Hasta La Creative!

It’s not just John Travolta.

Seems Sir Martin Sorrell has apologized after the ever-reliable Page Six reported on his inability to remember a female colleague’s name at an event honoring various British advertising people.

We aren’t really familiar with the St. George’s Society of New York, but apparently America’s biggest British charity held a gala the weekend before last to honor Sorrell, British Consul-General Danny Lopez and historian Amanda Foreman, who created last year’s “The Ascent of Women” series for the BBC.

Seems that Sir Martin referred to her as “Angela” after giving “a long-winded speech”  in which he congratulated himself along with the other two honorees and led Foreman to make this crack on the Twitter:

My congratulations to … #whatshername. Any other women out there with similar horror stories? #everydaysexismpic.twitter.com/VZ382EJWMA

— Amanda Foreman (@DrAmandaForeman) May 4, 2016

According to both Page Six and the London Times, Sorrell was a bit preoccupied with arguments over the size of his pay package and the news that WPP will soon begin looking for his replacement.

He also reached out to Foreman to apologize, which is a lot more than we can say for certain executives. Behind this paywall, she says she doesn’t hold a grudge.

[Image via Reuters/The Telegraph]

In case any of our readers ever dream of breaking out of the agency rut by lighting a match and burning the whole thing down, we have to advise you not to do that. There are other, less violent ways to escape your frustration…like working as a full-time freelancer! “Male Copywriter” Lawson Clarke just took the plunge.

As you may know, Clarke launched the site–and the persona that went along with it–after getting canned by Arnold in 2009. In a subsequent interview, he said “I don’t look at it as a gimmick,” and he clearly doesn’t. Bob Garfield once gave it three and a half stars!

This week Clarke left his SVP/creative director job at Hill Holliday after more than three years and announced his newfound freelancer status with a semi-erotic video in which he sells his One Show award and attempts to beat up at least one child.

Clarke spoke to Tim Nudd earlier today about the project, his belly button piercing and his decision to poke fun at one Vladimir Putin. We asked him a few more questions about his advice for other creatives who want to escape from the shackles of the Big Bad Agency world.

Why did you leave Hill Holliday now? No, really.
I did the best work of my career at Hill Holliday and I’m leaving behind some very good friends. But, honestly, the reason I’m going back to freelance is simple: I just like the freelance lifestyle. It suits me well. I freelanced for about 5 years before coming Hill Holliday, and always knew I would go back to it eventually.

What’s the appeal of freelancing?
Is the freelance life for everyone? No, but for me it’s a good fit. The Malecopywriter reboot was just an attempt to make my life a little easier and get the phone to ring on its own. I mean, the irony is we as creatives spend our entire careers coming up with ways to get our clients noticed, but when it comes to our own brands most are content just to throw their portfolio on Cargo Collective and call it a day.

What would you say to others who are thinking of making similar moves?
My advice for anyone thinking about making the jump would be to make it easy on yourself and think of a way you can have clients come to you. That being said, this is going to be hilarious when I’m working as a barista a year from now.

That was a solid take, though we do have a theory that Clarke agreed to speak with us primarily so he could read all your comments.

Please feel free to mention his mustache.

Credits for the project:

Creative Director: Lawson Clarke
Art Director: Jude Senese
Web Design: Rafael Feliz
Producer: Whitney Bogosian
Director of Photography: Tim Mollen
Editor: Michael Reuter
Colorist: Chalie Coffou
Animator: Marcio Lima

This week marks a changing of the guard in the upper echelons of Team One: Saatchi & Saatchi’s Lexus/luxury-focused agency unit announced that longtime exec Julie Michael will assume the role of president on August 1st.

Michael replaces fellow Team One vet Paul Mareski, who spent 15 years with the agency and six as president. The official word is that he’s leaving for a purpose far closer to home: “pursu[ing] his dream to relocate his family to his hometown of Detroit and participate in the city’s rebirth.” In a statement, Mareski adds, “This move allows our children to grow up with 14 of their cousins just blocks from our new home in Birmingham, Mich.”

As for Michael, the incoming president has been with Team One since 1998, moving up the ranks from director of event marketing/promotions to director of business development to her most recent position as executive director at the agency. Along the way, the exec has not only worked on Lexus, but brands like HSBC Premier and Ritz-Carlton.

Regarding Michael’s appointment, Saatchi West Coast/Team One chairman/CEO Kurt Ritter sings her praises, saying:

“Julie is a proven executive and visionary leader who enjoys the respect and esteem of both clients and agency colleagues. She has been in all the right chairs to provide exceptional leadership in this position, and we are pleased and fortunate to be able to name her as our new president.”

Michael will be replaced by another Team One veteran, Paul Silverman, who’s been with the agency since 2005 and will now assume the dual roles of executive director/account management and managing director of its Texas office.

Regular readers of this blog will almost certainly remember that Chief Creative Officer Jeff Benjamin announced his plans to leave JWT New York last summer in what some called an ouster and others called a mutual decision.

The agency’s release and Benjamin’s own statements held that he was leaving in order to launch his own creative venture. We didn’t get any details on that venture at the time, but now Benjamin seems closer to unveiling it; we only know that it goes by the name Disco.

In what appears to be the venture’s first publicly shared project, Benjamin and his crew joined the “wild card” crowd pitching ride-share service Lyft yesterday.

The concept: call a driver in Brooklyn and pay him to hang out with them all day rather than provide rides to others. There’s ice cream, table tennis and a trip across the old Brooklyn Bridge:

Yesterday, Benjamin tweeted what appears to be a list of collaborators:

Influencers don’t like being called influencers. @samthecobra, @jerm_cohen, @dave_krugman are awesome connected creators to work with.

— Jeff Benjamin (@jeffb) June 9, 2015

Of course the Lyft “review” is ongoing, but Disco did get the company’s attention yesterday as both the “startup” and its CMO Kira Wampler (formerly with Trulia) favorite the submission on Twitter.

We’ve been unable to reach out to Benjamin directly so far, but we expect to hear more about Disco soon (location, number of employees, points of differentiation, etc.). Of course we welcome him to give us more information.

Earlier this month, Grey effectively swiped some Procter & Gamble business from BBDO as the client moved to consolidate the whole of its grooming brands with one agency after awarding Gillette to Grey in 2013.

In that new business memo more than two years ago, Grey Chairman/CEO Jim Heekin started his thank you list with four names: CCO Tor Myhren, COO Michael Houston, and account leads Tamara Ingram (formerly group EVP/executive managing director) and Debby Reiner (former EVP/group director).

In the wake of the win, the latter two have been promoted: Ingram will fill the role of chief client team officer at parent company WPP while retaining leadership of “Team P&G” and Reiner will be president of the global P&G group overseeing Grey’s work for all related brands.

Here’s the memo.

I am pleased to share two important promotions with you which concern Tamara Ingram and Debby Reiner, our Procter & Gamble account leaders.

Tamara has been promoted to a key new post at our parent company, WPP.  She will become Chief Client Team Officer of WPP, overseeing all of WPP’s global accounts, working with the leaders of the Team WPP groups that have been established to serve global clients.  I am pleased to say she will continue as President and CEO of Team P&G across WPP group and remain based at Grey headquarters in New York.

After leading two of Britain’s top agencies, Saatchi and McCann,Tam joined Grey London in 2005, rising to the post of Grey UK Group CEO.  In 2007, she took on the dual roles of President and CEO of Team P&G across WPP group as well as Grey’s global leader on P&G.

Under Tam’s leadership, the past eight years have been some of the most creative, productive and dynamic of our nearly 60-year partnership with P&G.  We’ve pioneered new markets and new marketing channels.  We’ve launched Famously Effective ideas that have put our juggernaut brands front and center in the pop culture conversation and driven their growth.  We have broadened our relationship, winning the Gillette business.  And our work has been hailed at Cannes and beyond as never before.  Tam will bring the same passion, skill and dynamism to her expanded new role.

Importantly, I am delighted to announce that Debby Reiner, an integral part of this success as our EVP, Partner and Global Beauty Director on P&G, has been promoted to President Grey/Global P&G, overseeing our entire portfolio of brands.  She will remain based in New York.

Debby joined Grey New York in 1989 fresh out of Harvard and embraced her passion for the beauty business, working on CoverGirl.  After a successful stint running Clairol at JWT, she came home to Grey in 1999 to lead the reinvention of Pantene.

It has been quite a ride marked by Debby’s instrumental role in the global win of Gillette and, most recently, the Venus, Braun and The Art of Shaving brands.  Along the way, she has helped build Grey into the number one beauty agency in the world with such leading brands as Pantene, Clairol, CoverGirl and fragrances and an integrated offering that encompasses digital, shopper, Hispanic and activation.

Debby’s boundless energy, single-minded dedication to creativity, success at team-building and sense of humor have endeared her to her clients and colleagues alike.

Please give both Tam and Debby your congratulations and full support as we begin an exciting new chapter helping P&G seize the future.

Regards,

GREYgroup | Famously effective since 1917
Jim Heekin, Chairman & CEO

MDC, which owns CP+B, 72andSunny, Doner, and various other agencies, suffered a hit to its stock price this morning after revealing the following (as transcribed by Seeking Alpha) during yesterday’s Q1 earnings call:

“In October, the company received a Subpoena from the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to CEO expenses, the company’s goodwill and certain other accounting practices, as well as trading in the company’s securities by third parties.”

In short, chief Miles Nadal charged “reimbursed expenses, medical expenses, travel expenses and other expenses for which information was incomplete” over a period of six years in apparent violation of SEC rules. As noted in The Wall Street Journal, the company’s share value dropped 33 percent and analysts updated the stock’s status to “hold” after the news broke. Its price picked up a bit at the end of the day for a total daily decline of 27.81 percent.

In her initial report, Noreen O’Leary of Adweek wrote that the most significant elements of the story were the fact that MDC chose not to reveal the information to investors for six months and that Nadal’s base salary last year was higher than that of both Martin Sorrell and Maurice Levy. In a follow-up story, she uncovered a few more details:

“Nadal received $926,005 in company-paid expenses last year to help support his Bahamas-based lifestyle.

Of that, $500,000 was for unspecified perks. Another $91,038 went toward Nadal’s personal use of aircraft, including travel between his residences in the Bahamas and West Palm Beach, Fla., and MDC’s corporate office in New York.”

Nadal has agreed to reimburse MDC for $8.6 million.

Here’s the full statement given to us by MDC:

“MDC Partners has been actively cooperating with the SEC and continues to do so. We are committed to the highest standards of corporate governance and transparency, and in response to this situation have taken a number of steps to strengthen our procedures and internal controls, the details of which are outlined in our most recent earnings release and proxystatement filed with the SEC.

We expect these circumstances to have no impact on the integrity of our current or previously reported financial statements, and we remain laser-focused on continuing to execute on our strategy and plan. Our business is very strong and we are confident in our ability to achieve our financial guidance for this year, as well as enthusiastic about our overall growth prospects for 2015 and beyond.”

The company says that none of these developments will affect day-to-day operations at its various agencies.

Since it’s almost Friday and our PR contacts are very resourceful, here are some quotes from agency executives discussing the pending finale of the most/least realistic show about the ad industry.

First, what will happen to Don “Don’t Call Me Dick” Draper?

From Jorge Narváez-Arango, VP/ECD on IBM at George P. Johnson:

“The clue has always been there, foreshadowed in the opening credits. Don will spiral out of the industry and take on a new persona once again, starting a new life on the West Coast.”

Maybe, but that would mean reconciling with Megan. From Jason Marks, ECD/chief Kanye troll at Partners+Napier:

“Don Draper will kill himself. He’s been falling from his Madison Avenue tower at the beginning of every single episode… he’s got to hit the ground sometime, no?”

That would be way too easy, though. From David Eastman, former JWT North America CEO and current MDC partner:

“A twenty-something Martin Sorrell will find a loop-hole in the McCann contract that allows him to buy the 51% from McCann.

He convinces the partners to sell to him on the basis that they will make more money during his proposed 20 year earn-out than they would have done on their 5 year contracts with McCann. He funds the deal by a sale and lease back on their office space to a twenty something Donald Trump. The lease costs will go on SC&P’s P&L.”

Slow clap.

We would include more quotes about favorite scenes and episodes, but everyone picked the Kodak/Lucky Strike pitches.

CCO Mark Simon of Lowe Campbell Ewald does, however, have a recollection inspired by the lawn mower incident:

“I drove a Segway into a presentation once, crashed into a wall and ran over the Account Director’s foot. Fortunately, no toes were lost in the process.”

We assume he meant to say unfortunately. Finally, GSD&M Group Creative Director Scott Brewer talks realism:

“The fact that my sister can text me and ask how many martinis I had at lunch is a pretty good indication that [the show is] reaching an audience outside those of us in the industry, but also shows how unrealistic it is compared to the actual agency world we work in these days.”

That’s not what we hear…

Our predictions? Don will write email campaigns for a direct marketing agency based somewhere in South Florida; Roger will retire to Orlando, father a child at 70, and live to 95; Peggy will quit the ad industry to become a real estate mogul with a practice on the Upper West Side; Pete will die while attempting to fake his own death in order to escape from Trudy; Sally will write an anonymous memoir; Bob will somehow run SCDP after the McCann deal falls through; and Harry Hamlin will break character to remind everyone that he played Perseus before they even graduated from Tisch.

GIF logo via Colorado designer Dan Lehman

Former agency executive Alex Bogusky is about to start something a little different.

Here’s a semi-cryptic tweet from yesterday:

Excited to launch new social-good agency platform very soon. Imagine an agency with a community (millions) and media distribution built in.

— Alex Bogusky (@bogusky) February 23, 2015

You may notice a pattern in his recent tweets: beyond sharing the “Save the Bros” campaign from “ad startup Humanaut,” he’s been posting quite a few links to Fusion, the joint media venture of Disney/ABC TV and Univision that ended 2014 by launching a cable network and signing a slew of journalists from more traditional publications like The Atlantic, Forbes, New York magazine, and Reuters.

The reason behind that trend, it seems, is that Bogusky’s newest project is a collaboration with the people at Fusion…a sharing of the assets, as it were.

Our contacts at Fusion were mum, and a CP+B spokesperson confirmed that this is NOT a Crispin Porter joint. But thanks to a Denver Egotist reader (hat tip), we can tell you that the new project is Spiffly, a Boulder-based “community for the natural and socially conscious goods industry” set to launch any day now.

It would seem, based on the vague descriptions given, that the baseline community of which Bogusky tweets is comprised of Fusion’s viewers, readers, and followers. It would also seem that he, former CP+B senior strategist Jim Moscou, and a few others will use these pooled assets to bring attention to area nonprofits and, eventually, global companies doing what people in the PR field call “corporate social responsibility” or CSR.

Spiffly reads like a combination agency/B2B social network. From the group’s LinkedIn page, which classifies it as a “partnership”:

“Launched in Boulder, CO. in January 2014 by a small group of entrepreneurs, strategists, and designers, Spiffly believes in the power of products that do good. In turn, Spiffly aggregates online for the first time one of the fastest growing, most innovative, and most influential business communities in today — companies and professionals making and supporting a new generation of consumer products that take into consideration people, planet and profits.”

Here’s more from the Spiffly Facebook page:

“At Spiffly, we believe in transparency and authenticity; a fun and festival atmosphere; to help fledgling and established brands alike to thrive and succeed; and to bring to market the first ever natural products ‘pro deal’, sampling, social/discovery shopping platform (and much more) at Spiffly.is.”

Regarding the venture’s mascot:

“…to manifest this unique vision, we really had to start from scratch and be our own animal. Thus, introducing the one and only, Spiffly!”

The Spiffly Twitter account currently follows one person: Boulder-area “healthy living market expert” Carlotta Mast. As we know from his past work with SodaStream and others, Bogusky is a big fan of sustainability, and Spiffly looks like a network created to help people who work at similarly-minded companies connect and further one another’s business goals in the process.

What’s not yet clear is what Spiffly will create beyond the network itself — and how it will partner with green-themed companies looking to exchange their goods and services for some form of legal currency via that social/discovery shopping platform.

But at least it’s not advertising.

Kastner & Partners of Los Angeles has long been known primarily for its work with Red Bull. But the agency has many more clients, and it’s looking to expand.

Back in September, we spoke to recently-hired CCO Jamie Reilly — an industry vet who worked in creative at Deutsch LA, Saatchi & Saatchi, TBWA/MAL and 72andSunny — on the appeal of moving from a large to a mid-sized agency.

This week Reilly spoke to us again about his agency’s new work for a very different client: Adidas golf. Here’s the first :30 TV spot in the campaign:

As Reilly explains it, Adidas increasingly “thinks of itself as an innovation/performance brand across the board.”

This makes for a challenge in the golf field, however. “Most perceive golf to be played on a beautiful day in an exclusive environment,” and the agency/client wanted to “position it as a sport with athletes of the highest caliber. We wanted to show them pursuing excellence against adversarial conditions.”

In discussing how the campaign came about, Reilly says that the agency wanted to avoid promoting the client’s new apparel line in way that simply says, “hey, here’s this” by telling “a bigger story about competition.”

Here’s another :15 spot:

The client “challenged [Kastner & Partners],” who “felt like this was a great way to talk about the product through the lens of competition and innovation.”

The client agreed: “when they saw the pitch idea, they started nodding their heads.”

Why?

Reilly says, “When you look at golf advertising…it’s mostly white people wearing white clothes in the bright sun. To me, this resonates as a competitor to other campaigns” due to its “grittiness.”

This :15 spot conveys Reilly’s point:

The goal is to “appeal to dedicated golfers,” who think: “I’m the guy who’s out there playing in the rain when my friends aren’t up to the task.” Reilly adds, “I can relate to their dedication.”

The campaign, which is already running on TV and online but hasn’t received any press attention to date, is a global effort; these efforts will be “picked up and adapted” for international markets.

The campaign also includes print elements that reinforce the “hot weather, cold weather, rain” theme via art and copy:

Kastner and client hope the work will prove to be “disruptive.”

As Reilly explains, “We shot it all in Florida in two days in the middle of August, so all the other components were put together with magic and pixie dust. It’s ambitious.”

adidas Golf – 18/365 PRODUCTION CREDITS

18/365 TV CREDITS:

KASTNER & PARTNERS:

Chief Creative Officer: Jamie Reilly

Creative Director: Tim Braybrooks

Associate Creative Director: Matt Bogan

Associate Creative Director: Richard Bess

Producer: Hank Zakroff

UBER CONTENT:

Director: Cole Webley

DP: Travis Cline

Line Producer: Christopher Cho

Executive Producer: Phyllis Koenig

Executive Producer: Preston Lee

MISSION:

Lead Flame Artist: Joey Brattesani

Creative Director: Rob Trent

Flame Artist: Chris Moore

Flame Artist: Trent Shumway

Flame Artist: Edward Black

Flame Artist: Michael Vaglienty

VFX Producer: Ryan Meredith

VFX Coordinator: Kristina Thoegersen

Managing Director: Michael Pardee

18/365 PRINT CREDITS:

KASTNER & PARTNERS:

Chief Creative Officer: Jamie Reilly

Creative Director: Tim Braybrooks

Associate Creative Director: Matt Bogan

Associate Creative Director: Richard Bess

Copywriter: Chris Guichard

Producer: Jill Lundin

BRAD HARRIS PHOTOGRAPHY:

Photographer: Brad Harris

Producer: John Cogan