Home Depot used to be big time. Sure, it still is in terms of turnover and position on the Fortune 500, but there was a time when people were simply Apple-style passionate about shopping at Home Depot. And to work there, that was even better.
Bob Nardelli, now running Chrysler into the ground, shook the place up, moved away from some of the core tenets that made Home Depot great and left the place worse than it was before he got there.
If you know anyone with Home Depot connections, you know that he’s not exactly an Atlanta favorite.
Nardelli is out and now it looks like Richards Group, Dallas, is going to be out as well. As AdPulp reports, Home Depot is working with consultants as it prepares to put all aspects of its half-billion dollar communications business into review.
From a creative advertising perspective, Richards Group did functional work:
Retail is always challenging to advertise for, though Target is an example of where smart thinking and creativity can break through, and Home Depot’s ads always left me thinking that there was an opportunity missed. Especially in Home Depot’s heyday, when there was so much passion about the brand that was just never taken advantage of.
Balancing that out to some extent is my love for the Home Depot jingle/music bed.
Every time a Home Depot spot ran, I immediately knew what brand it was for even if I wasn’t looking at the television, and the homey, Americana sound fit perfectly into the idea of Home Depot helping the common man build his home and achieve the American Dream.
Richards Group and Home Depot marketing were disciplined about building the brand on the back of this memorable tune and sticking with it long enough for it to become ubiquitous and instantly memorable – which in this day and age of brand managers bouncing around from here to there like Hollywood starlets, each wanting to put their own special little stamp on the marketing, it saying a lot for their rigor and focus.
And it is the reason why, though the spots won’t ever win any awards, I like them.
After my post yesterday about the near-naming of his agency after John Travolta’s wife, Chuck Kelly, the second name in Preston Kelly, himself has posted a link to my blog and an excerpt of the post, at the official agency newsroom page no less…taking the piss about how I said his ego was the reason behind the near snafu with the agency’s name.
I love it. Lots of people – Bob Garfield, I’m looking at you – surely have reasons to want to take a blogger down a peg, but the only real way to do it is to take the piss like Chuck Kelly did.
Too bad for him there isn’t a peg down which I can fall.
Of course, I stand by my ego comment. I know that it is still an industry standard to name an agency after the founders/partners, but to re-name an agency after yourself means that there is some ego in play…but did anyone get anywhere in this industry without a little ego? And when did ego become a bad thing anyway (especially when the man is so clearly able to have a laugh about someone talking about his)?
All that said, doesn’t Mr Kelly seem like a good guy? And didn’t he kind of make his agency seem both engaged and pretty cool?
Paging Enfatico…please get your head out of your ass. That goes for all of you, but primarily for senior recruiter Dave McLane.
Or, as I like to call him, superdave!
Superdave! McLane, whose superdave@enfatico email address helpfully tells you, in case you didn’t already know from his reputation, that he is awfully super, just sent possible the super-ist of all recruiting emails to an anonymous Creative Director…who posted it on the internet.
Because, to put it politely, he’s a little bit upset about the email. Fucking pissed off, even.
It’s all about primary sources here at this paragon of journalistic awesomeness that you may know as the Daily (Ad) Biz, so let’s get right to the email that Superdave! sent from Enfatico!
—–
Subject: Acd position
From: Dave McLane
Date: 7/23/08 11:02 PM
To: XXXX
Please send your portfolio to superdave@enfatico.com
Sent from my iPhone
—–
To be fair, if I were to get an email like this from someone who is actually super like, say, David Lubars or Harvey Marco or Al Kelly then I would be okay with it. They are actually super.
They are also actually really busy, really respected and really badass enough to pull something like this off without sounding like a total douchebag…even though none of them actually would. When you’re really big time, you don’t have to posture.
Enough from me, let’s take a look at the reaction of the very put out Creative Director who received the email…because, as you would expect, it’s pretty super!:
1. WHO THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? […] You must be Cardinal Richelieu come back from a past life. Since you seem so fond of barking out instructions without any benefit at the end for your personal slaves who are duty bound to fork over their life’s work.
2. WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU EXPECT FROM YOUR ONE SENTENCE, INFORMATIONLESS EMAIL? […] I’m suddenly DYING to work for a place that wants to litter the earth with shitty Dell computers.
3. JUST EXACTLY WHAT FUCKING POSITION IS AVAILABLE??? “Acd position”? Does that mean an ACD position? Or A CD position? There’s this fucking thing called a goddamn SHIFT key. Look into it when you’re not pretending to be somebody with their shit together. […]
4. DO YOU THINK ANYONE GIVES A FLYING FUCK THAT YOU HAVE AN IPHONE?
5. DO YOU REALLY THINK PEOPLE LOOKING FOR A CAREER WILL BE IMPRESSED BY YOUR ONE SENTENCE EDICT EMAIL? Maybe people looking for a career at Enfatico […]
As I alluded to in an earlier post, there is a new and improved Pretty AE lurking around the Official Private Life of the Daily Biz…there are two actually.
My brother says that I love drama and I usually disagree, but after spending over a year pining for a co-worker and then moving seamlessly into trying to choose between two pretty account siders at competing agencies (though from the same holding company…which may or may not mean anything), I think that he may have a point.
Here is how we got to this stage in what I am unofficially calling the Pretty AE Auditions (at least around my apartment I am):
As you may recall from an earlier post, I had been set up with a friend of a friend and it actually went well…which isn’t something that you can bank on in one of those set-up situations. I had prepared for the worst. It was considerably better than that.
We have hung out here and there – by no means would I go in two-footed on this one – and I am interested enough to keep going back, as it were, to see how things develop.
Things got interesting late last week when I ran into an old friend that I had sporadically kept in contact with (and then Facebook came along and made our sporadic friendship totally official). Said friend, more Pretty Account Supervisor than mere AE, is really attractive.
Really attractive.
And, based in part on our lengthy Facebook friendship and history that stretches back to both of our baby steps into the business, I know that I like her for more than the whole tall, blond, blue-eyed thing she has going on.
So…where does that leave us?
First, I plan to see how things pan out with The Auditioning Pretty AE. Why let a bird in the hand, pardon the pun, fly away?
Second, I plan to learn the lessons from The Pretty AE to make sure that I don’t dawdle forever on this Pretty Account Supervisor situation that is showing an awful lot of potential.
My brother thinks that maybe I should move beyond advertising and that I might be happy with a teacher or lawyer or something…but that just wouldn’t be quite as interesting. Or filled with drama. And apparently I like drama.
The exodus at Ogilvy isn’t really news, but it is continuing…both voluntary and involuntary departures having happened with regularity through the past few weeks. It’s getting kind of ugly over there and not even the departure of Ms Lazarus has lightened the mood.
I guess that’s how it is when people think they may lose their job.
The interesting part about the Ogilvy departures, at least from the interactive folks, is that a big chunk of them seem to have landed at agency.com…where they promptly displaced another chunk of interactive types who decamped for God knows where.
Talk of currently being in a recession may be economically illiterate, but even so the best that can be said is that we are in a period of very slow growth.
Which, you may have heard, is a bad thing for ad agencies.
And with the obvious problems faced by carmakers and rising cost of goods pinching profits for CPG companies, both of which are the kind of company that traditionally anchor agency client rosters, it’s a dicey time to be making big job moves.
Not that many from Ogilvy have much choice in the matter.
Ad agencies are as much a brand as any client they might represent…which is why the Minneapolis shop formerly known as Kerker, named after 1960s ad man Dick Kerker and a solid regional shop known for solid, regionally-relevant creative, is re-branding.
The shop has moved from suburban Edina to the Northeast neighborhood of Minneapolis, right across the Mississippi from downtown and definitely part of the vibrant, urban core of the city.
While the move is important in that it was kind of embarrassing to be the largest agency not in a cool part of town, the key change is the name change. Kerker is now Preston Kelly, after head creative Chris Preston and owner Chuck Kelly.
The original idea, to satisfy Kelly’s ego, was to put his name first…until they realized that it would be pretty silly to name an ad agency after John Travolta’s wife and reconsidered. Ego comes second to looking ridiculous…at least in this case.
kelly preston
Not to mention the fact that they would never win the SEO battle for their own company name.
Apologies for cutting and running at the end of last week…things have been busy here at the House of Biz as we have wrapped shooting for our ’09 print campaign for our biggest client and are now in the midst of all of the production that will make those shots look good.
Or at least be approvable by the client.
Not to mention that the copy decks that go with those snazzy new shots are in a veritable typhoon on swirling and contradictory feedback and revisions from the client. It’s been a busy time.
It has not been as busy for me though as it has been for The New Pretty AE – oh yes, there is a new Pretty AE and there will be an update on that situation later today – who has been out in LA for a proper shoot. You know, one of those television kinds.
Everything about a TV shoot reminds me just how overblown the shouting about the “death of the :30 spot” is.
Ignoring the positives about television as an advertising medium – it’s broad reach, the video format that showcases products, the institutional credibility of a brand advertising on television, the fact that people click through channels and come across ads – the simple reason that it won’t die any time soon is that production is far too fun.
It’s too fun for the agency – evidenced by the stories coming back from LA about 3am swims in the ocean and dinner at the Palm.
It’s too fun for the client – what client can resist being treated like royalty in LA and then being on an actual set and imagining themselves as a real big time film guy…after all, this is where movies are made!
There are business reasons to advertise on television, which is nice, because even if there weren’t agencies and clients would find a way to make them happen.
It’s five minutes before I have to run into a meeting and it’s been five minutes since my last meeting so there isn’t much time to blog, but something irked me in the previously mentioned last meeting: online advertising’s focus on click-through rate as a key metric.
Sure, there are some times when click-throughs really matter as a measurement tool…for example, I just finished some banners that support the launch of a new product and have a much-more-smoothly-written click here to learn more call to action that takes consumers to a microsite where there actually is more to learn.
On this most recent project, we’re just sending people to a website because we were told to have a call to action so we hit the objective of getting a 0.0X% click-through rate because that is what is says in the brief.
Who cares that there is nothing at the destination to make it worthwhile.
What is wrong with using online banners as sort of an internet OOH?
The product isn’t really one that makes sense for some rich media techie marvel, calculating effectiveness based on interaction rates/time is out. We have nowhere to send people for anything other than maybe, maybe some lame brand information and videos. But we want to build awareness. Is the OOH model so bad?
What with the ads are served to a targeted audience, etc and so on, is the online-OOH hybrid model a bad one for building awareness?
I know that it’s cool to see results that you just can’t see for other tactics, but if they don’t fit the brief, product or project is there a reason to force fit them? I mean, is there a reason to force fit them just because they are there?
The account team is saying that is must be done because it is a client mandatory and, while that is a better reason than “we ate paint chips as a kid,” it still doesn’t do it for me.
One of the things that bugs me about working in advertising is that everyone thinks that they are really easy to do and always wants to comment on them, pitch me ideas and otherwise give me advice and consent on what I do.
I don’t comment on Ginsberg’s opinion in US v Virginia to my lawyer friends. I don’t give investment advice to my financier friends (though maybe I should have to my previously-at-Bear-Stearns buddy). And I certainly don’t write pithy emails making fun of famous surgeons and how they perform surgery to my doctor friend based on having seen a few episodes of ER.
I don’t do this because I don’t know what the shit I am talking about.
Which is true about people who don’t know commenting on advertising…usually.
An attorney friend of mine – who will likely get an informed brief from me on US v Virginia just to show him up – emailed me a rant today about an ad he saw while watching the Yankees last night at his swanky bachelor pad in southern Connecticut. And it was pretty funny. So I am going to post it in full:
I couldn’t find the clip online (which is surprising, because the commercial airs literally every two seconds on ALL local broadcasts of anything), but there is a bizarre new Optimum Online TV spot that just has a relatively handsome dude standing in a totally blank backdrop talking about how awesome Optimum is.
There is a campaign that features the handsome dude and within that campaign a spot that is specifically for their internet service and is directed at Connecticut customers.
The handsome dude promises that Optimum Online is “5 times faster than that phone internet service.” That’s fine. It is pretty much common knowledge that telephones give you Lupus, so it’s not surprising that they would screw up your Google searching too. Stupid phones. But here’s where the new ad takes a new turn, a turn that I can’t decide whether it makes Optimum awesome or just a huge dick.
The handsome dude finishes his fictional-statistics schpiel and then snarkily jabs (paraphrasing), “Obviously Connecticut knows that one place where going faster is better is on the internet. What state wouldn’t want that…….? North Dakota, probably. Pshaww…”
Sooooo true. People in Connecticut LOVE mocking other states. They get off on that shit. In fact, every household in Greenwich just bought a separate internet connection for every room in the house to remind themselves how much they rule and how much people in North Dakota suck.
Optimum might have erred in their hubris, though.
I doubt they accounted for the business they would lose in SOUTH Dakota as well as the mocked and scorned North, because people in South Dakota are stupid and might not realize that only North Dakota was being singled out as being stupid, which they clearly are (I mean, did you hear that those people don’t even like to go fast on the internet?? They have problems).
So, in favor of Optimum being awesome: they like to rip on states other than Connecticut, thus breaking through and connecting with the target. And, the ad clearly prompted everyone in Greenwich to buy multiple internet connections, thus driving sales
In favor of Optimum being dicks: North and South Dakota
The news is not unexpected if you have been reading the daily (ad) biz, but it’s still sort of sad to type because it definitely means layoffs for the good people of Kansas City-based VML. Dr Pepper / Snapple Group, formerly Cadbury Schweppes, has removed the last vestiges of a WPP roster of agencies that only a few months ago also included Y&R and Mediaedge:cia by shitcanning interactive shop VML.
Considering that the DPSG soda portfolio, with flavored sodas leading the way, has outperformed category competition from Coke and Pepsi, I can definitely see why sleazy VP of Marketing Sean Gleason would want to remove them. After all, they were responsible for the tragic development, launch and massively over-estimated sales of Accelerade. What? Eh? Oh.
The good news is that, with VML out of the way, Mr Gleason can fill out his roster of agencies with an interactive shop headed by a buddy, just like a tipster says that he did with media, advertising and below-the-line.
I don’t know if that accusation is true, but a tipster who has been right before says it is, and anyway it wouldn’t be the first time something like this happened in the history of marketing.
It happened on BMW with GSD&M and on Porsche with Cramer-Krasselt and on the Burger King interactive account with Crispin, Porter + Bogusky. It happens. It’s the industry.
But it still sucks.
It especially sucks for those who will lose their jobs…there is no official word that this will happen, but after losing the Burger King account to the aforementioned CPB and now DPSG, which had seen them as agency of record with responsibility for online advertising, major web redesigns on most brands, maintenance, etc and so on, it is going to be tough to retain their staffing model as is.
