Hasta La Creative!

Well, the decision came a tad quicker than we expected but according to reports from you know who, Chicago-based Cramer-Krasselt’s relationship with Porsche continues as the automaker has retained said agency’s services after a pitch that dragged on for six months. You’ve probably read Porsche’s perspective, now here’s a quick note from C-K president/CEO Peter Krivkovich:

“During the past five and a half years, C-K has enjoyed a great relationship with Porsche and we look forward to continued success together.

After the client’s best sales year ever in 2012, the best Q1 in their history to kick off 2013, and all of the industry recognition for smart strategic and creative thinking, we know we’re onto something good as PCNA’s agency partner.

When reviews like this happen – and this was a long and thorough one – it’s a good reminder for everyone that we are prepared for the challenge to work just as hard for our clients now as we were the day we were invited to their first pitch.

In the end, the proof is in the results. And Porsche has them.”

Peter Krivkovich”

As we mentioned last week, sources in the know were telling us that Porsche narrowed down its creative review to incumbent C-K, which has handled the account since 2007,  and Minneapolis-based Olson.

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Last Friday, the brilliantly insightful Corey Eridon of HubSpot castigated P&G for calling their “Facebook experiment” a failure and for the brand’s complete misunderstanding of digital strategy.

In response to the assumption it’s somehow Facebook’s fault P&G fell on its face and had to lay off 6,250 employees, Eridon wrote, “Yes, it’s Facebook’s fault. It’s not P&G’s fault for failing to stay on top of digital trends like learning what EdgeRank is and how it works. It’s not P&G’s fault for relying on third-party assets to build their brand, instead of investing in assets they can control, like their own website and blog. It’s not P&G’s fault for failing to create remarkable content that — and if you know how EdgeRank works you’d know this — gets you more visibility on Facebook due to reader engagement. It’s not P&G’s fault for failing to realize no audience is guaranteed, paid or otherwise, and that audiences are actually earned on a daily basis. And it’s certainly not P&G’s fault for expecting a “new” platform like Facebook to work by slapping on the same old-school ad tactics they’ve been using (and, based on their rampant layoffs, not using well) for decades.”

Whoo! It’s like you can visualize Eridon in a cage match schooling an army of P&G mascots on how shit gets done in today’s world of digital marketing.

But Eridon, much like everyone at HubSpot, isn’t out to crotch punch just for fun. No. She has wisdom and advice to share with P&G. Information the brand could actually act upon to better their marketing and put an end to the $10 billion they waste…uh…spend annually on marketing.

She sites some of the great work P&G brand Charmin has done and how some of that work, coupled with a concerted owned-media approach to marketing could right the brand and put them on a course to better success.

This notion that throwing more money at a problem is rooted in a Neanderthal-like belief that more GRPs, more reach, more frequency or more weight are the answers to all marketing predicaments. When there were just three television networks, one daily newspaper, a handful of radio stations and a few special interest magazine, that approach made perfect sense. In today’s hyper-fragmented, internet-enabled world that approach no longer works. What does work is the creation of interesting, educational, informative and helpful content that is easily found when a person comes looking. Content that enables a brand to become a trusted resource, not an annoying interruption.

And yes, it’s more complicated and involved that just creating a few informative blog posts but helpful content is where it begins. Helpful content garners leads and properly nurtured leads convert to customers.

Check out this infographic for a super simple explanation of inbound marketing…which is what we’re talking about here and what P&G should be doing.

Get a load of this insanity. Mondelez, that packaged goods company all the social media whiz kids love so much because it’s behind Oreo, has now decided it will take 120 days to pay agencies and other suppliers. And get a load of this buzzword-laden bullshit a Modelez stament gives as reason for the move:

“We’re continually looking to drive efficiency and improve our processes on a global basis. Extending our payment terms allows us to better align with industry and make sure we compete on fair grounds, while simultaneously improving transparency and predictability of payment processes.”

Um, what?

You meant to say you’re doing this to make your books look better, are able to spend more than you have and don’t give two shits about how this will affect your agency partners.

If you don’t have the money and can’t pay for something then don’t buy it in the first place. That’ll make your books look better. Not fucking vendors up the ass by making them wait 120 days for payment.

And we wonder why this country is in so much debt.

On an up-note, this is great news for FastPay

Well, you asked for it, and we’re giving it to you. To follow up on our Porsche review post from yesterday, we’ve heard from very reliable sources that the pitch for the automaker’s North American creative account is indeed down to two: Chicago-based incumbent Cramer-Krasselt and, you guessed it, Minneapolis-based Olson. Consider us surprised as we thought everyone’s darling agency Droga5 would be in the mix, but not so. Anyhow, we’re hearing Porsche’s decision is imminent and that the brand is getting more digitally focused in terms of its creative efforts. The other two finalists as mentioned before were CP+B Miami and McKinney. We’ll keep you posted.

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Since tipsters were scolding us for not talking about it much, here’s a quick update on Porsche North America’s creative review, which was launched five months ago. From what we’ve been told, it’s basically down to a few finalists and sources familiar with the matter confirm that Chicago-based incumbent Cramer-Krasselt is still very much in the mix.

We’re hearing that C-K, which has handled the account since 2007, is now battling it out with just a couple of the other finalists reported by Adweek in February including Droga5, CP+B Miami, Olson (when reached, wouldn’t comment, referred inquiries to client) and McKinney. Yep, it’s still a crapshoot, but we hope you’re appeased for now. As has been reported, you probably shouldn’t expect anything until end of month/early next, but who thinks C-K will retain? Feel free to weigh in.

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And this, friends, is how an unlikely bond on the Twitters begins. Last Friday, digital agency Resource, which houses offices in Columbus, Cincinnati, Chicago, etc., decided to continue its habit of engaging/baiting Twitter celebs. Not sure Shawn Ries is quite a “celeb” per se, but the guy’s been a staff writer on Family Guy for a couple of years, so that at least says something. Anyhow, Resource, which handles all digital properties for the “It’s not delivery” pizza brand, DiGiorno, decided to strike up a Twitter convo, and above and below, you can see how the chat evolves from snippy to sappy in no time (and now, we’ve been told Ries follows DiGiorno..aww). Think we all learned something today, though we’re not sure what yet. You can check out larger, squint-free image after the jump…

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On Thursday, NBC’s long-running U.S. version of The Office will celebrate its series finale after nine seasons on air, the last three of which everyone would like to pretend never happened because they were pretty boring and shitty.

The end of The Office also means the end of free product placement for Dunder Mifflin, the fictional-turned-real paper company licensed from Comcast by Staples two years ago to sell under the latter’s Quill brand. What might have seemed like a clever business venture at the time is now looking a bit silly as, with no more episodes of The Office on the horizon, Dunder Mifflin’s charm as a gag gift is fading quickly. Soon (as in probably about a year a so), if someone gets you a ream of Dunder-Mifflin paper, you will not laugh knowingly at the brand, thus depreciating the only value it offers. Instead, you will marvel at the fact that a friend got you a ream of paper as a gift, and likely consider them a total asshole.

Hopefully, Staples will put Dunder Mifflin out of its misery faster than NBC did with The Office, but in the meantime, we’re still getting spots produced by LA-based crowdsourcers Tongal that are even worse than the last season of the show they’re based on. Luckily for America, the above spot is only running during the series finale’s telecast in five Dunder Mifflin “branch” markets (Scranton, Utica, Akron, Albany and Syracuse), so you would most likely be spared if you hadn’t visited AgencySpy today. Sorry about that, but hey, at least we get Steve Carell back for the two-hour finale on Thursday, right?

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DraftFCB Chicago has invoked the cuteness theory for their latest Del Monte Foods work, which suggests that people will always respond positively to cats or babies. The Facebook campaign lets users personalize a digital cat avatar with pet photos and create a jingle. Aside from the obvious cooing and awwing, those who play along could win a $100 daily prize or a $10,000 grand prize. I can almost hear the creaky bones of cat ladies crunching as they try to get up from their rocking chairs and walk to their computers without stepping on one of their 47 cats.

The app has been so successful thus far, according to echoes from the Chicago office, that the agency’s needed to add more servers to accommodate the traffic. That means cat ladies are probably making 47 entries for each of their kittens, giving them more chances to win and less chances to ever reclaim a normal life that involves other human beings.

Credits after the jump.

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Recognizing mistakes retroactively is easy. After the damage is done, heads roll downhill as people ask, “Who could’ve let this happen?” At times, the criticism can be unfounded. The political correctness machine does not care much for different sides to an offensive story. But sometimes, in cases of extreme public blunders, the story only has one side.

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen two thoughtless content blunders – one from Mountain Dew, the other for Hyundai – that resulted in serious and immediate public backlash. Mountain Dew’s goat spot was developed by rapper Tyler, the Creator, and was quickly pulled by Pepsi Co. after viewers complained of racism and misogyny. As you’ll see in the above ABC News clip, it’s also being referred to as “the most racist commercial ever” for the way it reinforces black stereotypes. The Hyundai spot, which aimed to pull humor and brand equity out of a failed garage suicide attempt, may go down as one of the most insensitive commercials ever. Hyundai reached out to AgencySpy, hoping to distance itself from the bad press about an hour after we published excerpts of a heartfelt blog post from Holly Brockwell, a London-based copywriter whose father died in a similar manner to what was portrayed in the ad.

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On a tiny island island outside Finland called Aland where, reportedly, nothing interesting ever happens, a gaming company, Paf, placed a help wanted ad looking for a seer. Now, we hope they aren’t hiring this this future teller to game the system. Rather, we hope, like any well-run business, they’d just like the ability to predict how their business will be doing in, say the next year, five for ten.

Apparently, there are a lot of clairvoyants in Aland as the company tells us they have received hundreds of applications.