Up to $1 million could be lost as Lion Nathan cans Saatchi & Saatchi’s Hahn ad campaign starring Roger Moore due to be shot in Spain next week
CB can reveal that a multi-million dollar advertising campaign, starring Roger Moore, for Lion Nathan’s Hahn brand, via Saatchi & Saatchi Sydney, which was due to be shot in Spain next week, has been canned. Cancellation fees are estimated to be as much as A$1 million, according to a source close to the situation.
It is believed the shoot was cancelled once the decision was made to drop Saatchi’s from the Lion Nathan roster, news of which was reported first on the CB blog on Monday morning. The Hahn brand is now headed to Mojo, Sydney while Saatchi’s also lose Tooheys New to BMF.
From what CB can gather, the fully integrated multi-media campaign, which promised to be humorous, worked gangbusters in research and both the Hahn marketing people and agency are devastated.
[On Monday Lion Nathan marketing director Matt Tapper said about the decision to axe Saatchi & Saatchi and Host from the roster: “It has been a very tough decision to make. We value very strategic and integrated relationships with our agencies and having reviewed our roster we feel we can achieve more effective and sustainable partnerships with two lead creative agencies rather than four.
“Making these changes at any time is difficult, but we have taken the opportunity to do this now at the commencement of our new financial year to deliver a more consistent scope of work for our lead agencies,” continued Tapper. “We have great respect for the time we have shared with Saatchi & Saatchi and Host and the contribution they have made in building our brands. We thank them and wish them every success in the future.”]
Overnight, a Lion Nathan spokesperson has sent the following statement through to Campaign Brief: “Any agency change incurs some sunk costs related to work that may not progress, however reports of Lion Nathan incurring exorbitant costs are well wide of the mark.”
Moore is pictured by CB at La Colombe d’Or in St Paul de Vence back in June during the Cannes International Advertising Festival.
41 Comments
Man, that sucks. I work for an agency that competes with Saatchis, on brands that compete with Hahn, and I still wish them nothing but the best. That is a really rough one for all the people who I am sure worked so hard to make the campaign happen.
Shouldn’t that be a $1 million Bond?
As in James, Bond?
That’s really terrible. I can only imagine the work that had to happen to get to that point. My sympathies and while I know none of that million dollars will come anywhere near a creative, dammit, we all know it should.
Watch out boys… They’ll come back bigger and badder than anyone realises… I also work at a rival agency and am not stupid enough to take my eyes off S&S. I’d still kill to work there.
Nooooo… Spain… Roger Moore… Beer! That ad sounds awesome.
Go on, someone put the script up here
6:06
How did you get to be suck a knob?
6:06
I meant ‘such a knob’ but I guess it came out right.
Thats what you get from just doing them TVCzzzz
No doubt the 2 rostered agencies that stay with Lion were not selected because they are great “TV” agencies….
That is a seriously a tough break.
I really feel for the creatives on this one. That is a all time junket.
I can only imagine the man hours on that. Sorry guys. I’d be pissed as well. What a waste.
Be good to see the script…. Lynchy?
Yeah, really feeling for ad people who couldn’t make a $1,000,000 ad.
Get over It. It’s just a fucking ad.
$1mil in cancellation fees means the campaign was worth a lot more to the agency.
What the fuck was happening on the planner / client management side?
Please, someone leak the script.
Or, Lynchy, start a comp to write the best Hahn ad with Sir Roger and Spain.
Sure it sucks for the team who worked so hard on this but I wanna know the story behind it being canned. Who made the call? Why did they make the call? Were they expecting S&S to pick up the tab? Or, didn’t they think a little think like a bond would come back to bite them? And if they did what are they doing pissing away $1 Million? Can someone find out please.
8:11PM. Indeed it is just an ad, but this is an AD BLOG so we tend to discuss advertising here. Probably shouldn’t be working in the industry if that’s your attitude.
this should get interesting…. very interesting
A million dollars is a lot to an agency.
A million dollars isn’t very much to a beer company watching its sales shrink by that much in a week.
A million dollars is nothing at all to a beer company with insurance.
This isn’t a story. This isn’t a big decision for them. It’s just one of twenty decisions they made today.
Ya. TV is boring. This proves it.
Could be worse. I’m here at 11 oclock still working on some fucking point o f sale reubbish . . .
common saatchi.
pull yourself together.
Geez
In terms of marketing and advertising in the 70s and 80s, no-one had more money than cigarette companies. In this decade it’s alcohol and communications marketers who have the enormous coffers. While $1m represents a lot to service provides like ad agencies, it registers as a mere blip on the client’s bottom line as 11:00PM suggests.
If ad agencies were remunerated differently, such as a percentage of sales, then $1m would not appear to be such a scary figure as it seems to transpire in most of the comments posted here so far. As long as agencies continue to be squeezed by clients and an outdated remuneration system, while is marketers’ pocket money will continue to appear to us as a pot of gold.
For the record, it’s not fun to see what’s happening at S&S.
I reckon we could probably work the script out.
‘Stay Premium Gentlemen’ is their strategy, this brings up images of old-fashioned gentlemanly behaviour – or ‘gallantry’ as other brands are getting into at the moment.
I can see the meeting now.
“Who represents the utimate gentleman? The man men want to be, the man women want to be with?’
Creative holds up picture of Roger Moore. Client smiles.
Script is read out. It needs to be in a Bond like location, Roger Moore lives in Nice, and he’s too old to fuck off to the Bahamas, so Spain it is.
Roger walks around in a dinner jacket as sexy girls ditch their idiot men for the ultimate playboy. Probably beach front location.
He holds up a Hahn at the end as one of the guys is pushed into a pool behind him or something.
He takes a big gulp and says ‘Stay Premium Gentlemen in that Bond way.
Well, I like it.
Nice one Saatchis. Would have been great.
it was going to be my finest hour. or rather sixty seconds with a thirty second cutdown
@ 9.32…..close but no cigar.
I’ve worked on Lion Nathan and I can tell you for a fact that this wouldnt be the first time that they’ve spunked away a load of cash by cancelling a production. And it certainly wont be the last.
Yes, 9:32, you forgot the enigmatic eyebrow lift – Roger Moore’s killer move. Otherwise good.
Anyone else want a crack?
I reckon mine’s pretty close. (With eyebrow lift at the end of course, thanks 10:56..)
has anyone else noticed the infiltration of digital monkeys who keep posting ‘tv is boring’? Just saying…
6.51 (and others).
So how would you propose launching a mass market brand without using TV?
Can you name a single example that has worked?
Can you name a single mainstream brand that has been launched and maintained with digital alone?
Here are some facts for you:
http://adcontrarian.blogspot.com/2010/09/top-10-double-secret-unknown-facts.html
Enjoy.
Oh, and the remaining agencies on the Lion roster are very good TV agencies.
i reckon they should have used a cat.
Okay here’s my version.
Roger Moore sidles up to the bar.
The barman recognises him instantly and as Roger opens his mouth to order the drink the barman holds up a finger to silence him. The barman knows exactly what to get him and proceeds to make a martini (shaken not stirred of course). Roger just stands there watching with a knowing smirk. The barman presents the martini and stands there beaming.
Roger simply says, ‘please, this is Moore, Roger Moore. I’ll have a Hahn Superdry thanks’. as the barman looks deflated we super: Stay Premium gentlemen.
3:49
I reckon that’s pretty fucking close.
Nice one.
I’ve seen the script:
Open on Roger Moore at an expensive Spanish resort, dressed a la James Bond, white dinner jacket, black bowtie, red rose in the lapel. Gorgeous well-dressed women abound. He sits admiring the view from his table on the verandah.
A waiter delivers a refreshing bottle of Hahn on a silver tray, along with a glass. Mr Moore declines the waiter’s offer to pour it for him. Mr Moore prefers to pour this beer himself. Beautiful close up of beer being poured into glass (Hahn logo visible on glass).
The beer appears to be frothing and overflowing when suddenly a little fat Turkish man wearing a white, crumpled linen suit and a fez appears and says “Not so fast, Meester Bond”.
Whereupon he shoots Mr Moore in the chest.
The clever bit here is that the creatives have swapped the blanks for real bullets.
The campaign is suddenly world famous.
Arrows and pencils all round.
Excellent 3:49!
Roger Moore: Look at your beer, now back at mine. Now back at your beer now back to mine. Sadly it isn’t Hahn, but if you stopped drinking that tasteless carb-infused drink it could be like mine. Look down, back up, what are you drinking? You’re at the beach with ladies drinking the beer you should be drinking. What did you drink? Back at mine. I have it, it’s a bottle with frost all over it. Look again, the bottle is now a hot babe. Anything is possible when your beer smells like a beer, not horse shit. I’m in Spain.
dooddoo dodod odoooodooo
We open on a Hahn Super Dry. In the reflection we see Mr Roger Moore.
At the other side of the bar we see the rapper Bow Wow making an obnoxious ass of himself in front of gorgeous woman.
Moore walks over, pauses, lights a cigar, exhails and then says………’you annoying, talentless little cunt’.
He Shoots Bow Wow. Dead. Very dead.
Super: ‘Stay Premium Gentleman’.
Moore exits with gorgeous woman.
Clients do this all the time. Get used to it.
Yes, 10:02 brings some long-needed perspective, although some of the speculative suggestions here have been fun. If I had a dollar for every script, campaign or idea I had killed over a long career I’d be considerably richer than I am. The thing is this: Although we creatives can see the thing in all its magnificence long before film is even loaded into the camera, until it sees the light of day, an idea is nothing more than a flight of imagination – plus head hours. And however unfair that may be, that – unfortunately – is how we get paid.
why 2 weeks out from a shoot would there be 100% of cancellation fees?
um anti digital guy.
google.
but i agree with you, people carp on about getting 3 million hits from a ‘viral’
3 million people watched a brandpower tvc last night.
food for thought.
A million dollars to create an ad and agency’s tell us they can’t afford pay rises!!!
To the last person comment on here
“um anti digital guy.google.but i agree with you, people carp on about getting 3 million hits from a ‘viral’ 3 million people watched a brandpower tvc last night.food for thought.”
How much did the ad cost in comparison to the digital viral? i reckon you’ll still have left 200k to create something else, cost effifecy.
When you refer to tvc clicks of brandpower tvc i really doubt that’s actually true and quantifiable means, i mean we all know that the survey is down on 600 people or less and then multiple by the population thus giving us an average amount of people who could have watched it.
I thought this could help you housewife on being more efficient with your dosage of Brandpower stories