Lowe has created a new TVC and print campaign to launch Johnson & Johnson’s Carefree Flexia, the first tampon designed with wings, into the market. Entitled “Little Things” the TVC executions include a 30 second and two 15 second ads as well as three print executions. The campaign conveys a simple and intuitive message that most women can relate to - it’s the small things in life that make us feel most confident in ourselves.

Lowe Executive Creative Director, Dave Johnson says: “This approach allows women to share in the little secret weapons that they might not ordinarily reveal, that help lift their confidence. The insight that little things in life can make a big difference to a woman’s confidence, allowed us not only to explore a truth in their lives, but also provide an integrated role for the product innovation to play within it. It’s also possibly the first time ‘chicken fillets’ have featured in a commercial for something other than a burger chain!”

After a long and exhaustive search, the block buster FFA brand ad now has a new sound track courtesy of the hot band of the moment, The Presets. This incredible new sound, along with an array of new action sequences shot in Melbourne, has given this blockbuster TVC new life and enhanced appeal for the 2008 football season.

When Foster’s created a new sales team to concentrate on selling Stella Artois, they asked us to produce a sales presenter. We gave them 50 customised Sony PlayStation PSPs instead.

The PSPs were delivered in hand-stitched black velvet drawstring bags and rebranded with Stella Artois logos. We modified the operating systems and icon sets to reflect the brand, then installed the Stella Artois films and artwork. Because PSPs are wi-fi capable, Foster’s can now load up new material quicker than new pages can be printed for a loose-leaf folder.

The PSPs have impressed not only the sales team, but also Creativity Online. The world’s leading source of information for creative leaders selected the Stella Artois PlayStation PSP as its ‘Pick of the Day’.

Lowe Sydney recently made noise around a low-interest football match between the Socceroos and Ghana by creating a fake Ghanaian fan club, which goes on a desperate mission to recruit people to be their missing ‘H’. Executive Creative Director Dave Johnson says “Highlighting the plight of an opposing team to help promote an Australian international is in itself a fairly radical approach, when you consider the patriotic formula of most match promotions. And then, to fabricate a tiny Ghanaian fan base, too few in numbers to spell ‘GHANA’ on their chests, and send them onto the streets to find their ‘H’ is a very lateral idea. But the theory, with such limited funds, was to create a genuinely captivating story, that the media would pick up on, and catapult way beyond our spend. All seemingly farfetched, if it were not for the fact that this is exactly what happened”

UPDATE: “The Missing H” has been selected amongst “best outdoor” this week on bestadsontv.com

Lowe is proud to announce the newest instalment in the Carefree Barely There TV campaign. Moving on from the previously successful ‘festival’ TVC, we’ve continued the music theme into the world of night clubs. Shot over two days and two very long nights at some of Sydney’s hottest nightspots, the TVC utilises stop-frame photography to convey the passing of time; a whole night of partying.

Lynx and Lowe & Rivet have made male soap use a crime and created a squad of beautiful women charged with reducing male soap use and turning guys on to Lynx Shower Gel.

We launched the Lynx Anti Soap Squad (L.A.S.S.) on radio and the web, using these mediums as the main drivers for a huge awareness campaign targeting a notoriously difficult group to reach — males aged 18 to 24.

Check it out.

On Friday night, Rivet’s groundbreaking website ElectroCity won two first
places at the NZ Direct and Interactive Marketing Awards, picking up the
gongs for Best Interactive Creative and Best Interactive Strategy. Our
Sydney-based Interactive Creative Director, Tom Markham, designed
ElectroCity for Genesis Energy, New Zealand’s largest electricity retailer.

The Stella Artois ‘Fight Club’ and Vodafone NZ v.box interactive work both
won Silver in the Loyalty/Relationship Programme category, and v.box also
collected a Bronze for Customer Retention.

Rivet ECD Chris Hunter was in Auckland to pick up the awards, and joined the
Genesis Energy clients for a night to remember!

Australian Cricket Captain, Ricky Ponting and the Rexona Men’s team have launched a new campaign: ‘Ricky’s Million Ball Mission’. Rexona Men Sport and Ricky Ponting are challenging Australian men to “get up, go out, and play more sport to build up a sweat”. Ricky’s Million Ball Mission kicked off last week with a live PR launch.

Lowe are responsible for the ATL communications, including: TV and print ads.

Watch Ricky’s Million Ball Mission TVC

Here at Lowe Sydney we have invoked the magic of Street Theatre to drive ticket sales for the Hyundai A-League Football Finals Series for the Football Federation Australia.

Using the ‘90 minutes, 90 emotions’ brand campaign idea as inspiration, we used actors to bring to life the various emotions fans go through when watching football in popular Sydney and Brisbane public spaces.

Passers by will be able to choose from ‘Joy’, ‘Passion’, ‘Elation’, ‘Tension’, ‘Worry’, or ‘Despair’ and then have the actor play out that emotion.

Football Federation Australia’s senior marketing manager Peter Jarmain said “With our target demographic being 16-24 year olds, it’s crucial we think outside of traditional media and seek out other means to resonate with our target audience through online and experiential”. This campaign provides a truly unique way to articulate the crowd atmosphere and range of emotions experienced at the Hyundai A-league. It’s a great extension to our existing TVC and print media.

Dave Johnson Lowe Executive Creative Director said “When taken out of the context of a stadium, a football fan’s behavior is really pretty extraordinary, so by literally taking a singular fan and placing him on a street corner amongst our target, we were really able to amplify the range of emotions that the game elicits to huge effect.

“What I love about the Interactive Fan is that the interactivity is totally fake. The idea that passers by can instigate certain emotions in a fan just by pushing a pedal is ridiculous, but this proved to be a most irresistible and entertaining draw card” said Johnson.

The interactive fan will also be pushed out virally and forms part of the finals series campaign supported by TV, radio and print.

Watch the interactive fan in action

While this blog is usually dedicated to the goings on here at Lowe and Rivet’s HQ, we couldn’t help but notice the innovative launch of a new airline.

British Airways (BA) has launched a new airline – called OpenSkies with daily flights from New York to Europe, taking advantage of last year’s EU-US “open skies” deal to free up the key transatlantic market. (Source). Now the product itself is quite innovative. Flying medium sized jets they are going to have roughly the same number of passengers in Business (24), Premium Economy (28) and Economy Class (30) giving it a comparative executive jet feel and smaller more intimate cabins throughout.

But what caught our attention was the launch website which is … a blog. With a name like OpenSkies, BA has established a brand name that promises a new levels of brand and consumer interaction. Well the blog seems to be taking that promise forward. A read of the behind the blog section spells out the plans for the site and that two-way conversation that we think is so important.

If you want to see an example closer to home (apart from the site your on right now) check out the blog – The Full Picture - on the FOXTEL HD site we recently launched. Hosted by Patrick Delany - FOXTEL’s Executive Director of Content, Product & Delivery Innovation – it’s another great example of brands opening up dialogue with their most passionate consumers.

We just launched a new website aiming to be the ‘definitive guide’ to HD for Australians for our client Foxtel.

It’s all about the pixels and their life now that HD is coming and they will have to share the same space with over 4 times as many pixels!!! Check it out.

Unilever has consolidated its $100m (£48.8m) global advertising account for the Signal toothpaste brand into Lowe Worldwide, without a pitch, relieving Bartle Bogle Hegarty of the European account.

The European business, which is estimated to be worth around $40m in terms of billings, will move out of BBH as part of a global realignment of the brand. BBH has handled the European account since 2004.
Lowe already handles creative duties for the Signal brand in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The move has been credited to a four-strong team from Lowe, including Tony Wright, worldwide chairman for Lowe, and Jean-Louis Roche, chief executive of Lola in Madrid, Lowe’s Spanish ad agency.
The team was completed by Fernado Vega Olmos, global creative director at Lowe, and Richard Kelly, global planning director.
Sebastian Lazell, Unilever’s senior vice-president for oral care, said: “Our global brands are being run in an ever more coordinated way and a single agency realignment will obviously help.
“We greatly value the relationship with BBH on Signal in the recent past but for the future we want to consolidate the business into one global communications partner and given Lowe’s extensive geographical coverage and experience of our Signal business globally, Lowe were the obvious choice.”
Signal is also the umbrella brand for a number of other brands including Pepsodent, Aim, Zhonghia and Pf.

Rivet has taken the Asia Pacific region’s most prestigious interactive honours with two trophies at AWARD for ElectroCity, its website for Genesis Energy. ElectroCity won Gold for best Online and Mobile Game, and Silver for best Website. The game was created by Rivet’s Sydney-based Interactive Creative Director, Tom Markham.

Only eight Golds were given out at AWARD, the single most important regional advertising awards show. This is despite a record total of 360 Finalists — from not only Australia and New Zealand, but also countries as far afield as China, Malaysia, The Philippines and Singapore.

Rivet’s New Zealand office rounded off a hugely successful night with a Bronze in the Flat Direct Mail category for its Vodafone Welcome Pack mail piece, and also had a Finalist for the Roost Mini Mortgage Guide. As an added bonus, sister agency Lowe New Zealand had two AWARD Finalists — for the ‘They weren’t born to be worn’ campaign for SAFE (Save Animals From Exploitation). Lowe’s ‘Baby in the water’ commercial for Watersafety netted Film Construction three Bronzes — for Direction, Cinematography and Editing.

Well done to all the people that worked on these campaigns. Campaign Brief has more coverage of the awards.

Sydney agency Lowe Rivet has just launched the first integrated campaign for intelligent men’s magazine Dazed & Confused since the Australian version of the cult magazine was launched in early 2007.

Dazed & Confused – internationally regarded a champion of the alternative mainstream male consumer – is published by the Paper Tiger Media Group.

Group CEO of Lowe Australasia Stephen Pearson said the publisher’s brief was simple, yet complex – take the magazine’s philosophy ‘be the first to know’ and attract social influencers to the title, without necessarily using the ‘first to know’ proposition. Pearson adds Dazed & Confused’s publisher Rob Bergin gave Lowe Hunt complete creative licence with a request for ‘progressive work’. “The creative challenge was to explore this area of being the first to know and make itcome to life in an interesting and original way. To be cool without saying you’re cool is a precarious path for advertisers,” Pearson says.

Creative team: Ben Smith and Neil McGuirk

The world’s most influential marketing blogger, Joseph Jaffe, has reviewed our website Electrocity. He said “it’s a quality, quality site”. Tops!! Click here to hear the podcast.