Tony Granger Is Out Of The Rubber Room
March 26, 2008
Tony Granger is supposed to be working at Young and Rubicam, but if you recall, that big bad dawg named Kevin Roberts was determined to hold Tony to his contract with Publicis Groupe. The terms of the employment contract would have kept Granger at the agency until this November, a full year after his resignation. However, now that Gerry Graf of TBWA signed on to replace Granger in February, it seems that Roberts is willing to let his grudge go. Seriously though… what made Tony think that unlike everyone else in the world, he wasn’t obligated to be bound by his contract? Hubris is a dangerous thing.
Today, AdAge is reporting that Tony could be out of his contract by the end of April. This situation is kind of like when New York City teachers get put in the Rubber Room. These people have been put on some sort of probationary status and must report to this room every day until the matter is cleared up. Often, they have no idea what they did to be placed in the RR. They get their full paychecks, but the average length of stay is often months and sometimes years. Christ. Now, aren’t you glad you’re in advertising?
Tony has got to be psyched! He’s just in time to run some more fake ads for the awards season. Sweet.
March 26, 2008 at 6:33 pm
this was hubris meets hubris–roberts and granger. y&r will win more awards with granger, but that won’t necessarily lead to growth. their chicago office followed that strategy and went for awards and is now down to one client–sears. clients don’t really care about awards, nor should they really. plenty of good work doesn’t win awards. and plenty of fake stuff does.
March 26, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Careful, Britt. People will start to think there are Creatives left in the business who care more about their clients’ business problems than their own egos or winning accolades under false pretenses. Oh, wait. There are. You just never hear about them because theyre actually working while the others are jetting off to Cannes at client expense.
March 26, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Then if I win awards for real ads, shouldn’t I be, like, a millionaire ECD by now? There should be a whole other hiring category for real ad-making award-winners. What am I doing wrong?
Maybe I need a PR agency…
March 27, 2008 at 12:06 am
let me get this straight: if your boss came up to you with a free ticket to cannes and said “here, take a week, have a blast,” and you had the opportunity to hang with many of the top creatives in the world (to either get inspired or get a new job), you’d turn it down? for ethical reasons? wtf?? hop that wave and ride it, baby.
March 27, 2008 at 2:27 am
Great, now maybe Y&R can jump into the pitch and win Burlington Coat Factory.
A perfect fit!
March 27, 2008 at 3:50 am
britt is right about chicago winning lots of awards and doing great work but lacking clients. but she misses a crucial point: there is no incentive for creatives do to anything else. we get hired based on the creative quality of our work, we have no stake in how well a company does (percentage of gain, etc) and if the agency goes under, we hop some place else.
fatc doesn’t get it at all. it’s not about egos, it’s about career advancement. you don’t have a good book&reel, you are not going to get that next job.
March 27, 2008 at 6:01 am
If you don’t have a good book or reel, you’re just not very good to begin with. It’s no fault but your own. You need to manage your career and make the right decisions. Just being able to come up with a clever visual pun is 1% of what this business is about.
There’s a problem with building a rep on scam. You end up flying to Cannes as a glamorous hero to pick up metal for fake work, but you struggle with the real work. You see it happen all the time.
Some agencies out there don’t encourage fake ads or they even have policies against making them. Those agency reputations are based on real work that wins all the time against even the scam. They aren’t handed the clients they work on either. They don’t win awards with fakes. They earn them the hard way.
Take whatever path you want. Just don’t come on here and make excuses for the need to cheat.
March 27, 2008 at 11:59 am
keep hearing about “fake ads” but starting to wonder if they are more an urban myth than anything else. can someone here please provide a specific example of a fake that’s won an award recently? please provide name of client, agency, ad, awards show, what it won and (most importantly) what proof you have that it’s fake.
put up or shut up, ladies.
March 27, 2008 at 12:24 pm
RT:
Have you heard of “The Google” — enter a few terms in there and you should be good to go.
No need to be do fucking lazy and make others do your work for you — what do you think this is — advertising?
March 27, 2008 at 2:29 pm
@ondownlow: ha! touche. hey, who trusts what they find on the internet?! some commenters here continually harp on this topic but never offer any examples/proof. let’s see ‘em back it up, that’s all.
March 27, 2008 at 4:23 pm
from what i hear much of the work on a famous breath mint account was fake–done by the client and the agency to further their careers. the last few years or so the brand shrunk incredibly and had very little media money behind it. yet they were producing a lot of ads that never really ran anywhere. there’s also an agency in chicago that buys billboard space and runs ideas their clients reject so they can enter them in shows. also many agencies create ads for small clients and then pay for the media themselves–either in the back of really cheap magazines or on a cable channel in des moines. this is not urban myth, happens all the time.
March 27, 2008 at 4:36 pm
Raj Kambel at Lowe is in the books most years lately with some fake work. Even got a bronze lion for a Stella “coupon” a few years back. Stella does 1 billboard a year out of the New York office. This guy is a classic example of how awards don’t translate into the ability to do real work. He couldn’t sell a real ad to a client if his life depended on it. But Wnek will keep him around so they can all pretend they have creative skills. This would all be acceptable if his overinflated ego didn’t make him impossible to work with.
March 27, 2008 at 5:04 pm
@mad dog lopez…thanks, dude, but NAMES please. client, agency, award. none of this “i hear…” and “many agencies…” bullshit. which client? which agency? which ad? which award. and what’s your proof?
March 27, 2008 at 6:31 pm
@sean: ok, closer but still no facts (”…most years”…”some fake work.”
explain the deal with the Stella coupon…why is it fake? what’s the proof? i’m just asking cuz i’m not familiar with the ad/situation.
March 27, 2008 at 6:55 pm
RT:
Because you are lazy — rumour has it:
Tony Granger while at S&S
Tide Ultra (P&G)
Won at Cannes - Grand Prix
(Didn’t actually air until the Superbowl months later — because it was an award-winner)
More info on the ad:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/advertising/2007-06-21-cannes-press-usat_N.htm
You are welcome!
(All of two minutes research on Google)
March 27, 2008 at 8:11 pm
@ODL: huh? i must be missing something: how can a PRINT ad “air on the super bowl”?
March 27, 2008 at 8:56 pm
…and again, “rumor has it”?? sounds weak, dude.
March 27, 2008 at 9:32 pm
RT:
OK… you can stop being a whiny little bitch about this — you do the definite research and get back to us all with your report.
You want to act like your a 3rd Grader… well now you have a “book report” for us all to evaluate.
It is due here, addressed to Ms. SuperSpy, by 5 pm EDT on March 28, 2008 — thanks for volunteering. That is all!
March 28, 2008 at 12:43 am
rt,
either you are brain-damaged or just an natural-born idiot. there’s a long tradition of cheating to win awards. for year’s the shows looked the other way, then they toughened the rules a bit, but it’s still easy to get around them. the poster category, for example. look for brands with small budgets, like altoids, that produced a ton of work. Or look for ads done for organizations like “Doctors in favor of better thermometers for albanian refugees.” Or look for anything from singapore.
March 28, 2008 at 12:11 pm
ha! c’mon, ODL, listen to what you’re saying: you make a claim, you can’t back up what you say, so it’s MY FAULT and i’m an idiot!! that’s some sweet logic, hope your clients get more brainwidth than that. sorry, but i’m not the one out there making claims, so it ain’t my job to qualify and prove someone else’s opinion.
and mad dog: time to chill, brother. i thought we were all lovers not haters in this comfy little social community of ours, no need to call names just because, again, your fuzzy “facts” aren’t concrete.
March 28, 2008 at 1:47 pm
i’m mad dog, obviously not the moniker of a lover.
May 13, 2008 at 10:18 am
Tide TV
Tide print
The vodka stuff
The cough syrup stuff
Basically, everything he touched at Saatchi was “fake”
Meaning it never ran or it ran once to enter into an award show.
June 5, 2008 at 3:33 am
1. You all sound like wieners, a bunch of old ladies in they’re late 70’s. Give me a break, this is Advertising ladies and gents.
2. Advertising is about Business, about creating work for a client that SELLS THEY’RE PRODUCTS.
3. Awards for CREATIVE work. Sure it may not run, sure if may not ever be used, but ITS [ AWARDING CREATIVE ADVERTISING] , not MOST SALES GENERATED BY AD.
4. so if your working is selling your clients product, or sales are going up, and your client is HAPPY, great job, you should be proud - if you win an AWARD FOR CREATING A CREATIVE AD/CAMPAIGN, congrats, your talented and you deserve it.
so stop crying, you guys all sound like babies. Need a hug?
- i’m only a JR. Art DIrector and i understand this, you all should be ashamed.