by mark February 23rd, 2006
in Daily Thoughts.
Supposedly, Jay Chiat once said that the ultimate mission for his agency, Chiat/Day, was “to see how big it could get before it got bad.” Not sure if he ever announced the achievement of this goal prior to selling the place to Omnicom, which merged it with TBWA, and shrugging off these mortal coils a few years ago, but the place remains as erratic as ever.
I cite it in the book as the quintessential example of how truly difficult it is to tell the difference between extraordinary advertising and ordinary (or even worse) advertising, insofar as it was Chiat/Day that gave us “1984″ one year and “Lemmings” the year following. About as good an example of the former and the latter as one could ever hope to see. And this year, the agency is at it again. With a campaign for Visa whose theme line: “Life takes Visa” was pronounced by no less a luminary than Lee Clow as a “good one.”
Continue reading ‘That’s “Life”’
by mark February 13th, 2006
in Daily Thoughts.
Let the rest of the pundits argue about whether this year’s Super Bowl ads were better or worse than previous years’, and which ads were extraordinary and which were not. I’ve got bigger fish to fry. As some of you know, I’ve been working on seeing if there’s any correlation between the quality of a company’s advertising and the quality of that company’s management overall. And Super Bowl XL provided some dandy support for this “proxy” hypothesis.
As in past years, Anheuser-Busch was a big Super Bowl sponsor this year. And despite the fact the USA Today popularity poll ranked six of its ads in the top ten, I was not impressed. I thought maybe two of A-B’s ads were extraordinary this year, about the same as last year, which has not been the case historically. Generally, the Bud and Bud Lite ads have been some of the best stuff on the Super Bowl. But that hasn’t been the case lately.
Continue reading ‘Super Signal’
by mark February 1st, 2006
in Daily Thoughts.
Yes, folks you heard it here first. The monsterous size of an agency appears to have little to do with its ability to satisfy clients. I derive this observation from the most recent edition of the Salz Survey of Advertiser-Agency Relations, a study that has been fielded since 1986 and concentrates primarily on large agencies and their equally large clients.
As reported in The New York Times last November, last year’s report revealed the following:
-Advertisers reported 35% more “hassles” with their agencies, the highest level since the question was first asked in 1998. And agencies reported 43% more hassles with their clients.
-Advertisers acknowledged 41% more “tension” in their agency relationships while agencies reported 46% more (which I guess demonstrates who pays who’s bills).
-And finally, coming in at the second lowest level since the survey began, agencies claimed that they were allowed to do their “best work” for only 53.9% of their clients.
All of which makes it somewhat less than totally surprising that around the same time The Wall Street Journal ran an article with this subhead:
Continue reading ‘Size Matters’
