Producer Teddy Lynn, Creative Director Lee Einhorn Head Up New Endeavor.
By Emily Vines
SANTA MONICA --Last month, agency Arnold Worldwide opened a new unit it is simply referring to as Arnold Worldwide’s entertainment division. Lee Einhorn is the creative director of the office, based in Santa Monica, while Teddy Lynn is the executive producer.
The idea, Einhorn said, is to extend beyond traditional advertising into feature films, television including reality shows and scripted television, documentaries and video games. “We want to make sure that balance is maintained so that the shows that we produce or movies, or whatever it is, are an attraction, not a distraction,” he said. “We want people to come and seek them out and not flip past them like we find is going on now with a lot of sort of grossly product-placement type shows,”
Their approach to branded entertainment will be to work organically from the soul of a brand, Einhorn related. “Our goal is to never shoehorn a brand into an existing piece of entertainment so it’s not going to be The Apprentice model.”
On the contrary, their model will be along the lines of the Hallmark Hall of Fame movies where the greeting card company-sponsored television films appealed to the demographic it wanted to target.
“I think what makes us different than what most agencies are doing is this balance between traditional advertising and traditional entertainment and the fact that — we listen to what each other is doing the whole time so that at no point am I representing something in the world of Hollywood that isn’t fair to our brands and vice versa,” Lynn said of the two-man team. “The key is to have the perfect balance between projects that are truly entertaining and also serve the brands.”
At this point, the two colleagues are not able to discuss any upcoming projects, although they say several are in the works. They have recently visited with creative directors in the Boston office for a brainstorming session. They have also been to the agency’s offices in New York and Washington D.C. and have a trip planned to St. Louis.
BEHIND THE CONCEPT
Einhorn has worked at Arnold before. In Boston, he was an art director and then associate creative director for four years prior to joining Publicis & Hal Riney, San Francisco. Then, for a little more than a year, Einhorn was group creative director at Hal Riney where he and Lynn met while the latter was acting as a consultant to the agency. They shared a similar vision on branded entertainment and since Lynn (Trial & Error, Pleasantville) has been a producer in Hollywood for some time, their approaches were complementary.
“We came at if from opposite angles. My view was to find new, interesting ways to finance entertainment projects and Lee’s was to find new ways for brands to get their word out and we found we met in the middle,” Lynn said.
On why they decided to take their idea for this division to Arnold, Einhorn cited the numerous clients the agency manages as well as his perception that the agency has taken aggressive steps to do things differently in the past.
Einhorn and Lynn report to Pete Favat, managing partner/executive creative director, and Ron Lawner, chairman and chief creative officer, in Boston. “I worked on the Truth campaign and on Monster.com with Pete and we had talked about things like this even five years ago,” Einhorn shared.
SAG-AFTRA Calls For A Strike Against “League of Legends”
"League of Legends" is caught in the middle of a dispute between Hollywood's actors union and an audio company that provides voiceover services for the blockbuster online multiplayer game.
The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists called a strike against "League of Legends" on Tuesday, arguing that Formosa Interactive attempted to get around the ongoing video game strike by hiring non-union actors to work on an unrelated title.
Formosa tried to "cancel" the unnamed video game, which was covered by the strike, shortly after the start of the work stoppage, SAG-AFTRA said. The union said when Formosa learned it could not cancel the game, the company "secretly transferred the game to a shell company and sent out casting notices for 'non-union' talent only." In response, the union's interactive negotiating committee voted unanimously to file an unfair labor practice charge against the company with the National Labor Relations Board and to call a strike against "League of Legends" as part of that charge.
"League of Legends" is one of Formosa's most well-known projects. The company provides voiceover services for the game, according to SAG-AFTRA.
SAG-AFTRA has accused Formosa of interfering with protections that allow performers to form or join a union and prevent those performers from being discriminated against — a move the union called "egregious violations of core tenets of labor law."
Formosa did not immediately respond to a request for comment. "League of Legends" developer Riot Games said that the company "has nothing to do" with the union's complaint.
"We want to be clear: Since becoming a union project five years ago, 'League of Legends' has only asked Formosa to engage with union... Read More