Honda Effect’. ‘The Honda Effect’ was an expression coined in the early 1980’s as part of the exploration of Honda’s entry into the motorbike market in the USA. Back then, Honda took potentially risky and swift business decisions which were perceived to be taken against the grain – but which ultimately paid off. This year, Honda shut down their Swindon factory for four months to prevent making permanent redundancies in the face of the financial struggles of the car industry – but which turned out to be another expeditious yet sensible strategy.
Alex Conaway, Head of Client Services, Wieden + Kennedy said, ‘Honda made a brave decision at the beginning of the year to combat the woes of the motoring industry. Temporarily shutting down a factory was no easy decision but in typical Honda style they used the ‘down time’ to totally reinvigorate the facility and put in place new technologies that were planned long before the market tumbled. Furthermore, Honda associates themselves painted, tiled, plumbed and scrubbed the Swindon plant to create the feeling of a new workplace come 1st June. The campaign celebrates the associates and the knock-on effect we hope will occur now they are making cars again.’
The campaign that runs from 15 – 28 June consists of press and radio executions which, each day, will tell stories of the impact of Honda’s employees returning to work. The posters will run in four key sites in and around Swindon for the duration of the campaign.
11.06.2009 | New business
Wieden + Kennedy London has been appointed as lead creative agency by Lactofree UK following a 4-way pitch against BMB, Karmarama and Euro RSCG. The agency will be responsible for the creation and development of all national campaigns.
Communications will roll out early next year – including advertising and healthcare professional marketing.
Lactofree UK is an Arla Foods brand. This is the third piece of Arla business W+K has won following their appointment in 2006 to provide communications for the Lurpak and Cravendale brands. Arla is one of the UK’s leading dairy companies and is a supplier of fresh liquid milk and cream to the leading retailers. Arla are also the leader in the butter, spreads and margarine sector.
Jessica Hardcastle, Group Brand Manager at Arla Foods said, ‘Wieden + Kennedy have delivered strong campaigns for Lurpak and Cravendale due to their ability to produce creative work that stands out from the crowd. We are confident their campaigns for Lactofree will be as successful’
Neil Christie, Managing Director Wieden + Kennedy London said, ‘We love working with Arla so we're very pleased to extend our relationship with them by winning the Lactofree business.'
09.06.2009 | New Work
Wieden + Kennedy London and Blinkink Productions have created a ground-breaking pop promo for We Have Band’s new single ‘You Came Out’ http://bit.ly/WYmVG
Conceived by married couple Thomas and Dede Wegg-Prosser and completed by Darren Bancroft, We Have Band have been making music since late 2007. With one years’ gigging behind them, they have established themselves as one of the UK’s most talked-about buzz bands. They have toured all over Europe, played this year’s SXSW festival, recently won Glastonbury’s emerging bands competition securing a big stage performance and have a summer full of festivals in front of them. ‘You Came Out’, which will be released on 15th June on Kill Em All, will be the band’s second single following the upbeat track Oh! Released last November.
Described by Time Out “as ‘the new Hot Chip’ if that wasn’t being unfair to both bands. Their icy glitch-rock is already having them hailed as one of the top tips for 2009.”
The music video was created by W+K creatives Fabian Berglund and Ida Gronblom, and Blinkink director David Wilson, the animated film is made up of 4,816 separate stills, featuring the faces of the members of the band – their eyes, lips and skin made up in varying, colourful ways. Each and every frame is hand-painted, shot, wiped off and redrawn, slightly differently for the next frame in order to create a seamless sequence. This time-consuming process involved the band members lying still for two consecutive days in a studio.
In order to animate the singing bit, lip movement was created by animating a painted mouth on the singer Dede. This involved breaking the lyrics into phonetics and giving each sound a specific mouth shape. In order to make this as realistic as possible all the mouth shapes were painted on Dede’s face individually and then shot. In order for the painted mouth shapes to animate the actual lyrics, they were put together in a specific order and timed to make up each word.
All of the 4,816 frames in the film have been uploaded to Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wehaveband) allowing people to re-edit the sequence as they see fit in order to make their own video, with their own track if they like. One of the images has an ‘Easter egg’ inserted which when clicked gives access to extra content for the lucky finders: an exclusive remix of the song.
Fabian Berglund, Wieden + Kennedy said, “The song is about a night out and we wanted to feature the band in the video but instead of them performing the song which feels very traditional we thought that what if we could tell the story of this night out by animating face paint. Their sleeping faces could come alive with painted eyes and even have painted lips on top of their real lips animating the lyrics. It's almost as if they are possessed, hope it’s not too scary!”.
