colle + mcvoy brings you the styles of yesteryear

It’s that time of year again I hear…back to school time. Of course, since I left school long ago and don’t have any kids the only way that I know this is by watching the advertising.

Minneapolis shop Colle + McVoy, who boast swanky new digs in the city’s warehouse district, are out with a new campaign for Taubman Malls based around, you guessed it, back to school. Continuing the trend they set with their recent work, they have built a pretty fun website, Yearbook Yourself, that lets you upload a picture and see how your yearbook photo would have evolved over the decades had you been hip to the latest trends.

Instead of my own photo, I chose Bob Garfield’s. Why not?

He’s not a bad looking cat.

I have been a big fan of Colle + McVoy’s recent interactive work and in many ways this follows suit. The design is solid, the animation quick to load and to run and the piece is interactive and surprisingly fun.

The meat of the campaign was in-mall signage and displays that showed the trends of today and which stores to find them in, so my comments on the site may be a bit nitpicky, but for the online piece I just didn’t get it right away. It demanded that I upload and adjust my picture before I got to a mall drop down and even then I didn’t really see the connection until, on a lark, I chose to click one of the store links next to the picture image and found myself in a mall locator.

Cool linking and a good idea, but it took a while to understand just what was going on.

Far be it from me to ask any agency to make the logo bigger, and this is a tough assignment since you are being asked to bring geographically different malls together under one roof and yet still make them relevant to the user, but I wouldn’t have minded a bit more explanation of just what was going on.

Even though I did have a lot of fun in the end.

fallon’s downward spiral

The word on the street is that Fallon’s Minneapolis office is down to around 75 people from around 400 a mere five years ago. It is sad news and it leaves observers in Minneapolis in a bit of a pickle.

Everyone likes to indulge in a little schadenfreude from time to time, taking sweet and delicious enjoyment in the precipitous fall of an agency that had been flying so high for so long.

Interestingly, the ex-Fallonites that I have spoken too are among those taking the least pleasure in the agency’s decline….even though who were caught up in the massive layoffs following the loss of most of the agency’s account. On the one hand, this feeling is self-serving. Fallon is on their resume as much as their alma mater is. Just like you want your alma mater to get more selective after you leave, you want your old agencies to do well if only because it makes you look like you are that much better. On the other hand, they are genuinely disappointed at what happened to the shop. A lot of people drank the Fallon kool-aid, not just because the agency did great work, but because the agency put Minneapolis advertising on the map. It is hard to watch them fade.

There is a lot of hiring going in Minneapolis as Olson + Company, Colle + McVoy and Carmichael Lynch in particular try to digest big account wins.

A common complaint, however, is that it is harder to attract talent from other parts of the country since Fallon started their downward spiral. Other agencies in town may be growing by leaps and bounds and doing excellent work, but Fallon is still the headlining shop in the city and with them down out-of-state prospects just don’t have Minnesota on the top of their list of possible destinations.

There is also a little bit of the “Austin Syndrome” where prospects have a niggling fear that should things not work out at whichever agency they move to that there will be no other shops to get work at unless they move back home. The worry is baseless, at least in Minneapolis, but that sort of niggling fear tends to keep prospects at home, making it tougher for Minneapolis agencies to get fresh blood.

Though there are occasional comments that delight in Fallon’s humbling, most of the commentary around the Twin Cities is hopeful that they will right the ship.

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!

anonymous fun at agency spy

There is a little brouhaha going on over at Agency Spy because of a post about Minneapolis shop Colle + McVoy (a shop whose work was cited in the post and attributed to Adrants running with first, that I actually had the scoop on, but my pride is only marginally wounded by that).

As with all brouhahas, especially those about Minneapolis agencies, I love to weigh in (even if, because work is getting in the way, I am really late to the game).

But how to weigh in? The commenter driving most of the, er, discussion has a strong opinion that is sort of hard to refute. He thinks that Colle + McVoy need better senior leadership and have peaked creatively. Perhaps…it just might take a while to tell if he is right or not.

(To quote The Big Lebowski, “that’s, like, your opinion…man”)

But then, as I made my way through the comments section, I came upon a post by everyone in Minneapolis’ favorite copywriter defending his good name. It turns out that someone had thought that the negative commenter was none other than he of the e-mail, Colin Corcoran.

And Colin went to the site to say that it wasn’t.

He would have been better off saying nothing…since I started writing this post I have had multiple people email or IM me (on my personal accounts, they don’t know that I am the man behind the curtain and so aren’t trying to pile on publicly) to laugh about how the best part is that he posted a comment, etc and so on.

He really isn’t liked in Minneapolis, if you couldn’t tell.

And that is why I feel for him on this one. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea in terms of personality and he did have a very public humiliation (which makes it easier to pile on, like hyenas on a wounded deer), but why drag him into this? Especially as he’s just a freelance copywriter…it’s not like he’s Bob Barrie or Bruce Bildsten (also mentioned in the comments section), guys who have been to the top and have the work to back up their claims for their position in the industry.

They can shrug off an anonymous content, but who knows if Colin (or someone at a junior level like he is) can?

We all know that it must be tough enough for him even without the comments that will sit, forever, on SEO-machine blogs that will place high when, say, a prospective employer searched for his name. It’s time to let it rest. It’s time to leave him alone.

So we can turn our energy to finding out who the real Tool Hater is…

colle + mcvoy’s virtual spray paint

Minneapolis agency Colle + McVoy, who seem to have a perfect combination of great work and really fun clients, has launched a new website for the hip-hop group Atmosphere that lets you tag other websites while listening to tracks from the group’s new album. No site is safe, not even mine:

There is a lot that is going on as far as marketing for the music industry is concerned, with Radiohead and their unique, for lack of a better work, online pricing top of the list.

Of course, that sort of strategy isn’t for everyone…but no matter the act, people want to interact and spend time with a musical group that they like. Or at least interact and spend time with content from that musical group online. They want to be “involved” and have a much higher tolerance for fun/pointless utilities and be asked to do things than they would at a brand site. Because brands are boring. Something like this would not work for a brand.

It does work, however, for a band. Or group. Or whatever. Good on Colle + McVoy for understanding that there are certain sites that people look for more stuff on, sites like those for their favorite musicians, and building something to suit.

erbert & gerbert’s turns 20

When we at the Daily (Ad) Biz ;last talked about Minneapolis shop Colle + McVoy (who have a great website, by the way), they were doing fun stop-motion videos for sandwich chain Erbert & Gerberts.

They are back, and with more video goodness for the same brand. From a creative perspective, Erbert & Gerbert’s is a great brand to work on. It is an off-beat, authentic brand that is approachable and, as far as the product goes, damn tasty.

To celebrate the brand turning 20, which to many is sort of an adult milestone because the teenage years are well and truly over, Erbert & Gerberts decided to celebrate like a kid:

Beyond this television spot – running in markets relevant to the chain, so you might not see it – there is a website with a wealth of different cuts, new ways to use the candle cannon, behind the scenes and more fun ways to interact with the brand.

It’s a little random, but it is a perfect fit with the brand personality and it’s a nice change from all of the sandwich chain ads (Subway, particularly, I’m talking to you) running spots that only show close-ups of the product. Those may get franchisees all hot and bothered, but they suck in terms of creative advertising.

This, however, does not.

minneapolis isn’t in decline, it’s just not out of decline either

Minneapolis advertising has had a tough time of it lately…and not just Fallon.

Campbell-Mithun had to hire another agency to re-brand itself.

Carmichael Lynch won Subaru without a pitch, but only after they lost Porsche.

Martin/Williams has held steady, which is nice, but the charger shops in the area, like Olson + Company, Colle + McVoy and Periscope haven’t been able to land the big client that makes people stand up and start talking about how Minneapolis advertising is back on the map.

Agency Spy revels in it a bit (thanks for bringing up Prince) before coming back to earth, concluding that we’re all drama queens about the whole thing and quoting Denny Haley, president of the Minneapolis office of BBDO, for backup. Haley points out the often overlooked truth when folks talk about the city’s ad business: “Minneapolis’ success had been so dramatic in the ’80s and ’90s that when it plateaued [in recent years] it seemed like it declined. It’s not as much in the doldrums as people convey.”

I would love to believe him. But having run from the carnage, knowing others who have run from it as well, and having had no less than three friends contact me this month alone because they are worried about how slow things are…yikes.

Minneapolis advertising has always been more than just Fallon. But Fallon’s ascendence really helped matters, especially on the job market front. Let’s hope that the city’s ship rights itself naturally in the next few years.

At some point, I’d like to move back home.

colle + mcvoy = stop motion goodness

Usually, when you hear about an “interesting” way to activate a brand on TV and online what you find is not interesting. Or, if it is, it’s completely off brand.

There are exceptions though, and the Erbert and Gerbet “Human Flipbook” work from Minneapolis agency Colle + McVoy is one:

Though you wouldn’t know from the chain’s terrible website, there is a lot of equity around the little Ergert and Gerbert characters represented in the spot. The low-budget feel is also inline with a brand that prides itself in its non-flashy Midwestern roots (and, let’s face it, was all they were willing to pay for). This ad is right on strategy and the creative is a nice change from just showing a close-up of a sandwich.

I am not convinced that the campaign website will take off virally, though the behind-the-scenes video is cute:

As cute as it is, I think that it is something that is fun for the people at the agency, from the client and in the industry. But if I am a consumer…why would I watch this, let alone pass it on?

Still, I like the ad a lot both strategically and creatively.

And not just because I think the agency is primed to get big.

congrats to carmichael lynch

The fact thatCarmichael Lynch won the Subaru account without a pitch is not only a huge win for them, but a win for good guys who do good work – and that should be applauded.

Subaru has made the right choice. Carmichael Lynch is chock full of guys with experience on Porsche and BMW and, with Colle + McVoy, is one of the Minneapolis shops I tip for upcoming serious creative goodness (since they were damn good to begin with and have only become stronger with some of the ex-Fallon talent they’ve picked up).

To celebrate their win, it’s CL time at the Biz and, though it’s a little old, it’s still good:

The knives will be out if their Subaru work falls short.