Hasta La Creative!

Oh hey, did you know that sometimes advertising can be almost completely free?! It’s this crazy new disruptive idea they call “earned media.”

More than a year ago, our Florida friends at Zimmerman made use of that practice to score some mentions for their client Jamba Juice. Today we received a link to a case study about that project from a reader who, upon learning that Z Town had won a Gold Pencil at this week’s One Show, took to Google to figure out how that might happen.

Here’s the video, which one can easily find by searching “swishy chug case study” to reach a URL that begins with the word “internal.”

See, that happened. We even helped it go off the charts. If you don’t believe us, won’t you believe some screen shots from Zimmerman’s own internal site?

Even the Russians were impressed. The point, we think, is that advertising is valuable … but PR is priceless.

Aren’t you at least a little sad that Zimmerman didn’t win McDonald’s now?

Captain Worldwide, the New York agency launched by creative director Dan Morales, veteran producer Douglas Howell and immersive theater director Michael Counts last year, has created a spot asking you to reconsider your bathroom routine.

More specifically, Captain Worldwide launched a spot for Tushy, which makes bidet attachments for toilets. To introduce the brand, and the concept of bidets more broadly, Captain Worldwide turns to a young bidet enthusiast who explains the downfalls of wiping, as well as a host of comfort and sanitary benefits from using a bidet. The young brand spokesperson claims he knows what he’s talking about, since he walks around  with his “nose at butt level all day.”

The humorous, matter of fact tone of the spot calls to mind another bathroom-related brand, Pou-Pourri, and its introductory “Girls Don’t Poop” effort. “Time To Get With The Clean Poop Program, People” keeps its focus on Tushy’s product benefits, though, from general cleanliness to preventing UTIs and hemorrhoids.

It’s also somewhat reminiscent of the approach used in OOH ads in the New York subway promoting Thinx, the “underwear for women with periods” brand launched by Tushy founder Miki Agrawal. Agrawal later stepped down as Thinx CEO amid allegations of unequal pay, firings without cause and  “a widespread culture of harassment” which allegedly included “talking about employee’s breasts and bodies, telling humiliating stories in public forums, inappropriate touching at work, and FaceTiming into at least one meeting from the toilet.”

While Tushy has been around since 2015, a spokesperson told The Drum that this is the brand’s first campaign. The campaign will run on channels including Facebook, YouTube and Instagram, and the brand spokesperson told the publication a broadcast element is currently in the works.

But can they really convince Americans to act more French?

Credits:
Agency: Captain Worldwide
Directors: Dan Morales and James Maravetz
Writers: Dan Morales, James Maravetz, Elliot Friar, Miki Agrawal
Creative Director: Dan Morales
Producer: Blake Farber

Houston agency White Hat has a rather unusual client.

The agency began working with The Silencer Shop, a retailer and distributor of gun silencers for the outdoor sports (hunting and shooting) market, last year.

“The Silencer Shop walked through the door with product so unique that it was impossible not to get excited about it,” White Hat co-founder Deborah Magnuson-Elliot said in a statement. “They were lost in the traditional gun industry advertising space, and we were certain doing the unexpected for that industry would get them far.”

“We saw the opportunity immediately – talk to their audience verbally and visually in a very unusual and graphic way,” added co-founder Pat Stark. “And we will build their awareness and image much faster.”

So how does an agency break out of the “traditional gun industry advertising space” and reach a broader audience?

White Hat launched a campaign entitled “Help Make The World A Quieter Place” which targeted regional markets with broadcast, digital and print ads, as well as a mailer in the shape of a silencer, OOH efforts and t-shirts, hats and stickers. The campaign aimed to instill brand loyalty in a wider audience while supporting a transition to online distribution. Broadcast efforts featured surreal, nearly-silent scenes of guitarists quietly rocking out, mimes, tiptoeing elephants and ninjas, concluding with the message that “A silencer on your firearm makes the rest of the world seem like a very loud place” and the “Help make the world a quieter place” tagline.

Now the agency is working to extend the campaign with an endorsement of the brand’s mobile app from Tea Partier, Fox News political commentator, TheBlaze host, Ted Cruz-backer and paranoid author of Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America, Dana Loesch.

There’s also a series of print ads which further the “Help make the world a quieter place” message. At the center of the effort is a full-page print ad which will appear in the September issue of NASCAR’S annual yearbook, released Sept 3.

Sir Martin Sorrell makes a lot of money. You know this. Everybody knows this.

As The Wall Street Journal noted back in 2014, he makes considerably more than all the other holding company CEOs when bonuses, stock options, etc. are considered. And that was the year before he pulled in a whopping $99 million (the vast majority of which was, again, not his base salary).

This time, however, WPP investors have had enough.

This morning Bloomberg reported that the company has moved to limit his overall compensation for 2017 to a mere $19 million, a 22 percent reduction. (These numbers are convoluted because of share price appreciation plans that boosted his overall take in 2015 and 2016 to approximately $99 million and $62 million, making him the highest-paid executive in England.)

In yesterday’s earnings report, non-executive director Sir John Hood said that the move was intended to placate shareholders, 1/3 of whom voted to reduce Sorrell’s total pay package last year.

Last summer, WPP made headlines yet again by approving the nearly $100 million bundle. At that time, Hood countered, “while the value of Sir Martin Sorrell’s award is very large, it was the result of an outstanding set of returns to share owners.” In 2016, Sorrell defended his pay in an interview with CNBC, saying: “Over that 31 years [that I’ve been with WPP], we’ve gone from £1 million capitalization to £21 billion… I make no apologies for the success of that business…over that period of time I’ve not sold any shares.” CNN estimated that, because of the aforementioned bonus program, Sorrell was making 1,444 times as much as the average WPP employee.

Now, assuming the mean salary remains at $62,326, he makes only 336 times as much as that lowly account manager. But that’s before considering the share price appreciation plan.

Today AdAge also reports that WPP insiders have been told to limit agency expenses … and yes, that includes Cannes.

But don’t get mad at Martin. He’s still not nearly as rich as Mark Zuckerberg or the soon-to-be richest man ever, Jeff Bezos. And he has a young one to support.

Today Digiday published a profile on VaynerMedia founder Gary Vaynerchuck entitled “#TheHustler: How Gary Vee became the ad industry’s lightning rod” and, well, where do we even begin?

The story documents VaynerMedia’s rise from social media agency to a full-service shop which “competes in major pitches against big, full-service firms, from Droga5 to Deutsch.”

And which account did it win away from Droga5? Shea Moisture, of course.

The piece touches on Vaynerchuck’s persona and the agency’s reputation for bro culture. Shareen Pathak writes that while some admire Vaynerchuck for launching an agency as an outsider disrupting the status quo of the industry, others are “convinced he’s a charlatan who uses his personal charms to sell clients a big, juicy nothingburger,” with one source describing Vaynerchuck as both the “Donald Trump of advertising” and the “Andrew Breitbart of the industry.”

Touching on the closing of the agency’s San Francisco office last November and rounds of layoffs in January and earlier this month, Vaynerchuck dismissed the notion that they were related to overestimating new business wins, saying, “Too many people slows us down. I care about speed.”

According to Digiday, Vaynermedia’s culture can be fairly unforgiving at times, with employees fired for a single typo in a tweet, despite an official policy of “three strikes and you’re out.”

Still, the office has a reputation as a “chaotic, bro-tastic place.”

“It was like being back in college,” one former community manager told the publication, referring to the “bro culture” of the agency. Another former staffer said the agency’s interviews too often came down to the beer test, which “created a sameness. There wasn’t any room for introverts.”

On the bro tip, former “CFbrO” Scott Heydt—who left the agency last November—told Pathak that, although some staffers did leave Vayner in the past, many returned after realizing that “making $10,000 more was not enough reason to switch jobs.” So he just admitted that Vayner pays less than other shops.

Looking ahead, Vaynerchuck claims he will “announce 71 promotions in the next two weeks” as his company looks to expand its media capabilities with a new studio in Long Island City.

He concludes the profile by comparing himself to the greatest of all time, Michael Jordan.

“People are confused. It seems like they think because I’m blogging I’m not here,” he said. “Ninety percent of the time, I’m the CEO of this company. I think I put myself out there, but I don’t see those as challenges. I mean, what was the biggest vulnerability for the Chicago Bulls? It was Michael Jordan.”

Good thing the dude is humble.

The lawsuit filed by Erin Johnson against now-former JWT CEO Gustavo Martinez more than a year ago moved forward this week after a judge denied WPP’s attempts to get the case dismissed and the accused parties officially disputed everything that hasn’t already been proven with video recordings or independent reports.

This week saw the introduction of several court documents that didn’t dramatically alter the state of the case but did indicate that it will indeed be going to trial. Eventually.

On Monday, Johnson’s lawyers submitted a letter to the judge regarding a key witness: Bettina Plevan, a partner at the firm (Proskauer) that WPP hired to conduct an independent investigation of JWT after Johnson’s accusations first went live—and more than a month after she claims to have alerted agency leadership of her plans to file suit.

In the letter, they essentially claim that WPP’s legal team has used various techniques to repeatedly delay the depositions of Plevan and another, unnamed party identified as “a law school professor,” with the holding company calling these depositions and related documents “irrelevant” despite the fact that it issued a press release upon hiring Proskauer to look into Johnson’s claims.

Here’s one key quote from the judge during a December discussion with lawyers from both sides: “I see from this that you really have not had settlement discussions as of yet and that you have a preference for a settlement conference before Magistrate Judge Francis, which is fine.”

This week, District Judge J. Paul Oatken officially moved the discovery dispute over to Judge Francis.

Here’s one example of the disputes: Gustavo Martinez’s lawyers asked for a 90 day extension of “the deadline to complete fact discovery,” and the Johnson team replied by accusing the other side’s two legal teams of “[failing] to comply with basic discovery obligations” such as clarifying which related documents are “privileged” and which are not. What is it, exactly, that Martinez and his lawyers need more time to find? That’s not at all clear.

In yet another letter, Davis & Gilbert, the firm representing WPP and JWT, states that they can’t release the “many confidential documents” presumably related to the Proskauer investigation without a protective order—which they then claim Johnson’s lawyers have yet to provide.

On the most basic level, Johnson’s team is telling the judge that they are quite ready to proceed with deposing witnesses and move toward the trial phase. And they also accuse both opposing firms of using a classic delay, delay, delay strategy in the (assumed?) hope that this will ensure a more favorable resolution for the holding company. Meanwhile, no one appears to have started discussing a potential settlement … and, as many people have told us since this sordid saga began, Sir Martin never settles.

This means a full trial is quite likely, if not inevitable. And quite a few current and former JWT employees will be called to testify.

Here’s one interesting tidbit. During the December hearing, Howard Rubin of Davis & Gilbert stated that “things have improved” at the JWT’s New York office since last November, when Johnson went back to work and her lawyers almost immediately submitted a letter claiming that JWT leadership had engaged in “retaliatory behavior” and pressured her to resign.

“I know she is having a meeting in January to talk about planning the global strategy for the company, which, I think, again, seems like she and the CEO [Tamara Ingram] are getting a long better than maybe when first letters were written.”

The two individuals mentioned in this week’s letters were scheduled to give their depositions today and yesterday, so expect more such drip-drip developments over the next month leading up to Martinez’s discovery deadline of May 26.

Artists: they’re just like us! Today, the Italian sculptor behind “Charging Bull” is absolutely furious with the City of New York for allowing a little girl to stand in the way of the statue that he installed 30 years ago … illegally and without permission.

Lawyers representing Sicily-born Arturo Di Modica claim the city has “infringed on his own artistic copyright by changing the creative dynamic to include the other bold presence,” according to a report in The Guardian last night.

He wants the city to remove McCann’s “Fearless Girl” immediately, or else he will be SO MAD, YOU GUYS.

OK, but let’s rewind a bit. Back in March, Marketwatch ran a story under the HL “Wall Street Bull artist calls BS on ‘Fearless Girl’ statue.” In the interview, Di Modica called the classification of the work as a symbol of female empowerment “a mistake” and said, “That is not a symbol! That’s an advertising trick. My bull is a symbol for America. My bull is a symbol of prosperity and for strength.”

Hmm…so what was his project, again?

Di Modica spent $350,000 of his own money to create and install the bull in 1987, right after the stock market crashed as a way to express his confidence in American capitalism. He called it a Christmas gift to the people of New York—but the NYPD wasn’t so amused, because Di Modica had absolutely no permission to install it … so they impounded the sculpture and held it before reinstalling it a couple of blocks away due to public outrage.

Oh, also: the city does not own the bull, and its position is officially temporary … just like that of “Fearless Girl.” Di Modica does have a copyright, however, and he will sue your ass without blinking if you try to use it to make money. He already sued Walmart for using photos of the sculpture and took Random House to court over a book about Lehman Brothers that featured a cover image of the bull. While he initially planned a series of four or five bulls for different cities, he has to date installed only one other, very similar sculpture in Shanghai.

Before you ask: yes, everyone likes to play with the balls. It’s not just you. Here’s a fun quote from a 2007 piece on tourists’ fascination with the work:

“I’ve seen people do some crazy things to that bull,” souvenir vendor David Jefferson said, shaking his head. “At night sometimes, when people have been drinking, I’ve seen them do stuff to that bull that you couldn’t print in a newspaper.”

Di Modica plans to hold a press conference on the topic today, so we will need to update this post. No comment from McCann, which is understandably avoiding this one like Sean Spicer will avoid any mention of World War II for the next few weeks.

The results of this Marketwatch poll are also a little surprising.

Are these finance bros saying that Wall Street doesn’t have bigger problems?

And do you still wish you’d gone into fine art instead of advertising?

[Pic via]

Today in Yes, It’s Friday News, we hear that Omnicom sent a URL out to all employees on Wednesday that is kind of amazing.

We Are Omnicom is a big WordPress site that loads a bit slowly but includes lots of information on the holding company’s global operations.

The copy below the featured video, which we can’t embed but you should really watch:

You are a part of five world-leading global networks. You are 75,000 amazing, talented, creative and innovative minds; spanning 35+ markets, serving over 5,000 category defining brands. You are amongst the best of the best. We like to think we’re the home of creativity – but we’d be nothing without you. You are our Connected Brilliance. And together…

We are Omnicom.

We learned a fair amount about the holding company in only a few minutes. For example, did you know that Omnicom University is “a management development program widely considered as the most pre-eminent in the industry” and led by professors from Harvard Business School and China Europe International Business School? We did not.

Here’s a pic of some recent graduates(?) hanging out in the big city.

This is also the first time we learned of Accelerate-ExBellum, which helps place “top talent from the military’s most advanced organizations, Special Operations Forces” at Omnicom agencies.

Of course you know about Omniwomen, which now has more than 10 chapters around the world.

But what about the tech-leaning Emerge and Close, which brings different Omnicom shops around the world together for team building exercises?

We’re not members of the online collaboration hub Link!, so we can’t really find out more. But the featured video itself is worth a watch for further evidence that Omnicom Group is, indeed, like one big family.

In a call with Bloomberg this morning, Unilever CFO Graeme Pitkethly officially confirmed the conglomerate’s status as the new P&G by promising to run “30 percent fewer ads as part of a cost-cutting drive.”

The Bloomberg writeup focuses on the damage this announcement did to WPP’s stock price: a 4.4 percent dive.

But if you look at the chart, this was nothing compared to last month’s dip, which came after Sir Martin warned of “a slow 2017” due to WPP losing the VW and AT&T media accounts to Omnicom.

Here’s the part of the story that really stood out to us:

The company, which is also selling off its spreads business, aims to reduce the number of creative agencies it employs by about half, Pitkethly said on a call with investors — a move which could benefit large agency owners like WPP.

Oh, and Unilever will also reduce the number of consultants it hires by more than 40 percent. See, not all news is bad!

This is all part of a bigger restructuring that follows the February takeover offer from Kraft Heinz (read: Brazilians’ attempts to rule the world a little bit faster). According to Reuters, investors who were a little miffed about the Kraft denial will get a $5.3 billion share buyback…and many of Unilever’s marketing partners will get screwed.

Don’t worry too much about WPP, though. Its stock hit an all-time high last summer.

Congratulations to everyone…we finally did it.

For one brief, glorious, truly amazing moment last night, every single person on The Internets was talking about advertising. And one ad in particular, even!

Is this actually the worst ad of all time? https://t.co/YJfwvBUF5C pic.twitter.com/LGEB4mRtkf

— Wieden+Kennedy (@W2Optimism) April 5, 2017

That was a bold rhetorical question, Wieden+Kennedy London. The Independent really got into it with the scene-by-scene breakdown. Key phrase: “I hate it deeply.” So did we all!

It was, like, sooooo many people, you guys! Who would have thought that the ad industry could somehow unite all Those Who Are Supposed to Hate Each Other??

“this is the most racist fucking video i’ve ever seen” – @Cernovich (actual quote)

nice job, @pepsi

— drew olanoff (@yoda) April 4, 2017

Muslims own Pepsi Cola now so what did U expect Their as just shows corruption of Left agenda #BoycottPepsi #UnAmerican #BoycottPepsiAds

— RedNckDEPLORABLLINDA (@RoseDru63) April 5, 2017

“Now just wait one second officers.

I have a Pepsi.” pic.twitter.com/NW0sddKOOI

— Philip Lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) April 5, 2017

Well shit, we should probably watch the damn thing after all that, right?

Wow. That was…a YouTube video with 3,000 upvotes and 22,000 downvotes.  The engagement numbers already have us all giddy.

For those keeping score at home, our favorite part was the moment when the cop looks at the Pepsi can like, “what are YOU doing here, and what the hell do you want me to do with this?”

The Pepsi team had such a great night that they were in a bit of a hurry to rush out statements explaining what that mess was supposed to be all about.

Here’s a statement I just got from Pepsi about their Kendall Jenner joins the resistance ad (story coming shortly on @Adweek dot com): pic.twitter.com/XIKDypVpvb

— kristina monllos (@kristinamonllos) April 5, 2017

Some people are telling us that the negative attention is a good thing. Like, when was the last time you heard people talking about Pepsi without adding the words “halftime show?”

OK, but…no. And also, wouldn’t that argument also imply that advertising doesn’t really matter unless it gets lots of (awful) press because that’s the only way people will really talk about it in the first place?

Now the inevitable question: who made it? Here’s pitchman Brad Jakeman, who had a whole lot to say about agencies increasing their diversity numbers back in 2015.

Jakeman later deleted this one after people ganged up on him and noted that the tagged the wrong Kendall, but the key info here is that Pepsi’s in-house agency, The Creators League, did the work.

(He later thanked the star properly.)

We’re equally honored to have you @KendallJenner. Thank you for everything. https://t.co/4owmaytkXM

— BradJakeman (@BradJakeman) April 4, 2017

The League got launched way back in the halcyon days of 2014 to make Pepsi “a little more like Red Bull.” It was described at the time as “pushing the boundaries for content creation and monetization and distribution” and former Pepsi CMO Frank Cooper III said this about its “branded entertainment” product: “For the most part they don’t’ really care that it’s delivered by a brand. It must be entertainment first.”

As you can probably guess, Cooper was long gone before this ad.

Just under a year ago, Creators became a physical space in SoHo, because “PepsiCo envisions selling enough unbranded content to cover the costs of creating ad content that does fuel product sales.” Digiday later took a deep dive into an organization that had “about 10-15 fulltime staffers.” Back then it was mostly handling post-production work, but its role obviously expanded—and now it’s cool with Mary J. Blige.

Unfortunately, you guys will not get a list of people to hate on. Here’s the press release, which includes no credits.

What a cultural moment this was.

For posterity, let’s remember those fleeting seconds before the backlash hit, when People magazine compared Jenner to Cindy Crawford and the always-reliable Daily Mail praised her “natural, glossy cropped ‘do.”

Our question for the agencies getting all self-righteous about this big doo doo bomb: would you do better? And have you done worse?

We personally can’t wait to see Pepsi’s in-house social media brand work after all this.