mckinney emerges victorious

North Carolina agency McKinney has come out victorious in the shootout for the Sherwin-Williams account, which is great news in general but also in this economy. I imagine that if you’re a McKinney staffer walking in this morning you’re feeling just a little bit better about your position than you may have been.

Unless you suck. Then you’re likely to get fired.

Anyway, the inside scoop is that McKinney won out on the strength of a brand and communication platform that took the iconic paint company into the chic, frou-frou realm that they wanted to go.

Good luck with that, says this pundit, noting smugly that Sherwin-Williams has no distribution in Home Depot or Wal*Mart, the who biggest paint outlets, and that brands like Ralph Lauren that are in Home Depot already own that niche. It’s not going to be an easy platform to deliver on.

But why get negative early? Congrats McKinney.

random rant after a long day

It has been a busy week…a busy couple of weeks, actually, but this week is really the culmination of it all. With that all said, I am leaving work now to go home and quickly get drunk before passing out and doing it all over again. While I get drunk I plan to think to myself, “self, why do agencies like mine continue to hire big-title types instead of hiring low since we are concerned about profitability and our biggest cost is salaries…is it because they are retarded or just have a past connection with these people and want to give them a sinecure?”

And then I will think to myself, “self, maybe it’s time to start that new agency you’ve been thinking about.”

“You know, the one where you go off on your own.”

“Maybe it could work.”

Maybe.

rewarding campbell-ewald

So…say you work at Campbell-Ewald. You’re feeling a little down after a year in which you’re lost basically all of your clients and the ones that remain, like GM brand Chevrolet, are drastically cutting their budgets because, well, they can’t sell a damn thing.

All of your friends are feeling bad for you because you live in Michigan, a state mired in economic trouble that is (and has been for years) worse than the rest of the country.

And of course you’re out of Detroit, Michigan…that poor city has been kicked so many times it’s tender enough to be served as a main course at Perry St.

Perry St is my favorite steakhouse.

It also has good pork chops.

Anyway, all is not lost if you still have a job at Campbell-Ewald! That’s right, my friends, despite the shocking year that the agency has had, the good folks steering the ship from rock to rock have decided that the best thing to do is reward everyone by giving them the week between Christmas and New Year’s off.

Though I did for a minute consider that perhaps IPG would just close the agency once everyone left for the holidays, I don’t think that Roth & Co are that devious. Perhaps they are that heartless. You’ll have to ask someone at an IPG agency to confirm.

Anyway, go on Campbell-Ewald and enjoy your break.

You deserve it. Ish.

a strategy statement come to life

I have been meaning to comment on DDB’s new spot for McDonald’s coffee since I saw it a few weeks ago, but…well, but this work thing is pretty busy and things with the Pretty Account Supervisor have gone better and quicker than I expected and when you put the two together I end up with a lot of things that I want to write about but never actually get to. Luckily, Agency Spy posted on the spot and that is the impetus for finally getting to it.

Agency Spy thinks that the spot is terrible, divisive and lowest common denominator:

[ VIDEO ]

I think that the spot is just a far too literal execution of the brief, the strategy statement in :30 of moving images.

I don’t go as far as Superspy in thinking that this truly appeals to the lowest common denominator…I caught a little bit of a wink and a smile in how hammy the actresses were that would like speak what is surely a well-researched target group that thinks that Starbucks really is for hoity-toity Apple-oid hipsters and isn’t a brand for them. It’s not an anti-intellectual spot, but rather one that pokes fun at those who take themselves too seriously.

That said, watching the spot is like reading the brief.

The opportunity – there is a significant group of regular people that find Starbucks coffee and the whole experience around it too elitist and look for something that is more down to earth, more on the go and, simply put, more regular. Just like they are.

The strategy – shine a white hot light on the delineation between the stereotypical condescending faux intellectualoid Starbucks denizen and the no need to pretend to be anyone but yourself McDonald’s coffee drinker who wants good coffee without having to worry about not fitting in or mispronouncing “venti.”

The problem with a spot that shows the brief so obviously is that it is, well, obvious.

a republican in advertising. seriously.

I have a friend who works in an ad agency…and he is a Republican.

Shock, horror.

I have spoken to him a number of times about how he feels about it, usually after a department head sends out a virulently partisan pro-Obama email to the whole department or people get paid time off to go to an Obama rally or whatever the case may be on the day.

As another example, this morning he sent me an instant message:

Him: Dude – just had an all-agency meeting turn into an Obama rally led by the CEO complete with ripping on Republicans for hating “real change”, poor people, minorities, and fun.

Me: I just had a sadistic hitting contest between me and my art director partner with rulers and our ECD standing by cheering us on.

Him: It’s like nobody thinks that there is someone in the agency that might disagree with them.

Me: Or they don’t care.

Him: No, I think they don’t even consider it. Some of them may not have ever knowingly met and conversed with a Republican.

Political aspect of the conversation aside, it makes you wonder…after all, we in advertising are supposed to know the people that we are selling to. We don’t have to be them, obviously, but we need to understand them, know what makes them tick, empathize with them to the point that we can understand them emotional hook that connects them to the brands that we are advertising for. How can we do that if we live in our hipster Manhattan (and Austin and Portland and Boston and Minneapolis…is it any surprise based on these cities that everyone in advertising is a Democrat?) worlds and disdain the rest of America that isn’t us?

Think about it honestly for a second…and yes, most people in advertising actively disdain the Wal*Mart shopping, flyover country living, openly religious people that buy most of the stuff that we sell. Just think about any briefing you have been in, think about that point where the planner starts talking about the target, and think about all of the cracks about said target that you know are coming.

Shame on them for not being upper class urban hipsters!

When I started at Fallon back in the day, Pat Fallon told me that to be good I had to be open-minded in the truest sense of the word.

He said that if I didn’t do things that were otherwise foreign to me, from things as read meat middle America like going to the state fair to things as avant-garde bohemian like seeing an experimental dance show in an offbeat converted warehouse in Northeast Minneapolis, then I wouldn’t have a chance in hell of doing good work. Experience, he said, comes from doing things with open-minded wonder, not from reading about it in the paper or making guesses based on responses to canned questions from a 10 person focus group.

Republican or Democrat, it really doesn’t matter (that whole thing was but a launching pad into a diatribe about the sad lack of wonder and interest in the world that most in advertising have)…what does matter to the good advertiser is being able to understand people who aren’t you.

And that means that you have to force yourself to engage with, interact with and even respect the decisions of other Americans whose lifestyle may baffle, surprise or shock you…because you’ll notice that yours does the same to them, they don’t care about your ivory tower or think your tight hipster jeans are cool, and that they will freely give you insights into how to sell to them.

How can you emotionally reach people through the limited tools of advertising if you have never bothered to actually talk to the people you are selling to?

You can’t.

Oh, and by the way, it’s tacky to get political to a captive audience that not only has to listen to you but has to pretend to be all into what you’re saying because you’re the boss. Grow up.

difficult client stops being difficult

The funny thing about working with a difficult client is that when things go well with something like a presentation of creative and you don’t get proverbially reamed out…you feel like maybe you didn’t do your job. That maybe the concepts were bland or something. That maybe it’s worse when they don’t care enough to be an asshole.

I never deliver 31 flavors of vanilla advertising.

But goddammit after presenting work and not getting bitched out in any way, shape or form I don’t think to myself, “self, you cracked the code and sold work that was creative and the client loved.” Instead I think to myself, “self, this client is a cockmonkey who is always upset when you present good work…maybe you didn’t do good stuff this time around.”

And that, my friends, is this week’s reason why I secretly hate advertising.

dr pepper + schadenfreude = fun

Schadenfreude sounds awfully ominous both because it is a German word and anything in German sounds like it presages some sort of invasion by robots in lederhosen and also because what goes around comes around and if you’re spending your time enjoying another’s misfortune the same is bound to happen to you.

Still, in the meantime, schadenfreude is enjoyable.

With the news that cleverly-named Dr Pepper Snapple Group has axed Executive VP, Marketing Randy Gier and his VP, Marketing henchman Sean Gleason my inbox was practically overflowing with German-style enjoyment at the announcement.

It’s so weird that firing Y&R and hiring your buddies at Deutsch/LA to produce an ad that tells people how to drink their soda (thanks Dr Pepper, I think that I’ve figured that bit out by now) would get you fired. Who knew?

At least they used Dr J:

Because if you’re going with a craptastic strategy you may as well rely on borrowed interest, too.

As an aside, can you imagine the good folks at Deutsch/LA pitching this idea?

Deutsch/LA: We are going to do something that will absolutely differentiate your brand from the others, we are going to take Dr Pepper in a totally new direction. We are going to build a campaign all around flavor!

Daily Biz VO: Um, but wasn’t the campaign you fired Y&R for all about the great taste of 23 flavors in every Dr Pepper?

Dr Pepper: I don’t know…all of the agencies we fired had flavor ideas and so have all of the agencies that pitched us.

Deutsch/LA: But our way has never been done before!

Daily Biz VO: Well, at least not by Deutsch.

Dr Pepper: Really, well…tell me more.

Deutsch/LA: We are going to use Dr J. Check this out: you are selling soda to young guys, you want to give them a kitschy basketball legend from the 70s to show that you are hip, with it and full of flavor. It’s going to be tongue-in-cheek, because we know that no other agencies pitched that tone to you, and it’s going to kind of rip off the Old Spice ads, but they won’t be done as well because we’re unoriginal and are borrowing interest.

Daily Biz VO: Some of the actual words may not be verbatim

Dr Pepper: Sold.

But enough about this commercial, its silly message that tells people how to drink a soda (I get more flavor if I slow down? I see more of my show if you shut up.) and shockingly obvious play on the whole ‘doctor’ thing. This post is about the shitcanning at Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

A lot of people are happy about it based on my inbox.

I am happy about it only because there is now a chance that Dr Pepper will produce some decent work.

Teaching younger people who like soda to drink their soda slower…good lord, who in the world thought that this was a good idea? Oh right. The guys that got fired.

my problem with account planning

As I sat in a creative review yesterday watching the Account Planner assigned to the project just sitting there, saying little and adding nothing I thought back to the briefing…which also relegated the planner to the background, leaving him in a position to simply parrot the points in the brief. Points that had been originally developed by the account team before he polished it. Or at least that’s what he was supposed to have done.

My problem with planners goes farther than this young gentleman.

For every planner that functions as nothing more than a researcher who fine-tunes the wording of the briefs that the account team initially develops, there are the good planners that come up with the fantastically complex and cutting-edge strategies. These planners are just as responsible as the researchers for the uselessness of the function.

I am not alone in feeling this way. Ad Contrarian notes that Account Planning is responsible both for the brain drain on the account side and the rise of the discipline correlates with the loss of confidence by clients that agencies can provide effective strategic guidance.

There are two reasons that Account Planning is killing strategy.

First, planners or either glorified researchers who don’t add anything or they are strategic glory hunters whose incentives are geared toward the newest, shiniest, cleverest, impress-your-friends strategies. Only with something that really pop out as shockingly original will they move up, which means that they are driven, if only to further their careers, to push the boundaries for pushing boundaries’ sake.

I am all about originality, of course, but not in self-serving originality.

That is not to impugn hard-working Account Planners, but rather to say that the incentives are set up for them not to think about the business – they are not promoted if their brand wins Effies – but to think about the most creative strategy to as to set themselves apart. Strategy isn’t creative and sometimes the most creative strategy isn’t the most effective.

The second reason Account Planning is killing strategy is because it is divorced from day-to-day client contact.

If Planning had day-to-day client contact, then they would be much more in tune with the actual business. This is critical because in most organizations you’re not just selling to consumers, you’re selling to multiple stakeholders that could include internal groups like sales or engineering, quasi-internal groups like franchisees, bottlers or dealers as well as the consumer. Planners are just focused on the consumer. This is a mistake.

Also, having that client contact gives one a deep understanding of the business problems the clients are facing every day, which is critical because often the stated business problem, something like the need to increase frequency with a younger consumer set, isn’t the real business problem, which may actually be a distribution issue that can be solved not by marketing to younger consumers but to retailers that serve younger consumers. With account divorced from strategy and much of the campaign development process, these critical distinctions get lost.

I am an old school guy.

I think that the ideal agency set-up is still built around the partnership between account and creative. Yes, I think that these days both account and creative need to have a broader array of abilities, such as an understanding of digital, proficiency with strategic development, etc, but I think that the best agencies are built simply. With fewer cooks in the kitchen. With a strategically-capable account team that gets the business and, with creative, develops the strategy. Then creative sells the shit of it with great work.

And, because there are fewer people splitting the billable hours, everyone gets richer.

And starts drinking bourbon before noon like in Mad Men.