Agency Spy

GSD&M got a new management structure as well as a name recently - GSD&M’s Idea City. Ha. Snort. Come on… you know that one) it’s a mouthful 2) meaningless addition and 3) way to close to Kiddie City. Roy Spence, the founder of the agency said, “We’ll have the advertising-marketing component, we’ll have the purpose-based branding component, we’ll have all of our analytics models as a component. We will be the only major advertising agency that will have media planning, market account planning and creative inside of one city.”

Okay, that’s just a false statement, but dude is going to run with it anyway. If you don’t know anything about Spence, here’s a brief: Roy is apparently going to make a political run and is a consultant for Ms. Hillary Clinton. Speculation is that this is the reason he’s stepping down as president. Protégé Duff Stewart will take his place with a plan to hire from the outside a “chief idea officer.” What’s really interesting is that part of GSD&M’s restructuring includes a 16-person “leadership council,” which co-founder Judy Trabulsi will head.  Made up of employees at various levels and in different departments, the council will participate in major agency decisions. Various levels? Whoa. We are hoping that they let some junior folks get in there and have a say. Young blood can only help an agency that has flatlined.

Spence has had a great career. He’s responsible for the now iconic “Don’t Mess With Texas” tagline. Plus, he famously withdrew his agency from the second Wal-Mart review during the turmoil. However, GSD&M has had it share of issues from losing accounts (Chili’s, Wal-Mart, etc.) to making it to the second round of pitches and then failing to seal the deal like Best Buy. The agency has currently been invited to pitch for AT&T, so we’ll see how that goes.