The mission of the Anna’s is to shine a spotlight on the best newspaper ads and to inspire agencies and advertisers to make the most of the power of national newspapers.

View the list of 2012 winners at the Anna’s: http://www.the-annas.co.uk

Created by Wieden + Kennedy London, the campaign wants to banish for good the overly worthy and slightly sad image of health food. Rather than following category norms of health benefits and dieting messages, the spot celebrates the world of delicious, healthy food by luxuriating in colour, texture and taste. All of the elements of the campaign are knitted together with this rainbow spectrum, injecting optimism and lightness into the work.

The 60” TV spot, directed by Dougal Wilson at Blink, breaks on Sunday 15th January. The spot is a dance between the senses – a visual bombardment of colour, movement and textures. The viewer moves through a rainbow showing the more exciting world of healthy food with Lurpak Lightest Spreadable at the heart of it. Several camera and animation techniques were used, allowing ingredients to be seen in a new, joyful light - travelling through the heart of red cabbage and following the dollop of Lurpak Lightest as it bounces with corn on the cob in a saucepan. A song provides the spine of the spot, with Rutger Hauer lending his distinctive tones.

The rainbow featured in the print campaign was lovingly constructed by hand – there is no camera trickery involved. It was created by set designer Nicola Yeoman and her team, and photographed by Dan Tobin-Smith. Built over three days, the structure comprised of more than 60 types of fresh produce.  None of the food used to create the rainbow went to waste either.  The produce from the shoot was given away to award- winning UK charity, Fareshare, who were able to put the food to good use through community dinners.

The 48-sheet OOH campaign, planned by Carat, goes live across the UK on the 23rd January, and will also appear across premium sites such as the Imax, Clapham Colossus and Battersea 7 in London.

Simon Stevens, Senior Vice President for Arla Foods, said: ‘‘Lurpak Lightest is our biggest product launch for 10 years, and our 2012 campaign reflects that. Building on the voice we have established for the Lurpak brand, we’re showing people that healthy food doesn’t have to mean boring food”.

Dan Norris and Ray Shaughnessy, Creative Directors at W+K, said, ‘It was an interesting challenge to do something new and different in the world of healthy food. With the Lurpak Lightest launch we've tried to inject fun and, importantly, deliciousness into what can be a boring and worthy place.’

For more information about Lurpak Lightest, visit Lurpak’s revamped website www.lurpak.co.uk or www.facebook.com/lurpakbutter, created by digital communications agency Outside Line.

* Source: AC Nielsen 52w/e 29th Oct 2011
 

Stephanie Wilkes, vice president US Confections at Kraft Foods, says she is eager to partner with Wieden + Kennedy. “Their understanding of the STRIDE brand and gum category is exceptional and we’re eager to see its creative be taken to the next level of success.” 

Neil Christie, Managing Director of Wieden + Kennedy London, said: "We’re absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to work with Kraft Foods on the STRIDE business. We’re looking forward to doing some great work together.”

About Stride Gum
STRIDE, The Ridiculously Long Lasting Gum was launched in 2006 to give gum chewers a fun, unique and long lasting chewing experience. STRIDE gum, a Kraft Foods brand, comes in 11 flavors – Winterblue, Spearmint, Sweet Peppermint, Forever Fruit, Sweet Berry, Sweet Cinnamon, Nonstop Mint, Uber Bubble, Stride Spark and Whitemint.  To find out more about STRIDE gum, our friends and what the brand is up to, visit:

www.stridegum.com

and

www.facebook.com/stride-gum

They join Dan Wieden, Dave Luhr, Susan Hoffman, Bill Davenport, John Jay, Tony Davidson and Kim Papworth as agency partners of the global Wieden+Kennedy network. This is the agency’s first partnership addition since Davidson and Papworth were appointed in 2009.

“We are very picky, very slow and deliberate when it comes to adding new partners. The truth is we have an abundance of talent throughout the network with new opportunities popping up quite regularly,” said Dan Wieden, co-founder and CEO of Wieden+Kennedy. “These four new partners bring fresh perspectives and skill sets to critical areas this agency and this industry will face in the years ahead. I am thrilled. It is like our brain and our heart just made a growth spurt.”

Tom Blessington first joined W+K in 1990 after working for Hill Holliday in Boston. Over the course of the next 12 years, he ran the Nike accounts in both W+K’s Portland and Amsterdam offices, worked as group account director for Miller Brewing Company and Coca-Cola in the Portland office, and was the first managing director of W+K’s New York office, which he expanded from a media-buying operation to a full-service creative shop. Blessington then spent four years at TBWA\Chiat\Day in LA before returning to W+K Portland as managing director in 2006.

“Helping to lead this agency at another level is both humbling and a tremendous honor. I couldn’t be more inspired or motivated,” commented Blessington. “It took 18 years but it was worth the wait.”

Neil Christie began his career in advertising at ABM and in the 1980s helped build Yellowhammer into a top 20 agency renowned for hard-hitting work. Christie went on to work two years at BBH and eight years at TBWA, where he ran such accounts as Nissan and Cadbury and was promoted to client services director and eventually managing director. While at TBWA, the agency topped the new-business league and the awards tables and was Campaign’s runner-up agency of the year three years running. Christie began as managing director of W+K London in 2004, where he has since worked across the agency’s clients and within the agency to create an environment where people can do the best work of their lives.

About the appointment, Christie said, “I’m very proud. I hope I can live up to the honor.”

Mark Fitzloff came to W+K in 1999, working as a copywriter on the AltaVista, Nike and Coca-Cola accounts. When appointed creative director on Old Spice, Fitzloff was charged with reinvigorating “your grandfather’s deodorant.” Fitzloff helped breathe new life into the old, iconic American brand and, in doing so, helped create some of the best, most recognized work to come out of the Portland office in recent years.
In 2008, Fitzloff was appointed to the Portland management team as executive creative director and has since continued to lead work that both wins awards and pushes the client’s bottom line. For the past two years, Fitzloff and fellow Executive Creative Director Susan Hoffman were the most winning creative directors in Creativity’s Awards Report.

“It’s the best job there is in advertising,” said Fitzloff. “I’m extremely thankful to be working for a company I love.”

Iain Tait joined W+K as global interactive executive creative director in 2010. Prior to joining W+K, Tait was a founder and creative director at digital creative agency Poke, where he worked for such clients as American Express, Orange, Yahoo! and Zopa. In 2009, New Media Age magazine named Tait the year’s most influential person in new media in the UK. Tait demonstrated this influence upon starting at W+K, working on the Old Spice “Response Campaign” and forever changing the landscape of interactive advertising. He has since been included in the 2010 and 2011 Creativity 50, Ad Age’s 2010 25 Media Mavens and Fortune magazine’s 2010 40 Under 40. Tait is working to evolve W+K’s creative product and process, continuously looking for opportunities to combine great storytelling with the power and connectivity of the digital world.

Tait commented on his appointment, “It’s incredibly flattering to be invited to join the partner group. I’m hoping I can bring fresh perspective to the team and help continue to push the agency into new areas.”
 

Wieden + Kennedy has been the advertising agency for Lurpak in the UK from late 2006, and since then sales of the brand have increased by 50 per cent, which equates to an extra £83m. During this time Lurpak has overtaken Flora to become the number one BSM brand in the UK, with Lurpak now £55m ahead of its competitor.

Laurence Fischer, vice president for Global BSM at Arla, said: “Saatchi and Saatchi, who have been the advertising agency for Lurpak globally for almost two years, delivered great results for the brand and we will continue to work with them in the Middle East and on other projects. However, it made sense, business-wise, for us to move total responsibility of Lurpak to one agency.

Wieden + Kennedy have achieved tremendous success with Lurpak in the UK and we are delighted to award them the global contract for the brand. We all now look forward to seeing their plans for the future.”

Since the launch of the 'Good Food Deserves Lurpak' campaign by Wieden and Kennedy in 2007, ROI has improved by 51 per cent. The campaign won the brand over a dozen industry awards including: best marketing campaign in the world at the 2008 Dairy Innovation Awards; two golds at the British Television Awards; a Golden Gramia (The Grocer Marketing & Advertising Awards); a silver APG award for strategy; and a silver at the Cannes Lions awards.

Neil Christie, Managing Director of Wieden + Kennedy, said: "Good food deserves Lurpak. And Lurpak deserves great work. We're very proud of what we've done in the UK and absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to build on that internationally."

Wieden + Kennedy also look after Cravendale and Lactofree in the UK. Since winning the Cravendale account in 2006, both volume and value have doubled with the brand now being worth £169m, while Lactofree has tripled in volume and value in the last three years.

Cravendale’s latest ‘Milk Matters’ campaign saw over 4 million youtube views for the ‘cats with thumbs’ advert and received a number of prestigious awards, including a Thinkbox award and a Cannes Lions award, which recognised the use of digital, direct mail, viral and TV to deliver a fully integrated campaign. The brand is also nominated for best campaign in 2011 in Campaign magazine, with Arla nominated as 'best advertiser'. 

Simon Stevens, senior vice president for commercial at Arla, said: “Wieden + Kennedy have done an exceptional job over the last five years, consistently producing great work which has driven outstanding sales growth and built consumer love for our brands. Lurpak, Cravendale and Lactofree have all achieved phenomenal growth, with Lurpak becoming the UK’s number one dairy brand and Cravendale being the fastest growing top 100 food brand over the last five years.”

Using physics principles and played in Chrome, Firefox or Safari, The Experiment challenges players to create a chain reaction by placing a set of pop-up windows in sequence. Each video window contains an object that interacts with those around it to create hundreds of possibilities and combinations. At the end of six levels users get the opportunity to create their own chains then challenge their friends.

W+K collaborated with B-Reel on the project, the production company behind the ground-breaking Wilderness Downtown launch for Arcade Fire.
The game is one of three interactive experiences Wieden + Kennedy London are creating to support ‘The Great Unknown’ pan-European marketing campaign. Each experience relays part of the journey the Honda engineers undertook- how they got to the final design of the Civic and the lessons learned along the way.

The first phase broke online with the launch of a destination hub on YouTube www.youtube.com/hondacivicUK. This phase introduced the campaign idea and was car-specific: the content relates to the various improvements and enhancements of the Civic.

-Background-

Honda Motor Europe unveiled its new Civic at The Frankfurt Motor Show on 13th September 2011.
The ninth generation Civic hatchback will be released for sale in 2012.  It will offer stand-out looks combined with class-leading space, and will continue to deliver peace of mind with low running costs, through Honda’s famed and unparalleled reliability. Quality and comfort levels have improved dramatically over the outgoing model. It has also been designed exclusively for Europe’s roads.

The unveiling of the new Civic is Honda’s next step in their long-standing commitment to being a company that society wants to exist.  Their aim is to be a business that does not cause any harm to the environment: their ultimate goal is for all their engineering to cause zero emissions.  The new Civic is just one of the brand’s many ‘roads’ towards this goal.

Play the game at www.experimentgame.com

Or find out more about it at http://hondaexperiment.posterous.com/

The agency picked up a silver for the Kaiser Chiefs Bespoke Album Creation Experience in the music category at the Lovie Awards (the European Webbys).

The mission of the Lovie Awards is to recognise the unique and resonant nature of the European internet community – from Europe’s top web and creative networks and content publishers to cultural and political organisations and bedroom bloggers.

View the list of winners at the Lovies.

And last night, the W+K network picked up three silvers in the fashion & beauty category for Old Spice for ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ at the Campaign Big Awards.  The agency also won a silver for Nokia for ‘The World’s Smallest Stop Frame Animation’ in the IT & Technology category and two silvers for Nike in the Sport & Leisure category for Nike GRID.

The Campaign Big Awards celebrate the best creative advertising that has run in the UK.
 

A TV commercial, created by Wieden + Kennedy, is the first phase of the campaign. The campaign highlights the fact that Three is the fastest-growing mobile network in the UK in terms of new customers.  It also communicates that Three offers all-you-can eat data on a great range of smartphones from just £18 a month: with ‘all the internet you’ll ever need’.

The campaign, created by Toby Allen and Jim Hilson and creatively directed by Tony Davidson and Kim Papworth, includes two TV commercials, ‘Drops’ and ‘Explosions’ and will be supported by press, print, digital, radio and out of home in the run-up to Christmas.  ‘Drops’ breaks on ITV, on 22nd October and will also air during the Rugby World Cup Final.

This is the first work the agency has produced for the mobile operator since its appointment in January 2011. It is a pre-cursor to a large integrated campaign scheduled to break in 2012 that will communicate Three’s brand story and continue its push in the UK market.

Thomas Malleschitz, marketing director at Three UK said: “Our upgraded network and the promise of all-you-can-eat data have made Three the UK’s fastest growing network. We’ve hand-picked the best range of smartphones so they now make up 98% of our sales, the campaign brings to life how people are joining Three to make the most of them.”

Toby Allen and Jim Hilson, creatives at Wieden + Kennedy said: “We’ve really enjoyed establishing a new tone of voice for Three. We think this will set it apart from other mobile operators and technology brands.”

The agency had three papers shortlisted (less than 10% of submitted papers are shortlisted for a prize) which were awarded as follows:

Cravendale – ‘Cats With Thumbs’ – Bronze
Nike – GRID – Silver
OFF-ON - Gold

In addition to the prestigious Gold award, the author of the Off-On paper, Sophie Dollar, was also given a special prize for ‘best real-time planning’.

The APG is a not-for-profit organisation run for and by its members and is the authority in advertising and communications strategy.  Founded in London in 1979, the APG is the foremost and longest-established organisation representing the interests of account planners and other communications strategists.  They have 900 members worldwide.

They say: ‘we believe in the importance of excellent advertising and communications strategy.  We believe planners are at the heart of creative businesses, so are more likely than anyone else to produce strategies that are creatively inspiring’.