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.

gsd&m’s rough week and new popeye’s work

Last week was a tough one for GSD&M what with that whole internal espionage thing and the rumors that they were on the outs with client BMW.

I still think that things with BMW aren’t likely to end well for the folks in Texas.

The first issue is the work, which can only be described as uninspired. Sure, not everything that Fallon did for the brand was as good as the BMW Films or as ads like this:

But the work was good. GSD&M’s hasn’t been.

Beyond the work and the creative espionage situation, there has been turmoil on the account with Lee Newman, the VP/Group Account Director who had been brought in from McKinney to land the business, heading out for Weiden + Kennedy Amsterdam earlier this year. Oh, and that good work that I referenced that came out of Fallon? Yeah…Lee was the driving force behind it from the account side.

And now he’s gone.

But it’s not all bad down at GSD&M…they’ve debuted their first work for Popeyes, an account that they recently landed. So that’s good.

GSD&M has brought the brand back to the Southern roots with a “Louisiana Kitchen” slogan and are talking a lot about their quality (ho-hum) and process (relatively interesting, as far as these things go). Advertising for fast food brands is notoriously uncreative, but considering the limitations of the category and the difficulty working with franchisees who aren’t professionals and who want to use advertising to drive short-term sales, I think that GSD&M has done a good job:

l.a. advertising & harvey marco’s saatchi see ya

Harvey Marco, in this observer’s opinion one of the very best creative minds in the world (and a really good guy to boot), is on his way out of Saatchi & Saatchi LA. His departure, which comes on the heels of ATTIK’s win of the Toyota Venza launch, raises obvious questions…like what was Toyota, whose work was shockingly mundane until Marco’s arrival and the “moving forward” campaign gave it actual interest, thinking?

One wonders if this has anything to do with the fact that Toyota can’t give Corollas away despite a huge effort behind the launch of the redesigned vehicle:

Los Angeles, pretty much a creative backwater considering its size and potential, was only a destination for Mr Marco because of his family ties and desire for good weather…understandable considering his previous agencies were in New York and Minneapolis. The departure of top creative talent from the city, and the somewhat interesting position this puts Saatchi LA in, doesn’t really bode well for a creative explosion in southern California.

Which is too bad because I really wouldn’t mind living in SoCal…

colle + mcvoy loves propane

Minneapolis agency Colle + McVoy has just pulled in a new account, and it’s a pretty big one though it might not be super-sexy…it’s the Propane Education and Research Council.

To quote an internal e-mail celebrating the win, “PERC is a significant win for Colle + McVoy and it will be one of our most visible accounts.” Oh, the joys of working at a Midwestern agency when a propane client is one of the most visible.

To be fair, Colle + McVoy did beat out strong competition for the account, including GSD&M Idea City, so it’s a good win. And, apparently, a big one.

Congrats to C+M!

car guys & more on traffic

Some years ago when Fallon still had the BMW account and I still worked at Fallon, a very good account guy on the interactive side of the business confided that he desperately wanted to get onto a new account because we was worried that he would soon be pigeonholed as “a car guy.”

Looking at the Tom Cordner, who has started up new Mitsubishi agency Traffic, that may not be a bad thing.

Cordner had previously worked at Ford while at JWT and on Lexus while at Team One (an agency that he actually founded). Certainly, he was more senior that this account guy, but there is clearly the opportunity to make something happen with a little bit of expertise in a category like automotive.

Just ask Tom Cordner.

The problem with car advertising, of course, is that there are far too many makes and models of cars out there so it’s really boom and bust based on fads. Take the SmartCar, for example:

I don’t care what you may have thought on your trip to Europe when you saw these zipping around the cobbled streets of Milan and parking perpendicular to a parallel-parked Maserati, these cars suck.

This is America. The land of big cars and wide-open spaces. While it may make sense to drive this car among the Vespas of the world, you are going to die in even a minor brush with a Yukon…and even a 4Runner or a BMW 5 Series. For savings of, what, maybe $200 a year over a real car like a Mazda, you can drive a ridiculous-looking death trap with no actual space for regular-sized Americans or anything larger than a cup of coffee.

On a positive note, you can lord it over your friends that you drive such a trendy car.

Do it quickly though so you can get your smugness in before you get totaled in a head-on collision with a bike messenger.

Car purchases, which you would expect to be very rational and planned out, are really just big-ticket impulse buys. With the long life of each model (about 3 years before a facelift, 7 years total before a redesign as a rough industry average) based on manufacturing considerations, advertising and branding is critical to keep moving metal if you’re not a passion brand or a fad car.

Mitsubishi is neither and Traffic have their work cut out for them.

more meaningless new account values

I am not the only one!

After complaining in my post about Cutwater’s snagging of the LensCrafters account (an account win that clearly had all to do with their work on and relationship with sister brand Ray-Ban) that the values assigned to new account wins are completely ridiculous, George Parker does the same thing.

The impetus for his wailing against the totally meaningless value put to new account wins is Traffic’s bagging of the Mitsubishi Motors account. He says:

I would love it if someone would actually spell out what that $185 million actually means. Yeah, we know it’s not income, or revenues, or even media spend in today’s totally fucked up messaging environment… So please, can someone come up with a “Metric,” and I hate the word with a passion, that spells out exactly what a new piece of business is worth?

Too right. And if you’re one of the trade mags, why aren’t you on top of this? It is, last I checked, sort of your job to get to the bottom of these stories, not just to spout back the numbers that agency flacks (eager to make the biggest possible splash) announce.

Especially when we all know that those numbers mean nothing.

don’t believe everything you read

According to AdAge, Cutwater, San Francisco has won the $60 million LensCrafters account and, while I am sure that Cutwater has a new account to crow about, I am not sure that it is a $60 million account.

Like salaries in the NFL, which are reported at their absolute maximum value despite not being guaranteed, being back-loaded and having high-threshhold incentives clauses, new business wins in advertising are reported at a ridiculous figure that makes no sense.

Really, why are account wins reported at the estimated media spend value?

We are so far past the 15% commission on media spend that citing the measured media is nothing more than the vaguest of yardsticks for estimating the true value of the account. So why cite it? Because there is no better estimation?

And the trades rip on ad agencies for being stuck in the past.

strawberryfrog in pepsi new business coup

Okay, okay, that headline over-promised a little bit if you’re North America-centric or have a thing for carbonated sugar water…but what can I say, I’m in advertising. In reality it’s not about soda nor is it a northern hemisphere thing, but it is still pretty big. StrawberryFrog in Brazil has won a pretty big shootout to scoop up a number of the brands under the Pepsico umbrella.

As of today, StrawberryFrog Brazil will be doing their signature work on Quaker, Toddy, Toddynho and Coqueiro.

I know, I haven’t heard of three of the four of those brands either, but they unseated BBDO (who was the incumbent and defended) and beat out DM9 DDB and Agency Africa, all Omnicom shops.

Brazil is a huge growth opportunity for a company like Pepsi and it’s an even bigger growth opportunity for StrawberryFrog, whose Brazil office was only opened last September. You read that right, less than a year old and it’s wormed its way into the Pepsi family.

That Scott Goodson has quite the touch.

Pepsico’s accounts come to join the agencies’ current clients Natura Brasil, Kitchenaid, Microsoft, Universo Intimo, Lindencorp, Gallo Olive Oil and Caipirinha One and Mahindra automotive.

Congratulations!

carmichael lynch picks up subaru interactive

Rumors are flying that Minneapolis agency Carmichael Lynch has won the Subaru interactive business without a review, which is a nice little incremental billings addition to the Subaru advertising account that they won earlier this year without a review. Subaru must really like them.

Based on my desultory research, Euro RSCG is the agency that got the short end of the stick on this transaction.

The win is a big one for Carmichael Lynch because they are not known for their interactive capabilities…in fact, the uncorroborated word on the street is that they don’t have interactive capabilities to speak of (they farm just about everything out and have but three interactive production staff in-house) and are now racing to staff up. Interactive designers and, yes, even an interactive Creative Directors are encouraged to start knocking on the door of their attractive downtown Minneapolis office.

Beyond being an opportunity to build out an additional capability on Subaru’s dime, this win sets up the agency to catapult into the big time.

They have already surpassed Fallon in terms of billings and if they can turn this into some momentum, both for creative and new business, there is a very good chance that this recently kinda sleepy agency can establish a national profile. Not to mention that the bonuses ought to better than usual if this no-pitch victory streak can continue.

Early and unofficial congratulations to Carmichael Lynch. I’ll be keeping an eye on them.

good news for chicago & leo burnett

After quite the battering, some good news out of the Windy City: Leo Burnett, they of the recently acquired Daily Biz upside-down EFFIE, has picked up Miller Genuine Draft’s global advertising from Mother.

[ WordPress is being a bitch and not allowing me to upload images, so in this space please imagine an ice cold bottle of Miller Genuine Draft with a weird vaporous swirl around it like this one ]

This is a bit of a coup for Burnett, as they had lost the last of their Miller business to Fallon in 1996 and are now clawing their way back in the door (their foot was in the door, apparently, through their relationship with Arc Worldwide, who do MGD’s direct marketing).

It’s also nice to report some good news for a Chicago agency for a change.