calling out vml

Kansas City-based interactive agency VML has come in for a lot of fire here on The Daily (Ad) Biz despite Y&R holding official Least Favored Agency status.

It all started so well, with kudos to the agency for the nicely designed Snapple website. But then the readers weighed in and VML got raked over the coals for taking a three quarters of a million dollar bath on site production.

And then more comments came in calling out VML staffers by name and slamming the account and creative team that works on the Cadbury Schweppes business.

The hits keep coming. Cadbury Schweppes launched a new product line, A&W and Sunkist Floats, to much fanfare, but with no website. No website even though the press release pointed people to it.

Again, the word is that the boys (and girls) at VML bear much, if not all, of the responsibility for yet another big error:

I am an employee of the carbonated side of Cadbury Schweppes, although I don’t work directly with VML, I can say that this is another VML screw up. I work in very close proximity to the A&W (and other carbonated drink) managers in Plano, TX. Needless to say, they are pretty fed up with VML’s attitude, processes and account management.

Due to VML’s “holier than thou” attitude towards Cadbury’s agency partners, nobody wants to deal with them. – so it’s bad communication all the way around and a press release goes out without VML’s input and you get what you have here. A half-assed lunder construction page thrown up to cover VML’s slow asses.

Let’s just hope that that VML comes through on the website, but rumblings within the office down here in good ‘ol Texas is that the website doesn’t hit the mark. Of all the concepts presented, this was the only “usable” one that came close. Due to budgets, VML wouldn’t budge on any redo and they had to make this one work. People aren’t to happy about it either.

2008 will be interesting for the Cadbury and VML relationship.

Coupled with an email from a loyal tipster that alleges that the first round concepts from VML were so bad that the internal interactive team did not even show them to anyone else and just told VML to actually read the brief and have another go, 2008 is going to be very interesting indeed.

I can’t wait.

thanks vml: cadbury’s bargain snapple website

The more I hear about them, the more I think that Cadbury Schweppes Beverages really gets it.

They had a huge viral win with the Dr Pepper Cherry Chocolate Rain video; so far the video has had over a million and a half views and it only cost $200,000. Not to mention how the video positively positioned the Dr Pepper trademark.

A reader comments that Cherry Chocolate Rain is not the only bargain the Cadbury has gotten lately.

Apparently, the very slick new website by VML for Snapple was created for the I-bought-it-on-eBay cost of $250,000.

At least, that is what it cost Cadbury:

“This website costs over a million to produce, but only costs Cadbury $250,000. Why the overage the company had to eat? EGOS, EGOS, EGOS. . . creative egos swell at VML and they wrote a check that the developers couldn’t cash. The website you see is held together with spit and wire – the developers did a good job making it work. The creative director (Tony Sneethen) cost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was a fiasco of epic status at VML.”

I am stupefied that VML would have proposed a site like Snapple’s with a budget of $250,000. And the fact that Cadbury was able to hold their feet to the fire and make them actually create what they pitched…well, that gets you a site this good that cheap.

I usually fall on the agency’s side of the production cost argument – I think that clients need to understand that the things they are asking for, especially last-minute changes, have a cost associated with them. Clients must be willing to adjust their budget if they adjust the scope of a project.

However, I have also been in the room when agencies have promised the world on a shoe-string budget to win the job (or because they don’t realize just how much work will go into the project – which is Bozo the Clown’s usual m.o. on digital), and then furiously backpedal when it comes time to pay the piper.

If you pitch it, you have to be able to execute it.

If you lose money executing something you’ve promised, well, you get called out on an industry blog (among other things).

Good job, VML. You get this upside-down EFFIE for ineffectiveness in managing a budget: