Out to Launch
Thursday, August 22, 2002
Every week new ad campaigns and websites are launched, and it’s hard to keep up with them all. This week Shell Oil Co. launches “Waves of Change,” Pete’s Wicked Ale reveals Halloween promotion plans, and Yankee Candle debuts new fall fragrances with a campaign to match. Read about these campaigns and others you may have missed in this week’s edition of “Out to Launch.”
  • Every week new ad campaigns and websites are launched, and it’s hard to keep up with them all. This week, Shell Oil Co. launches “Waves of Change,” Pete’s Wicked Ale reveals Halloween promotion plans, and Yankee Candle debuts new fall fragrances with a campaign to match. Here are the highlights.

    Shell Oil Co. breaks a more-than $25-million national ad campaign this week, per WPP Group's J. Walter Thompson. The print and TV work introduces the new tag "Waves of change." The ads spotlight Shell's reformulated fuels, refurbished stations and increased customer convenience. JWT Houston developed the print and radio, while the lead global office, JWT London, created the theme and TV commercial. The media buy includes national broadcast and cable TV networks, national print and spot radio. Karen Wildman, manager of national advertising at Shell, said the campaign is global and the U.S. is among the first nations to use it.

    Visual effects and design company A52 has announced details of their visual effects and design work for J. Walter Thompson Detroit's dramatic new Ford Super Duty Power Stroke :30 spot entitled "Ice Breaker," which debuted on Jul. 26. The latest spot in JWT's No Boundaries campaign, which first broke on Feb. 25, celebrates the go-anywhere, do-anything spirit of the Ford brand, features a Russian icebreaker carving its way through an ice field under the power of six diesel engines. When it gets stuck, however, it relies on a seventh diesel, the one under the hood of a new Ford F-350 that's lowered onto the ice. In the spot, the Ford is soon towing the icebreaker through the ice.

    Clear Channel Worldwide announced that it will team up with Sony Electronics and ABKCO Records in a national campaign that will use the synergy of the nation's largest radio and entertainment promotion company to promote ABKCO’s The Rolling Stones Remastered Series and the Super Audio CD format. The campaign will feature one of Clear Channel Entertainment's top productions of the year, the Rolling Stones North American Tour. As part of the promotion, Clear Channel Radio will run more than 288,000 promotional announcements on nearly 200 radio stations across the country, as well as on Clear Channel websites. The promotional announcements will include daily giveaways of Sony Super Audio CD players and ABKCO’s The Rolling Stones Remastered Series exclusively on hybrid Super Audio CD to coincide with the band's tour. As a grand prize, each promo will highlight the chance for one lucky listener and 10 friends to "Live Like a Rolling Stone" and win an all-expense-paid trip to Las Vegas to see the Stones perform live on Nov. 30.

    Pete's Brewing Company has joined forces with Lion's Gate Entertainment, Spencer Gifts and Geffen Record to deliver the power of a different rock superstar in a multi-faceted sales promotion this Halloween. Beginning Sept. 23rd, Pete's Wicked Ale give consumers a glimpse of Rob Zombie's "House of 1000 Corpses" movie and a National Sweepstakes that culminates with the world movie premiere in Los Angeles. In-store merchandise for Pete's "The Wicked Will Get You!" Halloween promotion includes a six-foot tall Rob Zombie cutout with eyes that "watch you" as you pass by, along with header cards, danglers, static clings, banners, table tents and coasters.

    Superstore Mervyn's is set to debut its latest commercial spot this week with a humorous, new twist on the classic "Open, Open, Open" campaign. Mervyn's tapped Colby & Partners to develop the new 30-second spot, entitled "Keys." The new spot, which promotes Mervyn's Super Sale event and reinforces the "Big Brand, Small Prices" theme, will primarily air in major markets nationwide. The campaign also includes a Spanish-language version of the spot. The new spot conveys a woman restlessly dreaming of being locked out of the Super Sale event. As she is about to be let in, the salesperson breaks his key in the entrance door. The announcer closes the spot with, "Doors open at 9. We promise. Mervyn's. Big brands, small prices."

    To show how its new automobile, the Vibe, is swiftly gaining popularity, Pontiac and D'Arcy took the logical approach by showing that "The Vibe is Everywhere" in a commercial tour with graphics by Producers Color Service, a full service production and post production company, and editorial by Mad River Post. The energetic :30 spot features the Vibe tearing up roads across America while taking brief breathers to display quotes from leading newspapers praising the new automobile.

    Ads for Springmaid and Wamsutta home fashions will launch this month in 28 magazines and run through December. Wray Ward Laseter, Charlotte, N.C., handles. In addition, a fully furnished, interactive exhibit for Springmaid will travel to 85 Wal-Mart stores this summer and fall. Wamsutta's "Indulge Yourself" campaign illustrates that women should indulge themselves with the best in bedding products. Copy reads, "Be comforted, be captivated, be refreshed.” The Springmaid spots demonstrate that a quality bedroom with designer-like decorating can be affordable and easy to attain. Ads with the tag, "It's every woman's dream bed" will run in shelter, women's service and lifestyle publications.

    The Yankee Candle Company, Inc. announced the Company's first advertising campaign, also targeting women between the ages of 25 and 54. The campaign message is that Yankee Candle, as a fragrance leader, offers scented candles and other products that have the ability to transport people to appealing places and times they remember. For fall, the full-page, four-color advertisement will feature the fragrances MacIntosh, Pumpkin Pie and Harvest from Yankee Candle's leading Housewarmer line pictured on a vivid autumn landscape. The headline reads: "There are places where autumn lasts as long as you want it to." The campaign will appear in regional editions of People in September, then in People, Family Circle, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, Country Living, Martha Stewart Living and Better Homes and Gardens in October.

    Change Daily!, a new collection of underwear from Windsong Allegiance Group, will run ads this fall where they can't be missed: in restrooms around the country. Zoom Media, New York, handles. The company has purchased more than 300 frames in bathrooms nationwide to display its catchy creative. The best part: the frames talk! In keeping with the irreverence and wit of the product, the frames ask silly questions such as, "Hey, you don't stir your drinks with that?" and "Want to try a career in Urinal Broadcasting?" Cocktail coasters will also reinforce the campaign bar side.

    The Content Project will attempt to explain the quirks of being a teenager in a four spot promo campaign for TLC's upcoming “Teen Species” special. The promo package is comprised of two :30 and two :15 second spots each branded specifically for the program that aim to provide scientific explanations for what happens to a teenage boy and girl both mentally and physically when they go through puberty. The boy promo, Homo Sleep Deprivus, opens with quick cuts of scientific and medical illustrations. Through a series of shots, male teenagers convey a range of emotions and activities (sullenness, laziness, anger) interspersed with clean, fast-moving graphic elements and a subtle tribal electronic beat. The promo targeting girls portrays the “biological lowdown on what makes teens tick” making the connection between the development of language in Neanderthal man and modern teenage girls’ obsession with talking on the phone. This spot, Homo Talkentele fonus, uses a female voiceover to carry the viewer through a range of teenage girl emotions and activities, including depression, love, female companionship, and anger, revealing the psychological and physiological differences between teenage girls and the rest of the world. All four spots conclude with the tagline “Teens: Another Species?” “Teen Species” premieres on TLC on August 25, 2002 at 8:00 PM.

    -- This newsletter is compiled weekly by MediaPost staff writer Lindsey Fadner. Past issues are archived at the MediaPost website. Your comments, questions and submissions are always welcome and appreciated.