Advertising Age - January 9, 2012

WARD-
KING
NTS
8.LARRYLIGHT
MCDONALD’S

OPINION DOUG SWEENY

CMO during the chain’s turnaround early last
decade, Mr. Light was a marketing theorist
and way ahead of his time. His notion of
brand journalism rings even more true in a
world of fragmenting media. “We don’t need
one big execution of a big idea. We need one
big idea that can be used in a
multidimensional, multilayered and multifaceted way,” Mr. Light argued.

Like Mr. Stengel’s broken-media model, this was a message whose punch came from the fact that it was issued from the marketing mainstream.

Respect, trust
key to healthy
ad relationship
9.MIKEDEAVER

RONALD REAGAN

e yes-men, standing in contrast to izards. This image ignores a nd innovation to the business.

, and some takeaways that may ive to watch for the near future.

The late Mr. Deaver shaped Ronald Reagan’s
image and approved some iconic political
advertising, including “Morning in America,”
arguably the greatest political ad ever. When dealing with his Tuesday
Team, Mr. Deaver kept things simple. BBDO’s Mr. Dusenberry said: “The
ultimate client was President Reagan, and it was as simple as that. We had
no layers of approval, no levels of a rule to go through time and time again.
It was as simple as showing Mike Deaver a piece of advertising we liked; if
he liked it, it was as good as done.” The
lesson: Assemble the best talent and stay out
of their way.

10.SCOTTBEDBURY

NIKE AND STARBUCKS

most-trusted company. For a lot of that time, Andrea Alstrup, a veteran of the first Tylenol recall—the one that was handled well—was a senior marketer deftly juggling a massive media budget, large agency roster and a portfolio of venerable brands. Never a self-promoter, Ms. Alstrup was the 10th woman and the first female client elected to the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame.

Let’s get this out of the way: Ms. Fudge’s time at the helm of Y&R was a hot Six Sigma mess. Focus instead on her tenure at Kraft, where she zipped up the ladder to exec VP with successes on brands that included Maxwell House, Shake ‘N Bake and Kool-Aid. During that time, she was praised as a consensus-builder and problem-solver who got strong work out of her agencies. Even years after the Y&R flop, she is still probably the most important black executive the advertising industry has ever seen.

Most marketers don’t get to work on even
one great brand, but in the 1990s Mr.
Bedbury led two. He took Nike to new
heights, overseeing the brand’s “Just Do It”
campaign and global growth. Then, as Starbucks was becoming a
household word with international aspirations, he pushed into co-
branding initiatives and got distribution in supermarkets. An
ambidextrous marketer who got both grand-production storytelling and
word-of-mouth-fueled promotion, he was a hint of what future marketers
would have to be. Since 1998, he’s run his own consultancy, Brandstream.

7.ANNFUDGE
KRAFT
FIVETOWATCH

Dana Anderson, senior VP-marketing strategy and communications, Kraft: The former DDB Chicago head has reinvigorated Kraft creatively. Stefan Olander, VP-digital sport, Nike: His Nike+ work with R/GA showed the potential of branded platforms. Steve Pacheco, director-advertising, FedEx: Long relationship with BBDO has yielded consistently strong creative. And he knows how to tweet. James Moorhead,associate marketing director at P&G’s Gillette: The client behind Old Spice’s The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. Enough said. Joe Tripodi, exec VP-chief marketing and commercial Officer, Coca-Cola: Allstate. Bank of New York. And now Coke, last year’s Marketer of the Year.

WHY SPEC CREATIVE SHOULD GO AWAY, BUT WON’T

tion, said Andrew Essex, CEO of
Droga5, whose shop was selected
to work on Athenos yogurt in
“Operation Spark.”
Curiosity Advertising,
Cincinnati, has eschewed spec
creative in most new-business
wins as it has grown to 30
employees from two since its
launch two years ago.

CEO Greg Livingston prefers
a review process in which
agency principals meet with a
prospective client to talk about
philosophies, personalities and
how the agency works. “The
true challenges are about chem-
istry and trust,” Mr. Livingston
said. “If you look at an agency’s
portfolio of work for previous
clients, that should give you a
pretty good picture of their cre-
ative style.”
Spec creative can easily cost
Curiosity $100,000 in billable
time and render a new account
unprofitable for the first two or
three years, Mr. Livingston said.
Other agency executives say big-
ger pitches can rack up uncom-
pensated costs ranging into
seven figures.

Agency-client relationships are like a marriage. You need to talk, listen, compromise and have a sense of humor. Like most marriages, they start with the euphoric honeymoon. It can start to wear during the months and years ahead as the difficulties of daily life set in, but how you manage those things is what matters.

We’ve all heard the story before: Our agency isn’t proactive enough. The client doesn’t stand up for the work. The agency is headstrong and opinionated. The client is ambivalent about the workload and time lines. The agency doesn’t understand our business challenges. The client doesn’t buy good work. The agency’s creative isn’t good enough.

How did we get here? Well, maybe we can learn from the mistakes of the past.

Saturn is one of the most tragic marketing stories of the past two decades. It was a brand “built to last for 100 years” that lasted 20. In the mid- 1990s, it It was “the” case study praised in MBA programs. Then it disappeared.

A key ingredient of Saturn’s mystique was the unique relationship and unwavering trust shared by the agency and the client. I was at Hal Riney & Partners when Saturn was a major account and can say that the agency was truly a partner to the brand. Staff was involved in everything concerning Saturn’s business, including selecting and naming paint colors and writing keynote speeches for senior executives.

But the connection was eventually undermined. The agency stayed true to the original Saturn vision and refused to adapt to changed circumstances. The client buckled to its parent company, General Motors, allowing the brand’s singular elements to erode. The agency was steadfast in its point of view, with little room for negotiation. The client was under extreme pressure to turn Saturn into a profitable division vs. a loss leader. The sides were at a standoff.

As they do in a bad marriage, little
things became big things—when the real
issue was that we could not agree on the
reason Saturn existed, why it was a
“different kind of company.”
When Saturn was firing on all
cylinders, it was hard to tell the client from
the agency side of the table. There was a
respect and trust that allowed great
things to happen. Were there
disagreements? A ton. Were there
laughs? You bet. But we started from a
common place, and trust was paramount.

How agency and client partners deal with the realities of day-to-day working life is where the rubber meets the road. Respect underpins a healthy client-agency relationship. So talk, listen, compromise and have a sense of humor.