Madison AveNew Means New

THE GOOD OLD DAZE. Smart Ad Folk do a great job of laughing up their sleeve at those they consider the not-so-brights in the fly-over markets. But exactly how smart are the smarter-then-thou creatives who shape the vast wasteland between the beats of network television programming?

vast wasteland between the beats of network television programming? I think it's high time that somebody called these pretenders out for their waste of our precious bathroom breaks. Their 30- second, dumb-downed affronts to human intellect need to be brought to task. It's a thankless job, but somebody's got to do it.

VOLUME
ONE
WEDNESDAY
SEPTEMBER 1,
2004

I taught John Travolta to sing "I'm Stuck On Band-Aid Brand" and convinced America that "A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste."I taught cats to "Chow, Chow, Chow,"and Joe Frazier to mumble,"Thanks, I Needed That."

THIS BLOG IS SO COOL THAT I JUST WANT TO THANK YOU. THE ARTICALS ALWAYS MAKE ME THINK.
You can send me this kind of mail and I'll be sure to post it - HW

I've worked in every major agency in New York, Detroit, Chicago and Los Angeles, so I know we can do better as an industry. I know what great advertising should be. Is there anybody out there who can't finish this sentence? "I'm stuck on Band-Aid, cause....So let's get started.

EVERY TIME YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH YOU SEEM TO PUT YOUR FOOT IN IT. WHAT MAKES YOU THINK PEOPLE IN ADVERTISING NEED YOU TO LOOK OVER OUR SHOULDER? WAYNE Q. NEW YORK

You can send me this kind of mail and I'll post it too- HW

If I chose to call this column "Madison AveNew"because it's time for some new thinking and new attitudes about what people care about and what just plain pisses them off. New insights into what passes for marketing smarts and what smacks of borrowed interest. New approaches to dramatizing the way people interact with their favorite brand of stuff. New resources for coming up with the "Big Ideas" that seem so few and far between these days. I'm talking "new" as in...WOW! New is why this column is hosted by my friend Jeffrey Wells and his Hollywood Elsewhere column.

In the world of global marketing these days, more "WOW" is coming out of Hollywood than any elsewhere else, and branded entertainment is the cornerstone of thisbrave new world of "Wow" in image building and product promotion. Look for more and more marketing executives to start following the lead set by Jim McDowell, VP Marketing for BMW and godfather of their much heralded web film efforts. Jim maintains that even though the BMW short films were more expensive to produce than a commercial, the total cost was significantly less expensive than a network minute and infinitely more targeted to their audience. That's what I'm talking about when I talk about "WOW." New ways to Wow an audience that's bored to tears.

In my opinion, you can't really begin to get to new without an appreciation of what's old. On Madison Avenue, "old school" was really the Golden Age of Advertising. In those days there were Dream Team agencies that could boast entire floors of genius-caliber creativity. As a result, those classic campaigns like "We Try Harder," "A Diamond Is Forever," and yes, even "I'm Stuck On Band-Aid" are still out there, selling their hearts out year after year after year.

At an agency like Doyle Dane Bernbach you would have giants like Mary Wells, Phillis Robinson, Bob Gage, George Lois, Helmut Krone, Gene Case and Julian Koenig. All of them working around the clock to build brands like Avis, Polaroid, Volkswagen and The Jamaica Tourist board into household names.

Two blocks away, Steve Frankfurt's Young & Rubicam boasted the talents of Bob Giraldi, Dominick Rosetti, Stan Dragoti, Alex Kroll and yours truly. All of us burning equal amounts of midnight oil to put BirdsEye, Dr Pepper, Band- Aid Brand, Metropolitan Life and Eastern Airlines (R.I.P.) on the map.

This was the dawn of creativity in advertising. Commercials were 60 and 90 seconds long back then. Like everything else in the 60's (which actually stretched only from '67 to '69) the revolution was in full effect. Today, the only thing revolutionary about advertising is the amount of money being thrown away. That, and more and more clients determined to find a better solution than the media based commissions that agencies have traditionally used as a basis of compensation.

From Y&RNY and DDB, the creative virus quickly spread in the 70's to spin-off agencies started by immigrant creatives who jumped from their motherships: Wells, Rich, Greene; Papert, Koenig Lois; DellaFemina Travisano; Rosenfeld, Sirowitz & Lawson; Carl Ally; Ammerati & Puris; Scali, McCabe & Sloves; Delehanty, and Kernit & Geller, to name but a few. All it took was an award-winning writer/art director team, a sharp business guy or gal, and a client willing to take the million dollar leap of faith.

Amazing brands were built by these defector agencies. Carl Ally created Fed-Ex. Wells Rich Greene revived Branif, Alka-Seltzer and American Motors. Sam Scali and Ed McCabe gave America Volvo and Purdue Chicken. George Lois made a generation whine, "I want my MTV."

A handful of brilliant minds. Billions upon billions generated in sales. With the exception of Lee Clow (Apple), Dave Wieden (Nike) and Donny Deutch ( Mitsubishi), few can make that statement today. I don't get it. The clients are screaming for NEW!, but nobody's stepping up to the plate.

The most memorable advertising campaign on the planet inthe past ten years has been "Whaassupp! "And that was lifted intact from a short film called "True."Whassupwitdat?

Let's look at the ten years before that. Michael Jackson's hair blazing Pepsi Campaign and the resultant Victory Tour. Pepsi boss Rodger Enrico and Don King put that amazing deal together in Kathryn Jackson's kitchen at Jackson's house on Havenhurst in Encino. BBDO and Phil Dusenberry were nowhere in sight for that particular thriller, until Mikey was rushed to Brotman Burn Center.

Ten years before that? The Golden Age we just canonized. That's not to say there were not bursts of brilliance over the past 20 years. Apple's "1984" comes to mind. But it was George Orwell, not Chiat/Day and Ridley Scott, that made that a classic."Just Do It" did good. But how can you go wrong with Jordan, Woods, Lennon/ McCartney and Spike Lee? Am I noticing a pattern here? Short Films, Triple Platinum Hits, Sports Super Stars, Classic Novels. Can you say "borrowed interest," boys and girls? "Avis Tries Harder," '"I Want My MTV," "Diamonds Are Forever," or another one of mine,"Chow, Chow, Chow" Now, can you say, "Product As Hero?"

SUPPOSE YOU GAVE AN OLYMPIC GAMES AND NOBODY CAME? No amount of soft-focus depth of field skullduggery could hide the fact that the majority of the Olympic hopefuls were beating their hearts out to a significantly less than packed house. So too were the spot inventories at the Networks of NBC Universal. Thirty second spots that were originally going for $760k a pop were being fire-saled at the opening gun for $700k.

And yet ad sales thus far have topped the $1 billion mark as the Peacock projects a profit of $50 million on its investment of $743 million for the worldwide rights alone. "We are absolutely guaranteed profitability in the neighborhood of what we did in 2000," claims Cameron Blanchard, senior sports and Olympics spokeswoman for NBC.

According to the N.Y. Daily News, the network promised to deliver a rating of 14.5, or about 15.7 million homes during their 1,210 hours of Olympic coverage. The Daily News reports that if the network fails to meet that target, it will have to give Olympics advertisers free commercial time. The first three days of NBC's coverage of the 2002 Winter Games, in Salt Lake City averaged 35.1 million viewers, compared to 23.7 million for the first three days from Athens. That puts them over the make good hurtle, but then it ain't over 'til the fat lady blows out the flame. Be that as it may, let's talk about what was representative of that billion-dollar branding orgy that separates the pommel horse from the 500 meter breast stroke.

Earlier this year, headhunters were beating the bushes for creative firepower to spark up the television advertising of Korean monolith Samsung Electronics. First they wanted somebody to work in a small satellite office in Irvine. Then they wanted to pay a kings ransom for an Executive Creative Director to make Korea their new home. And all this after consolidating their $400 million global advertising budget at one agency. The reason for the consolidation was the fact that Samsung had employed a hodgepodge of 55 ad agencies around the globe. Eric Kim, the brand's new head of global marketing, bundled up all of their work in a single shop, the New York office of Foote, Cone & Belding Worldwide. FCB was to coordinate Samsung's global marketing.

Okay, we're going for symbolism here. I get it. But wait...isn't Samsung a technology company? Why did the execution of the CGI effects look like last months fire meat? I know, I know, they just got the business less than a year before the air date and there was no time to ramp up. No time to make everything picture perfect. But four years later, Samsung Electronics' "Style Meets Performance" and "Perfection" spots were equally half baked. Fencers bogged down in flowing haute couture. Gymnasts whose black and yellow frocks appear in danger of snagging on the pommel horse. What's wrong with this picture, sports fans?

Could it be the subtle message that style might just be getting in the way of performance? Then there is the flying cell phone morphing in and out of the platform divers airborne contortions. All I could think of was what happened the last time I dropped my $1500 flip phone on the Amtrak platform in L.A., running for the last train to Chicago. The minute it hit the concrete I knew it was a goner. Is anybody out there paying attention to the subthreshold messages these million dollar minimovies are sending? Apparently not at Samsung.

Did anybody at Samsung put a call into The Korean Gymnastics Federation when they protested Paul Hamm's gold metal? "Hey, we just put up $400 mil to sell these round eyes our cool gadgets. Don't rock the high bar." My personal gold metal goes to the NBC traffic department for slotting in a Samsung commercial right after one of the protesters, Yang Tae Young, clipped the high bar with his foot and almost fell flat on his face during his dismount, which put him in last place. It took The Korean Gymnastics Federation two days to lodge their protest. Somebody from Samsung could have gotten to them and said, "Yo! You guys did this in Salt Lake City and it didn't work. Bad for business, dawg."

But no. Wake up and smell the kim chi, fellas. Global marketing means never having someone say, "You suck." That polite snicker you hear in the background is Samsung's arch-enemy LG Electronics who passed on the Olympics this time out.

Now let's talk about who did it exactly right. In a word, Chevrolet. GM was, by far, the largest investor in Olympic ad time. They increased their third-quarter ad budget 10 fold for a total of 200 commercials between August 13 and 29, according to Kim Kosak, Chevrolet's General Director for Advertising and Sales Promotion. "We're not going to have any competition, from an automotive perspective," Kosak told reporters in a pre-Games news conference. That's because the Generals ( Motors and Electric) did a $500 million deal back in 1997 making GM the exclusive domestic automaker in Olympic advertising on NBC through 2008. And you thought they backed Christi Yamaguchi because she was "cute?" But the deal was definitely not the star of this show.

Remember a few paragraphs back when I told you that the future of advertising was in Hollywood, not on Madison Avenue? Well, for my money, the hands-down gold metal winner of the Olympic competition for the hearts, minds and wallets of the television audience was Madonna hubby Guy Richie.

The director of "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" certainly made his bones on one of the BMW films we mentioned earlier. But he outdid himself and every other multi-million dollar branding extravaganza with his 60-second ode to the 2005 Corvette, the first national advertising for the brand since 1997. Richie and the Campbell-Ewald creative team gave us a schoolboy's daydream of a white knuckle ride through the streets of New York to the thunder of the Stone's "Jumping Jack Flash," that ends with the single best line in the 28th Olympiad. "The Official Sports Car of Your Dreams."

But don't take my word for it. See the spot for yourself. Just click here

Five days into the Games, the mighty General of Motors yanked the spot because of hand wringing by a pack of auto safety watchdogs. At first, I thought it was another case of corporate chicken shit in action. Then I said...wait a minute, I know these guys. Bob Lutz and his boys don't blink. They pulled the ultimate "Gotcha". These guys had to know this spot was over the top. They had to know the spot would be pulled five seconds after it ran. They had to know it would gain 1000 times the notoriety, visibility and downright legendary status for their new Vette for a fraction of the bucks. And get every 9 year old in America, saving up his lunch money in the bargain. Hell, If I know it, they had to know it, right?...Right?

Let's look at the folks responsible for the most recent Arby's campaign. Here we have a quick service restaurant with a great new menu ( their "Market-Fresh Sandwiches" are da bomb) and a brand new store design. New, new, new. How do they decide to advertise all this newness? By ripping off the Hamburger Helper oven mitt as a spokes-thingy. What were they thinking?

One, their menu is the one true antidote for burger death in the category. Why go anywhere near an image that says hamburger anything? Monumental stupidity on a scale that defies all logic. Two, why is this terrific new menu the last thing this idiot glove communicates? These are not baked sandwiches. Pot roast is not baked. Three, they've been spending $15 million a year (which is chicken feed in fast food) to be absolutely invisible. They need to get four bucks worth of bang for every buck they spend just to get noticed.

Thankfully, somebody down at Arby's in Ft. Lauderdale finally got a clue. Detroit's W.B. Donner, who created the spokesglove campaign, is OUT and the account is up for grabs. The four finalists are some of the brightest shops in the biz. Interpublic Group's Mullen in Wenham, Mass.; Omnicom Group's Merkley + Partners in New York; MDC's Kirshenbaum Bond + Partners in New York; and independent Venables, Bell & Partners in San Francisco. Good luck guys. Don't forget to bring the NEW.

Stay Tuned.

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