19 Agencies Featured on The Watford Tour (Pt 1)

The Watford creative advertising course has been running for 50 years, and is widely acknowledged as one of the best places in the UK (if not the best) to learn the trade of being a creative advertiser (the course caters for both copywriters and art directors).

In 2010, the course's leader Tony Cullingham had the vision of building a network of agencies in which his students could experience the day-to-day workings of a creative ad agency.  The Watford Tour began, with top agencies including Fallon, Saatchi & Saatchi, WCRS and TBWA\London signing up. 

Cullingham's vision was to expand the Tour to 36 different agencies, so that the entire year-long course would become the tour.

For now, the Tour makes up half of the course as 18 different agencies in London have signed up.  This year, the tour has been expanded to 19 because the BBH week had to be cancelled because of a flood.

The agencies featured are as follows:

1) Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO
Founded by David Abbott, Peter Mead and Adrian Vickers over 30 years ago, AMV is part of the BBDO network, which in turn is part of the Omnicom Group.  AMV is Britain's largest ad agency in terms of ad revenue and has been since 1997. 

As already featured on this blog, AMV.BBDO won an unprecendented Double Black Pencil in 2000 for the Guinness Surfers ad. More recently, it won a Cannes Lions Grand Prix for Effectiveness in 2011 for Walker's Sandwich. 

In 2010, it won a Grand Prix for Good with its campaign for the Metropolitan Police

  2) Saatchi and Saatchi

Founded in London but now headquartered in New York, Saatchis is a huge agency with 140 offices in 76 countries and over 6,500 staff.  The agency was acquired by the Publicis Groupe in 2000.

The embryo of the agency was established when copywriter Charles Saatchi when he teamed up with Art Director Ross Cramer.  Cramer left and was replaced by Charles' younger brother Maurice and Saatchi&Saatchi was founded.  The agency employed a number of men who would go on to become genuine stars of advertising, including Sir John Hegarty of BBH, Lord Tim Bell and Sir Martin Sorrell.

(Of those three, only Hegarty was/is a creative)

One of Saatchi's most famous posters is the Labour Isn't Working campaign put together before the 1979 general election.

Andrew Rutherford (later to become the R in WCRS) was the copywriter for this piece and Martyn Walsh the art director.

Another key campaign was that for British Airways.  1989 "Face" advert below.  The ad was directed by Hugh Hudson, and was one of the most expensive ads ever created at the time.

 
3) Engine/WCRS

WCRS stands for Wight Collins Rutherford Scott.  The agency was founded in 1979 and went on to become the Aegis Group.

The current head creative team is comprised of Billy Faithfull, Ross Neil and Ben Long.

Engine and WCRS have had notable work with Sky and The Sun Newspaper including this lovely illustrated spot for The Sun.  This is a great example of taking using what is popular in viral videos and applying it to advertising, as the artist behind this ad, Richard Swarbrick, had already done a similar, fantastic illustrated video to demonstrate Spurs' fantastic performance vs Inter Milan in the Champions League.

Read about "Watford Week" on Engine's company blog.

4) BBH

Bartle Bogle Hegarty have the strapline "When the world zigs, zag" on their website, which I believe comes from a Levi's ad copywritten by Sir John Hegarty.  They are an excellent ad agency, quite possibly the hottest property in terms of London-based ad agencies at the moment.  They are 49% owned by Publicis Groupe.

The agency has worked for global brands including Audi, Vodafone, Levi Straus, British Airways, Johnnie Walker, Omo/Persil & Axe/Lynx.

BBH was behind a number of high-profile campaigns such as Levi's 'Laundrette', and Levi's 'Flatbeat' featuring Flat Eric, a small yellow puppet. They were also responsible for 'Vorsprung durch Technik' for Audi, 'The Axe (Lynx) Effect' for Unilever and 'Keep Walking' for Johnnie Walker.

More recently, BBH's ad for the Guardian was extremely well received this year:

Because of a flood in BBH's office, the Watford course was not able to spend a week there this year.

5) Fallon

Fallon is known as one of the most creative, most off the wall ad agencies.  Two of their most striking ads in recent memory are the Sony Balls ad and Cadbury's drumming gorilla.

A list of Fallon's most notable campaigns are available on their wiki page.

6) Publicis

Publicis is one of the world's largest advertising groups (the others being Omnicom and WPP).  Counted among its agencies are Leo Burnett, Fallon, Saatchis and BBH.

The agency also exists as its own London agency.  The agency has done work for Renault, The Army and McVitie's.

7) Leo Burnett

Briefly - a word for the man himself.  Credited as one of the most creative men ever in advertising, Leo Burnett was, along with David Ogilvy, William Bernbach and Mary Wells one of the major forces behind the Creative Revolution of the 1960s.

Now, Leo Burnett is a worldwide network of agencies, part of the Publicis Groupe. Its clients include McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Walt Disney, Marlboro, Maytag, Kellogg’s, Tampax, Nintendo, Philips, Samsung, Visa, Wrigley’s, Hallmark, Allstate Insurance, Procter & Gamble and others.

Here is a list of 45 Clever Leo Burnett ads

8) Mother

Mother is the UK's largest independent advertising agency.

Mother's recent ads for Comic Relief have been deservedly getting a lot of coverage lately

They're smart and they're funny, and actually funnier than a lot of things that comedy writers and comedians put together for Comic Relief.  What's more they engage a very broad fanbase by combining two ideas that have become cultural icons - classic films and well-loved children's television characters. The agency also has history with wooly characters. They were behind Al and Monkey, the characters used first to promote ITV digital and then later PG Tips

The agency's philosophy is "To make great work, have fun and make money. Always in that order."
 
Their wiki page has a better potted history of some of their ads than I am able to offer, but I will just mention that Campaign voted Mother ad agency of the decade in 2009, and they were behind the fantastic Orange Gold spots shown in cinemas.  More recently, their campaigns for Stella Artois have been highly stylised and injected a new stylish life into a brand troubled by the nickname "Wife Beater".

9) DDB

At the time of writing, DDB no longer exists.  It is now known as Adam&Eve / DDB.

Doyle Dane Bernbach is a grand old agency founded in 1949 in New York.  Bill Bernbach and Ned Doyle had previously worked together at Grey Advertising - the agency credited with the invention of the Account Planner.

DDB London has been the home of many great creatives over the year, among them: John Webster, Dave Trott, Gordon Smith, Rooney Carruthers, Derek Hass.

It was DDB Chicago who came up with the Wassup ad for Budweiser, which went on to become a cultural phenomenon until its exhaustion.

In recent times, DDB has struggled, and its recent buy out and merger with the smaller, newer Adam & Eve agency ended in most senior positions being taken on by Adam & Eve management.

DDB has had a very strong relationship with VW over the years, despite losing many others of its key accounts.  With the injection of new blood from the very highly regarded A&E agency, it may see its star begin to rise again.

How One Ad Can Make an Agency and Change the Marketplace

VCCP is now renowned as the home of Alexander Orlov, the character from the Compare the Meerkat ads.

My understanding of the history of VCCP is a little muddled.  What is for certain is that it was founded in 2002.  Its parenthood is a little more obscure.  It is apparently a subsidiary of BGL Group, but also of holding company Chime Communications.

The Compare the Meerkat concept was supposedly the result of a drinking session at the pub.  I don't think anyone can be too surprised by that.

The campaign has had a revolutionary effect on Compare the Market.  The article I linked to above originally claimed that though the ad was very popular, it was not so successful.  A rise in traffic of 76%, while CTM's direct competitors suffered substantial losses spits in the face of such a claim.

The article also talks about the digital strategy of the campaign, and how it was built with the design of making a multi-faceted character that exists across different media.  Having struck on an idea that clearly engaged the public, VCCP drove the idea as hard as possible.  This is a great piece of reactive advertising - VCCP sensed that there was an opportunity and they grabbed it with both hands.

This fascinating article from the Guardian explains the impact that the ad had on the marketplace, likening it to Howard from Halifax.  Suddenly all major players in the marketplace realised they had to rethink their strategy and up their spending.  They had seen how Compare the Market had gone from an also ran to the 4th largest comparison site in the UK (that article is old, so perhaps CTM is even more successful now).

There's nothing particularly original or clever about Aleksandr Orlav (to take nothing away from the brilliant director who created him, Darren Walsh).  It's a joke on a terrible pun, with a meerkat based on Borat (with less controversial humour).  But it's a risky piece of advertising, right up there with the insanity and irreverence of Fallon's drumming gorilla.

VCCP is now recognised as a very exciting young agency, and it is now even featured on the Watford Tour.  More on Watford tomorrow.

Resisting the urge to fit in "Simples" somewhere, I will now sign off.  See you again tomorrow

How To Win A Black Pencil

This blog from D&AD lists the complete winners of black pencils throughout the 2000s.

A breakdown of the winners by agency is as follows:
AMV.BBDO (double award)
Mother
BBH (Frank Budgen)
Wieden + Kennedy London
4Creative
Leo Burnett Canada (first ever digital black pencil in 2006)
Fallon
R/GA (digital agency)
Projector
The Partners
Droga5 (two in one year)

What's remarkable is that aside from 2 years in which AMV BBDO and Droga5 each picked up 2, no agency won on more than one occasion during the noughties.

Not that the D&AD judges have anything against handing out black pencils to the same people: Apple picked up 5 black pencils on four separate occasions throughout the 2000s- one for the ipod, the iphone, the 4th gen iMac, Apple's Cinema Display, and for the Pro Mouse.

That so many diverse agencies were recipients of black pencils reflects the vibrant landscape of advertising and the very healthy competition that takes place in the sector.  It suggests that to win a black pencil is an extraordinary achievement which, if you're a top agency and you're very lucky, you will be able to win only once in a blue moon.

Apple's crazy-successful 5 black pencils are certainly reflected by its crazy-successful business model.  If you're winning black pencils, you are doing something very, very right.  If you're winning 5 black pencils in a decade, well, you're probably going to go on to become the runaway success story of a generation.

AMV.BBDO won an unprecedented double black pencil for its Surfers for Guinness ad.

When this advert came out in 2000 I was only 12 years old. I remember the music, but not the visuals.  They are insane and stunning and totally gripping.  The ad is a fantastic piece of work which really flirts with the line between artistic representation and branding.

Creative director for the ad was Peter Souter.  He joined Abbott Mead Vickers in 1990, and took over control of the creative department in 2007 after founder David Abbott stepped down.  In 2008, he left AMV BBDO to pursue a career in television. In terms of his television career, he is most famous as the writer of Married Single Other.

Droga5 won a black pencil for the great schlep. Check out the Sarah Silverman led video at that link, and don't forget to look at the statistics towards the bottom of that page - the ad appears to have had a huge effect.

Fallon's drumming gorilla was a winner in 2008.

This ad was a sensation when it came out.  It's the reference point for my generation of insane advertising.  People would get excited when it was on TV.  For an ad, that's the dream.

More than any other ad being discussed here, Fallon's Drumming Gorilla shows that you win a black pencil by taking a risk.

If you want to win a black pencil you should do something no-one's ever done before, ideally never even thought before.  And you have to do it with outstanding execution - the idea itself is not enough.

In the coming weeks I'll hope to profile a few of the agencies in that list as well as some of the people behind the ads.  A shorter than normal post today, but there's some great content to be hunted down in some of the links I provided.  Tomorrow I'll be taking a look at the Compare the Meerkat campaign for Compare the Market - another fantastic example of insane advertising that has become a reference point for my generation.

Until then, ad fans.

What D&AD Means

Arguably the two most important awards for advertisers are the Cannes Lions and the D&ADs.  But what does D&AD mean?

D&AD stands for Design and Art Direction, and is a British educational charity set-up to promote excellence in design and advertising.

The art directors and designers responsible for establishing the charity are David Bailey, Terence Donovan and Alan Fletcher and Colin Forbes.

A judging panel gives out yellow pencils every year for exceptional work in a number of different categories including writing for advertising, press advertising, graphic design, and many more.

Black pencils are only given out to truly outstanding work.  Normally 2-3 are awarded every year but in 2003 none were awarded.

This year's yellow pencils have already been awarded.  Black pencils will be announced in September at a larger event than normal, to celebrate the awards' 50th anniversary.

Creative Review has a lovely long article about this year's yellow pencils which is certainly worth a read.  Below are a selection of some of the ads that stood out to me as particularly brilliant.

BETC Paris' bear ad for the movie channel from Canal+ is pure advertainment.  A comparison of this ad with the Christmas 2011 ad for Sky Movies is not a very flattering comparison for WCRS in terms of originality and imagination.  Without criticising the Sky ad too much, because I do genuinely like it, WCRS's ad is a nostalgic mashup that is, quite frankly, a penny a dozen on Youtube, while BETC's high-quality original content is about aspiration.  I know which emotion speaks to me more as a consumer.

The other winner in the TV & Film category was this fantastic ad from BBH for Barnardo's.  I've not got too much to say about it.  It's a fantastically crafted and thought out ad which inspires compassion and, most importantly, hope in the viewer.

The JWT Melbourne mobile ad was another fantastically clever piece of work which recalls every advertiser's favourite example of short copy, Ernest Hemingway's six word tale:
For sale: Baby shoes, never used.

It was interesting to see Wieden + Kennedy pick up a pencil for digital for their "bespoke album creation experience" for Kaiser Chiefs, mainly because I was aware of the project without expecting that an ad agency had worked on it.  The ad made waves but I was never sufficiently interested in it to have my own "bespoke album creative experience".

72 and Sunny's campaign for K-Swiss on the other hand, which also won a pencil for digital, was one that I really enjoyed and engaged with as it came out.

In such a crowded marketplace as trainers / sneakers / training shoes, 72 and Sunny found a gap in the market that was totally powerful and somehow found a new niche in the market for the brand image of K-Swiss to occupy.  The ad applies all of the attitude, bad-assery and humour that Kenny Powers has displayed in Eastbound and Down onto the K-Swiss brand, but perhaps most importantly of all utilizes the power of the HBO show's cult following.  This was a really risky ad unlike anything seen in the market before.

McCann Erickson Bucharest won a pencil for Integrated and Earned for their fantastic campaign for Rom candy bars.  This was another campaign I was aware of at the time; in fact, it was all a really smart, really manipulative piece of trolling.

More than anything, this campaign shows that even risky strategies like generating anger can be worthwhile.

Those are my favourites, but I highly recommend spending 10 or 15 minutes on the Creative Review piece which shows a full list of the winners.   

This post started with the question: what does D&AD mean?

D&AD means taking a risk.  D&AD means making something new, that no-one before has thought of, and that most importantly evokes a strong emotional reaction.

Hope that you can make it back tomorrow. I'll be taking a closer look into what makes a black pencil.  Until then.

How Iris Won The Olympic Mascot Account

Iris Nation is a creative agency founded in 1999 in London.  It has since grown into one of the world's largest independent integrated agency groups with several international offices.

Last month, Iris won a D&AD in the packaging category for its work with Heineken, which repackaged the bottles so that their designs stick out under UV light - taking the traditional star of the packaging and reinventing it as something new and exciting.  It's an incredibly smart campaign and does a fantastic job of rebranding a stodgy Dutch beer into a glamorous nightlife brand - a well-deserved pencil for their efforts.

A quick google search for Iris doesn't yield as many results as some other agencies, but it's clear that they've done some very clever, exceptional work.  This piece for Quitline (number 3) is very, very smart, but you would have to imagine that the outreach would be relatively small for such a project.

This spot for VW is another very clever idea - but I do wonder if this isn't the sort of footage many car fans would have grown quite accustomed to seeing on Top Gear.  Certainly I would say it isn't quite as original as some of Iris' other works.

In terms of originality, Wenlock and Mandeville, the official sponsors of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, are a brilliant example.  They're controversial, (the Marina Hyde article I linked to a couple of days ago shows that despite the two year bedding-in period for them, they are still not really accepted), but in terms of genuinely disruptive and unique mascots I think they're great, certainly attesting to the spirit of creativity and originality that makes London such a fantastic city.

Personally I applaud the committee's decision as brave.  Iris are an exciting agency, capable of genuinely creative branding and advertising solutions.  They're certainly an agency which I will be keeping tabs on.

I mentioned the D and ADs briefly in this blog, but I'll be doing a more full go-over of the winners from this year in tomorrow's blog.  Until then, check out some of these fantastic adverts from across the world.  Not all of them are amazing, but there are a few in there that will make you find yourself saying "well that is just very, very good".

33 Clever and Creative Billboard Ads
26 Brilliant Minimalist Print Ads

Until tomorrow

3 Mad Men Who Built BBDO and Omnicom

Advertising is about emotions. It is one of the most people-orientated crafts there is - both in terms of creativity and business.  Here are 3 key people who made BBDO one of the world's leading advertising agencies.

Allen Rosenshine began at BBDO in 1965 as a copywriter. He worked his way up to become BBDO New York Creative Director in 1975, President of the BBDO New York HQ in 1980 and then CEO of BBDO Worldwide in 1985.  He played a key part in the 1986 merger with DDB and Needham Harper which created Omnicom.  Time magazine called it the Big Bang Merger.

James J Jordan Jr aka Jim Jordan joined BBDO as a copywriter in 1952.  He was renowned for his slogan, perhaps the most famous being the 1961 slogan "Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one."  His form of sloganeering was known as nameonics.  This technique stressed linking a brand name to product qualities or intended benefits.  Jordan rose to become BBDO's creative director (later succeeded by Rosenshine) and president.  In 1978, Jordan left BBDO to form his own agency, which later became best known as Jordan, McGrath, Case and Taylor.


Phil Dusenberry joined BBDO as a copywriter in 1965.  One of Dusenberry's first projects, an ad for Gillette showing two men chatting through a bathroom medicine cabinet, is still remembered as a standout commercial of the 60s.  He had most success when Creative Director of BBDO in the 80s, where he was an avocate of cinematic production standards to ads as well as celebrity endorsements. He aimed to create Advertainment, the sort of advertising that consumers would seek out for themselves.  Later in his career he became involved in movie-making, credited as co-author of "Hail to the Chief" and "The Natural".

A text heavy blog today. I'll try and keep it a bit light for tomorrow's spotlight on Iris.

Hope you're looking forward to reading it as much as I am to writing it

How BBDO Inspired Mad Men

Yesterday's featured Getty Images Ad was by Almap BBDO.

 From what I can tell, Almap is a Brazilian-based arm of the BBDO Agency Network. 

Almap BBDO was named #2 agency of the year in 2008 at Cannes.  BBDO New York was number 1 agency and  BBDO Worldwide was top agency network.  In fact, BBDO won Agency Network of the year for the 5th year in a row in 2011.

2008 was the year that Fallon's Gorilla for Cadbury was the major headline. But BBDO had a lot of success with a number of spots for HBO, and this Voyeur Project Installation was also successful.



The "about" section of BBDO's website links directly back to its Wikipedia page. This says two things:

1) BBDO realise that if someone wants to get information in the digital age, they will go to Wikipedia before anywhere else.

2) The information on BBDO's Wiki is all company-approved.  You won't find any skeletons in the cupboard there.

Their Wiki lists a number of BBDO's current clients. Among them: Gillette, The Economist, AT&T and Starbuck's.

The history of the company section is unlike any other Wikipedia page I've ever seen before.  You have to imagine its curated by BBDO themselves.  It's vast, but I've picked out 5 moments of this New York-based agency for you.

5 Key Moments in BBDO's History:

1928:  September 21, the Batten Co. and BDO merge to form Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn (BBDO).

1946: Ben Duffy becomes president. Billings quadruple from $50 million to $200 million in ten years. He steps down in 1957 due to illness.

1984: On January 27, Michael Jackson's hair is accidentally set on fire during filming of a Pepsi commercial. Phil Dusenberry, BBDO's executive creative director from 1980 - 2002, later names his memoir "Then We Set His Hair On Fire"

1986: BBDO wins the account of Apple from Chiat/Day, producers of the "1984" Ad. Apple would return to TBWA/Chiat/Day in 1997

1986: Omnicom is formed from the merger between BBDO and DDB Needham. Sometimes referred to as the "Big-Bang" merger.


 I skipped over the early 60s in this list, so here's a separate list of events which may have inspired Mad Men plotlines (show-runner Matthew Weiner cites BBDO as an inspiration for Sterling Cooper).

6 Events of the Early 60s at BBDO that could have Inspired Mad Men

1960 On March 16, Chrysler moves its Dodge Truck and Car Divisions, with billings of $21 million, to BBDO. On April 6, BBDO wins the $17 million Pepsi account after a pitch against seven other agencies.

1961 Jim Jordan creates a campaign for Schaefer Beer based on research that revealed that 80% of the beer was consumed by 20% of the drinkers. The slogan and jingle: "Schaefer is the one beer to have when you're having more than one."

1962 Phil Dusenberry is hired as a junior copywriter.

1963 Jim Jordan creates the campaign "Us Tareyton smokers would rather fight than switch!"

1963 BBDO introduces the slogan "Come alive! You're in the Pepsi Generation." It is the first time a product is identified not by its own attributes but by its consumers' lifestyles and attitudes.

1965 Allen Rosenshine is hired as a copywriter.


The early 60s is the most name-droppy section of the BBDO section.  Tomorrow I'll return with some profiles on Phil Dusenberry, Jim Jordan and Allen Rosenshine.

I also want to talk a bit about Iris, the creative agency who concepted Wenlock and Mandeville. This article in the Guardian piqued my interest in them today. 

Stay classy.