“Couch“¸ a spot directed by Jan Gleie for Febreze and Grey Worldwide was part of a campaign, dubbed “Breathe Happy,” that recently won Cannes 2012 Creative Effectiveness Lion. The same campaign earlier took Silver at the 2012 Global Effie Awards.nnGleie, represented in the U.S. by Madheart, directed English and German versions of “Couch,” which was shot in Berlin. In it, several adults are blindfolded and led into a squalid apartment filled with dirty laundry, smelly shoes, musty furniture and other malodorous objects—all of which had been treated with the air freshening product Febreze. The blindfolded subjects are asked to sniff things handed to them or found by crawling on the floor and told to describe what they smell. “Fresh air.” “A fresh, clean smell.” “Like flowers.” When the blindfolds are removed from their eyes, they gawk at their horrifying surroundings in disbelief.nnn nThe subjects of the commercial were real people who were recruited on the street and led directly to a trailer for blindfolding. They were then taken to an apartment that a crew had spent hours stocking with foul-smelling objects treated with Febreze. (The couch prominently featured in the spot was found in a dump.) The responses of the subjects, as they examine their surroundings with their noses, were entirely spontaneous and unrehearsed, and recorded via hidden cameras from a remote site.nnGleie often employs real people in the ads he directs (notably in his acclaimed work for Pampers, Target and Hallmark), but the clever ruse incorporated into this spot gave it a novel twist. nnThe spot has been wildly successful, earning a huge number of hits on YouTube (and spawning several spoofs). Since the campaign broke, Febreze has become Procter & Gamble’s fastest growing brand.nnCreditsnTitles: CouchnClient: Procter & Gamble (Febreze) nAgency: Grey Worldwide. Ingo Klein, creative director; Eric Straub, creative director; Anja Seibert, producer. nProduction: TwinFilm, Dusseldorf. Jan Gleie, director; Silvia Kirsch, producer.nnMadheart is based in Los Angeles. For further information, call 213.995.4555 or visit www.madheart.com. The company is represented on the West Coast by Lisa Gimenez Toliver (contact Lisa via email), Hot Betty in the Midwest (contact Hot Betty via email), and, on the East Coast, Dana Dubay (contact Dana via email) and Kelly Flint (contact Kelly via email).
Lisa Phillips Executive Producer Madheart Contact Lisa via email 213 995 4555
Contact:Media: Linda Rosner ArtisansPR 310.837.6008 Contact Linda via email
NYF Advertising Awards Open for Entries: Grey New York and New York Festivals Launch ‘No BS Allowed’ Campaign and Plant Seeds of Growth
The New York Festivals Advertising Awards is now officially open for entries for the 2025 competition. Grey New York has teamed up with New York Festivals Advertising Awards to unveil a bold new creative campaign, titled “No BS Allowed,” for the show’s 2025 awards season. The campaign serves as a call for entries, challenging the advertising industry to reject superficiality and focus on creating work that truly matters. The New York Festivals Advertising Awards, known for celebrating the world’s most innovative and impactful advertising, is taking a hard stance against the industry’s reliance on inflated metrics, fabricated buzz, and empty results. In this provocative campaign, these industry conventions are reimagined as something more tangible and valuable: fertilizer for growth. Thiago Cruz, Chief Creative Officer at Grey New York. “New York is famously known for not putting up with BS, so we’re ensuring our festival stands for that too. We’re looking for work that truly drives both cultural and business value for clients.” The campaign humorously relabels case studies' so-called "BS" with sharp accuracy, exposing the elements that undermine true creativity:
- Made-up tweets
- Inflated number of impressions
- Lots and lots of positive sentiment