Agency Spy

Grey Worldwide has won the Honk Kong Tourism board account. The agency snagged a three-year contract covering 18 global markets, which Adweek is estimating to be in the $50 million value range. WPP’s MindShare will handle planning and buying on the business.

Sorry, but Grey landing this one causes a chuckle to tickle my throat. Hong Kong is cemented in many minds as a mover and shaker, idea, creativity and savvy business oriented republic in comparison to China or well, lots of places. So, how is it that death star agency Grey landed the account? Hmmm… Their last agency of record was DraftFCB, so maybe the board is blinded by the multiple worldwide offices? If that’s the case, then in three years the tourism board will be signing up with McCann.

Guy Seese is joining Grey San Francisco as Executive Creative Director. Seese abdicated his title of Creative Director and Associate Partner at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco earlier this year. He told Creativity that:

“I’ve been freelancing for a while, in New York, some work with the Barbarian Group out here in San Francisco, and I kind of liked the idea of being the Lone Ranger. But what I missed was the opportunity to build a team, and the camaraderie that went with it. Jeff Goodby is a good friend, and he told me that I needed to start my own agency, and I got started on that through these side projects, but ultimately it’s a really difficult thing to do. It’s very difficult to find the right people you can trust with the right business acumen for the job.”

Everyone bailing on Goodby. Feh Tarty and Pat McKay departed for W+K London recently. Mark Wenneker bailed for Mullen in March. Guy Seese said,

“I was really impressed with the people here at Grey SF. All the integrated pieces are already in place, we just need to throw some fuel on it and fire it up. Our goal here is to be nothing less than a creative powerhouse in the new media space.”

Right. Um, was it the money, Guy? You’ve still got to partner with Betsy Sperry to lead the agency, so it had to be the cash. Sure, I get that. Cash talks. Possibly, Seese realized he was never going to shine beneath top dawgs, Goodby and Silverstein and left. Failed to get his own shop of the ground and then went straight for the cash.

Bravo to Grey for trying to revamp the deathstar. First, with Tor Myhren in New York and now this move. In his new role, Seese will lead Grey San Francisco’s integrated creative department and oversee all the work — from traditional advertising, to interactive, to web development. Prior to GSP, Seese spent five years as Executive Creative Director, Partner at Cole & Weber/United in Seattle working on Nike and Dell among others. Guy Seese is a Cannes, Clios, Kelly and One Show winner, too.

If you want to check out Seese’s work, Grey has set up a website to cure your curiosity. Check it out here.

G2 Worldwide, which has its issues, has made an acquisition. Upon regulatory approval, G2 will acquire a majority stake in India’s Chateux Hospitality Pvt. Ltd - a marketing and relationship management firm. Founded in 1998, Chateux Hospitality employs 148 people and is based in Gurgoan, with offices in Mumbai and Bangalore. Clients include American Express, GE, GlaxoSmithKline, AIG, Nestle, Eli Lilly, HP India, and Hero Honda.

This investment is part of the initiative to spur G2’s growth and make them a global powerhouse. Last year, G2 acquired Refinery and China’s Star Echo. Joe Celia, Global Chairman and CEO, G2, said:

“Continued growth will remain a priority for us this year as our capabilities broaden in the critical APAC region and beyond.”

Hunh. You guys might want to get better at this whole “acquiring thing” if you’re going to keep doing it, yeah? G2’s acquisition of Refinery was a disaster. There were high level resignations. Unhappy employees. Maybe they should set home base straight before tying on yet another shop. You know what… I’m going to let the employees (past and present) speak for themselves. Comments on Agency Spy regarding G2:

I Love It said:

“Hmmm, I find this commentary very funny, no strike that extremely funny. This mass exodus from G2 has been going on for over a year so it is nothing new and I am sure it will continue to happen. On my Aol IM I keep a count of former G2 employees and it now reads at 29 that have left. After reading these posts, apparently it needs to be updated. Sorry Sara. You are now officially added to the for G2 pile.

Yes, I was one of the 29 and counting former G2 staffers. Nope I am not biter or one of the ones that couldn’t hack it. I was one that was tired of the back stabbing and the poor senior management styles. I will not go into how bad Mallory is/was and how bad Jan is at managing people with her wonderfully absurd language. At one point I stared keeping a journal of all the interesting words she would use to describe people. (i.e. creatures) Oh I am enjoying. Seems like the chickens are coming home to roost.

Let’s say you can be a friend to G2 today and the favorite child and the bane of their existence tomorrow. One thing to think about is this, if the problems at G2 was because of the 29+ that were fired or resigned then shouldn’t it be better at this point. The only consistent factor seems to be Jan and Mallory. I wonder what G2 would look like if they were released of their duties years ago…..If there was a true alternate reality…..”

Love It Or Hate It said:

“And I will reinforce, the people who work at G2/Grey Interactive are a talented, smart group of individuals that are and will lead successful careers in advertising. There is no lack of talent in regards to current and past employees (past includes those who have and have NOT left on their own terms) There is lack of leadership. What is missing is leadership that wants to get rid of the negative attitude that has poisoned the agency. When in fact,the current (and recently outed) leadership team puts their own personal agenda and insecurities in front of producing good work and keeping good people.

Sad as it is, members of the managment team did it to themselves and deserve to fail.”

White Chocolate said:

“I worked at G2 few years ago. I remember having the most crazy fantastic moments with possibly the most insane group of people there. Everybody had fun except the few who didn’t fit in and ultimately chose to leave. I was 100% sure that there was no other agencies with culture and ambience that can match up to G2’s. It was unbelievably great. Now the new era has begun w/ new exec level. ppl of G2 and Grey all are mixed up and stuck between the chaotic internal politics in the upper level. It’s sad to see a corp.culture so hard to find evaporate. the old crew is leaving the place one by one, and i must say I can’t blame them.”

E*Trade has a had rough time of it having reported huge losses related to investments in risky mortgages in November. With the addition of a new CEO, Donald Layton, stock prices rose slightly the other day. CNN Money reported that:

“So far, 2008 is shaping up as a much better year for Etrade (ETFC) and its investors than 2007 was. The company has resumed adding customers after 70,000 users - many of them among Etrade’s most lucrative accounts - fled late last year amid bankruptcy rumors. Since then, the company has brought in a deep-pocketed outside investor, bid adieu to longtime CEO Mitch Caplan and rolled out a plan to slash expenses while boosting marketing spending.”

Part of their resurgence could be attributed to the Super Bowl spots by Grey featuring the trading baby. You may not have liked them, but tt should be noted that the week after the Super Bowl (February 3rd, 3008), the company posted a “32% increase in newly opened and funded brokerage accounts the week following the Super Bowl” [source]. Hell, advertising is powerful.

However, did you see the print ads for E*Tradethat ran in the last New York Times Play magazine that claims the company has added a 1000 new accounts a day with this caveat in small print - “new accounts claim based on internal E*Trade financial metrics for average daily gross new accounts between 1/1/07 and 12/31/07?”

Fortune also provided us with a bit of a clearer picture:

“E*Trade also added 16,000 net new retail accounts in January. While those gains pushed the company’s end-of-period account rolls up 0.3 percent from a month ago, they show that E*Trade was adding just over 500 net accounts daily during the month - just half of the thousand daily account openings the company pointed to in its popular Super Bowl ads.”

Truth in advertising, yup. Advertising is full of shaky data, yup. Apply it where you want. Slap it on and see if it sticks. We’re sure that the company has some sort of metric for making it a full 1000 accounts a day, but here’s a few questions we want to pose to you readers:

Do you think that Grey knew that the company was fudging the numbers with shaky accounting? We say no. However, is it an agencies responsibility to check they are “truthfully” advertising their clients? Does it matter more or less that this is a financial company?

Just something to chew on this afternoon…

Grey is so weird. We wish we could sneak behind their closed doors and spend a day sniffing around their office. Lord knows what we’d find. The video above was sent to us via a lovely tipster and features singing Executive Vice President, Chief Creative Officer Tor Myhren as he prepares to move his office to the 2nd floor.

Here’s our favorite lines:

“Since I’ve been here I’ve been working on Tampon ads and Herpes ads if I choose.”
“I could of moved us to 35, but some weird dude in G2 said no.”

Also, “I went to Steve Hardwick and guess what he told me, guess what he told me… he said, girl, you better build a good department and you better make it quick. But, he’s a dick.”

Financial-services firm Fortis has placed its estimated $200 million global creative account with Group’s Grey Worldwide. Our mouths almost hit the floor, too. Then we remembered what one very wise agency owner once told us - Grey is not about innovation or creativity. The agency is all about maintaining its clients presence in the public space; keeping the ship upright, not moving forward and they do a great job at it. Or, something like that anyway. It’s true, too.

Fortis had 10 agencies bidding for the account with the final three being Grey, WPP sibling Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide and Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett Worldwide.

Grey’s chairman-CEO Jim Heekin, told AdAge that: “This win demonstrates that in a year of change and challenges, we are on the path to growth.”  Sure.

Read More:  What’s The Upside Of Working At Grey

MultiCultClassics points us to an ad for JWT. It’s a diversity ad above. MCC seemed to be inspired. They’ve tinkered with the real ads of the big shops (or, correction, made their own) including Y&R, BBDO, DDB, Ogilvy and Mather and death star agency Grey to create some truly funny, as well as diverse new ones. Our favorite, for DRAFT/FCB is below. Go see the entire collection here.

JWT UK has slipped from second spot in the agency billings game for the first time. The UK agency, which lost both Vodafone and Reckitt Benckiser in the past 12 months, fell to third place in August after seeing its billings drop £64 million to £285 million since December 2006.

McCann Erickson UK is now number two having increased billings to £305 million — a growth of 4.5 per cent since the end of last year. Ogilvy Advertising also fell from 8th to 10th, Leo Burnett from 10th to 12th, Saatchi & Saatchi from 11th to 14th and Grey from 13th to 15th.

Read More From Brand Republic Here

Working for Grey has its upsides? Sounds like it. Sources say that ex-employees of the death star agency often reunite. Think of it like an alumni mixer. In fact, there’s one this Tuesday that mashes together a send-off of a female employee at Grey with the “what have you been up to” vibe of other get togethers. Also worth noting is that Grey often brings back folks they’ve fired or have quit. Odd, but true.

Grey has some wonderful people toiling away in the bowls of the ship. They actually, you know - like each other. Think of it this way - we’re positive that the storm troopers got together and played a little cards, talked about families, sent cards around to sign when mum’s were ill. It’s just Darth Vader, General Tagge and all the other bigwigs that everyone hated.

The comment section on the recent articles about G2 and on other posts about Grey Worldwide got us thinking. If you take out all the crap about management, what you have is a bunch of people talking about how great everyone is that works there. Like this one:

GuerrilaGirl says: “Their is so much talent and amazing individuals here at G2i that it’s sad to see the way John Paulson has destroyed the moral… letting Mallory Anhouse conduct the dirty work…”

This may be true for lots of agencies, but the folks at Grey have made it a point to make sure we know that they stick together in the face of evil.

Read More: JWT Is Suffering

It looks like the run for the door at Grey’s G2 unit is going to continue. Our sources tell us that there are two more resignations at G2 Interactive: the Lead Project Director and one of the top Account Supervisors on the Campbell’s account. When it rains, it pours.

We’d like to share a comment from a reader on the original piece about the shop’s troubles:

“Talent is there, but morale is down. The John Paulson comment is a low blow. Whoever sent that comment doesn’t know what they’re talking about and just aims at the head. G2 is a group of talented individuals who put their blood sweat and tears into the work for this agency - the real problem is:
1) Proper Compensation
2) Incentives
3) Departmental Ego’s”

Well, you can be assured that the first two issues are going to maintain, since HR has told employees that they can forget about raises. Departmental ego’s…? Aren’t most agencies suffering from that same exact problem?

Read More Here: What’s The Upside For Working At Grey?