Agency Spy

Sir John Hegarty, the man behind Bartle Bogle Hegarty, has been busy building a vineyard in the South of France. Hegarty told the Times UK that:

“I’ve worked in advertising for 40-odd years. I deplore the word retire, but you want a segue [a seamless link] into doing something else,” he says. “We didn’t want to just have a house in the country where we went once every four to five weekends, opened it up, read some papers, closed it up on the Sunday, and drove back.”

Hegarty, 63, and his partner, Philippa Crane, 52, bought an old farmhouse set in 54 acres in the foothills of the Montagne Noire near Carcassonne. A similar property is up for £1.74 million. Crane, a former board member and ad producer at BBH (who-hoo, inter office love!) manages the vineyard full time.

The grapes from Hegarty’s land have been sold to the local co-operative for the past 35 years. Naturally, the ad man and his lady have decided to not sell to to the co-op as they were informed that the profit is minimal. Instead, the couple have set up their own label and now produce their own award-winning Minervois wine, Hegarty Chamans. Make money, money and all that. Hegarty is a true ad man and relished the challenge of building a brand from scratch. Yeah, you would too. Hegarty also said that:

“It’s such an expensive industry to set up. Also it’s over-supplied and it takes a very long time to develop the product that you want to make. If you are dealing with an agricultural product you’re subject to the vagaries of Nature. It’s not like making jeans. At the beginning you are a farmer, then you’re a chemist, and, if you are selling your wine, you’re a marketeer. But nothing great is created with ease.”

Seems that Diageo has settled on JWT for the global Baileys advertising business worth about $80 million annually - as announced late yesterday out of London. They are in final negotiations on a contract at the moment.  The win is a boost for the WPP Group-owned agency after it lost the business to BBH five years ago.

Incumbent BBH and (surprise, surprise) Leo Burnett got turfed in the final round. Fallon was booted earlier in the process.  BBH will remain on the Diageo roster and will continue to work on Johnnie Walker. The loss will come as a blow to the agency, which lost the Smirnoff business to JWT in 2006

Agency Republic, an Omnicom agency, got assigned the global digital work earlier.

The current campaign shows Baileys aimed at moving it from being seen as a drink consumed only at Christmas.

Recently, a handful of mid-level creatives have bailed from BBH NY. One story that can be added to this mini-exodus is that of Art Director Andrew Tider.

Before leaving the shop for a gig over at Nitro, he decided to make a video of himself packing up. Not just his office… the whole shop.

His coworkers dug it, of course… and luckily so did his superiors. Steve Hearty apparently called it “extraordinary.”

Enjoy.

- Agent C

agencyspy.agentc at gmail dot com

Remember we mentioned that Dove was going to be doing something with MTV and Alicia Keyes in an effort to get a little younger, get the hip ladies using social media? Here’s the spot for their seemingly episodic show, “Fresh Takes,” that takes a jab at the Lipstick Jungle’s of the world.

Unilever owns Dove and Axe. The latter brand had a huge success with the Game Killers via BBH. Makes sense that strategy would filter across agencies and brands beneath the banner.

The print work coming out of BBH London makes us want hug and kiss the creatives. That’s some good stuff above - Hillary endorsing Obama with the tagline, “Imagine the power of Axe.” It doesn’t matter who you’re for. The ad just works. We recently dug their work for Levi’s, as well.

Adcentered also spotted this one and is asking their readers: “Do you think that non-political advertisements can have an effect on an election? Is this a political ad and therefor subject to the same rules that govern political advertisements?”

If you’d like to share your thoughts on those questions, you can do so here.

There are a few of these, but here’s our favorite from a series of new print ads from BBH UK for Levi’s. Possibly because we’re female? Don’t look shocked. You all knew it, anyways. Possibly because we were the girl with green streaks in our hair and a Queers t-shirt on? No matter.  Love it. Love it.

Go check out the entire collection over at Scamp’s blog. You’ll see that BBH has made a very cohesive, simple and effective campaign.

At a panel discussion at Adweek’s Creative Conference: Mashup 2007, Aimee Reker, svp, global director of search at McCann Worldgroup, Lori Schwartz, svp, director of Emerging Media Lab and Greg Andersen, head of engagement planning at Bartle Bogle Hegarty, discussed trends and predicted, “What’s Next.”

Andersen and Schwartz both said that one of the biggest mistakes agencies make is “being enamored of everything new.” Alright, fine, but then Andersen goes on to say that he would like to see “SMS on T-shirts.” Talk about being enamored by everything new. Maybe these guys actually offered relevant information on trends, emerging technologies and also did a little forecasting. You wouldn’t know it from the AdWeek article, which makes them all sound a little out of touch. We’ve met Schwartz and that just isn’t true.

We would have liked to have seen some interactive/experiential/gaming folks on this panel like Ian Tait from Poke; Noah Brier from Naked or Kevin Slavin from area/code. Oh, let us stop… We could make a very long list.

So… what’s next, readers? Please feel free to comment. Let’s pick up AdWeek’s slack.

Read More: Anomaly’s New Converse Spot

BBDO has won New Balance’s estimated $20 million creative account according to AdAge. The agency beat out five contenders. One of which, was BBH. The incumbentwas independent Boathouse, Waltham, Mass. But since New Balance lost some more market share to the powerhouse that is Nike, the company was searching for a more progressive agency to get them back into the game. That’s going to be tough, but we wish ‘em luck.

Looks like BBH is going all out for the up-for-grabs New Balance business. We hear that… BBH will be pitching a concept in opposition to the hard core competitive campaigns that feature mega watt athletes from Nike. It’s not about the superstars of sport, but more about the consumer being their own star. So. We. Hear.

Reebok tried a different approach to this same oppositional idea with their “Run Easy” campaign. And despite the brand’s recent success making use of Facebook, Adidas’ CEO Herbert Hainer recently said that “Reebok will be profitable this year but in the US itself, Reebok will achieve revenue growth only by 2009.”

We predicted BBH was going to win this business over competitors Arnold Worldwide; BBDO, Cramer-Krasselt and Element 79. Not a bad start…

Don’t know how we missed this… Oh - wait. Yes, we do. It’s called work. Saatchi is apparently out of the LG review for its global corporate image business according to AdWeek. The shop withdrew due to a conflict, which apparently means the Sony Ericsson account. That leaves Publicis and Agency.com still vying for the $100 million account. Can you imagine if Agency.com pulls this off? Talk about a good start on a comeback, which began with their closing the creative work on LG’s digital display division.

Meanwhile, DDB and Bartle Bogle Hegarty are trying for their brand’s creative duties.