It turns out that those nasty contract issues have finally managed to entangle my typing fingers and draw me back into the warm embrace of Mediabistro. At minimum, I’ll be blogging over at a little blog called Agency Spy for the next six months. I’ll hope you’ll come visit me.
“With years of experience manipulating the masses, two of the best tricksters in the industry explain how you as a consumer are being duped, and how you are actually a part of the conspiracy to make you fat.”
That’s the description on Alex Bogusky’s new book, “The 9-inch Diet.” Wait… isn’t this the man who brought Burger King back to life by selling their fat riddled products to teenagers?
Nick Parish of Creativity has the whole scoop over here.
Today, the Tribble advertising blog engaged in a bit of geek diggery to speculate that Barack Obama would choose Kathleen Sebelius for Vice President. It’s now been picked up by powerhouse Dem blog, Daily Kos, and the mother of all politico sites, Drudge. Seems that ad bloggers might just take over the world. Muwhahahaha!
I’ve been spending a lot of time looking into Cannes. In 2008, over 28,000 entries from 85 countries competed for the coveted Lions at the Cannes 55th International Advertising Festival. That’s an increase of 10.2% versus 2007. Wow-zee, woozers! Without taking into account the new Design Lions category, that increase is 5.8%. A lot of those new entrants also come from the break out of TV to include other screens.
In order to enter your work in Cannes, you’re paying anywhere from $466 US (Radio Lions) to $1120 if you’re entering into the Film Lions. If you’re living in the UK, it’s a little bit more. The average entry fee cost (considering Film, Outdoor, Cyber, Direct, Radio, Integrated, etc.) is $816.84 (roughly). Stay with me, ok? So, that average times the 28,000 entries? $22,871,576. Oh yeah dawg. Read it and weep.
If you want to go for the full 4 days and go to every event the festival has running it’ll cost ya. That’s 2386.02 pounds or 4455.42 US dollars (that includes the French TVA fee). For arguements sake, let’s say that of the 10,000 reported delegates, not everyone got the full package. Lets say they ponied up for three days. That’s still $3126.61. Okay, multiply that by the 10,000 or so delegates. I’ll wait.
Got it? Right, right - $31,266,000. Shall we add those two numbers together? I’ll do it for you. It’s $54,137,576. And keep in mind that I’m underestimating everything. Plus, I’m not including how much it cost to access the archives each year - a whopping $2800 - nor the kickbacks from various enterprises in Cannes. Oh, Cannes is so smart.
Of course, some agencies bill back their entry fees to clients. Smaller agencies might just be on the line for the dough. Out of all the attendees about 96% of people will get their return on investment and hell, it can be valuable. The power of Cannes is undeniable. They’ve branded the hell out of the competition and its worked, hook line and sinker. A Cannes Lions brings new jobs, new brands and keeps old ones. Still, it’s kind of like a game of bolita.
Bolita is type of lottery, which was popular in the latter 19th and early 20th centuries in Cuba and among Florida’s working class. In the basic bolita game, 100 small numbered balls are placed into a bag and bets are taken on which number will be drawn. Bets sold well in advance, and the game could be rigged, by having extra balls of a given number or not including others at all. Other means of cheating included having putting certain balls in ice beforehand so they’d be cold and therefore easy for the selector to find by touch. Sounds kind of like Cannes no? Lets rig the game with fake ads along with the basic shaky principles of judges promising not to vote for friends and their own work. Riiiight.
Come on. The least Cannes could do is pay for the judge’s airfare and you know, check an ad or two to see if it’s real. How much would that cost? Ten dollars an hour to have some interns make some calls? You do the math.
Breaking up is hard to do. Especially, after 26 years. Stella Artois, run by Goliath InBev, has said saynora to ad agency Lowe. The agency will not defend. Stella also recently handed Mother, London, creative duties to launch a 4% alcohol beer for Stella. Mother beat out TBWA for the business.
Despite the long standing tag line of Artois, “Reassuringly expensive,” Stella was looking to counter its association in the UK with binge drinking. Hmm… somewhere around there, that slug of a slogan lost its ability to inform consumers. Just a note… that Love Your Local campaign you guys just got into? Yeah, that isn’t really going to help your binge drinking image. Pub goers have the chance to nominate their favorite London pubs for the new Stella Artois award of “London’s Best Loved Local.” Yes, lets celebrate where the binge drinking happens before it falls out into the street with the geezers wildly swinging at perceived slights. Hell, your brew is 25% stronger than standard lagers, so you know…
Stella’s shipments dropped by 5.1% during the second quarter in the UK according to AdAge. Meanwhile, the slug in the US is “Perfection has its price,” which seems to be working well. Somehow, the other moniker for the brand, “wife beater” has yet to land Stateside. Why wife beater? Ever hear of Tennessee Williams play A Streetcar Named Desire? Ever seen Marlon Brando’s version in the film? He’s drunk, shirt ripped and locked out of his apartment wailing “Stella” again and again? Yeah. There you go.
Meanwhile, Lowe Worldwide has been a pain in the ass to Interpublic’s bottom line for sometime considering the loss of their GM business in 2007, but it looked as though the shop may have returned to profitability in 2008. Two weeks ago, Michael Roth was attributing their rebound to the agency’s UK win of Unilever. Damn, damn, damn. This loss for Lowe will twist the numbers around, no? It’s Murphy’s Law. Just when the bad was going good, it all goes pear shaped.
Nationwide has locked down Carol Williams to handle a piece of the insurer’s ad business. The shop replaces Matlock Advertising and Public Relations as the insurance company’s African American agency of record. This latest team-up is Nationwide’s third initiative this year to reach this demographic. As reported:
“The insurance company does not break down sales or policy figures by race, he [Steven Schreibman, vice president of advertising and brand marketing] said, and would not be able to track campaign success through that measure.”
Question: How can you know if your strategic push towards blacks is working if you aren’t tracking sales by race? Either that statement is a big load of bollocks or, Nationwide is just stupid. Like really stupid. If you’ve got three separate programs, which includes movie advertising and a partnership with Tavis Smiley, then you know… you might want to go ahead and just make sure all that cash you’re spending is paying off, you know?
See… now if I was Carol Williams, I’d put my money where my mouth was. Get Nationwide to track your efforts precisely. Yes, it can be done considering that the campaign includes print and web along with braodcast. Then, tie your payment structure into the results. Now, I know that agencies are often hesitant to tie results into a pay, but if you’re good then tighten that jockstrap and get in the game. Use the results to increase your profit margin and use it as proof to future clients that your work actually results in sales. What better way to win a client than with raw and hard data? Yeah. Yeah. Just do it.
For the record, it’s not like Nationwide is on some Target level shit, who has always been big on speaking to multi-cultural audiences. In 1998, Nationwide was forced to pay out a $17.5 million settlement for discriminating against black homeowners. At the time, Constance Chamberlin, the executive director of the Richmond group that brought the suit, Housing Opportunities Made Equal said:
‘We showed that Nationwide relied upon race, in its own documents, as a basis for choosing where to do business.”And that, “-if you succeeded in getting a Nationwide policy, you would pay more than your white counterparts and you would be very likely to get an inferior policy.”
So, Nationwide was tracking back then? But, not now? Note to Carol Williams: Get your money. They most certainly are tracking the stats. You better believe it.
Seriously, everyone chill. It’s 84 degrees in New York City and I just had my first cocktail of the day. There’s something so very special about that mid-afternoon vodka martini. The Mad Men had it right.
That (hiccup) said, my alluded to contract issues aren’t about anything other than me being a total dumbass. I’m working it out. I am going to get back to blogging soon. It’s all I want to do. What can I say? I miss you guys.
Thanks for checking on me. Seriously. I’ve got tears in my eyes. No… seriously.
Promise y’all - everything’s gonna be alright.
x
Is SSF working? When I say SSF, I could be talking about “soft science fiction” or non-sphincter splitting fistulectomy. Never fear. Your senses haven’t left you. I am speaking of the joint venture between Saatchi and Fallon?. Saatchi & Saatchi and Fallon beget SSF in August 2007. Robert Senior(pictured above), one of the OG founders of Fallon, is charged along with the great and wise oh-obwi-wan Roberts (Kevin, that is). The stated mission of SSF was to fuel growth for Fallon in the U.S. and provide leadership for Saatchi in the U.K. So, is it working?
Saatchi UK landed the Labour account for the now beleaguered Gordon Brown just a month after forming SSF in September 2007. Saatchi has a long history of mucking around with Labour having performed seminal work for Thatcher’s campaign. The slogan then was “Labour Isn’t Working.” The slogan now is “Not Flash. Just Gordon.” Hmm… SSF didn’t have a lot of time to make an impact on that win. It may have been that Gordon wanted to nod up and down to the past long before SSF was even a brain fart.
This year: Saatchi UK recently lost the Australian Tourism account (valued at $85M) in a shoot out against DDB. They also lost the pitch for The Sun, which was valued at $9M and won by EuroRSCG. They defended on the pitch for Bel Group, which they lost. It went to McCann. Saatchi had to resign the Standard Life account just after 18 months due to a conflict of interest with the agency’s AXA account. S&S picked up that $15M AXA account in May 2008. The parted company with Barclays Capital in May. It was picked up by Ogilvy in July. Doesn’t sound so good does it? I could go on…
So, how has Fallon US fared under this new management system? Big boy creatives Al Kelly (picured left) and Todd Riddle report directly to the SSF Group. Kelly once said that:
“No matter how great a place is, when you’re in the middle of the machine, day after day, you can lose perspective.”
Has it happened yet Al? You’ve been there since 2007, but this can’t be easy. It can’t be easy to forge ahead over at Fallon. Could it really have been that their last win, Equinox, was way back a year ago? Yup. Yup. Right now, they are up for the $15M Tidy Cats account against Avrett Free Ginsberg and JWT. But, perhaps that will go the way of Bailey’s? JWT snatched it back after losing it for five years to BBH. Fallon was a contender and was eliminated early in that race. Way back in April that was.
The biggest hope and loss must be Microsoft selecting Crispin. It’s a soul crusher to the a death star and loss to an confident rebel alliance such as CP+B. Just the other day, Amy Sheil, Fallon Minneapolis’ director of media, left the hood to join CP+B as co-director of the agency’s media department. You go with the title and you go where the business is good. Other departures include: Murray Hardie, previously director of planning at Fallon in Minneapolis, has joined Energy BBDO in Chicago as chief planning officer.
So, you decide. Is it working this whole SSF thing? After a year of trying to get their shops back online, it seems that neither one, on either side of the pond has yet to rebound. True, it’s been just a year and what is being battled is an entrenched demoralized culture at Fallon US. Perhaps, that’s true for Saatchi U.K. It’s going to take more than a year, Roberts and Senior, a free press releases to get these shops back into the glory days.
Cross your fingers for Fallon US on the Tidy Cats business. Hope they win it. For Minneapolis and the (wo)men in the trenches.
Next Tuesday, casual dining restaurant Ruby Tuesday is going to blow itself up. One location of the chain wil be exploded and broadcast in real time over the internet. Why? The brand is relaunching itself in what is most certainly a nasty, beaten down economy where casual dining is no longer so casual for consumer’s bank balances.
There is a ton of media buys around the event from banner ads to radio spots, print and broadcast. The associated website even has a clock that is counting down the second till the big ka-boom. According to MediaPost, “TV spots will introduce a new spokesman who will introduce consumers to the radical changes taking place at Ruby Tuesday.” The campaign is the first work for the brand by BooneOakley.
What are those changes? A new look, as well as menu changes moving the chain from “grill” to “fresh American dining.” Hope that really means something. Is it cheaper? Is it healthier? What? A little info please?
BooneOakley is the shop that set-up “car spas” for their client State Farm Insurance. Meh. The company likes gimmicks. Last year, they also “literally ran” their RFP to Saucony following the whole 800 mile journey through blogs and videos. Whatever works, yeah? Well, they didn’t actually land that last account, so maybe not.
Back to Ruby Tuesday’s and casual dining… the thing is, these types of mass-eating restaurants have been talking about their need to shift from “ubiquitous” to “discernibly different” since 2004. Back then, Ruby Tuesday’s answer was to start seriously investing in advertising. The company brought in Bernstein-Rein in Kansas City to replace the Kaplan Thaler Group in New York. Notice: they didn’t actually make any changes to their services or menu. All that remained exactly the same.
If you look at their historical stock price data, you can see that the rush into advertising didn’t have much effect. The stock price still trended down a bit. In 2006, RT’s switched their agency again. This time the restaurant chose Brouillard Communications part of the WPP Group and more than doubled its ad spending in 2006. Looks like the market responded in kind. Two-thousand six was a good year. However, in 2007, the shop jumped (oh yes!) again to TargetCast TCM out of Maryland. Two-thousand seven totally sucked for the brand. And now, they are with BooneOakley.
This is a phenomenon. It’s “Agency Burnout.” The psychological definition of burnout is: “changes in thoughts, emotions, and behavior as a result of extended job stress and unrewarded repetition of duties. Burnout is seen as extreme dissatisfaction, pessimism, lowered job satisfaction, and a desire to quit.” CMOs and brands go through this. They jump from agency to agency to quell their overall dissatisfaction with their bottom line or market position. Didn’t you guys learn better when you were payng $40K a year to get that MBA?
Brands looking for a fix, can’t just switch shops and pray that the core brand attributes will automatically seem totally different to consumers (in the case of RT’s menu, service, price) or that despite potential issues (economic stress, rising gas prices, etc) are just going to disappear. Ruby Tuesday’s suffered a 10% decline in average sales per store over the last two years. Unless the shop was ready for some serious re-working, no advertising agency was going to save their souls. Now, by blowing up one of their locations and radically redefining their offerings (we hope) the brand is helping themselves to succeed. In advertising, sometimes (especially with established brands) you need two to tango.
According to a new, ground breaking study:
More than a third of tweens said search results have had “extreme impact” on their decision to purchase apparel.” “A minimum of 40% of tweens reported using search to gather more info about products/services about which they’d seen an ad. Some 78% said they use Google most often; 14% cited Yahoo instead.
As expected, IPG has bought the first of what may be many digital shops. Roth said they were ready to go on their last earnings call and he wasn’t kidding.
IPG now owns 51 percent of digital agency, Huge, which has 130 employees and offices in quite a few places. The shop has been around since 1999 serving clients like JetBlue, Nokia, AOL, Nutri-System, The Dish Network and Warner Music Group, to name a few with $3.5 billion in annual revenue. HUGE will continue to operate under the leadership of its four partners, David Skokna, Sasha Kirovski, Gene Liebel and Aaron Shapiro.
Interpublic owns a bit of a few digital shops in the US: iDeutsch, Kaleidoscope, R/GA, Reprise Media, Screengrab, FutureBrand, Wahlstrom Group, ID Media, MRM Worldwide, Jack Morton Worldwide and Rivet. You don’t hear much about Rivet other than rumors of closings and tales of the St. Louis branch’s bar called “The Bar.”
The Atlanta based Home Depot is getting ready to review its $500 million-plus communications business, including creative, media, PR, digital and multicultural chores. That’s the whole enchilada. Media is currently with Initiative and creative is with The Richards Group, which (uncharacteristically) is expected to defend. You, too would break your policy and defend if it was $500M in play.
Who might be invited to play? Perhaps BBDO Atlanta, which recently won Embassy Suites, as well as taking home Erickson Retirement Communities. ATL also retained The Peace Corps, REI and Georgia-Pacific Gypsum residential marketing communications this year. The kids down south are on a roll. BBDO ATL has been under the creative guidance of Marcus Kemp since 2004.
So perhaps, them. Maybe GSD&M as well? The shop is looking to make their comeback. Plus, they can say they are familiar with Atlanta, considering their latest addition, Popeye’s, is Hotlanta based, too.
There are three things we all know:
1. Agencies are constantly on the look-out for ways to differentiate themselves from other shops, while showing clients that they understand the fast changes and needs of consumers. On that latter point, they aren’t doing a very good job.
2. America is in the economic shit and could be headed deeper in to the shitter. Economists for the recent Bloomberg News survey forecasted consumer spending will rise 0.2 percent next quarter, the smallest gain since 1991. This lull is here to stay.
I’ll get to number three in a second, but I was just thinking… why aren’t agencies stealing clients by way of the economic downturn? Why isn’t there a discipline for this just like there is for online, mobile, multicultural and boomers? The ra-ra 90s were like a dream, true, but isn’t it best to have crisis teams on hand like PR agencies do? There’s loads of data to be mined and very little players (other than sociologists) in the field. Numerous brands are going to get crushed by a recession (hotels, casual dining chains, automobiles, etc.). Is it possible to make get some new clients via their worry over the bottom line?
I laid out my plan to a CMO friend of mine just now. He was like, “I’d consider it if my current agency was currently disappointing me.” And here’s the third truism:
3. We all know how easy it is to disappoint a hard-headed CMO. I imagine the pitch going something like this:
“Look, Bob. I know that you are worried about the economy. We all are, but listen… seriously, as an agency, we totally own this stuff. We’ve got this team who just sits around and thinks about advertising during a recession. No, really. They forecast how long the recession is going to last and what consumers are feeling moment to moment. They just give a damn about how you, Bob, are going to weather this storm and even, make fans for your brand. We are an advertising firm with an economic stimulus program for brands. Ha-ha!
Here’s the deal… We’re going to come up with a targeted 360 plan (online, real world, mobile, broadcast) for your brand based on real consumer insights and field work. Yes, that’s right, Bob. We listen to our insights people. We send them into the field to talk to consumers about your brand, about their needs and desires during this tough economic time. We just don’t have a bunch of creatives sitting around guessing about what they want like those other guys you are currently using. No offense or anything.
Bob, you look skeptical, but how about this: You give us a small piece of the business. Consider us your economic stress plan for that brand we did some side work on last year. Try us out. See what we can do. You gotta admit Bobby, boy - that one off work we did was darn good, yeah?
Anyway, listen. You pay us some amount, but if sales improve, that’s where we’ll make our money. Our final payments will be tied to our ability to help you deal with all this stuff. See? We both win. Your bottom line is intact. And then, you know, we can talk about your larger portfolio that may need the same services. Why don’t you come round the office when we finish up with these drinks? I’ll show ya what I’m talking about.”
Okay, in my imagination this Biz Dev Director sort of sounds like some sleazy guy in a back room bar, but you know… I haven’t heard about any big shops with such a discipline, but if someone is already playing this pitch, let me know! Would love to talk to them. Anyway, if “it’s the economy” works for politicians, why can’t it work in advertising? Here are some brands that would probably be game to such a pitch:
Office Dept Posts Quarterly Loss On Lower Demand
Casual Dining Restaurant Suffer From Slackening Consumer Spending
Delta Raises Fee For Second Bag
Unilever May Say Quarterly Profit Declined on Costs to Cut Jobs
Pilgrim’s Pride Posts Loss Amid Surging Feed Prices
Timberland 2Q loss narrows slightly