Hasta La Creative!

Minnesota is different. For once, many of the people have Canadian-like accents and they ALL love hockey. When your state is endowed with 10,000 lakes and eight months of winter, it makes sense. Like this new commercial from ICF Olson makes sense. The Minneapolis agency partnered with NHL team, the Minnesota Wild, to create a […]

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McCann has won what could be a significant victory in its legal back-and-forth with the government over the very lucrative U.S. Army contract.

Earlier this week, the Government Accountability Office issued an official judgment on McCann’s complaint about its earlier elimination from the review for an account that could concern up to $4 billion in spending over a decade.* By marking the bid protest “sustained,” the GAO effectively ruled in favor of McCann, which argued that it was unfairly eliminated due to technicalities.

This is the second piece of good news for McCann in less than a month. In August, the Army extended its contract with the agency for a third time, adding 12 months to the relationship six months after McCann was officially disqualified.

The initial decision to eliminate McCann appears to have stemmed from different readings of documents by the Army’s marketing and PR division and its Contracting Officer. The primary complaint noted by the Officer purportedly concerned the agency’s inability to confirm its status as a certified contractor, despite the fact that it has been the Army’s agency of record for more than a decade.

Now, the matter will presumably return to contracting court as the status of the larger review remains in limbo.

We have reached out to spokespeople for both McCann and the U.S. Army but have yet to receive a reply from either.

*As noted by one very friendly tipster, a clients’ spending totals are not the same as an agency’s fee totals. We know this! But as you are also aware, spending estimates are the only publicly available numbers for any given account. If you would like to share exactly what portion of that money will go to whichever agency ends up handling the business, please feel free to do so.

Today in digital agency acquisitions, Havas New York is expanding its digital capabilities with the acquisition of the New York digital agency The 88.

The 88 has grown from a team of three to around 50 employees. It has worked with clients including Coca-Cola, adidas, L’Oreal, Mars, Bacardi and Bloomingdale’s and personalities such as A$AP Rocky, Alexander Wang, Casey Neistat, Jeremy Scott and Phillip Lim.

The agency will be rebranded Annex 88 as part of Havas’ Annex cultural network and The 88 founder and chief creative officer Harry Bernstein (pictured, left) will serve as a chief creative officer of Havas New York.

Bernstein founded The 88 in February of 2010, following a year with Rockstar Games’ marketing department. Prior to that he spent five years as a creative director with Berlin Cameron, working with clients including Coca-Cola, vitaminwater, Lincoln, Ford, Heineken and Belvedere. He began his career as an art director with Ogilvy & Mather New York, where he worked with clients including IBM, Sprite and Kodak.

“My vision has always been to change advertising forever, even before advertising realized it needed to be changed,” Bernstein said in a statement. “But at this pivotal moment when the modern CMO is beginning to question traditional means, there’s no better time than now to join forces with Havas. I’m excited to combine my understanding of contemporary culture and innovation with Havas’ capabilities to help our clients break the traditions of their categories as the CCO of Havas New York.”

“Havas New York is a creative agency breaking tradition to build brands of the future, which is why it is imperative to have someone like Harry at the creative helm,” Havas New York CEO Laura Maness said in a statement. “As a partner to the modern CMO, we offer a valuable mix of capabilities that aren’t what you’d expect to find in a creative agency, such as experience design, cognitive, data and technology. With Harry leading the way, we’re poised to create the most relevant, unconventional model while rapidly scaling our growth platforms in New York.”

“I love advertising, but the entire vocabulary of our business has changed. We have an opportunity to be at the forefront of this change and offer clients modern capabilities that drive real results. Harry is the perfect person to help Havas New York stay ahead of the game by disrupting the status quo,”added Havas Creative U.S. chairman and chief creative officer Jason Peterson. “As a thought leader and true innovator, his storytelling embraces the modern language of advertising and will take our offering to the next level.”

In case you missed it, the global review launched in April for Airbnb is over, with Wieden + Kennedy emerging as the winner.

The client confirmed that DDB was the other finalist, and a couple of parties told us that 72andSunny, R/GA and Anomaly rounded out the last five. One may note that DDB North America CEO Wendy Clark and Airbnb CMO Jonathan Mildenhall worked together at Coca-Cola, but the latter called this “the most closely contested pitch of my career.”

Frankly, we were surprised Droga5 wasn’t in the mix, because in that case this review would have involved all of the trendiest agencies of the moment.

Here’s the statement from Colleen DeCourcy:

“From day one, it’s been clear to us through every interaction that Airbnb is a values-driven company that cares deeply about its mission and ethos. In this respect, Airbnb and W+K are natural partners. We are a company that lives its values which are centered on people, creativity, and daring to do things that have never been done before. We are inspired because we believe that 21st-century brands are judged by what they do and the value they create for people. When you look at the company we keep—Lyft, Spotify, Instagram, Facebook and now Airbnb—Wieden+Kennedy has become the agency of record of the New Economy.”

She does have a point. DDB CCO Ari Weiss also weighed in:

“As we continue our creative resurgence it’s been critical to surround ourselves with the best clients and the best competition. And this pitch was no exception. In the end it came down to us and one of the best creative agencies in the world. Today we came in second. Tomorrow we come in first.”

W+K will soon start working with Airbnb’s in-house team (yay!) on a fall product launch campaign and a 2018 travel season effort.

For context, TBWAChiatDay L.A. had the business for about three years but declined to participate in this review. We’re told, by someone close to the whole process, that the whole thing stemmed from former president James Vincent’s decision to leave the agency in February and launch his own spin-off, FNDR. That effort came from his experience as a direct advisor to Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky (among other such startup chiefs), and a couple of sources claim that the split also played a key role in TBWA’s decision not to pitch for the Airbnb account.

San Francisco-based agency Camp + King is expanding with a second office in Chicago.

“We intend to run a one-office, two-location model that gives clients access to the totality of Camp + King in San Francisco and Chicago,” Camp + King CEO Jamie King said in a statement. “Our intent is to create a long corridor between the Presidio of San Francisco and State Street in Chicago.”

LBB notes the expansion allows Camp + King to service its Midwestern and Eastern clients, including Energizer, which has its headquarters in St. Louis. Camp + King was named Energizer’s AOR back in January of 2016, following a review launched the previous October.

Camp + King named Kristin Barbour as managing director for the new Chicago office. Barbour is a DDB veteran of over twenty years and spent the past seven years as senior vice president, group creative director and strategic business lead on the agency’s Conagra Brands account, following over two years in the same role for the agency’s Wrigley business. She joined DDB Chicago as a vice president, account director back on the McDonald’s account in 1996 before eventually transferring to Kraft Foods some eleven years later. Prior to joining DDB she spent over two years as an account executive with Campbell Ewald, working on the Chevrolet account.

“Kristin is a dynamic leader who embodies the city of Chicago and understands the vision of Camp + King,” King said. “She is the perfect person to build our brand there.”

“I am excited to have direct access to the creative talent in Chicago,” added Camp + King co-founder and chief creative officer Roger Camp. “Like the city, the talent is soulful and expressive, and I intend to apply Chicago and San Francisco teams to all of our client briefs, regardless of location. We intend to marry West Coast dreaming with Chicago work ethic to best solve client briefs.”

Image: LBB

Nine months after showing its new face to the world in the form of an open floor plan redesign via MMoser architects, Saatchi & Saatchi has made another big move—into the Midtown headquarters of Publicis New York.

That means saying goodbye to 375 Hudson Street in SoHo, which was completed in 1989 and has long been known among locals as “the Saatchi & Saatchi building.” For a blast from the past, check out this 1985 New York Times real estate article about why Saatchi decided to move into “a ‘smart’ building that incorporates the latest innovations in telecommunications and computer operations.”

At the time of the announcement, Saatchi planned to occupy “395,000 square feet on the upper nine floors of the building,” or half of a structure designed by Lee Harris Pomeroy Associates and Emery Roth & Sons. The original lease was for 25 years with options to renew.

A spokesperson for Publicis Communications, the creative network officially established by Arthur Sadoun last year that includes Leo Burnett, Publicis, Saatchi & Saatchi, BBH, MSLGroup and tech/design consultancy Nurun, gave us the following statement:

“We’re excited that Saatchi & Saatchi will be relocating to independent unique spaces at 1675 Broadway. This move will further foster collaboration across Publicis Communications agencies in order to bring forward the best solutions for our clients.”

This sentiment is in keeping with the “Power of One” strategy in which Publicis combines agencies to pitch for large accounts like Walmart and USAA.

Readers may also recall that S&S gradually reduced the amount of space it occupied at 375, consolidating all operations onto a single floor in 2015 and recruiting the band Big Data to make a music video of the resulting destruction. That was well before this January’s rollout of the open-floor space.

Clive Wilkinson Architects

Publicis Communications’ headquarters, designed by Clive Wilkinson Architects, made its public debut last fall. The angle was that, like TBWA and other spaces before it, it contains no assigned desks, and “not one of the 1,200 employees, top brass included, can close a proprietary door,” as per the directions of Publicis North America CEO Andrew Bruce.

From Bruce’s interview with Interior Design:

“When people have an office, they’re at their desk all day, blasting out e-mails. Don’t respect authority—respect intelligence. Ideas matter. Clive [Wilkinson] pointed out that, at any agency, roughly 30 percent of your employees are always off-site. So we can easily have 1.2 people for every seat. We’re investing in human capital, not inanimate objects.”

The most recent move comes, at least in part, from Saatchi & Saatchi’s shrinking client roster and general consolidation across the creative side of Publicis Groupe. General Mills was the most recent big client to split with Saatchi late last year when it picked 72andSunny as its primary agency of record after an extensive review.

In June, Business Insider ran a piece about Saatchi & Saatchi’s attempts to bounce back after the General Mills loss and the scandal involving Kevin Roberts‘ comments on gender diversity. That article noted, “Saatchi New York is redeeming itself through successful campaigns for big-name brands like Walmart and Tide, a reinvigorated culture and a couple of big award wins at the Cannes Lions…”

Last month, however, Trinity Wall Street—which is the real estate arm of Trinity Wall Street Episcopal Church—secured $400 million in financing for the purchase of the leasehold interest of the building. The Church owns the property beneath the structure and has for some time, though its plans for the space are unclear at this time. From a Globest report on the news: “The office space at the property is currently 100% leased. The property is anchored by Saatchi & Saatchi, which occupies more than 62% of the space.”

The spokesperson does not currently know who will be eventually occupy the agency’s now-former space.

[Publicis image via]

VML is expanding with the addition of Rockfish Digital, which will now function as a unit within VML known as Rockfish.

Rockfish Digital was founded in 2005 and has offices in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis, Cincinnati and Northwest Arkansas. The agency counts Walmart, Southwest Airlines, Mars and MetroPCS among its client roster.

While the merger takes effect immediately, the company will “use the remainder of 2017 to finalize integration to allow for a seamless start to 2018,” according to a press release.

“VML has always been about making an impact across the entire connected consumer experience – from point of inspiration to engagement to long-term consumer relationship,” VML global CEO Jon Cook said in a statement. “Rockfish plays across all of that, but also brings an unmatched depth and best-in-class experience to digital innovation, ecommerce and modern loyalty solutions. Extending this expertise into VML will allow us the opportunity to offer a truly reimagined relevance to the lead agency model.”

“Just as important as our shared passion and entrepreneurial spirit surrounding our businesses, we share a commitment and focus on creating incredibly strong cultures for our team members across the world,” he added. “I could not be more excited for everyone at Rockfish to become a part of our VML family.”

As a result of the deal, Rockfish CEO Michael Stich and Rockfish president and chief strategy officer Dawn Maire will become part of the VML executive leadership team.

“Rockfish has a history of transforming brands through digital innovations and productive disruption,” Stich said in a statement. “We look forward to realizing this further through our integration with VML. Together, we can create new models and value for brands that reinvent the connected consumer experience.”

With the addition of Rockfish, VML now has over 3,000 employees in 33 locations.

“With Rockfish becoming part of VML, the enlarged VML becomes an even more comprehensive offer covering the entire consumer journey,” WPP founder and CEO Sir Martin Sorrell, said in a statement. “It aligns two of WPP’s best performing and most accomplished agencies to create a highly relevant offering to lead clients through an increasingly complex and fragmented marketing environment.”

Australia: it’s a different kind of place! The country has something approaching universal health coverage, and it’s one of the few places in the world with compulsory voting.

But unlike the U.S., it still doesn’t allow same-sex partners to legally marry.

The country’s government is about to vote on that issue, and shit is getting quite real in the meantime. You probably remember the related debates in this country, and it all seems every bit as intense down under. The New York Times recently reported that anti-gay flyers reading “Stop the Fags” have begun to appear, with some particularly targeting the Chinese community.

Interestingly, Australia’s AdNews reports that some local news outlets admitted to exacerbating/exaggerating the problem by “photoshopp[ing] the poster into a Melbourne laneway.”

This week, the first official ad in the anti-SSM campaign from the Australian Christian Lobby aired, and it is something else.

So, what have parents lost their rights to choose? Whether to send their kids to school with teh gheyz? Extreme Park Slope Parents aside, that’s a pretty tired non-argument. The idea that a school’s policies are going to turn your son gay is even more ridiculous, but we’ve heard worse.

The fact that the video has 2K likes and 14K downvotes might tell us something about how effective the campaign will be, but then no one trusts digital metrics.

And we’re most interested in the agency angle, a la this line from the writeup in AdNews: “The Marriage Coalition declined to reveal the agency behind the ad.”

That’s probably because none of the big names would agree to do it. Earlier this month, several shops including Ogilvy, Leo Burnett, DDB and many more signed on to the “Say No To No” initiative saying they would refuse to work on this (well-paid) project.

The latter point is the most interesting thing about the whole story to us as Americans, because the government has to allocate a certain amount of money any time a big vote or “plebiscite” goes down. An earlier HuffPo story estimated that each competing campaign could have up to $10 million in funding.

Here’s what Nick Cummins, creative partner at The Royals, told HuffPo:

“I’ve been in ads for over 30 years and it’s a great community. Sometimes we have to make messages or ads for things we don’t necessarily believe in 100 percent, but when it comes to these sorts of issues, it’s an opportunity for us to have an impact. …It’s like refusing to work on tobacco advertising, I see it as similar.”

Hmmm. Even Meghan Trainor got into it when someone used her unauthorized image for a “No” flyer.

Now someone please help us figure out which agency made this ad. And feel free to correct our admittedly poor understanding of the Australian legal system.

The stock market is on fire. So, why are advertising agency stocks are languishing on the vine? According to The New York Times, WPP, which owns agencies including Y&R and Ogilvy & Mather, said annual net sales may be flat or grow up to 1 percent as it reported that the measure shrank in the […]

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In March of 2016, McCann Erickson Japan welcomed an AI creative director entitled AI-CD ?. In June, the agency pitted the AI CD against Homo sapien creative director Mitsuru Kuramoto to see who could develop the better ad and then asked Japanese audiences to weigh in.

But creative director isn’t the only agency position artificial intelligence is gunning for. They want your receptionist jobs, too.

The innovation team at agency VCCP decided to conduct a little AI experiment, employing Amazon Echo’s Alexa as a receptionist. After a developer and copywriter to develop Alexa to handle answering simple questions and integrated with the agency’s system and employee database,  VCCP decide to make things more interesting by programming Alexa with three different personalities based on the OCEAN personality model of five basic traits.

So how did this quirky version of Alexa do?

Out of 407 interactions, the AI system misunderstood 38 requests, answered 104 questions, successfully welcomed 34 visitors (and also cracked a few jokes, flirted with coworkers and whispered the wifi password upon request). Unsurprisingly, people preferred Bubbly Alexa to Neurotic Alexa. VCCP learned the difficulties in communicating brand tone through such a system and that human receptionists are irreplaceable (for now).

According to VCCP innovation director Adrian Gans, Alexa “is limited by her voice, by the need to trigger her skills with an invocation, by the linear nature of her conversations and by her tendency to get distracted by background noise. And she really is not intelligent. Every interaction had to be carefully scripted.”

So by our calculations, the robot takeover should be at least 24 hours away.