Why Fallon Is In The Shitter (Hint: Meet The Buchner Boys)
August 1, 2007
UPDATE: August 2nd, 2007 at 3:30 pm - More Bodies Fall At Fallon Including Pat’s
We wrote a piece this AM about Fallon and Saatchi & Saatchi’s new deal to create a new division together called the SSF Group, which is really a way to save Fallon’s sinking profit margin. Read it here. A tipster has provided us with their thoughts about Fallon’s downfall, which include some scathing details about The Buchner brothers. This is a MUST READ:
“Having worked at Fallon right up to the point that it all went wrong (no more Subway, Lubars leaving for BBDO and fat multi-million dollar payday, and the rest of the dominoes falling) when I jumped ship just in time, the reason this is all happening is clear:
The Buchner boys have too much power. When [David] Lubars left, there was a huge void in creative leadership. [Bob] Barrie and [Dean] Hanson wanted no management responsibility, [Bruce] Bildsten was only around beacuse of his connection to BMW (everyone else hated him) and Harvey Marco had already left for Saatchi. The great creative shop was taken by the unimaginative Buchner boys, whose influence has always been outsized (see: Shetty, Baba, brought in to save BMW…didn’t turn out well. That guy is a corpo leech who takes others’ ideas and has lived off of BMWFilms for too long - his only contribution was not f-ing them up).
Pat Fallon is disinterested these days and has trusted the Buchner charlatans with the keys to the agency. They are terrible at new business development, no clients have ever liked them (I am specifically recalling BMW and Subway’s reaction to Mike Buchner) and they are pompous asses who wear shirts that show off too much chest
hair. More than that, they are directionless and it was clear as they moved up that the agency had lost its focus.
With them in charge, the agency is screwed. Just look - they have shed clients, lost their best people (Appleby, Sage, Bologna, Merkin, Barrie, Gunnerud, etc and so on), and are quickly flaming out.
They need to either reanimate Pat Fallon a la Orville or break free from Publicis and go gunning with creative in the lead like the old days.
Oh yeah, and without the Buchners.
This is more of a screed than an argument, but those muppets have ruined a great agency.”
Oh boy…. Everyone bow down to this tipster who has the real deal goods.
UPDATE: We have more thoughts from a tipster about the problems plaguing the agency - Part Deux: Why Fallon Is In The Shitter or, if you’re bored of this find out about McCann Erickson’s Recent Very Very Dumb Mistake
August 2, 2007 at 4:29 pm
[...] Part One: Why Fallon Is In The Shitter Posted by superspy Filed in [...]
August 2, 2007 at 4:46 pm
This is total bullshit. How can the Buchner brothers be faulted for the downfall of Fallon’s Creative offering when their advice on how to steer the agency has been largely ignored?
Your tipster left Fallon a long time ago. You think the Buchners were responsible for the hiring of both Paul Silburn and Kerry Feuerman? Think again. Having worked under both of them, I can tell you that these two extremely poor choices for Lubars-successors is the most significant factor in the downfall of Fallon’s creative offering.
August 2, 2007 at 5:16 pm
It would be a mistake to ignore the complete disintegration of Interactive, and the resulting loss of an incredibly powerful think-tank of creativity, when examining the state of that agency.
August 3, 2007 at 2:56 pm
[...] is uninterested in trying to understand how the business has changed in the last 15 years (see the previous comment re: the interactive dept). It’s common knowledge at the agency that Pat’s inner circle [...]
August 4, 2007 at 10:12 am
Oh come on - Feurman and Silburn never stood a chance against the tidal wave of politics, resistance and head-in-the-sand-longing-for-the-good-old-days inner circle of Pat Fallon’s cronies in creative, project management, account management, etc. To blame them is crazy - they were each there less than 1 year. In fact Silburn made some great hires - Roger Camp, Mark Taylor (who won a Titanium at Cannes again this year), The Wixom’s (now at BBH NY), Brian Tierney and he even teed up Joel Rodriguez who soon realised his mistake. At least he was trying to inject some positivity and new blood into the failing, cancerous corpse. What changes were made elsewhere during that time? None because everyoine was covering their asses. And poor Kerry Feurman was just a puppet for Westbrook and Fallon. Don’t blame him either. The Buchners and Pat deserve the lion’s share of blame for sticking with a broken model for way too long. Now it’s over. Sadly a once great agency will never recover under the new regime.
August 5, 2007 at 3:16 am
Your a fag. You have to much time on your hands to be making articles about complaints. Get a life.
August 6, 2007 at 2:06 pm
“Let’s be Honest” brings up some good points. Silburn did hire some great people and the politics at the place are crazy stupid. But he was not a good manager of people, no work was done while he was there, and both creatives and clients were fleeing like mad.
To even suggest Feuerman was remotely qualified for the job or could have suceeded without the politics is laughable. Either you didn’t work there with him, or you are him, because everyone else could see he was a horrible judge of creative, not to mention an embarassing presenter and completely out of touch. He didn’t know what a “blog” was. Honest.
Feuerman was a puppet, but mainly because he wasn’t good enough to do his job.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. But the fact is, the agency was able to do good work with the group creative directors running the show, but not with Silburn or Feurman.
Look at the good work that came out of that place last year. Nearly all of it happened between the SIlburn and Feuerman’s reigns (check with the credits at Cannes…the only one Feuerman is on is Bahamavention, but everyone knows he wasn’t allowed to touch that account).
Basically, Westbrook and the Buchners just need to stay out of the way.
August 6, 2007 at 2:30 pm
[...] More Fallon Coverage: Part One: Why Fallon Is In The Shitter [...]
August 7, 2007 at 2:04 pm
Not quite true ex-Fallon person. I’ve checked the awards credits for the Andy’s, One Show, Cannes and D&AD and the single biggest winning piece of work Fallon has done in the past 2 years is the Brawny Academy campaign - and that was created and overseen by Silburn and Mark Taylor right up until their departure when the production was then overseen by Roger Camp. All the creatives on that campaign were hired by Silburn too. For me this is not simply a debate about Fallon’s creative ouput anyway. Look at the brilliant people in other departments who quit during 2006. The departures of the disillusioned didn’t stop when the ship was supposed to be steadied - Brian DiLorenzo was awesome. So too were Magnus Blair, Michelle Fitzgerald, Lisa Seward, Roger Camp, Tim Gillingham, Adrain Ho…
January 12, 2008 at 2:01 am
Let’s be honest, aka Paul Silburn:
Yes, you got credit on Brawny. Here’s your pat on the back.
ex-fallon person’s point still stands. Bahamavention, Travelers, Holiday Inn all were done after you left and without Kerry. And while you may have been there when Brawny was a scribble on a napkin, the other 95% of the work happened after you were canned.
So, I guess, congrats for sort of selling one thing. If you could have sold anything else, you might still be there.