In a fitful moment last night, the Publisher of this site asked agencies to have some fun with Schick®.
One agency–Circle One Marketing of Norwalk, CT–has now done so.
Circe One embraces through-the-line marketing to do traditional, in-store, promotions and interactive for clients like Tastykake, Traffic.com, Birds Eye, Cadbury Schweppes beverages and Pepperidge Farm.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the cats that gave us our two most recurring nightmare monsters, just won the privilege of promoting Windows products to consumers.
NEW YORK MDC Partners’ Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Miami has landed a new global creative assignment from Microsoft following a review, the client confirmed today. Fallon in Minneapolis, a Publicis Groupe shop, was the runner-up, sources said.
Spending on the effort will likely be about $300 million, per sources.
Two other shops, WPP Group’s JWT and Interpublic Group’s McCann Erickson, both here, were cut in an earlier round.
The winning agency will develop a global campaign defining Microsoft to consumers in the context of its mobile, Vista and Live platforms.
“Crispin was chosen based on their strategic approach, the strength of their creative ideas and the passionate and diverse team of people at the agency,” said a Microsoft representative. “We’re looking forward to working together and will share more details on the campaign at the appropriate time.”
In November, Microsoft confirmed that the company was “soliciting input from various agencies, including [lead agency] McCann Erickson, for a new upcoming consumer-oriented assignment.” The company also said McCann and sister shop Universal McCann would remain lead creative and media agencies, respectively. In fact, UM will handle media duties for the new assignment.
Microsoft’s domestic major media spending was approximately $325 million last year, down $25 million from 2006, according to Nielsen Monitor-Plus.
Having fielded studies, interviewed researchers and read “over 50 books” (!!!!) “related to the subject of marketing to women,” Hoffman Group launched a woman-targeting think tank called Kaleidoscope Group. The website greeted us with an actual kaleidoscope of women and some Lilith Fair music that stimulated the growth of our leg hair follicles.
Ad agencies are always on the lookout for their next award.
TBD Agency in Bend, Oregon recently won an award that actually means something outside the creative department.
Oregon Business magazine named TBD one of “The 100 Best Companies to Work for In Oregon.”
Hip Techies Dig Scene In West L.A.; Houses Google, Yahoo, MTV; The beachside enclave of Santa Monica is sort of the Silicon Valley of the south
BRIAN DEAGON — Investor’s Business Daily , February 25, 2008 Monday NATIONAL EDITION
Silicon Valley might have never come to be the technology capital of the world were it not for Frederick Terman getting tuberculosis.
Terman, considered the father of Silicon Valley, was intending to return to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology sometime around 1930 when a bout of tuberculosis caused him to stay at Stanford University, where he would later continue teaching.
He cajoled two of his students, William Hewlett and David Packard, to form a company, which they did in a place near the Palo Alto, Calif., campus, between San Jose and San Francisco and often considered the heart of Silicon Valley.
Terman also pioneered the creation of Stanford Research Park, where engineers would congregate. Such acorns became the foundation of Silicon Valley.
Building a tech community requires a concentration of companies, watering holes and organizations where people get to know the movers and shakers.
Something like that is occurring in west Los Angeles, anchored in the beachside city of Santa Monica. Among the largest employers in the 85,000 population city are Activision, MTV Networks, Symantec, Edmunds.com, Yahoo and Google.
Roots have also been planted by Time Warner’s AOL, Microsoft, HBO, Sony, Lionsgate Entertainment and News Corp.’s 20 th Century Fox.
According to the Santa Monica Business Directory, more than 140 tech companies have a business license from the city, an area of just eight square miles.
This does not include a bushel of tech firms just outside the city limits, many along Wilshire Boulevard, which runs into a shoreline overlooking the popular Santa Monica Pier. Electronic Arts occupies a two-story building six miles up the coast, with room for 600 people. Yahoo leased 256,000 square feet of space in a business complex that was renamed Yahoo Center.
The Santa Monica and west Los Angeles area appeals to 20- and 30-something creative types. The Mediterranean weather and beach scene aren’t the only draws. Santa Monica’s Main Street has lots of stores and restaurants. It has the open air Third Street Promenade and the upscale Montana Avenue.
“It’s a lifestyle choice,” said Michael Jones, a vice president of AOL and CEO of its Userplane.com unit. “While there are pockets of tech firms in Burbank, mid-Hollywood and parts of the San Fernando Valley, it’s really all about west Los Angeles and Santa Monica.”
According to Santa Monica’s Economic Development Division, technology firms are some of the area’s top employers. The city’s Web site says: “No discussion of the area would be complete without mentioning the tremendous influx in recent years of entertainment, high-tech and software companies.”
Evidence of the influx is shown in commercial rental properties. Nondescript industrial buildings fetch monthly leases of $5 a square foot per month, on par with high-rise office building rents.
“We see a lot of digital activity on the west side,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Los Angeles Council Economic Development Corporation.
As with all successful tech centers, the area is burbling with professional networking groups.
When Dealmaker Media, a well-known networking group in Silicon Valley, held its premier event in the area, it chose Santa Monica as its location, across the street from the Yahoo Center and next to MTV.
TwiistUp, also new to L.A., has held three events in nearby Venice.
“It’s happening because there is a critical mass of tech people on the west side,” said Benjamin Kuo, founder of SoCalTech.com, which chronicles L.A. tech activity. “A lot more events are going on, with more people getting involved.”
Pointless drama aside, Paul Tilley is dead.
It seems even the most mundane things such as…oh…an elevator rescue make their way to YouTube.
Guest columnist Erik Hauser explores the interest in previously unknown music Guitar Hero can spawn as an analogy for marketers and agencies working together to create product relevancy for audiences who no longer know a particular product or to create interest in a new product.
I’m glad The Escape Pod sent me the March issue of Fast Company. It’s nice to leaf through and see innovative companies celebrated for their contributions. It was also a terrific media buy for The Escape Pod.
Google and Apple top the list, but the magazine names New York anti-agency, Anomaly, the 24th most innovative company in the world.
image courtesy of Chet Gulland
So what makes Anomaly a Fast Comany darling? The fact that these guys truly own their talent.
The message they’re sending via their 21st century compensation model is as clear as it is cocky. Normal ad people are happy to make a percentage or a fee, but Anomaly, not so much. They claim their ideas are capable of moving one’s business to another level; ergo, a mere fee will not suffice as payment for marketing service rendered. We must be partners, they say. That they can and do say this, means Anomaly has muscle–and that’s not an attribute native to the ad clan.
– StrawberryFrog, The Wexley School for Girls, The Barbarian Group. Now we can add Omelet to the list of oddly named advertising companies.
In an article on alternative agency compensation models, Adweek introduces me to another strangely-named Los Angeles agency.
Omelet in Los Angeles is aiming for an even split between traditional client and agency ventures within the next five years, said Mark Vega, founder and partner, and a former intellectual property and entertainment lawyer. The ratio is currently 80 percent client work versus 20 percent in-house projects. Vega said some of Omelet’s innovations have been in changing contract language with clients such as Heineken and Microsoft to stipulate that even if Omelet is paid by a client to pitch, the agency owns the ideas as its intellectual property.
Founded in 2004, the agency owns Facebook applications, code, infrastructure for social networking sites, a handful of scripts and story ideas, and an interest in an unspecified “wellness” company. But Vega said the next frontier is creating original content for licensing. He foresees an explosion of small Web sites willing to pay $1,000 to $5,000 to license original content the agency is keen to provide.
According to their website, Omelet is helping to redefine how brands and entertainment co-exist.
p.s. First there was Kowloon Wholesale Seafood Co., then 86 the Onions. Now Omelet. Is LA hungry, or what?
“For the first time in its history, advertising must earn its own audience to make an impact.” -The Escape Pod
In order to draw me to their website and interest me in their story, The Escape Pod did not send a lame press release. They FedExed a framed poster of this self-promo ad instead (on a national holiday, no less):
The ad is running on page 55 in the March issue of Fast Company, which also came in the box along with a nice note from Vinny Warren and Norm Bilow, the firm’s principals.
Rock poster artist, Joe Simko, created the piece that Warren and Bilow refer to as their shop’s “elevator pitch.”
It’s interesting that Warren, who could rest on his Wassup laurels, is charging down the “we have to earn our audience” lane. His humor won his client a mass audience on air while writing copy at DDB/Chicago. He earned it there. And he earned it by taking the time to send an ad blog a lead it could not ignore. It’s a good bet that he and his team will keep on earning it at The Escape Pod.
The cats at Hub Strategy asked us to check out the new introductory video on their website. (You can’t miss it.) The goal was to give potential clients a warm fuzzy feeling that would invite them to dig deeper.
Red Tettemer is intent on providing its staff with intangibles like quality of life.
Given that it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow, the shop is hoping to hook some of its singles up via their “automatic romance configurator.”
Jen can be reached at shegotdaappleson@redtettemer.com
The idea is you glance through the agency’s hotties and send your love note via email, which may or may not be returned.
Some of the other emails you might try:
imalreadyboredwithyou@redtettemer.com
TurkishTower@redtettemer.com
stdfree@redtettemer.com
pillowtalk@redtettemer.com
When Ad Age runs a headline like this:
there shouldn’t be anything funny about it.
After all, clients demand ROI and if agencies can provide it, more power to them.
But one half of DraftFCB used to be able to sell ideas that a CMO didn’t need a computer print out to analyze.
Therefore, there is something funny about the headline and the story behind it.
The Daily Ad Biz reports rumors are flying Microsoft has chosen Fallon over CP+B.
When it comes to targeting the elusive Hispanic consumer, Cilantro Animation has this to say: “Be prepared to offer more than just Hola!”
(Though we’d like to point out that strategy worked wonders for Dora the Explorer.)
LA Times features Santa Monica agency, Secret Weapon, today.
It seems the SW principals took VW’s sage advice to “Think Small” to heart.
The independent Secret Weapon, with 25 employees, has by design at most three clients at any given time.
“I have friends who run big agencies, with 20 clients, and there’s always a fire to be put out somewhere,” Sittig, Secret Weapon’s founder and creative director, said recently. “We’re right smack in the middle of our clients’ business instead of delegating.”
Right now, Secret Weapon has contracts with two companies: San Diego-based Jack in the Box Inc. and the Southern California Honda Dealers Assn.
Dick Sittig and Patrick Adams started Secret Weapon in 1997, when Sittig left ad giant TBWA/Chiat/Day with the Jack in the Box account in tow. He was joined by Adams, a former manager at El Segundo’s Team One Advertising, which handles ads for Lexus.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
