Hasta La Creative!

In a play for new customers, The Uncola is mixing it up with Sir Mix-a-Lot and 2 Chainz. The Dr. Pepper-owned brand is also making a strong play to be the mixer of choice for fans of adult beverages. It’s an interesting twist to take a back seat to spirits, and one that could pay […]

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In case you had any doubt, the crowdsourcing trend is here to stay.

Today BBDO’s London office announced the launch of Flare Studio, a unit that will be dedicated to “meet[ing] the rising demand for diverse and authentic video content for an online audience.” AMV BBDO will lead the project along with client Mars’ Petcare division.

In a statement, Mars Petcare’s global CMO Leonid Sudakov said: “We are very pleased to be partnering with BBDO to contribute to a massive transformation of content production.  Flare Studio will give Mars unprecedented access to a global pool of creative talent and we are excited about the unique ideas that this crowdsourcing collaboration will generate.”

Cool. But what does this mean, exactly?

Flare Studio is essentially a marketplace/platform for freelancers, directors, prod cos and, of course, “influencers” to “compete for briefs posted on behalf of BBDO agencies and their clients.” And it’s a tiered model, meaning you can pay to play.

The homepage makes it all seem so simple.

The project isn’t technically new. It’s an extension of AMV BBDO’s in-house content arm, which launched two years ago and now collaborates with 12 of the network’s offices.

Flare founder and AMV BBDO head of content Nick Price offered this statement:

“Flare Studio is a bold undertaking – bringing the benefits of the crowd but also injecting it with the right amount of agency know how to make sure the work reflects an understanding of our brands and can work for them within the crowd source model.  That’s a very different approach from anything else in the market.”

In this case, then, “crowdsourcing” is less of an Airbnb-style “send us your ideas for a chance to win $500” project than a streamlining of the pitch process via a digital platform owned by the BBDO network.

The implication is that BBDO creatives will ultimately work on all resulting campaigns and that many of the parties who provide the winning work will not be amateurs with iPhone cameras but advertising professionals and people who make their livings on social media. In other words, your jobs will not be outsourced … for now.

In order to get the whole thing off the ground, AMV BBDO and Mars are partnering with U.K.-based National Film and Television School and offering two $30,000 scholarships to launch “The Flare Foundation.” So it’s a public service, too.

Philadelphia-based digital agency Bluecadet, which specializes in museum and non-profit clients, launched a New York office. Lillian Preston will serve as managing director of the office, with Brett Renfer holding the role of creative director and Ben Bojko serving as the office’s creative technology director.

The trio has been working with Bluecadet in Philadelphia for the past six months or so, AdAge reports, on projects for clients including the New York Public Library, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.

Preston joined Bluecadet as an executive producer last November, following eight months as director, ITP Innovation Lab at NYU. Before that she spent nearly four and a half years with Ralph Appelbaum Associates in New York, as a senior producer and then head of production. While with RAA, she worked on projects including the 2012 London Olympic Gardens and IBM THINK Exhibit at Lincoln Center and EPCOT. She is also currently an adjunct professor for NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts – Interactive Telecommunications Program.

Renfer joined Bluecadet in May after nearly two and a half years as director, experience design for New York-based brand consultancy Collins. Prior to joining Collins he spent nearly six years as a senior technologist for architecture and design firm Rockwell Group, tasked with conceptualizing and designing temporary architectural scale interactive environments as part of Rockwell Group’s Interaction Lab. Before Rockwell Group he spent two years as an interactive designer with Georgia agency Terrance Sullivan.

Bojko joined Bluecadet as a creative developer last December, following a year and a half as a senior developer with design studio potion. Prior to potion he spent nearly four and a half years at Big Spaceship, working his way up from technologist to associate technical director, spending a year in the latter position before leaving for potion.

Mark Gross and Chad Broude, both longtime veterans of DDB Chicago, recently announced their plans to leave that agency and launch their own boutique unit called Highdive. Wednesday will be their last day at DDB.

The operation, which will be based in downtown Chicago, has already received project-based assignments from several clients including Google-owned smart home company Nest, online tuxedo rental company Xedo and Jawzone, a forthcoming “social powered online destination for sports related conversation and debate.”

Gross has spent the majority of his career (22 years) with DDB Chicago and ran creative on some of the office’s biggest accounts including Capital One, Cars.com, Bud Light and Mars-Wrigley. He tells us that he’s probably best known for the late-’90s “Real Men of Genius” campaign for Bud.

Broude spent 8 years as a copywriter and creative director at the office, where he worked on many of the same accounts: State Farm, Skittles, Lifelock and Capital One. His work has won various awards, and he has played a key role in such recent campaigns as the State Farm relaunch, the Capital One series starring Charles Barkley and the Steven Tyler Skittles spot from last year’s Super Bowl.

“It’s always been a dream of ours to run our own creatively led shop … that’s about good creative and fewer layers,” Gross says in explaining the pair’s decision to break off from DDB. Broude adds, “As more work goes project-based and budgets get tighter, it’s more important that every dollar goes to good creative. Going independent is a better way to do that.” He says that a boutique operation like theirs is “more equipped to handle some of the project work.”

We’ve encountered variations on that line quite a bit in recent months: examples include Boulder’s Work in Progress, Miami’s Markham & Stein, New York’s Joan, San Francisco’s Partners in Crime, Erich & Kallman and many others that we should now apologize for not remembering.

Regarding this trend, Broude says, “You’re seeing the shift [to smaller independent agencies] more and more because there less of a barrier to entry. You don’t have to win the whole piece of business to get on a client’s agency roster.”

Gross thinks the Windy City could use some boutiques of its own: “Over the past few years the perception seems to be that the majority of great advertising is coming out of the East and West coasts. We plan on changing that by building an award-winning boutique right here in Chicago.”

The name Highdive was inspired by the concept of taking a great risk, either through executing a difficult physical feat or attempting to make great advertising. The agency does not yet have work ready to share publicly, but Gross tells us his operation’s first campaign will go live soon.

For the time being, Gross and Broude are Highdive’s only full-time employees, but like many other such operations they are drawing on a pool of freelance talent. Gross says that the idea is to choose the strategist and/or account person best fit to a given client, adding that this also helps the team develop a more diverse group of partners and to “Build the perfect team for the perfect assignment.”

“Advertising has always been a challenging industry with a lot of client turnover. That’s what scares people,” Gross says when asked about the most difficult things facing his new operation. “Obviously the financial part of taking a risk on any business and building it is a daunting task. Our goal is to build client relationships … growth is our biggest challenge.”

Eventually, Highdive seeks to turn some of these relationships into agency of record agreements. For now it will focus on project-based assignments for clients centered on ecommerce and various other online services.

Publicis Communications recently raised some eyebrows with the latest step in its ongoing effort to remove as many of the dreaded “silos” as possible by arranging its agencies’ P&L (profit and loss) reports by country rather than by network.

This means, for example, that all of Publicis creative entities in the U.K. report to Saatchi & Saatchi CEO Robert Senior, acting in his capacity as a leader of the Communications group in that country rather than his role atop the Saatchi organization.

And it’s not just Publicis.

On September 15, sources tell us that Ogilvy & Mather global CEO John Seifert, who was named Miles Young’s successor back in January, sent out an all-staff memo essentially announcing that his agency would begin doing the same thing.

In what amounted to his formal introduction after assuming the roles of global CEO and chairman of the WPP shop at the beginning of this month, Seifert praised Young’s work and expressed optimism about the future of the Ogilvy brand while announcing that it would, moving forward, operate as one interlocking network in North America with all offices across disciplines (creative, media, PR, etc.) moving to the single P&L model.

As is the case with Publicis, it’s not quite clear at the moment how this shift will affect Ogilvy agencies in terms of day to day operations, and we do not currently know who will lead the North American entity.

But Seifert acknowledged in his memo that change — especially on this scale — can often be difficult, implying that the consolidation could lead to some trimming of the operational fat across Ogilvy’s many North American offices.

The general consensus among our tipsters holds that Seifert, like Arthur Sadoun at Publicis, is trying to “shake up” a model seen as staid and even antiquated. Arranging offices and teams by continent would theoretically allow for greater collaboration and ability to attend to specific clients — a sentiment that recalls talk surrounding the creation of Omnicom’s as-yet-unnamed McDonald’s unit in Chicago.

Ogilvy employees, however, still have some key questions. Chief among them: Who will be in charge? How will the resulting hierarchy operate, and how will the inevitable wins and losses be distributed?

MUH-TAY-ZIK|HOF-FER, the formerly independent agency that was acquired by VCCP in May, has opened a new operation in New York City and hired Nick Johnson, founder of The Incite Group, to run it.

This news is not a revelation: In a May Adweek piece, ECD and co-founder John Matejczyk stated that he planned to open a Manhattan location with the backing of London-based VCCP. The story also noted that the two agencies “plan to eventually enter the South American and Asian markets,” though it did not specify how, exactly, that might come about.

We’ve been in touch with MUH-TAY-ZIK’s PR team about this development since August, but they have so far declined to comment directly. Multiple sources, however, confirmed that Johnson will oversee the office and serve as president, and it seems that his title will apply across the entire organization since the agency does not currently list anyone in that position.

Various sources tell us that the New York operation remains small at this time, with a staff in the single digits. The creative department has yet to expand to Manhattan, which is primarily focused on new business. Details regarding the MUH-TAY-ZIK|HOF-FER New York location are currently unavailable, and it’s not clear whether the lease has been finalized. But we do know that the team itself has been working in an alternate space.

If the New York office ever resembles the agency’s San Francisco headquarters, there will be lots of white.

Johnson worked at various marketing companies in the U.K. before founding The Incite Group, which describes itself as “A global intelligence company” that handles both paid and earned media (social, email marketing, advertising, PR) and produces “Conferences, reports and analysis on how to engage your customers and drive sales,” in 2013. It’s not clear at this time whether he will play any role at Incite moving forward.

Some small changes occurred in the San Francisco office of MUH-TAY-ZIK|HOF-FER prior to the New York move, with former AdAge journalist Maureen Morrison joining the shop in a content-focused role and a very small number of employees let go due to changes in the agency’s relationships with clients Netflix and SoFi, which moved toward more project-based work.

Updates as we get them. At the very least, expect MUH-TAY-ZIK|HOF-FER to begin more aggressively pitching new business in Manhattan in the months to come.

Last month, a representative for the U.S. Census confirmed that the organization had chosen Y&R as its new lead creative agency after a pitch that lasted nearly a year.

Late yesterday, The Wall Street Journal’s newest advertising reporter Alex Bruell filed a story centered on a document that demonstrated how Y&R won: by severely under-bidding its rivals. In fact, according to this document which we admittedly have not seen, the agency’s bid was lower than those of competitors FCB, DDB, McCann and Droga5 by as much as 50 percent.

From the WSJ story:

A team led by Y&R submitted a proposal for the three-year deal that would cost the government agency about $14 million, far lower than the bids submitted by four other players, which ranged from roughly $25 million to over $30 million, according to people familiar with the matter.

According to a document reviewed by The Wall Street Journal that ranked agency fee proposals by price, Y&R’s team came in the least expensive, followed by teams led by Interpublic Group’s creative shop FCB, Omnicom Group’s DDB, and IPG-owned McCann World Group, as well an Accenture-led team that included people from creative shop Droga5.

For the record, the story also claims that Y&R beat the other agencies in the “technical” ranking, which somehow quantifies the abstract by assigning a number to indicate how well each respective shop could “perform the work.” It also notes that, according to unnamed sources, the agency has  been discussing a possible partnership with PwC to handle what will obviously be a large, complicated account. Y&R unsurprisingly declined to comment to us and the WSJ regarding a contract worth $415 million over three years.

We hadn’t heard about Y&R’s alleged pitch strategy before the WSJ story ran yesterday. That said, the federal contract for the business makes for an interesting read — especially the part in which the government answers agencies’ questions about how the media partnership portion of the deal will go down.

You’ll have to download the PDF here and wade through a lot of verbiage to review the whole thing, but given the recent brouhaha about the 4A’s and the agency world’s relationship with various media outlets, we think you will find the part about small business media partners particularly interesting.

The contract stipulates that 49 percent of the winning agency’s ultimate subcontracting spend on the U.S. Census account must go to “small businesses.” This number is quite high, especially given that very, very few media organizations or other major ad buyers would qualify as “small” by any real measure.

From page 41:

“The Contractor shall submit an updated Small Business Subcontracting Plan within twenty (20) business days after contract kick-off and then each year thereafter with task order proposals. In addition the contractor shall submit a quarterly report that includes the progress towards small business subcontracting goals that includes first, second, and third tier subcontractors.”

A January 11 version of the RFP includes questions and answers, with the questions submitted by the competing agencies and the answers provided by the Census organization itself. Here is one key exchange:

Question: A portion of subcontracted work may be National Broadcast Media Vendors. The majority of these vendors are Large Businesses and not available to meet the Small Businesses goals without significant compromise to the government’s ability to receive the financial discount benefits of a large buying agency. Would the U.S. Census provide a waiver of these vendors against the Small Business Goals?

Answer: No. The small business subcontracting goals applies to the overall contract value and not to specific subcontractors.

In other words, the unnamed agency was asking the Census whether it could get a waiver that would classify its national broadcast media partners as “small businesses.” Here’s the official requirement table for some context:

One can tell the agencies are nervous about this requirement.

Question: Small Business: 49% of the total contract value Is the 49% small business goal evaluated on a quarterly basis or as an average across multiple years?

Answer: [It’s “based off of total contract value.”]

Here’s another exchange in which an unnamed agency asks whether potential media partners can “self-certify” as small businesses:

Question: It is our understanding that SBA regulations permit small, small women-owned, and small disadvantaged businesses to self-certify. Please confirm this to be the case.

Answer: Yes, this is the case.

No word on which businesses this question might be referring to, what their actual size might be, or whether the government would subject their self-certifications to any sort of review.

In other words, it could be a great way to satisfy the requirement that 49 percent of your spend goes to “small businesses” even if some of the partners in question would not normally qualify for such a designation under any other circumstances. This would be especially easy if the government chooses not to review each of those claims individually.

Another agency had an interesting idea on that front:

Question: The Government’s requirement is that all printing be accomplished through the GPO and its vendors. By limiting Contractors to printing through GPO and its approved vendors, the Government is missing an opportunity for use of small and/or Economically Disadvantaged Small Businesses; this requirement also eliminates the opportunity for Contractors to work with vendors to negotiate the most effective and efficient terms for the Government. Can Contractors assume that printing costs for work conducted through GPO are not included in the Contractor’s budget?

Answer: No, the Contractor cannot make this assumption.

You don’t get that level of bureaucracy on most pieces of business. This should be a simultaneously fascinating and tedious account to work on.

Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson is right about one thing: over time, marijuana will be legal in more and more states, thereby creating a problem for our federal government.

Quite a few parties are trying to make money on this trend before it officially hits, and Anomaly appears to be one of them. Today the MDC Partners shop announced that it had been working for a couple of years on “bringing [a] new company from inception of idea all the way to market,” with the company in question being a marijuana startup called hmbldt (you know, like Humboldt county).

This isn’t your weird uncle’s weed, though, and it isn’t Gary Johnson’s, either. Check this stuff out:

It almost looks like … medicine.

Anomaly founding partner Jason DeLand is a board member at hmbldt, which offers the user four varieties of cannabis-derived concoctions to address various challenges like insomnia, anxiety and whatever the opposite of “bliss” happens to be.

The press release tells us that “Humans and cannabis have a long, symbiotic relationship, however medical professionals have struggled to design therapeutic treatments that are reliable and repeatable.”

hmbldt believes that it has reversed that trend by way of “precise formulations of major and minor cannabinoids and terpenes found in cannabis to deliver targeted benefits” while also “miniz[ing] the side effects sometimes associated with cannabis use” such as the belief that South Park is still funny.

This all stems from the idea that “cannabis is the only non-toxic therapy that is powerful enough to replace common pharmaceuticals,” and the current method of delivery is a vape pen. And it’s not a joke.

According to the release, this stuff will soon be available in oral spray form as well.

So the hmbldt guys have essentially used some real science to separate the good stuff in weed from the bad stuff, then create unique combinations of the former to treat specific health matters.

The larger story here is about Anomaly’s adventures outside of the world of advertising, and the release also clarifies that the agency has no time for your pothead jokes: “Anomaly’s interest in cannabis is medicinal. Our passion is driven by raising the quality of life for real people with real needs:  young children with Dravet Syndrome, veterans suffering from PTSD, business executives lagged by constant insomnia and people of all walks of life slave to dangerous and highly addictive pain and anxiety meds. Our interest is not in getting high, is not about the singular cannabinoid of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC).  Rather our interest is in the other 5 cannabinoids and hundreds of terpenes and their functions that can make people’s lives better.”

That’s cool, we get it. hmbldt’s core team includes one of the founders of Oracle’s software unit, and its products will go on sale at “select medicinal dispensaries” this month with plans to expand to the three states that have legalized recreational weed as well as Nevada.

Most importantly, “Anomaly has not invested hard cash into hmbldt. Anomaly is being paid based on success of the hmbldt sales though a royalty of products sold.”

If that approach works for McDonald’s, it can certainly work for weed startups. We personally don’t get the need to dress it all up, but whatever gets you where you need to be.

After introducing its A.I. CD early this spring, McCann Japan decided to bit the AI-CD ? robotic creative director against its human counterpart, namely creative director Mitsuru Kuramoto, in a creative battle. Both were given the task of creating a spot for Mondelez Japan brand Clorets Mint Tab, communicating the brand message of “instant, long-lasting refreshment that lasts for 10 minutes” and then turning to a nationwide poll to declare the winner.

Well, after several months the results are in and it appears humanity has triumphed, for now. It seems safe to say our robot overlords will not be taking over the ad industry anytime soon. The results were perhaps a little too close for comfort, however, with Kuramoto winning 54 percent of the vote and his A.I. counterpart tallying 46 percent. 

As a refresher, here’s AI-CD ?’s entry:

And Kuramoto’s winning spot:

“Honestly, it was a major blow,” Shun Matsuzaka, the McCann Japan creative planner who led the project to develop AI-CD ?, said in a statement. “But I think the fact that an A.I.-made commercial lost only by such a small margin against one made by today’s leading creative mind is in itself a coup. We hope to further develop AI-CD ? so that it can continue contributing to our clients’ businesses.”

Kuramoto expressed a desire to work together with AI-CD ? in the future, saying, “It was very exciting to be given the opportunity to battle it out with AI-CD ?. Next time, I hope to collaborate with AI-CD ? so that we can create something together! Thanks for the great match!”

Today Shareen Pathak of Digiday ran a rather unflattering portrait of The Barbarian Group, taking a look inside its recent “meltdown.”

The Group has seen something of a leadership exodus in recent months, changing CEOs for the second time in less than a year last week. Back in December, Sophie Kelly left the agency to be replaced by Peter Kim, who has since been succeded by interim CEO Aaron Lau. In March, co-founder and chairman Benjamin Palmer left the agency after 14 years, with chief strategy officer Ian Daly part of a wave of executive departures two months later. Owner/CXO Keith Butters, CCO Edu Pou, head of talent/HR Michelle Prota and head of account management Sherri Chambers also left the agency in May. 

“The fact that it’s still around at all is a testament to its heritage, since right now it is literally being run into the ground,” Barbarian co-founder Rick Webb told Digiday. 

The publication pointed Barbarian’s relationship with Korean holding company Cheil Worldwide, “a company with a culture at odds with its own.” For example, one veteran of The Barbarian Group told us that Cheil didn’t want to pay full price for its in-house talent, especially on the technical side of things.

This party also pointed to clients not knowing quite what to make of the organization, saying, “We were in limbo between production shop and full-service agency. And while the middle was interesting, a lot of clients didn’t know how to engage.” At a certain point, Barbarian spent significant amounts of money pitching new business alongside more traditional shops — and this investment largely failed to pay off.

Agency veterans also claim that certain members of the leadership team “checked out” well ahead of Cheil firing Kelly.

“When they fired [Kelly], an account person, who personally owned the relationships with every major client, out of the blue without telling the clients in advance, the fate was sealed,” Webb told Digiday. “They’ve been play-acting since December, and they never had a chance.”

Lau, currently serving as interim CEO says finding permanent CEO for the agency is his next order of business. “I’m not here to change history,” he told the publication, “I’m here to shape the future.”

It would seem that certain media outlets also got a little overexcited about The SuperDesk, which would turn out to be a symbol of Barbarian’s ambitions despite the fact that — according to our sources, at least — most employees liked it.