Director James Rouse wins a Gold Clio with his Harvey Nichols’ ‘Walk of Shame’ film.  The film, which was released before Christmas, picked up well over a million hits on youtube and has already been awarded two Silvers at the British Arrows.

The spot raised a smile by reminding people of a familiar hazard of the Christmas party season – of waking up somewhere unfamiliar the day after a night out and having to embark on the journey home in attire that was less than suitable for the morning rush hour.

We’ve all been there. Searching for a job in order to finally leave the current one you hate. The biggest problem is finding a reason to miss work to get to an interview for a better position elsewhere. Enter: Grandma. Everyone knows you don’t question someone who uses the “family emergency” line, it’s just bad etiquette. The only downfall to this ingenious excuse is that Grandma can only die so many times.
Spy Films director Martin Hodara has partnered with Draftfcb Argentina to explore this exact concept through the promotion of Argentinean job search website Zonajobs, which spans throughout Chile, Spain, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Colombia. Ending with the tagline “Let Grandma rest in peace, find a job you want to go to” it becomes pretty clear that Grandma won’t be happy until you are. Find a job and let the poor woman die for good!

Fact: The actress is indeed 90 years old, but still had to be told to act like an old woman. Apparently, she was overly spry.

Upon reflection of the spot, Hodara says “I think the agency was inspired by the universal feeling that people have when they have a job they don’t like, and invent excuses to miss work. It is incredible how people around the world, based on comments on YouTube, identify with this message.”

For the second year in a row Spy has been featured on TED Ads Worth Spreading for a commercial we produced. Last yearʼs list featured our Batelco ad that has received nearly 2 million views on YouTube. This year TED highlights us for our Rethink Breast Cancerʼs “ Your Man Reminder” spot, directed by John Grammatico, a newcomer to Spy.

“The dream behind this initiative is to find ads that communicate ideas with consumers in the same way that TED wants to communicate with its audience. An idea can reset someone’s worldview and even begin a domino effect as they pass it on to friends.”
Rethink currently sits at close to 2.2 million views on YouTube, and counting.

“A brilliantly funny approach to a serious issue — Rethink Breast Cancer uses hot guys to remind women to check their breasts. The campaign encourages women to download the mobile app and choose their favorite man, receiving a pleasant monthly reminder of a possibly life-saving exercise.” The success of Rethink Breast Cancerʼs “Your Man Reminder” shows how the combination of witty humor and attractive men not only sets the stage for a great ad, but can also help save lives.

A leisurely day on the boardwalk turns into an unanticipated dip in the canal for an innocent bystander. Ruairi Robinson unleashes the hungry beast in this spot for the French Dairy Council, through Euro RSCG C&O. Mmmmnm, cheese.

Trevor Cornish has paired up with TBWA/Paris to create a witty spot promoting the new McFarmer and McTimber sandwiches at McDonalds. Shot in California over two days, the classic soundtrack “Eye of the Tiger” guides these two foes in their rigorous training to compete in brute force for the ultimate reward.

Using the everyday chores of an average logger and farmer, larger-than-life weight lifting and cardio regiments become the workout plans for these two enemies. The farmer is depicted skipping rope with barbed wire, and weight training with full-sized hay bails and a tractor with the swather attached. The logger practices his sparring with a grizzly bear, rows with an enormous saw in each hand to cut down numerous trees at once, and uses boulders to tone his muscles. After the intense workouts, each rival indulges himself with his respective sandwich.

Reflecting on the shoot, Cornish described it as challenging as every scene was its own large, in-camera stunt. The remote locations, large cranes, and real wildlife made for a lot of prep and planning, but in the end it all came together as envisioned.

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Happy Holidays from all of us at Spy!

Spy Films and director Arev Manoukian produce global campaign for Sony.

UK based agency Grey London approached Arev to collaborate on this 3D cinematic spot after watching short film, Nuit Blanche. ECD Nils Leonard already had Leonard Cohen’s poem That’s What I Heard You Say in mind, and needed to find a visual component that was just as poignant and influential. According to Nils, “Nuit Blanche… really just captured a unique, powerful romance that I hadn’t seen before,” which he felt would do justice to Cohen’s words.

Two Worlds captures an emotion so powerful between two people that the physical world no longer matters. Thus came the challenge of showing how 3D can really make an audience feel something, not merely creating an elaborate spectacle of flying cars and debris.

Spy3D and exclusive partner 3DCC worked alongside Arev Manoukian to ensure a proper stereoscopic 3D production. In-house stereographer Bill Reeves noted that the most memorable challenge was that Two-Worlds had purely CG elements. “The biggest task being positioning the live actors and all the action in correct stereoscopic parallax values that would make sense when you start to layer elements together and build the scene around the talent… that’s where the biggest challenge was… just the position of subjects.”

Leonard Cohen’s words brought a human, raw emotion to the film. Cohen was drawn to the project due to its level of beauty and romance. Paired with the breathtaking musical composition by Clint Mansell (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream), a notion of power was given to the epic digital landscape. The music carried the words in a poetic fashion, which really brought audio and video together seamlessly.

Join us in welcoming our newest director to the roster at Spy: Elizabeth Orne. Her imagination and creativity use a combination of dry humor, gorgeous colors, and well composed frames to make old ideas new again, surprising and delighting her audiences. Her unique abilities derive from a mix of her studies in Art History and Filmmaking. She began her professional career working in art galleries in London, New York, and Los Angeles. While in LA she directed theatre productions before returning to NYC to attend the NYU Graduate Film Program, where she made her thesis film “Crazy Glue”. The film was chosen to screen at Telluride Film Festival, which is known for other famous premieres such as Juno and Brokeback Mountain. Elizabeth describes her directing as emotionally true yet delightfully entertaining, stating that: “Our job as storytellers is not to just communicate the dry bones of a story, but to engage an audience, and leave the story resonating within them.”

US directing duo Sniper Twins are quickly being recognized for their clever approach to creating hilarious work in the advertising world. Barry Flanagan and Dax Martinez-Vargas came to New York City from Austin, where they began their writing and directing careers, working at MTV as creatives for over six years. The release of their first video “Computer Friends” [Stack the Memory] on YouTube generated over 500,000 hits in less than two weeks, laying the pavement for their unique style used in advertising.

Now with Spy Films, their ingenious creations are setting the bar for the marketing savvy young directors of today. Living by the motto “If you really work at something… It will happen,” the sky is the limit for these budding stars.

Spy Films’ Ruairi Robinson recently partnered up with MacLaren McCann to bring to life Cadillac’s “Zero to Drama in 3.9 Seconds.”  Cadillac, the title sponsor of the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, wanted to highlight the CTS-V’s ability to go from 0-60 mph in 3.9 seconds.  Interestingly enough, the tone of a movie can change just as quickly.  In the spirit of TIFF, Cadillac created three movie trailer themed spots that draw the comparison between the speed and power of the CTS-V and the rapid, sometimes startling, intensity shift in a feature film.

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