Yeesh. I go skiing for a couple of days and return to find that one of advertising’s most venerable names has become a monogram. Yes, in the infinite wisdom of its management, wishing to convince clients it is “reinventing itself”, J. Walter Thompson has become JWT. Well, okay, so now it’s a whole new ballgame, eh?
Interestingly, I’ve had to make reference to this joint as one of my many alma maters and whenever I used the descriptor JWT it did nothing for people, but the full name–J. Walter Thompson–never failed to generate a powerful response.
Of course, I have to assume, J. Walter, oops, JWT did a considerable amount of research before making this decision and, perhaps, therein lies the whole problem.
Most of this agency’s, along with most of the clients of all big agencies, research the dickens out of everything they do. And what do we get?
Well, in the case of JWT, we get Ford advertising. Advertising that hasn’t risen above the level of ordinary since the Mustang was introduced. But what’s a big agency to do? We are all–to one extent or the other–the victim of our clients. If they want to pay us handsomely for round after round of ordinary advertising that clears some “test” hurdle, what are we supposed to do, give them back their 15% (12%, 8.5%, 4%)?
Of course not. Especially if we’re publicly held. We’ll just rearrange the deck chairs on the…no, the style of our letterhead into something that would look mighty fine on a pair of cufflinks.
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