1. Chinese LandWind brazenly rips Jaguar Land Rover
LandWind’s corporate website features a nifty slogan that reads ‘LandWind: Easy as 1-2-3’. It couldn’t be more fitting as the Chinese company featured a carbon copy of the Range Rover Evoque at the Guangzhou auto show in southern China last week. Jaguar Land Rover has vowed to take action against the Chinese car brand at a time where people have touted the end of copycat China. What’s even juicier is that the LandWind’s X7 will go on sale for about a quarter of the price of the Evoque (RMB 578,000). If that’s not controversial enough for you, the X7 is expected to arrive in dealerships later this month, while the real Chinese-made Evoque won’t be on the market for another two months. How would you feel as a brand if you were Land Rover?
2. Agency of Year: ANZ and Japan/Korea winners; Network of the Year shortlists
It's been a busy week in the Agency of the Year programme. Today we unveiled the winners in Australia/New Zealand and Japan/Korea. A few days back, we published the Agency Network of the Year shortlists. See www.aoyawards.com for details and table reservations for the all the Agency of the Year festivities.
3. P&G Malaysia’s crying babies
P&G launched an interactive YouTube video of screaming kids with skippable links. Ramanjit Singh Gulati, creative director at Grey KL, promises no children were harmed, or even greatly upset, in the making of the video.
4. Airbnb’s homemade global campaign
The new video campaign sets out to educate viewers about Airbnb, portraying the world as small and encouraging people to explore and discover. To produce the video, 30 people spent five weeks building an 85-square-metre train set, with more than 2,400 craftsmen hours spent creating the landscape. The work used 20 square metres of plywood, 12 litres of glue and more than 160 sheets of polyboard.
5. Agency-Marketer partnership award announced
In case you missed it, the winners are:
- Isobar China and Coca-Cola (Gold)
- Wunderman Shanghai and Land Rover China (Silver)
- Lowe Asia Pacific and Dirt is Good (Bronze).
Ken Mandel, managing director of Hootsuite Asia has confirmed his departure. Mandel told Campaign Asia-Pacific that the company was restructuring its global leadership around key verticals and that this arrangement means “holistic management becomes a lot less necessary.”
The official Bruce Lee Instant Drinks launched in Hong Kong this week with eight flavours inspired by the legend himself, according to licensing company Bruce Lee LLC. The company describes the beverage line as "new, healthy choices with great taste", and the "pride of Hong Kong" at an "affordable premium price".
8. Coke China crowdsources fresh ideas
A new "Coca-Cola China Video" contest offers €25,000 (US$31,175) in prizes and runs from 24 November to 18 January. "If you had to explain to an alien who has never tried it before, which particular element of the Coke taste experience would you talk about?" the brief asks.
10. Tourism authority of Thailand produces ‘I hate Thailand’ video
Relentlessly friendly Thai people win over an angry, idiotic western tourist who claims to 'hate Thailand' in a video has achieved more than 1.5 million views and worldwide media coverage. This week the Tourism authority of Thailand revealed that they were behind the unbranded video.