In a move that will catch the attention of leading directors, Cutting Edge has announced today that highly respected editor Billy Browne has signed up with its new Melbourne studio.  
 
With 15 years in the cutting room, Browne has a knack for artistic storytelling, problem-solving and is much loved for his quirky creativity. Most recently he has been working with high calibre directors on a range of projects spanning all genres, from comedy to drama to Paul Goldman's epic 'Three Little Letters' for Commbank.

Volkswagen Group Australia and DDB Group Sydney have created a print campaign to promote Volkswagen Genuine Accessories.

The "Ruined" series uses visual analogies to explore the thought that you should never cut corners after you've purchased something great. Each execution compares two seemingly unrelated purchases and allows the viewer's imagination to summarise the outcome.
 
Says Dylan Harrison, ECD at DDB Sydney: "Volkswagen is renowned for making cars of the highest standards. Their accessories are no different; And if you skimp on this seemingly trivial detail when buying a VW, you could be ruining the car."

VIEW THE CHANDELIER AD
VIEW THE FISH AD
VIEW THE BONSAI AD
VIEW THE SHOES AD

By Rob Meldrum, innovation director, Naked Communications, UK

I applauded Tim Berners-Lee today. You know: the inventor of the Internet. I applauded him not because he was a good speaker (he wasn't), nor because of the content of his speech (although interesting) but because if it wasn't for him this connected, collaborative place we now live in would never have existed. He fundamentally changed the world. The whole world! Now, if that's not worth clapping, I don't know what is.

Released just in time for the first bounce of the 2014 AFL Premiership season, Isobar has partnered with Select Australia to bring traditional AFL collector cards into the digital age, with the Select Official AFL Collector Cards app launched this week.

Working closely with the AFL, the AFL Players' Association and Select, Isobar conceptualised and built the app that uses image recognition to scan physical cards into a digital album. Collectors are also able to create their own team out of their favourite cards and share their collection on social media.

GET THE APP

Six months after becoming global CEO of Draftfcb, Carter Murray is changing the agency’'s name to FCB (Foote, Cone & Belding).

"Two distinct brands, Draft and FCB, were merged together seven years ago," said Murray. "The entities have united and now have one seamless offering. It’s time to simplify our brand name as well to reflect our focused identity and direction."

"Specifically, the global network will be called FCB (Foote, Cone & Belding), with an important local element celebrated market-by-market. Typically, each office will add the city in which they operate, for instance, FCB Shanghai, FCB Paris or FCB Chicago, using a diagonal line through the B and the first letter of the local moniker.

They may not be able to dance over in the West but they certainly know how to throw a party. It was another big night for the Perth industry at the Oasis Ball and Campaign Brief WA Awards, held at Crown Perth on Friday night. Some big CB awards were handed out and some big money was also raised for the Crossroads West Appeal. Congratulations to Marianne Stelmach and the Oasis Ball organising committee, the sponsors, the brilliant David Gardiner from DGPR and everyone who came along and made it such a great night. Watch this short video.

WATCH THE VIDEO (2:32)

On the eve of the latest Australian Rolling Stones tour, a new national survey of more than 1,000 Baby Boomers highlights how they also 'can't get no satisfaction' from brands and advertisers according to research conducted via Blaze, a global strategic insight and business consultancy based in Sydney.

Marketers are failing to understand and effectively engage the majority of Australian Baby Boomers. This means missing out on capturing their sizable disposable incomes.

With Baby Boomers outliving and outspending more than any previous generation, the biggest finding of the survey was that this group don't recognise themselves in marketing directed towards their age group with 71% expressing dissatisfaction with how they are represented in the media. In fact, 80% of respondents say they feel the advertising industry assumes that all over 50s are the same and 78% say they think companies tend to forget about their generation when developing new products and services.

One of Sydney's most valued heritage landmarks, the Queen Victoria Building is unveiling a new creative direction for autumn winter 2014 heralded by the enlistment of one of Australia's most successful modelling exports Nicole Trunfio via Studio Woo.

Since first opening in 1898, and named to honour the monarch's Diamond Jubilee, the QVB continues to set the pace for the harbour city. Bringing this grand legacy into the now, the QVB has utilised New York-based Trunfio's in-demand face throughout its new season campaign and also as the cover star of its debut issue of Icon magazine, a biannual publication that treasures the past and celebrates the future.

A favourite of Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Christian Dior and Gucci, Trunfio is at the top of her game. Always the elegant rebel, her sartorial approach on and off the red carpet exudes a glam-rock vibe that has many following her lead. Then there's her starring role as judge on the soon-to-air television show The Face Australia alongside Naomi Campbell. She brings an exuberant charm to the QVB that takes the iconic destination to a bolder and more directional aesthetic than ever before.

By Rob Meldrum, innovation director, Naked Communications, UK

My mind was blown today. In fact, I'm surprised I'm even able to cobble this blog post together. There were also some 'meh' talks and one that was so badly put together that I walked after ten minutes. It doesn't matter if you have a celebrity asking the questions, if you fail to prepare your discussion properly it is going to be terrible.
 
Not the best speaker, but an amazing man, was Dean Kamen. Inventor, entrepreneur, philanthropist and all round nice guy I was impressed by his vision for providing clean water, power and wifi to the developing world. And it's not only a vision; he's gone and done it. The way he spoke of how he convinced the CEO of Coke to help him deliver his water purification machines around the globe was nothing short of remarkable.

By Rob Meldrum, innovation director, Naked UK

Two days in and I'm starting to get used to the craziness of SXSW. Waking earlier than I should on a Saturday the day started with robots. A fantastic talk from Carl Bass: he spoke about the role of robots in our lives and the future; how we need to change our behavior in order to continue to grow with new technology rather than against it. Oh and he also suggested that we've been living with robots for years: we only call them robots until we work out how they work and then we give them a name. Like a train.

By Rob Meldrum, innovation director, Naked UK
 
Day 1 at SXSW. Wow. It's been big. I've crammed in as many talks as I possibly could. I've also crammed in as much free BBQ as I possibly could, but that's another (much less interesting) story.
 
It didn't start well. I joined a large queue and waited patiently. Twenty minutes later and I'm being turned away at the last minute as the venue was full. But my enthusiasm was not dampened and I ended up wandering into a very interesting book reading by Jeff Gothelf, of his book Lean UX. Other than having possibly the best name ever, there were some really insightful thoughts on structuring teams and borrowing from software development within product design.

Last week the Steve Waugh Foundation launched the 'All We Ask' campaign via Leo Burnett Sydney, to coincide with international Rare Disease Day and help raise awareness for the individuals and families affected by rare diseases.
 
The poignant short, directed by The Pool Collective's Ingvar Kenne, plays off the fact that charitable organisations encourage all sorts of weird and wonderful ways to raise funds these days. And compares this to the simplicity of our request for awareness. Inviting the children with rare diseases and their families to be the stars of the film gives the piece the authenticity and allows them to show their strength and positivity, while highlighting their need for assistance.

VIEW THE SPOT

Leo Burnett Sydney has dominated at ADFEST walking away with 21 awards and the title of the most awarded agency in Australia.

Despite fierce competition, with this year's 17th annual awards show attracting over 3,200 entries from 41 cities, Leo Burnett Sydney has also been named the second most awarded agency in Asia Pacific.

Sydney agency YOLO (You Only Live Once) and Republic of Everyone have worked together to launch a new campaign for Teachers Mutual Bank.

Sustainability and profit with a purpose have always been integral parts of the Teachers Mutual Bank, and the new campaign "The Feeling's Mutual" is the result of the cross agency collaboration to bring the brand and sustainability messages together.

VIEW THE SPOT

CB Exclusive: BMF has launched a new campaign for ALDI with Jimmy Masters, motivational speaker and ALDI Awards' spokesperson. With layers of spray tan and a toothy smile, Jimmy shows everyone how they can achieve that winning feeling simply through purchasing any of ALDI's 150 award winning products.
 
ALDI Awards aims to demonstrate that quality is not compromised by their low prices. Plus, their awards are of the highest calibre, including Choice, Canstar Blue Most Satisfied Customers Awards and fine food awards such as Sydney Royal Cheese & Dairy Show, Melbourne Fine Food Awards and Royal Queensland Food & Wine Show.

VIEW THE CHEESE SPOT
VIEW THE TRIMAT SPOT
VIEW THE WINE SPOT
VIEW THE CHEDDAR SPOT

By Simon Veksner

It's not hard to mock a hipster.

If your Twitter feed is anything like mine, it currently consists of about 50% excited posts from SXSW, and 50% mockery of people wearing Google Glasses, beards, or both. See image above.

But let's face it, all this mockery is just jealousy in disguise. READ MORE...

AdFest has honoured the late Malaysian creative leader Yasmin Ahmad with the 3rd annual Lotus Legend award. Akira Kagami, Executive Advisor & Global Executive Creative Advisor of Dentsu Inc, was the first Lotus Legend in 2012, followed by David Droga, founder of Droga5 in 2013.

"I'm very happy about Yasmin Ahmad being named this year's Lotus Legend. She was a wonderful talent who was always fighting against prejudice and discrimination. She had a passion for fighting back with her creativity. She was a remarkable person who was very much a free spirit," says Jimmy Lam, President of AdFest.

As one of the few film directors and screenwriters in the small Malaysian film industry to make an international impact, Ahmad will continue to be known as a creative legend.

A woman of astonishing talents, Ahmad was an accomplished director and screenwriter whose feature films had a global following. Rumor has it that sometimes when pitching to clients, she wouldn't even show storyboards - she would only talk, and her words would bring the room to tears.

The 17th Asia Pacific Advertising Festival (ADFEST) wrapped up this year's three-day Festival with an Awards Presentation at PEACH, Royal Cliff Hotels Group in Pattaya, Thailand on Saturday 8th March 2014.

Leo Burnett, Sydney took out the Outdoor Grand Lotus for Coca-Cola 'Small World Machines' and Whybiin\TBWA won the only Effectiveness Lotus awarded on the night, for the NRMA 'Car Creation' campaign.

McCann Melbourne won an Integrated Lotus for Macquarie Dictionary's 'Phubbing'. INNOVA Lotuses were awarded to JWT Sydney for RAC's 'RAC Attention Powered Car' and Leo Burnett Sydney for Coke's 'Small World Machines'. Colenso BBDO, Auckland won two Gold Lotus awards in the Media category, both for Samsung.

By Claire Davidson, executive producer,
The Sweet Shop

Donald Gunn, Founder and Emma Wilke, Managing Director presented Adfest today with the Gunn Report's Global Index of Creative Excellence in Advertising, highlighting the winners from the past 12 months. 

The most awarded Agency Network of the Year for 2013 was BBDO, for a record 8th year in a row.  A big congratulations to BBDO. Ogilvy and Mather were second, followed by DDB, Leo Burnett and McCann. The most awarded agency in the world was shared by Wieden +Kennedy (Portland, New York) and McCann (Melbourne). Top honors for the most awarded digital agency in the world went to R/GA.  Nike topped the table as the most awarded advertiser in the world, followed by Volkswagen, Axe / Lynx, Coca Cola and Google.

UPDATED WITH VIDEO - AdFest delegates kicked off last night at the Campaign Brief, Sweet Shop, Fin Design + Effects and The Gunnery pre-awards night party.

Around 250 people enjoyed drinks, cool music and a spectacular sunset around the pool of the Royal Cliff Hotel. Mixing the music was Evan Roberts creative director at The Gunnery.

Special thanks to our fantastic and generous sponsors - Sweet Shop, Fin Design + Effects and The Gunnery.

VIEW THE VIDEO
Music by The Gunnery

Digital Pulse has produced content for the four main shows in the Royal Hall of Industries as well as producing a 10 hour live projection extravaganza in the historic Hordern Pavilion for the sexiest party of the year: the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Party.

Managing director of Digital Pulse Brett Heil said the creative collaboration with VJs was a first for the Mardi Gras Party.

Friday night was a huge night for the Meerkats team with the agency taking out the major award of the night - Agency of the Year. In front of a sell out crowd of 780 people at the Perth industry's night of nights, held at Crown Perth on Friday night. Meerkats stood tall on the stage for the third time in the past five years. Meerkats first won this award in 2009, and followed it up again in 2010.

The Meerkats submission for Agency of the Year was a comprehensive document highlighted by the return of iinet to the fold and the State, plus additional new business growth and major awards recognition at both the Campaign Brief Awards and the PADC Awards.

They edged out a resurgent Marketforce, a seven-time previous winner who bounced back from a disappointing 2012 with a fine performance last year, and a newcomer for contention for this award - Shed. Also considered for the Award with solid submissions was 303Lowe, Rare and last year's winner, The Brand Agency.

The winners of Interactive, Mobile, Print Craft, Design, Direct, Promo, Press, New Director Lotus (including Fabulous Four) and Film Craft were announced in an Award Presentation at the end of the second day of ADFEST 2014, now in its 17th year, held at PEACH, Royal Cliff Hotels Group in Pattaya, Thailand.

Interactive Lotus
Three Gold Lotuses were awarded, all to Australian agencies: one to Mercerbell in Sydney for Allianz Car Insurance's 'Be OK' YouTube button; George Patterson Y&R Melbourne for 'Anytime, Anywhere' for the Royal Australian Air Force; and Finch in Sydney was awarded for 'The Most Powerful Arm' (plus a Silver), created for Havas Australia and client Awareness for Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.

AdFest 2014 in Pattaya, Thailand kicked off with a VIP judges dinner held at one of Pattaya's finest restaurants Cabbages & Condoms.

Over 80 VIPs attended and enjoyed the hospitality of the AdFest organisers.

Leo Burnett Sydney has dominated the finalist stage at Adfest 2014 with a whopping 42 entries shortlisted. Coming in at equal second is George Patterson Y&R with six shortlisted entries as well as McCann Melbourne, also with six.

Other Australian agencies who have made the cut at the shortlist round include Innocean Australia, JWT Sydney, MercerBell, Finch/Havas Sydney/Red Agency, Clemenger BBDO Sydney, Whybin\TBWA Melbourne, Clemenger Brisbane, Block Perth, Whybin\TBWA Sydney. Australian production companies who have made the finalist stage include Finch, who lead with four entries shortlisted, followed by Exit Films, Fin Design + Effects and Alt.VFX all with three entries and Nylon Studios with two and Mr Smith with one entry making the cut.

VIEW ALL FINALISTS HERE

DDB Group Sydney has been appointed as creative agency for Australia's leading classifieds site Gumtree following a competitive pitch process.

The win will see DDB Group utilising DDB, RAPP and Tribal to manage multi-channel communications for the online trader.

In celebration of 2014 International Women's Day (IWD), DDB Worldwide, part of Omnicom Group (OMC; NYSE), has today announced the launch of "Empower," a website featuring photos of real women from across the DDB Network via DDB Chicago.

Slated to launch on Friday, March 7, "Empower" will be accompanied by tweets from female employees on @DDB_Worldwide, which will answer the question, "What empowers you?" IWD is celebrated globally on March 8, and recognizes the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.

VIEW THE SITE

Sydney agency Frost* has created the third installment of their highly successful, multi-phased Ending HIV campaign, for the AIDS Council of NSW (ACON).
 
Launched to coincide with Sydney's Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras festival this month, the new creative focuses on encouraging gay men to test for HIV more frequently, as a key element in the fight to end new infections of the virus in Australia by 2020.

Melbourne Storm has used its Season Launch to unveil its new advertising campaign - urging sports-loving Melbournians to Fan Up and put their passion into action by embracing the rugby league experience in 2014 via CumminsRoss.
 
With superstars Cameron Smith, Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk again leading the charge, Fan Up encourages all Melbournians to embrace and experience the passion and excitement of world-class rugby league action, right in their own backyard.

VIEW THE SPOT

At a sell-out event at the Viaduct Events Centre in Auckland tonight, 800 advertising types came together to celebrate the NZ industry's best creative work of the past year.
 
The highly coveted Grand Axis was awarded to Clemenger BBDO, Wellington for its New Zealand Transport Agency (NZTA) film 'Blazed'. The trophy will sit alongside the Grand Prix the film was awarded in Screen Content and a further four Gold Axis awards Clemenger BBDO received: three in Screen Content and one in Craft for copywriting.

Jon Skinner, creative partner at independent creative consultancy 12:20 in Sydney is on this week's Adfest Interactive Lotus & Mobile Lotus jury. Here are his thoughts on what he's seen, exclusive to CB.

Adfest 2014, the annual Asian advertising festival, is in full swing with the judging now mostly complete and crowds of delegates from here there and everywhere arriving by the planeload.

For the last few days I have been judging the Interactive Lotus and Mobile Lotus categories along with jurors from China, Singapore, Japan and Thailand and Malaysia.

In a shock decision, the Film Craft Lotus and New Director Lotus jury voted unanimously to disqualify one of this year's Fabulous Four directors for the first time in ADFEST's history.

The jury said the Bangkok director's short film had nothing to do with the original script submitted, 'Love for Now', violating the rules and regulations of the Fabulous Four program.

"Of the 24 Fabulous Four scripts we originally received, we chose four because we felt they had the most potential to develop in film format. Unfortunately, one of the directors sent us another film, which has nothing to do with his original script. It wasn't a difficult decision - he didn't comply with the rules, which meant someone else missed out on the opportunity to participate in this year's Fabulous Four," says Hozefa Alibhai, managing director of 200 not Out FILMS in Mumbai and jury president of Film Craft Lotus and New Director Lotus.

UPDATED - Fifty six of the advertising industry's best names, specifically chosen for their expertise and global recognition, converged at Royal Cliff Hotels Group over the past three days to vote on the best creative works in the region of 2013.

This year's festival attracted 3,253 entries from 41 cities in the Asia-Pacific. With more than 10 countries and three continents represented on the jury panel, the diverse range of personalities and advertising-related savvy is one of the hallmarks that make ADFEST one of the industry's most anticipated events.

VIEW THE 4 MINUTE CB VIDEO OF DAY ONE
(taken just as delegates start to arrive at the conference centre)

On Thursday 27 March The Communication Council is hosting lunch with two of advertising's most influential creatives - David Droga and Sir John Hegarty and The Communication Council would like AWARD members, to help shape the conversation.

Please submit your suggested questions to be directed to Sir John Hegarty, David Droga or both, to jo@communicationscouncil.org.au by Wednesday 12 March.

This is a unique opportunity to hear their insights from years of international experience across the business.

The Q&A will explore the challenges and rewards of starting an agency, the future of this business, an exploration into their personal creative process and some intimate stories spanning their respective careers.

Tickets are still available, so please register before you miss out. Book here.