Vancouver, Washington-based Papa Murphy’s is not Papa John’s. That’s one key point-of-difference to establish in the pizza-eater’s mind. The other thing to make clear is that Papa Murphy’s is take-n-bake pizza, which is why I like Wong Doody’s tagline for the brand, “Love at 425 degrees.”
Wong Doody has served as the Papa Murphy’s agency of record since October of 2012.
Now, according to The Oregonian, the chain of 1,418 mostly franchised stores plans to make an initial public offering and raise $70 mil.
Company executives believe the United States can accommodate up to 4,500 Papa Murphy’s outlets—more than three times the current number of locations.
The concept of “take-n-bake” pizza was invented by Papa Murphy’s in 1981. The leading chains offering take-n-bake pizza are Papa Murphy’s, Figaro’s, and Nick-N-Willy’s.
PizzaToday ranks Papa Murphy’s as the nation’s sixth largest pizza chain, behind Pizza Hut, Domino’s, Papa John’s, Little Caesars and California Pizza Kitchen.
Having worked in some smaller ad markets, it’s always great to see agencies in those markets lure top talent. And here in the Northwest, while Seattle and Portland often get the glory, the Boise ad scene is growing steadily as well.
Stoltz Marketing Group is starting off 2014 with a new Creative Director, Ward Duft. Said agency president Ken Stoltz, “Ward brings more to the table than just creative ideas. He delivers a unique blend of strategic insights and creativity and inspires others to do their best work. We’re all looking forward to the growth and success he will help us achieve.”
Stoltz also announced the hiring of Bill Doty as Digital Media Producer. No doubt, we’ll see big things coming from Boise in the new year and beyond.
Often, when you meet someone involved with a startup, you come away thinking, “So what the hell do they really do?” So ten startups, chosen in conjunction with local online pub Geekwire, were given giant six-foot “napkins” to sketch an idea that represents their business in its simplest form.
One startup, SNUPI Technologies, used their napkin to outline the genesis of their new product Wally – which uses a home’s electrical wiring as a giant antenna connected to sensor that can collect data and track condensation from water or appliance leaks. The idea grew from a series of events, outlined on the napkin, that began with noise overheard emanating from a wireless keyboard.
The other startups also have equally compelling ideas—and napkins. If you’re going to promote a museum as interactive and innovative as MOHAI, the idea makes sense. For Copacino + Fujikado, the idea represents a way to “own the moment of innovation,” according to Mike Hayward, C+F’s Creative Director. And to generate some public participation, people were invited to sketch their ideas as well.
Of course, any creative in advertising knows the best ideas sometimes come from napkin sketches. In the world of startups, that adage applies as well.
With health insurance exchanges set to launch later this year as part of the Affordable Care Act, I’ve been very curious to see how they’ll be marketed.
Since they’re being launched on a state-by-state basis, we’re going to see a lot of different messages. Oregon, with its Cover Oregon campaign, is definitely playing up the localized quirkiness of the state, thanks to Portland agency North.
With so much misinformation out there, it’ll be interesting to see what actually gets people motivated to compare healthcare plans and get one if it’s the best option for them. In this case, the TV ads definitely feel like a huge slice of Portlandia. The question is, is this the right tone and audience for people who don’t have health insurance and will be needing the exchange to find coverage?
One thing is certain: Health insurance-related messages are going to be a huge ad spend in many states. And, as I’ve written before, private insurers will be looking to add to their marketing efforts as well when these exchanges open and competition increases.
SEATTLE—You have to trek up four flights of inconveniently located stairs to get to the office of Square Tomato, an agency located in the shadow of CenturyLink Field. So when a strange man knocked on the door unannounced and inquired about advertising services, agency principal Frank Clark was a little skeptical.
Turns out the man was the CEO of Allsports, a sporting goods equipment company. He was actually in the building meeting someone else. But his business needed rebranding, and he’d done his research on this smart, nimble agency, so he decided to pop in. And a new client relationship was born.
It’s not the staircase or the name that provides the true differentiation. Little by little, Square Tomato is pursuing what Clark calls a “brick and e-retail strategy.” Namely, helping retailers thrive in an e-commerce world. “All retailers know they’re competing on some level with Amazon,” said Clark. “Even if you’re a store with only one location, it’s the cost of entry these days to have an e-commerce presence. Any shopper looking online wants to be able to buy online if they see you exist.” Square Tomato is putting this to the test for clients like Mrs. Cook’s, a kitchenware store with only one physical location but a dedicated e-commerce site.
Like many startups, Square Tomato was born from Frank’s experience as a senior art director in Seattle, and many connections built over the years. “At a certain point, it simply becomes easier to do direct client work. You know more about how everything needs to get done, and also how to put partners together to make projects happen.”
Looking through Square Tomato’s work, one sees an agency capable of putting together a breadth of fun ideas for nearly any client category – such as the Creative Mystic microsite for Veer, a stock photography service.
It’s that level of fun in Square Tomato’s work that first caught my eye when I moved to Seattle, because we’d both worked on the same B2B client (I worked on it at an Atlanta agency). But Square Tomato was able to get away with some fun ideas my former agency couldn’t.
I asked Clark if doing fun work was a part of the agency ethos.
“Clients are attracted to clever and funny. It’s a foundational advantage. But it’s not enough in and of itself to win business. Clients these days want it all — a certain level of vertical and horizontal expertise. They want to know that you’ve got the category expertise that makes you qualified to work on their business, and they want to know you’ve got the right skill sets, whether it’s TV or web experience. Getting to that point, as I have, takes a while.”
Anyone willing to take on the Amazon-sized retail world could do well to use an agency like Square Tomato, an agency unafraid of the goliaths of the ad world.
PORTLAND—Agencies with digital capabilities are a dime a dozen today. On the other hand, an agency with digital DNA that also creates compelling retail experiences, new products/companies and traditional advertising, is rare indeed. Ergo, I feel like I may be in the presence of an albino gorilla here at Struck’s Old Town offices.
John Gross, Strategist/Account Director, says, “We do killer websites, but we get that digital is storytelling.” And therein lies the Salt Lake City-based shop’s magic formula. Struck has an awesome toolbox, but the leaders of the shop know that tools, regardless of their power and shiny attractiveness, are just tools. The real work is using the tools to build something wonderful.
Another of Stuck’s defining characteristics is its habit of taking on challenger brands like Asics and Jack in the Box; in fact, the agency considers itself to be a challenger brand.
I ask if being an agency from Salt Lake City is a perception challenge that needs to be overcome, even though the agency’s record of winning big accounts out of market is well established. Struck CEO, Daniel Conner, sees Salt Lake as a strategic advantage, if anything, and recounts a story about how executives from Lennar were wowed by the agency’s “second to none” thinking (which led to Struck being named AOR by the home builder).
Matt Anderson, Creative Director in the Portland office says, “To be a great agency, you have to solves your cleints’ really messy problems.” He counts Jack in the Box as a good example. The brand has been running its iconic Jack character TV campaign for 18 years, but there was no reflection of the brand’s attitude in digital. Struck has successfully changed the score by bringing an irreverent and mobile-first approach to this QSR.
Struck believes in being “greater than.” Conner says it’s not just about messaging, it’s about creating better experiences. Generally speaking we all want greatness out of everything we do, he says. “At Struck we believe we can make it a bit better than everyone else, for our clients and ourselves. It was an internal mantra and a common cause we rallied around,” says Conner, “but we didn’t quite understand what it was until we gave it a brand.”
Pauline Ploquin, Chief Operating Officer at Struck, provides some context for the mantra with a story about how Struck went above and beyond to build its hospitality client The Grand America Hotel two new retail stores, a toy store and a bakery, from the ground up. “We came in as a marketing partner,” says Ploquin. But when Struck saw that the hotel needed a stronger retail strategy, the results led the agency to cross over into product development. Ploquin adds that the toy store they created, JouJou, may expand into a retail chain.
Gross says, “We’re not afraid to take a stand and push clients outside their comfort zone. In digital, safe equals boring.”
Anderson says, “The reason we work at Struck and not in some basement at McCann, or somewhere else, is because we want to do things that matter to our clients.” He adds, “We have never been in a position where we felt free to do something that didn’t count. Everyday is a street fight. We’re just always fighting for our lives.”
Anderson brings the agency’s “greater than” philosophy full circle. He says, it’s a way to keep ourselves honest. We ask “Is this great enough? Because if it’s not, sooner or later we’ll turn into one of those small regional agencies that does ads for oil changes.”
I have to say Struck’s insistence on always being “greater than” has delivered impressive results. While working on a project for Gatorade, for instance, the Struck team realized that the shortcomings in Radian6′s social listening tool could be overcome through better visualizations. So Struck made its own product, called NUVI, which is now a stand alone business with 25 clients already on board, including Berkshire Hathaway’s Business Wire and other agencies like Fallon and TBWA\Chiat\Day.
Conner says there’s a technology boom happening in Utah, a.k.a. the Silicon Slopes. “Struck as a digital creative agency is riding that wave. In fact, we helped generate a lot of this wave. A lot of our designers and developers have roots in this world.”
“Great ideas don’t just live on Madison Avenue anymore,” says Conner. “In order to execute these ideas, you need to be where the talent is, and there’s a ton of development talent in Utah. Same with Portland, the talent’s here.”
SEATTLE—There are rubber chickens hanging in the agency’s storefront-like window facing 5th Avenue in downtown Seattle. There’s a giant statue of Merlin greeting you at the door. There’s a jar full of white powder marked “cocaine” in the bathroom. The CEO’s office is decorated like a butcher shop, and the CCO’s office resembles a set piece from “Baywatch.”
But Cal McAllister and Ian Cohen, the “Headmasters” of Wexley School For Girls, insist the biggest misconception about them is, “People think we’re wacky, but we’re not.” After spending some time with them at their shop, I found out how right they are.
Between full-time and freelance jobs, I’ve probably experienced 50 or so agencies up close in my time. And I’ve known about Wexley’s work and office space for years. So I went to see Cal and Ian determined to learn why Wexley succeeds at what so many agencies try and fail to do: How can an agency successfully carve out a unique identity, build an unmistakable culture, and do great work? What’s the secret sauce here?
I’m not sure I learned the answer, and if I did they’d hate me for divulging it. But I learned a few things about Wexley that creatives — and agency heads — ought to know.
Wexley was started by two copywriters without a client. Which sounds crazy in the ad business, yet it totally makes sense once you consider the agency’s work and ethos. Prior to going to ad school, Ian worked in PR, and Cal was a journalist. With those backgrounds, I can see why they want their work, and the office itself, to be a topic of conversation and buzz. And while they do great commercials, the agency has done a lot of innovative event marketing, making it a point to dig deeper into a client’s business to find unique solutions. As a result, the agency positions itself as a “Fan Factory” that turns consumers into fans.
(Seattle, as I discovered when I moved here, is a soccer-crazy town. The Seattle Sounders — the team — and their fans have Wexley to thank for this.)
Now, making brand fans is a nice positioning for an agency. Lots of agencies make similar promises. So how does Wexley make it happen? As I learned, it takes more than just great ideas.
Unlike many creative people I know, even ones who own agencies, these guys know how to talk business on an intricate level. That struck me immediately when I first met Cal McAllister at the agency. He was coming out of a meeting, and his mind wasn’t on ads. It was focused on ROI. A prospective client looking for a 10x return on their marketing budget. That type of ROI, he said, was becoming an increasingly common request: “If I knew how to guarantee that, I’d do it myself.”
Having started their ad careers at smaller shops, Cal and Ian learned to make friends with their clients. It’s that basic understanding of business that’s part of the Wexley foundation. “I know how a sports team works, I know how milk gets on store shelves, and I understand how difficult it is to sell a burrito,” said Cal.
Another surprise, yet a logical one: Their work doesn’t tend to make clients nervous. Because before any work gets presented, there’s a lengthy research, planning, and briefing process (in which everyone at a client, up to the top management levels, signs off on the brief.) So by the time work gets presented, clients expect a great solution. Still, there’s always an element of surprise and delight. “We lose when we give clients what they want to see,” Cal said. “There is no safe version,” Ian added. “There’s the right version, and if there’s another idea presented, it’s also right.” Its work for Microsoft shows an ability to do great work for large, multi-layered clients.
Also important to the shop’s success, Cal said, is metrics. That a project has achieved its measurable objectives is crucial. Once a client sees that a campaign has been measurably successful, it proves the agency’s work truly works, and builds trust. And it seems to be paying off. In a business where there’s a lot of account shuffling, Wexley has gone from a mostly project-based shop to a mostly AOR-based shop in the past few years.
So what does Wexley hope the next few years will bring? Hopefully growth, and work with a higher national profile. What won’t change, Cal and Ian insist, is the promise they make to their employees. “We want to make this the best job they’ll have in their lives, doing the best work they’ll ever do in their careers,” Cal said.
With an outlook like that, it’s easy to see why an agency that’s a “Fan Factory” for brands has quite a few fans of its own.
There weren’t any Grumpy Cats like at SxSW or half-naked Argentine Creative Directors like at Cannes, but the MarketMix 2013 Conference sponsored by the Puget Sound American Marketing Association did prove worthwhile, at least from this copywriter’s perspective.
The key to these types of conferences is to pick some sessions on topics you don’t know much about. Although many speakers seem to be pimping their own companies or books, others can be really insightful. And this conference, which is geared more towards client-side marketers than creatives, turned out to be more valuable for me than some social media or awards show-related wankfest.
I’ll hit some highlights:
In one session, the partnership of the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center and Seattle ad agency GreenRubino was spotlighted. A major fundraiser was launched with the theme “Be Breakthrough” and highlighting some of the Fred Hutch researchers. Here’s a sample spot:
But the campaign (see one spot below), with its vanity URL and message “When you give to science, science gives back,” wasn’t as successful in raising money and awareness as a subsequent, more direct message featuring local TV personalities and the idea that donating money saves lives. I suppose when the desired response is “give money,” the appeal needs to be more straightforward. It was also quite interesting to see agency and client make a serious pivot mid-way through the year-long campaign, although the agency’s reaction to switching things up wasn’t discussed.
While the crowdsourcing of ideas and creative work has been discussed at length in the ad business, crowdfunding is an exciting possibility for fledgling brands and entrepreneurs. Mike and Jen brought that notion to life for the attendees. Jen also noted that positioning herself as a “Female Anthony Bourdain” helped boost traffic and donations to her Kickstarter.
Another interesting presentation was from AllRecipes, which has worked its way to become one of the world’s most heavily trafficked sites. They’ve been at it for 16 years, so it didn’t happen overnight. Having a mobile-optimized site is key for them, but they demoed their Video Cookbook app, which highlights recipe directions while we watch the food being prepared.
Clearly, they’ve got a devoted following: According to Allrecipes’ surveys of their users, 50% use the site on a mobile device. And of that 50%, half use it while they’re at the grocery store. While the presenters were a little cagey about trying to partner with advertisers to reach people right at the point of purchase (I’d say they’re not quite there yet), I’m sure some marketers, somewhere, are salivating over the idea of using NFC technology to hit consumers right in the aisles.
Of course, what the conferences do well (if you’re willing to chat with strangers) is allow me to meet folks I’d never meet otherwise, which can also be insightful. I have one good example.
In a casual chat, I met one marketing director for a local Seattle utility. They have 1.7 million customers. So how many of them use Online Bill Pay? Only 20%. I would never have guessed a figure that low. And it’s why she still values ways to reach customers through (gasp) bill stuffers. Try using that statistic the next time someone in your agency says, “no one pays their bills through the mail anymore.”
There were also some presenter shout-outs to Uber, the car-for-hire service that’s caused a splash in many cities. It’s quickly becoming the case study/example du jour of digital marketing disruption among marketing conference speakers. Does this mean fewer people using Zappos as an example? We’ll see.
You can get a sense of all the chatter at the conference by looking at #marketmix on Twitter.
SEATTLE—I am in Seattle to discover where the brand transformers work. And how they work different to achieve better results. Jim Haven, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of Creature, is my willing and hospitable guide.
Haven and Co-founder Matt Peterson started Creature in 2002 and have since seen the agency grow to 50 people in Seattle and 20 in London. Creature is a well known shop in creative circles, having done outstanding work for Pacifico Beer, Nike, Starbucks and many others over the years.
At this time, Creature is preparing to debut its first work for Fort Worth-based clothing brand, Dickies.
For every client we want “irrefutable ideas, something that’s never been done,” Haven says. He admits it is a “North Star goal” and that they don’t always get there. Naturally, lofty goals require strategic thinking and the ability to execute, which is why Haven is excited to show me the agency’s home for “living briefs.”
In the basement of their refurbished Capitol Hill industrial chic offices, a fifty foot long wall where the agency’s strategists work out client problems is dominant. “It’s our secret weapon,” Haven proudly states. “Nothing is sacred. We solve problems visually and challenge things in real time.”
The strategic mapping done on this wall helps lead Creature’s creatives to better understand and solve “The Beautiful Problem,” and move from obstacle to opportunity.
“There’s a leap of faith that every client takes,” Haven explains. “Great creative requires clients to make that (leap).” The wall helps clients understand the our process more thoroughly and exposes them to “waterfall moments along the way,” so in the end recommended solutions aren’t a surprise, but a natural outcome of the system.
Back upstairs in the partners’ shared loft office, I ask Haven what makes one agency “creative,” while others, even those with talent in the ranks, flounder. “Hard work, luck and naiveté — those are the things that it takes.”
“In some ways, you have to believe in this kind of dream and pretend long enough for it to become real,” Haven suggests. “Matt and I talk about this. The laws of physics apply to life. You end up in the direction that you’re looking. So you want to always make sure that you’re looking in the right direction. Your mind and body will follow any doubts you have. That’s why I say, ‘instead of confidence, naiveté,’ because if you analyze what you’re up against — all the obstacles that get in the way of good work — you probably wouldn’t get up and do this.”
One obstacle Haven points to is the mindset of some big Seattle-based clients. He references Jeff Bezos’ famous quote, “Advertising is the price you pay for having an unremarkable product or service,” and suggests that the focus of many big clients Seattle is squarely on building a better product. Personally, I see Creature doing the same thing, and when you end up making a better product, the marketing it wears tends to fit like a bespoke suit.
Interestingly, Creature does some storefront marketing like crosstown hot shop Wexley School for Girls, which helps give both shops greater presence in the market. Peterson says, “We want to contribute to the neighborhood. We’re closer to the street, not up in some building.”
This is what advertising needs more of, in my opinion — practical idealists working side-by-side with other merchants. It’s the necessary feet-on-the-ground piece that helps make the lofty ideas come true. Think about it, an agency up in a corporate tower is physically on the client’s page, and the ideas generated therein often reflect this. But an agency that is part of the fabric of the community, it is tapped in to what people are thinking and doing.
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.
