Venables Bell & Partners

PAUL ON THE HOTSEAT.

Meredith Vellines — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:38:50 +0000

Our fearless leader Paul Venables was featured this week in the San Francisco Business Times. Read about how he got his start as an entrepreneur and his aspirations as a girls softball coach here.

WHAT DO CREEPY MAGICIANS AND MAN-BOOBS HAVE TO DO WITH CLEAR 4G INTERNET?

Will Gorman — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 21:29:16 +0000

This week VB&P launches a new campaign for Clear 4G internet that includes TV spots “Shirts” and “Magician.” Both play up ridiculous scenarios where data limits and long-term contracts from the internet world are applied to everyday situations. In “Magician,” a family finds themselves awkwardly eating breakfast with a magician with whom they reluctantly signed a “two-year birthday party contract.” And in “Shirts,” a mid-level manager finds himself giving a bare-chested presentation to a crowded conference room because he happened to reach his “shirt limit for the month.”

TOP TEN.

Meredith Vellines — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:46:20 +0000

We’re proud to report that Audi “Vampire Party” scored in the top 10 of “Most Liked” Super Bowl ads according to USAToday‘s first ever Facebook AdMeter. This is huge. We beat out Chevy, Acura’s Seinfeld, Coke’s Polar Bears, Budweiser and…drumroll…Ferris. Check it out here. *

USAToday isn’t the only poll that “likes” our work. Nielsen ranked us the 7th “Most Liked” and we are now #8 on Hulu’s Adzone Countdown (voted by Facebook likes). To top it off, we have 6.1 million YouTube views and counting (7th most overall of any Super Bowl advertiser).

In addition to all this social media chatter, our Vampires earned top press reviews in People, CNBC, The Daily Beast, LA Times, Fox Sports and Good Morning America.

*The Facebook AdMeter is a much bigger deal than the traditional USAToday AdMeter as the traditional one only talks to 286 randoms in McLean, VA.

WE’RE ULTRA EXCITED.

Meredith Vellines — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 19:32:18 +0000

Last week Adweek announced VB&P’s win of Intel’s Ultrabook assignment. This is one of Intel’s biggest marketing pushes in years and continues the relationship we’ve had with them, creating the “Sponsors of Tomorrow” master brand campaign and the hit viral film “The Chase.” Check back in this April to see what we come up with.

VB&P ON THE AIR.

Meredith Vellines — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 19:06:06 +0000

This week our very own Paul Venables and Lucy Farey-Jones had television appearances on ABC news, talking about the Super Bowl. Watch Paul here and Lucy here. As you’ll see, the camera loves them.

Additionally, Paul, “I hang out with Jerry Seinfeld,” Venables appeared on KGO radio with Ronn Owens to talk about the game. Listen to Paul’s thoughts about Sunday’s ads here.

THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.

Meredith Vellines — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 19:01:58 +0000

Well, that vampire fad was nice while it lasted. Watch what an Audi S7 does to a gaggle of vamps in this new Super Bowl spot. Then tweet #SoLongVampires and declare what side you’re on.

QUICK, FIND THE COMMERCIAL.

Ned Brown — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 00:55:08 +0000

These days, it’s not about when advertisers pre-release their Super Bowl commercial – it’s about how. To put a twist on this year’s Superbowl pre-release, we created an interactive game on Facebook called, “Race the Light,” where we release 60 one-second clips of our Audi Super Bowl commercial. The mission of the game is to find all 60 clips (which are hidden) before time is up. If you succeed, then you unlock the full commercial and can enter a contest for a trip to the Audi Sportscar Experience. So click here to see if you’re up to the challenge.

THE SUPER BOWL AND THE SOCIAL NETWORK.

Meredith Vellines — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:45:08 +0000

Facebook is going to be a Super Bowl marketer’s best friend this year as the social network is set to edge out YouTube for ad searching and sharing, VB&P found in results from our third annual Super Bowl survey published in today’s Mashable.

“Facebook has been critical to game day and post game marketing for a couple of years now, but for the first time in our study we are seeing the site bypass YouTube and brand sites as the first place Americans search online for ads pre-game,” said Lucy Farey-Jones, partner and head of strategy, VB&P.

Almost one in five (19%) Americans searched for ads before the game in 2011, about double (11%) who did in 2010. Of that group, 48% searched for ads on Facebook, putting the site just ahead of popular video sharing site YouTube, brand sites, and media sources as the lead destination to find ads. As Audi of America’s agency of record and creator of five years’ worth of Super Bowl spots, VB&P is taking advantage of this trend in this year’s game. To learn more, visit Audi’s Facebook page on January 25th.

Facebook will also be the place where Americans share ads. More than a third (36%) of Americans plan to share their favorite ad via social media. Of that group, 87% will share via Facebook, which is more than emailing with a YouTube link (6%) and Twitter (4%). Theoretically, this means that if 111 million people watched this year’s game, there could be 35 million posts on Facebook about Super Bowl advertising and with the average Facebook user having 130 friends, those collective posts could result in over 4.5 billion incremental impressions. Overall, digital engagement during the Super Bowl has experienced double-digit increases from 2010—2012, proving Americans are increasingly multitasking during the big event.

For more information on the study or to schedule an interview with Lucy Farey-Jones, partner and head of strategy, please contact Meredith Vellines at meredith.vellines@venablesbell.com.

THE UNSTOPPABLE ONE.

Matt Keats — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 01:16:05 +0000

Tragic hero, check. Arch nemesis, check. Epic battleground, check. No, these aren’t the ingredients for another Harry Potter sequel. It’s simply our latest spot for Audi quattro™, the world’s top selling AWD system. To pay tribute to its 30-year legacy, we turned to one of the all-time classics in American literature for inspiration. Filmed on location in Alaska in sub-zero temperatures, the aptly titled “Ahab” re-imagines Herman Melville’s epic struggle between obsessed sea captain and elusive white whale to bring the legend of quattro to life. If you watch closely, you may even find quite a few hidden references to the timeless tale. Along with TV, additional episodes are running online. Watch them all here.

LABYRINTH.

Meredith Vellines — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:33:12 +0000

This week we launched our first work for Google in the form of a video that re-imagines the game of labyrinth as a massive handcrafted version of Google Maps. The game-like structure of the piece showcases many fun things about Google Maps that you may not know existed, while also illustrating that getting from point A to B can be a journey of unexpected fun and exploration. In addition to breaking on Mashable, Adweek named it the “Top Spot” of the week and it earned “Ad of the Day” by Creativity.