Advice Corner (another potential weekly column)

Inspired by Mats’ post in the comments section earlier today, I’m thinking of blowing out another weekly bit where we use the collective knowledge of the entire group to try and help at least one person solve a problem that has been vexing them (that hopefully doesn’t require intervention by the HR department and/or the cops.)

Here is Mats’ question:

“I’m 2 years out of college and have been busting my ass for those 2 years trying to get into broadcast production at an ad agency in Chicago. I’ve got almost every internship in the book, but at the end of one at a pretty good agency, there seems to be no funds. I thought something was wrong with me, but I found the truth was that there really wasn’t any money to take me on. I would like to stay in Chicago and one day be a an assistant/associate producer here, but I’m about to throw in the towel and maybe go back to school. You guys got any advice?”

Now, we all (include myself) could probably come up with a 100 different ways of being a douchebag and answering with a sarcastic tone — but hell, let’s be different this time and actually try and help out those in need of some answers/advice.

I’m thinking that all the buzz than the Orzio/Energy BBDO post created — there would have to be more than a few Chicago-based people to help out and express a helpful opinion to offer some solid steps to take.

Just call it my “George Bailey-inspired” moment for the kids.

(ed note: I’m also up for a copywriter helping me to come up with a more inspired name for this bit — “Advice Corner” is lame, but I’m not feeling snappy today.)

Effies blows the suspense — rewards all the usual suspects.

WPP’s JWT and Ogilvy & Mather and Omnicom Group’s BBDO are the biggest winners at the upcoming 40th annual Effie Awards that honor effective advertising, the Effies organization said today.

JWT and Ogilvy will each receive seven Effies and BBDO will get six at the ceremony which is to be held June 4 at  in New York. Omnicom’s DDB and WPP’s Grey and Leo Burnett will each take home five trophies.

There are more intimate details of who won & for what here (courtesy of our friends at Adweek) — that being said, do the Effies matter anymore?  (I guess you can get the cliffhanger aspect by waiting to see who wins the “Grand Effie” — the word “effie” makes me think of a Beavis & Butthead chuckle though.)

If so, why is it the usual holding company suspects getting all the awards (that being said, I’m more than ignorant about how the Effies are awarded and whatever process they use to determine the winners — so feel free to educate me and/or rip me a new asshole in the comments.  More about the “process” here though)

Here is what their own website says about the awards:

“Effie awards Ideas that Work – the great ideas that achieve real results and the strategy that goes into creating them.

Effie winners represent client and agency teams who tackled a marketplace challenge with a big idea and knew exactly how to communicate their message to their customer.

Since 1968, winning an Effie has become a global symbol of achievement. Today, Effie celebrates effectiveness worldwide with the Global Effie, the Euro Effie and more than 30 national Effie programs.”

Does that sound like the usual bullshit?  Do we (the royal “We” strikes again) care about the Effies at all anymore (if ever that is — outside the fact that it probably boosts the price tag of the winner’s salary when they bail out to a new gig at a different agency.)

Pfizer losing its boner — on the search for a holding company to cuddle with

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer is believed to have begun a comprehensive review of its global marketing activities, in a bid to consolidate the massive business with one holding company (a la Dell with WPP creating “Project DaVinci” — and look how well that is going so far.)

The Asia-Pacific component of the review, which includes the whole shooting match (PR, digital, CRM, event media, consumer advertising and healthcare) just recently kicked off in Australia and is expected to visit several local markets in the rest of the region. The review is being managed by Pfizer’s in-house procurement unit.  (ed note: Always nice when procurement drives the process — creatives love that shit!)

RFP have apparently been shipped out to all the usual suspects — lets hope the chemistry meeting don’t last more than four hours — or they might have to seek a doctor’s attention.

(woo!  a shady reason for a succession of dick jokes early on a Wednesday morning…good times!)

Craig Newmark continues his quest for world domination

San Francisco based classified site Craigslist has added an extra 120 cities to the areas that it covers, including a number of smaller towns in the UK and Rallamah in the West Bank (always fun to check out the listings in a quasi war zone), further increasing the threat to struggling smaller “mom & pop” newspaper publishers relying on dwindling paid classified advertising for revenues.

Craig Newmark, the website’s founder, wrote of the expansion on his blog two days ago, saying that the site now covers 570 cities.

For those who have been living under a rock since the dawn of “the Internets” — Craigslist contains listings for jobs, housing, goods, services, local activities and advice. It does not charge individuals to advertise, as a paper might, nor does it take a cut of sales in the manner of eBay. Similarly, it does not carry ads.

Instead, the site obtains its revenue from charging businesses in US cities to place job ads.

Craigslist receives more than 9bn page views per month and its users self-publish more than 30m new classified ads each month, according to the site.

The dude makes some serious scratch from this — not bad for a dude who started it up 13 years ago as a way to keep his friends up-to-date on what was happening around the Bay Area.

VW gets a street cred soundtrack for its latest UK ad

Orbital founder Paul Hartnoll has created the soundtrack for the latest Volkswagen Golf ad by DDB in the UK.

The music was created from sounds experienced during driving the car, including the car door shutting and a man playing guitar outside.

The ad was directed by Scott Lyon, the creator of videos for artists including Mark Ronson and The Zutons.

VW UK communications manager Morna Steel said: “It is all the little things in the car that work so well and when experienced on a daily basis it is these things that add up to make a long and rewarding ownership experience.”

It sounds like a bad mashup if you ask me — but some old electronica fans are probably going to love it anyway.

(FYI: Orbital was an English techno duo consisting of brothers Phil Hartnoll and Paul Hartnoll whose career lasted from 1989 until 2004. They took their name from Greater London’s own circular orbital motorway, the M25 which was central to the early Rave scene and party network in the South East during the halcyon ‘daze’ of Acid House. One of the biggest names in British electronica during the 1990s, Orbital were both critically and commercially successful, being particularly known for an element of live improvisation during their shows, a rarity with techno acts.)

Travelogue series… What’s next? You help decide!

As for the first in the series (SF) — I’m now trying to decide between Miami (home of CP+B) & Dallas (home of… a lot of “average” ad shops it seems) as the next one… (it has been a slow ass haul of blogging for the past two weeks here at AS — there is fuck-all to write about in the agency world for the most part.)

(I was going to consider Chicago — but after the hub-bub of EnergyBBDO last week…i’m going to let sleeping dogs lie for awhile.)

So if you have thoughts on which one you want to hear more about (or even better) — inside tips for things the average reader wouldn’t know — e-mail me at ondownlow (at) gmail (dot) com or hit me up on AIM at OntheDL666.

(PS – “South Beach” is an interesting term for google image search — and oh so NSFW)

*UPDATE*

I’m going to try and make it a somewhat regular feature here and publish one every Friday. It should be up early every Friday morning so you guys can comment on it over the day (as we all know we start turning off the brainpower for the weekend after 2-3 pints at lunch — so slightly inebriating comments should be fun.)

I’m looking for not only agencies, but also people, organizations and other interesting ad-related (at least in someway) tidbits.

I’ll get city #2 up on Friday (keep it a surprise this week) and then at the end of it, announce what next week’s city is going to be so you can all send in relevant info to me to use to build it out. Sound good?

Mitsubishi Rumblings…

What have you heard..?

Because we heard that Dallas-based agency Temerlin-McClain may be scooping up Mitsubishi from BBDO West.

Last year, TM merged with Seattle’s Sedgwick Road and scored the American Airlines account.

So… any truth to the rumor? Go ahead and chime in.

Said a Little Birdy from Detroit…

A little birdy from Detroit told us that about 40-60 people working on Chevy were laid off at Campbell-Ewald in Detroit last Friday. With reduced billings on Chevy, the agency decided to let go people who worked on the client in their design, creative, and production departments.

All this after a round of lay-offs around Christmas a few months ago.

The agency isn’t winning any new business lately, nor is it getting invited to work on any new pitches apparently. Doesn’t really help since they will need to replace lost business from other clients like National City and Bissell.

To read a little more on this, check out George Parker’s post…

Mars Direct (the candy bar…not the planet) chooses imc2

Mars today named a digital shop — imc2 based in Dallas — as the lead agency for all strategic planning, creative and media work on its customized candy unit Mars Direct, as well as for My M&M’s and My Dove brands.

Queue up Adweek for the details:

“The win marks the first time the division of the candy maker has selected an online shop to handle all media and planning duties, according to imc2, Dallas. It reflects a shift among marketers, where digital is emerging as the focus of marketing campaigns, the agency said.

“Our goal in conducting this review was to identify a single firm that could be a partner to Mars Direct regardless of medium,” said Jim Cass, gm of Mars Direct, in a statement.

Mars, Hackettstown, N.J., launched its customized candy business in 2006 with the help of DraftFCB, Chicago. Consumers could visit Mymms.com, then choose M&M’s by color and order personalized message printed on the candy shell. The concept was novel enough to persuade candy lovers to pay about $9 for a pound of M&M’s. Soon Mars expanded its capacity to meet personalized orders as demand grew.

Mymms.com initially handled seasonal messages for birthdays, holidays and special events. Today that business prints logos of Major League Baseball teams on M&M’s and has a business-to-business outreach for printing corporate logos on the candy pieces. Mars spent nearly $15 million on Mymms.com last year, up from about $5 million in 2006, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.”

I guess it could be significant in regard to it being a digital shop that is leading it — but realistically, I’d assume most of the orders for this kind of stuff would come from the internet anyway, right?  Looks like Mars just decided to cut a step out by naming a digital shop as the lead agency (this is assuming that in no way does DraftFCB ever get considered a digital agency of course — which by their track record, pretty much fits the bill.)

Like the comments for the Dell account — $15 million may seem a lot — but it is including the media spend — so it is not all that big an account…unless they use it as a stepping stone to get their foot in the door and then start driving the direction of the main brands — not just the smaller subsidiaries.

Vitrone & Reichenthal replace Goldsmith at Y&R

Incoming Young & Rubicam executive creative directors Scott Vitrone and Ian Reichenthal will become the day-to-day leaders of the shop’s creative department in New York with the rapid exit of North American chief creative officer Gary Goldsmith last week.

Adweek again has all the intricate details you’ll ever want:

“Vitrone and Reichenthal also are expected to work on select network assignments, including some involving clients outside New York. They start this week.

Previously, the two were partners and group creative directors at TBWA\Chiat\Day here, where they produced irreverent and quirky work for Mars brands such as Skittles, Snickers and Starburst. They resigned from TBWA\C\D two months ago to join WPP Group’s Y&R.

At their new shop, Vitrone and Reichenthal will oversee a department of 112 creatives and work under worldwide cd Tony Granger, who also will be based in New York.

“Their first priority coming in should be to focus on Y&R New York and help us build the momentum we have been gaining there,” said worldwide CEO Hamish McLennan, in a statement. “Tony and I believe their enthusiasm and their absolute love of their craft will be infectious and uplifting.”

Granger, the former CCO at Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi & Saatchi here, is expected to join Y&R next month after negotiating a reduction in the one-year notice period in his Saatchi contract. He resigned from Saatchi in November.

Vitrone said he was “excited to dig in and help Y&R as it continues its transformation,” while Reichenthal described his new role as a “great challenge” and a “terrific new beginning.”

We (using the royal “we” of course) discussed a bit about this last week in the comments section — what kind of impact is Y&R realistically looking at with adding these two — both in the short & long-term?  Discuss amongst yourselves…or in the comments.