Alledged chicken wing shortage inspires agency and client to go nuts!

Cuckoo in front Cuckoo’s nest

So, what’s up with this knucklehead screaming at ousted Governor, Rod Blagojevich’s house on You Tube? He appears to be fuming at the former Gov’s apparent responsibility for a nationwide shortage of…chicken wings?

As if Rod didn’t have enough on his plate. Now he’s a culprit in some avian conspiracy.

But wait a minute. I know that raving lunatic. (Not Rod. The guy in the car.) Matter of fact, he works for me! Bill Mericle, an ECD at Euro RSCG Chicago, was just doing his bit to help generate buzz around a bit of viral fun we were having in support of our new client, Kraft.

Last week a legit story appeared on a local news channel reporting that, because of the shutdown of a major supplier of chicken wings, there was likely to be a shortage of the tasty tidbits, which would lead to a raft of unhappy snackers during Sunday’s big game.

The Kraft team (client and agency) were inspired to expand on the story, implying it might be on account of hording do to the new formulation of Kraft Ranch Dressing, soon to be introduced.

With only a few days before the Super Bowl, we had no time to bog down in debate and discussion. Wednesday at noon teams were briefed at the agency. Friday night the video (see below) was posted on You Tube. A remarkable accomplishment, when you consider how long it usually takes to make a cohesive film, especially for a client as big and complex as Kraft.

The production company was Foundation, also out of Chicago. The mock news story we made together was written on the fly, sans approvals, shot and edited in 48 hours. Given all that, I’d say they did a pretty good job.

Such is the brave new world of viral filmmaking, where everything has to be done faster and cheaper than most agencies and clients are used to. But get used to it we must, because that’s where our business is going.

Kudos to Euro’s creative, production and account team for getting it done. And cheers to Kraft, for inspiring us as opposed to bogging us down. They were fearless. Oh yeah, and here’s to Crazy Bill, for taking the wing shortage way too seriously.

The “Big Game” feels small. Why am I so blase’ about the Super Bowl?

Bowl half empty?

Imbedded URLs! One-second spots! Danica undresses! These are just a few of the headlines in this year’s advertising script for the Super Bowl.

I know I’m supposed to care. More than just care, actually, I’m supposed to be fascinated. This is the “Louvre of TV commercials.” Didn’t I, and every creative I know, grow up dreaming of “playing” in the Super Bowl? Wasn’t that our Valhalla? The Great White Whale?

What can I say? I’m just not that into it.

Sour grapes? Perhaps. In my career, I’ve had two campaigns appear in the Super Bowl: Oldsmobile and McDonalds. For the record, both campaigns were creatively decent, though neither ever won any awards.

Whatever. I remember being pretty damn excited about it. I told loved ones. Fantasized about Lions. Obsessed.

Today, not so much.

The Super Bowl seems dated. Obviously, the recession has overtaken every story on earth. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? And it’s more than just the Internet taking over TV. For me, the “Big Game” has lost its luster as a cultural landmark. Tarnished anyway.

Oh, I’ll watch the game. I still love football. As do many, many Americans. The NFL, if I’m not mistaken, is the number one watched sport in this country. Even though these two teams do nothing for me, a good game is a good game and I’ll be hoping for one.

I’m somewhat interested in the commercials. It’s just I’m not obsessing about them. From what I’ve glimpsed on line and in the trades, it’s a mixed bag at best. I do not believe we will see any masterpieces of the form. Nor do I believe we will experience interactivity above and beyond simple applications.

Whatever the reasons, I’m just not into the Super Bowl. Is it a phase, a one-time phenomenon, or the end of an era? Or is it just me?

Agencies that obsess about their own brands are probing their own you know what.

Searching for your agency's brand.

One thing that has always driven me crazy about advertising is the grandiosity we agencies have when it comes to ourselves. As soon as I became part of an agency’s creative leadership I became part of the “Who are we?” discussion. This is the meeting where VIPs from all over the network argue passionately about the agency’s mission statement. The discussion can get pretty heated. To pinpoint the source of this frustration, one need only look at an agency’s credentials. Supposedly, these are the agency’s brand essence and what it stands for. Are we about ideas, client service, publicity or all of the above? In every creds piece (including ours), is some permutation of “building brands over time while selling product right away.”

Blah, blah, blah.

I need to call bullshit. With the possible exception of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, there are no agency brands. Not really. The venerable Carl Ally once said, “Clients make great agencies, not vice-versa.” More than a treatise about greatness, his statement suggests that an advertising agency is defined by its brands. For example Wieden & Kennedy is Nike. Its greatness is their greatness.

Let’s look at BBDO. This venerable agency used to be about big personalities. It was Phil Dusenberry, Joe Pytka, Michael Jackson and Pepsi Cola. What is the agency now? David Lubars and HBO? Probably. And that’s fine. Clients come to agencies for up to three reasons: it’s portfolio, creative leadership, and relationships. Doubtful a client ever chose a mission statement.

Seems obvious. But then why is this stuff so hotly debated? I’ll get to that. For me the “it” of an agency is the current and prevailing perception (of us) by those that give a damn, which, if we are honest, are precious few. The takeaway here is that an agency doesn’t really need a brand identity. We are people, places and things orbiting around a collection of clients. Each of these systems has gravity. If we are lucky and good, this gravity is strong and, therefore, highly attractive.

End of story. When I observe creative people fighting with business people for the “soul of their agency” I roll my eyes. At best, the argument is an interesting philosophical one. At worst, it becomes a divisive and political nightmare.

As suggested, the lone exception might be CP&B. Their “Fame” strategy is unique and has a self-serving component the rest of us cannot get away with. They regularly turn down business because it is not commensurate with their stated mission. Only agency I know to do so. Good for them.

Solving for our own brands seems immaterial. Yet, we are hell bent on doing so. When we put that energy into our clients the reflected glory trumps all rhetoric.

Would you like to hear about my very first time? Read on…

“Want to see my portfolio?”

My friends at IHAVEANIDEA.ORG (the people behind Portfolio Night), have been collecting stories from ad folks about our very first jobs and how we got them. Rather than post mine here, I ask you to make the jump over to their site. For students and newcomers, it’s a good site to bookmark. Hopefully my very true story is a good one to read.

How\'d you get in?

Puzzling new language or a conference call with brand managers? Sounds like Mumbo Jumbo to me!

Mumbo Jumbo, The God of Confusion.

Something funny, if not mildly disturbing, occurred while I was attending a breakout session (fear these mightily!) with key account directors, on behalf of a new client, who shall have to remain nameless.

In this roundtable affair, we were to discuss ways the agency could secure new opportunities with this client as well as maximize the ones we already had. A perfectly good basis for a meeting, but I found myself…drifting.

Why? Because my colleagues, God bless them, were speaking in tongues. It is a way of communicating that must be learned in order to understand. And though I’m familiar with it, I struggle.

For example, what exactly are “channels” and “platforms?” I sort of know. I mean I think I know. But in the end, I don’t know. So, I pretend to know. I get the feeling I’m not the only one, especially if there are other creative people in the room. If I’m feeling brave, I just ask what a term means. Invariably, someone laughs nervously –at me for my ignorance and, I suspect, at just how silly this all is.

It’s not rocket science. If I’m paying close attention I get it. But, and herein lies the rub, if I’m not inspired or provoked I cannot pay attention. Brilliant as they may be, my colleagues sounded to me like the dispatcher in a cab, almost foreign. Mumbo Jumbo.

Another example: Why is art and copy now called “consumer facing propositions?” When did this distinction become necessary? Even the word “consumer” has become lost in translation. Is a consumer different from a customer or, for that matter, a person? I think a consumer is a person who becomes a customer but what the hell do I know?

There’s a very funny episode of the Simpsons, in which one of Krusty’s show writers berates a verbose account executive for using the word “proactive.” He wonders aloud if dumb people use the word in order to sound smart. I wonder if smart people do the same thing.

The real story behind “Trust Me” is the story of a lifetime.

Hey, guys, who did those Effen ads behind you?

A colleague asks why I keep writing about my friend’s new TV show, “Trust Me.” He jokes: What are you –their PR man?

No. And my passion for “Trust Me” is also not because I supplied it with old advertising awards and hustled a few clients into the program. (Well, maybe a little.) But those are trifles. If they had asked, I would have lent these guys money.

You see I’ve known John Coveny (and to a lesser degree, Hunt Baldwin) for going on 20 years. I worked side by side with them at Leo Burnett. Over those years I became close with John and his wife, Mia. We’ve been through a lot together. Good and bad. When John left Burnett (under less than rosy circumstances) to pursue a writing gig in Hollywood, I said, there goes a dreamer. His odds of success were slim. He had only a screenplay and a couple phone numbers. Not to mention a nervous wife. Whatever life they’d built was now in serious jeopardy.

TNT PR doesn’t talk about this part of a show’s development. It’s off point. The back-story. Well, not to me…

Anyway, John had some dollars saved but they were rapidly being unsaved. I received many anxious notes from him asking about freelance, you know, until they finished this or that script. For a while they’d been working on a project called “Fast Lane” with “Charlie’s Angels” director McG. A silly premise, it went nowhere. Things got iffy. If Mia became frightened and exasperated by her husband chasing windmills, I couldn’t blame her. Who would?

The specter of failure wasn’t discussed. Right or wrong, men have their pride. But I knew the clock was ticking. Everyone around them did. And none, I imagine, were more aware of time running out than Baldwin and Coveny.

Just weeks before hitting a self-imposed time limit, which would have ended John’s “career,” the sun came up in the form of a goofy, sexy blonde named Kyra Sedgwick. They’d gotten in on the ground floor of another project. But this one clicked. Less than a year later they had a hit on their hands. “The Closer” became the number one show on cable.

This earned the team some breathing room. And it was in this clearing they created their own show, the one about their lives during ad time, the one that goes on national TV next week. Lots of people make a TV show happen. I’m sure Hunt and John owe more people than Lehman Brothers. Yet, to be the creator of a book or movie or TV show is… special. These are the children of men.

I’ve only flirted with success like theirs. When Touchstone optioned my first book, The Last Generation, I was euphoric. I could have passed out cigars. Long story short, NBC ended up balking at the pilot script and my dream ended there. That dream anyway. Go Happy Soul Industry!

This is the real story, then. For John and Hunt, the drama started years before next Monday’s premiere. Which is why I am riveted, and you should be too. Whatever it’s fate, “Trust Me” is the closest thing I know to a Hollywood miracle.

“Trust Me” fools me with its ingenius ad campaign.

Even I was fooled by the front cover of Adweek magazine. Maybe you saw it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t upload the image. This week’s edition read: “Agency of the year, Rothman, Greene & Mohr.” Who are these guys? I wondered. And wasn’t Crispin Porter & Bogusky Adweek’s agency of the year?

Turns out the whole thing is a promotion for my friend’s new TV show, “Trust Me,” about advertising and relationships in the Windy City. Unlike Mad Men, the series takes place here and now. RG&M is the fictional Chicago ad agency depicted in the series. The two 30-something white guys on the cover are its stars, Eric McCormack and Tom Cavanagh. (Speaks well of the casting, seeing as the two actors look like every creative director I’ve ever known, though perhaps a bit more photogenic!)

You’d think I’d have seen this coming, given how I helped creators’ Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny with some prepping and propping. (That’s my Cannes Gold Lion in Mason’s office. Don’t lose it!)

Yet, I was totally fooled. The artistry of this faux campaign goes pretty deep. Read the “interview” with Mason and Connor in Adweek. And check out the agency website: rgmagency.com

the agency website, complete with real clients!

On it you’ll even find a client roster, some of them real, some not. Among the actual clients are Dove and Buick. Madison avenue and Hollywood are truly merged. Not featured are the two pieces of Euro RSCG business in the show as well: Effen Vodka and Potbelly. (I’m not sore for the omission…but good luck selling those Buicks.)

It’s an impressive campaign, obvious yet original. Here’s hoping the show is too! The early reviews have been very good. Now, finally, it’s your turn. “Trust Me” premiers next week on January 26th at 10 p.m. ET.

Britney, Buicks and Blago. Not to mention a bankrupt client. Those, my friends, are things that suck.

And so we come to the end. Last Friday Circuit City stopped breathing, bellied up. Everyone saw it coming but still. They’re one of our clients. Correction. They were one of our clients. Short-circuited now. Finished. And just weeks before the demise of analog TV. Ironic, huh? My agency more or less planned for this. We will make out. But what about the 40.000 Circuit City employees?

I know. We’re in a Recession. Maybe only the beginning of one. In the immortal words of Cheech and Chong, things are tough all over. Maybe so but if my foul mood needs a reason the “R” word about covers it. That and below zero temperatures.

Obama’s inauguration should cheer but right now I need to shed some hate. It’s my blog and I’ll cry if I want to. First up, Rod Blagojevich. And not just because he’s a cheat and a liar. We’ve seen those before. It’s his childish defiance and denial. When he quoted Rudyard Kipling in his defense I wanted to punch him in front of his children. Other reasons to loathe him are that bad, football-coach hair and his jerk-ass name. Who names their kid Rod? And here’s a tip. Given the whole world perceives you as a felon do you think it’s wise wearing all black all the time, and a tracksuit no less? You look like the cartoon criminal you undoubtedly are. Stand down, jerk!

Pop music sucks. I can’t think of an effen song younger than my daughter that’s worth 99 cents on I-tunes. Beyonce. Britney. Justin. Every single American Idle contestant. Who are these people? Sex pots with a good shower voice, that’s who. And that’s it. I guarantee no one will ever listen to any of this music five years from now, let alone remember its practitioners. Rock acts like the Fray, Maroon Five and Fallout Boy are so boring I can’t even drum up hatred. Must we rely on warhorses like U2 and REM for quality music?

And can we give the harmonic synthesizers a rest? You know what I’m talking about: that cheesy special effect singer’s use on their vocals. It’s not that I don’t understand the words it’s that the words sound awful. It was lame when Peter Frampton did it a million years ago. Enough. You sound like you’re singing through a kazoo.

There is nothing “real” about reality TV. Hello! There are cameras in the room. It is pro wrestling for girls, gay men and bored housewives. How anyone can relate to assorted booby housewives and has-beens is beyond me. This sort of programming has a slimy My Space veneer. I get why people like it. I just don’t like that people get it. And the shows that pretend a moral conscience? Whether rehabbing houses or junkies, the mock sincerity grates. I suppose some reality programming has conceptual value. Following around crab fisherman in the North Atlantic teaches us about hardship. Thankfully, there are no booty calls. Least liked of the lot: The Bachelor. How can any of these women (and men) look into the camera and claim they are looking for true love? Have any of them no shame? They want fame. Unfortunately, admitting it would diminish the program’s already paltry veneer.

The American auto industry deserves its miserable fate. The combustible fuel engine is so hopelessly last century. It was invented at the turn of the 19th! In less than 20 years we went from calculators and typewriters to computing. In the same span, we evolved music from vinyl to digital. What are cars doing burning fossil fuel? Not only does it pollute the air and cost a fortune; it’s running out! This view has nothing to do with my politics and everything to do with evolving technology and world reality. Besides, there are too many carmakers and too many car lines. If Chrysler went away, other than the loss of jobs, would anybody miss it? The same can be said for Buick. Maybe even Ford.

Finally, I’d like to return serve on all the haters hating big advertising agencies for being…big advertising agencies. Listen. When I started out I wanted to work only for a big advertising agency. I wanted to work on big brands and work with big people. I had big ideas. And I wanted to come up with many more. Of course I wanted the big office one day. That’s the American Dream, isn’t it? Those who don’t make it don’t for many reasons, some fair and some not. Blaming a big agency for personal failure is a cop out. Hating successful people for their success (in good times and bad) is hypocritical.
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Okay, I’m better now. In honor of Martin Luther King’s birthday I’m ready to practice acceptance and tolerance. But first lets put Blago in a Buick and push him off a cliff!

Integrated Marketing. For Guns and Roses, “it’s so easy.” For ad agencies, not so much.

In my novel, The Happy Soul Industry, a key character gets car jacked by a young gangbanger. Without playing spoiler, let’s just say the relationship takes an unexpected turn.

The young gunman is also an expert at guerilla marketing. While not stealing cars, he designs and puts up posters for bands and the like, all of it illegally. I’ll come back to that…

I’m half way through the wonderfully debauch expose of Guns ‘n Roses, “Watch You Bleed” by Stephen Davis. Davis also wrote “Hammer of the Gods,” the similar and seminal biography of Led Zeppelin.

In the G&R book, we learn that to get the word out about his new band, guitarist Slash designed crude posters of upcoming gigs and plastered them all over L.A. In the 80’s, this was how bands got themselves noticed. All the groups did it. This mostly illegal act was called “flyering.”

Flyering was guerilla marketing, pre-Internet. A decade later savvy ad folks coined the phrase “wild posting” for essentially the same activity. My hypothesis, then, is that, addled as they were (and were they ever!), Guns ‘n Roses had integrated marketing down pat. Slash not only designed hip and dark propaganda for his outfit, he also targeted key markets, knowing very well where the young and restless worked and played.

In addition, before releasing their first Geffen LP, “Appetite for Destruction,” the band put out a fake indie record, an EP called “Live ?!*@ Like a Suicide.” Suicide was only available in limited supply and quickly sold out. The idea was to create a buzz for the band. The crude recording captured a raw unfiltered “concert” of the Gunners before mainstream radio could. It worked, driving existing fans wild while creating countless new ones. The record is now highly sought after collectible.

A teaser campaign? Unofficial pseudo-bootleg? Sound familiar? That’s because it’s the same strategy countless bands, and for that matter brands, are using on You Tube. Everything about Guns early “marketing” was, when you think about it, a brilliant example of integrated marketing!

Axl and Slash barely functioned off stage. Yet, they concocted a brilliant marketing strategy for their brand. Funny how ad agencies consider this activity so damn sophisticated they need digital experts and proprietary tools to do it.

Blogs are like fishing. You never know what you’ll catch.

Not to sound like Forrest Gump, but the above paraphrase of his famous “box of chocolates” line makes a good segue. But while the chocolate box contains finite possibilities, the lines from a blog are cast into the largest pool on Earth.

The piece I wrote yesterday about my brother is a perfect example. I’d written about Daniel’s exploits with Olympian, Michael Phelps in China. Among the usual readers of Gods that day (friends, family, co-workers, etc) was also a VIP in Daniel’s life –boss, business partner, client; I’m not sure.

Regardless, the man read the piece and was moved by it enough to write Daniel a note of congratulations, a vote of confidence.

You’re thinking: Nice but no big deal. Think some more. Perhaps, upon this exchange, the relationship between these two men improved or went up a notch. Maybe it cemented a deal in progress. What if the other man decides, now, to retain Daniel for a project he first deemed to lofty? Who knows how these things work? What I do know is that this connection only hints at the awesome power social networks have in moving people. And we are only scratching the surface…

While I’m happy to have done a solid for my little brother, I am also thrilled GOA was capable of attracting such a desirable fish! Bottom feeders certainly exist in the blogosphere, but so do the most important people in the world.