There's a nice piece by Tim Nudd in Adweek about the new Target campaign from Wieden + Kennedy Portland. The work is fresh and charming, so thought I'd share the article here.

GENESIS: Target wanted to highlight its wide variety of products through charming slice-of-life stories about when its customers need them the most. Wieden + Kennedy went with 15-second spots instead of 30s, so it could tell more stories and have each one elegantly focused on a single product. The structure: nine seconds of plot; a one-second reveal (with a ding sound, like a lightbulb going off) when a product resolves the tension; and five seconds of outtro music, as the bull's-eye logo swipes over a pair of taglines, "Life's a moving target" and "Expect more. Pay less." The agency has done more than 125 spots since last May—a mosaic of plots, products, songs, and styles in a reductivist construct that's hard to keep fresh. "What looks like a formula is not a formula," says Will Setliff, Target's vp of marketing. "It is so not simple to come up with simplicity."

COPYWRITING: Many teams work on the scripts, seeking witty insights that feel observed, not manufactured. "It's not that hard to do a good one, but it is very hard to do an excellent one," says Wieden creative director Rob Thompson. "The trap everyone can fall into is solving the riddle: A plus B equals C, yay, I solved it." Done right, the reveal is a delightful surprise—and the viewer, having been called on to puzzle it out, feels complicit in that joy.

Two of the agency's favorite spots achieve that in different ways. In "Crying Milk," a girl dabs milk on the rim of her glass, and it falls like a tear. "Don't cry, milk. I miss them too," she says. (Ding! Oreo cookies.) In "Questions," a wife thinks she has food poisoning, but her husband, who had the same dinner, is fine. (Ding! First Response pregnancy test.)

"It can't be too obvious that you see it coming, or so cryptic that you never get it," says Wieden creative director Chris Mitton. The campaign began with several Lost tie-ins during the ABC show's series finale in May 2010, and has included a number of seasonal-specific spots, too.

ART DIRECTION: The ads stay within Target's aspirational visual language, but with enough variety that they don't get stale. "It's a more composed, more thoughtful, little bit brighter version of life. This isn't verité," says Thompson. "But we don't want it too composed and too much of a visual equation, just as we don't want it to be a joke equation."

FILMING: The agency has used eight directors so far—Wayne McClammy, Patrick Daughters, Kinga Burza, Jack Bender, Aaron Ruell, Renny Maslow, and the team of Phil Morrison and Joe Ventura—and shot in Southern California and Hawaii. The next director might shoot in New York and try handheld camerawork—which could lend an even more observed feel, as long as it maintains Target's traditionally elegant sense of composition.

TALENT: The actors play customers of all ages and demographics. They need to make an impression in seconds while playing things honestly and subtly. "It's a lean-forward kind of approach," says Mitton. "They have to really draw you in."

SOUND: The agency licensed dozens of tracks for the outtro music, many from the '80s. "That felt relevant to the target—people in their 30s and 40s, women in particular," says Thompson. "There's not just a nostalgia but a warmth there. It reminds them of their high school days in a cute, funny, irreverent way." The agency hopes to introduce more unknown current artists in future spots.

MEDIA: The spots run on national broadcast and cable, then online. Where possible, two spots run in the same pod, ideally bookending it. Setliff says all the metrics are up, and viewers are engaging sooner with each new spot. "They know there's a story to come," he says. "It's become a page-turning mentality. What's the next story? What's the next page?"

Ray writes:

This is a strange job. And we’ve had some strange moments. But yesterday tops it off. Because I don’t think we’ve ever actually orchestrated strangeness like we have on the latest Visit Wales campaign. And I sincerely mean strange in a good way. Because this weekend we put the weight of one country, behind inviting just one unsuspecting man, on a proper holiday. One man called Piers Bramhall.

 The last holiday he had with his fabulous girlfriend Emma Foley was an all-inclusive job. A sitting by the pool and stuck to the sun lounger affair. Nothing wrong with that. Piers is a decent hardworking bloke who just fancied a bit of a rest. But we wanted to give Piers and Emma the chance to have a holiday together away from the lilo, and experience a proper holiday, courtesy of Wales.

This campaign is still about Wales standing for Proper Holidays. But we wanted to push even harder to help shift entrenched perceptions of Wales by acting in a different, more progressive way. This campaign will also see us opening up the conversation about Wales by giving the people of Wales and lovers of Wales a platform to talk about the stuff that they do or love best.

That’s the background. Here’s the mentalness of the day. A day that started in a park in Ealing at 7am with a Welsh choir limbering up their handsome vocal chords. Then the lovely Joanna Page joined us. And her lovely husband. And her equally lovely parents. Trust me. They’re lovely.

All 60 of us then tip-toed our way round to Piers’ house ready to make our grand invite. Then an IKEA van showed up so all 60 of us had to quickly tip-toe back again. Finally the choir assembled and sonorously belted out their version of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau (Wikipedia it). My goodness. Have you heard a Welsh choir? One that’s in front of you and not on the telly. It fills up your chest. It makes you stand a bit taller. It brings on goose bumps even if you don’t want goose bumps, damn it. These big voices flooded the street and sure enough brought Piers and Emma outside. I can’t explain the rest from here. No point. Just look.

Do you see what I mean? About the bonkerness? The choir. Twickenham. The newspaper. Ian Rush. IAN RUSH! Kelly Jones. Kelly Jones’ mum and dad. Kelly Jones’ mum and dad chatting to Joanna Page’s mum and dad. Enough already. You get it.

We really hope that Piers and Emma enjoy this trip. They are a brilliant couple who deserve a brilliant experience. You can see how it all unfolds here.

Follow the campaign on Facebook! www.facebook.com/visitwales

And on twitter! @wewantpiers