If stage one of Ogilvy & Mather’s ’99 business plan was to get a buzz going, then mission accomplished. Last February it announced The Syndicate, a new business model consisting of a partnership with seven smaller agencies: Core, Hunt Adkins, Pyro, VitroRobertson, WongDoody, Work and Grant, Scott & Hurley. The Godfather of The Syndicate is Rick Boyko, O&M president/chief creative officer, whose intent is to shake up an industry that, to some observers, has become too complacent and stagnant.
"I don’t see much work coming out of the industry that’s exciting or interesting or breaking new ground," says Todd Tilford, creative director/co-founder, Dallas-based Pyro. "The industry prides itself on being creative and innovative, yet it’s now formulaic. I’m surprised something like this hasn’t happened sooner."
"The industry’s changing," says Cabell Harris, president/creative director, for Work, Richmond, Va., "and agencies are outsourcing more and more of the work. Nowadays, no two clients are the same. They all have different needs. I’m amazed that an agency didn’t do this earlier. Ogilvy’s being smart, and I feel like a first-round draft choice."
The partnership paves the way for O&M to develop work for both existing and prospective clients with the member agencies, all of which are working on retainer. The relationship provides participating shops potential access to global brands, and allows them, for a discounted fee, to utilize the worldwide capabilities of the O&M network. For O&M, it’s a chance to work with critically acclaimed boutiques respected for their cutting-edge work. The relationship demonstrates to clients interested in smaller shops that Ogilvy can adapt to their needs without losing its muscle.
"Most agencies are hiring freelancers left and right," says Tracy Wong, creative director/co-founder of Seattle-based WongDoody, "so why not have freelancers that are more than freelancers, that are thinking agencies that have stability of their own that they can add to the mix?"
Although no Syndicate jobs have materialized yet, several roster shops have been recruited for pitches, including Pyro for Sears and Hunt Adkins for IBM.
"It was smooth sailing," says Tilford. "We worked directly with Rick and the creative directors and account people, got briefed-the problem, the objectives-just as we would if we were part of the agency. We went and worked on it, and got it back to them. It was like we were an extension of Ogilvy."
Several ideas, he adds, were presented to Sears, including their own. "I don’t even know where that totally netted out. Obviously I know that neither one of the ideas we presented were [taken], but Rick was excited about them." In sum, Tilford notes, "It’s way too early to look at it and say "Nothing’s been produced.’ The ball just got started rolling. Over the next year is where it’s going to be more telling."
Patrick Hunt, partner at Minneapolis-based Hunt Adkins, says it worked on pitches for IBM and Dove "and a couple of others that remain confidential. We worked closely with their creative directors, met with clients, met with them again-just like we would on a regular client relationship. Our approach was respected, and it was a really good experience."
According to Boyko, Syndicate jobs will be parceled out to members after considering two factors: "Who I obviously think would be right for a certain project," he says, "[and] making sure we fill those [contractual time] guarantees." (The various contracts are tailored to the individual agency, both in terms of hours promised and pay rates.) Syndicate members then work with an O&M creative director-there will be co-creative director titles when applicable-and the work will be presented under the O&M banner. The Syndicate will not be listed on a credit sheet unless specific clients actually request Syndicate work; it will then be "O&M/ The Syndicate."
"It’s a win-win situation," says Boyko. "Already there’s been some savings in reducing the freelance [budget], and we’ve gained in that we’re getting better work, and are working with people who understand us. The problem with freelancers is you don’t know who you’re going to get, there’s no loyalty … and there’s a lot of down time when you’re trying to educate them as to what the client wants, or what we believe is good or not. In dealing with these guys, after a couple of months they know me, I know them. It’s shorthand."
J. C. Dillon, a partner at four-year-old St. Louis-based Core, with national accounts including Zebco, Monsanto, a life-sciences company, and Never Compromise putters, agrees this relationship is superior to a traditional freelance arrangement. "We don’t have to relearn the brand each time," he says. "Whereas you bring in freelance people, they focus for two weeks, and then you never see them again. You have to re-train the next person to what is IBM, what is the brand. Over time, we’re able to internalize the true brand essence as Ogilvy defines it, and can hit the ground running."
Reservations
Although members, so far, seem sold on The Syndicate, there are a few concerns. Reservations center around not wanting to "be perceived as a creative boutique that was doing freelance work for O&M clients," says John Vitro, partner, San Diego-based VitroRobertson, whose work is perhaps closest in style to O&M’s. "We struggled for so long to create an identity as an agency that we didn’t want to dilute that." In the end, he says, they were won over by the mutual nature of the partnership. "They look to groups like ours to help them go after new business, for the creative resources we’d provide, and we look at O&M as a way to go after [our own] new business with the muscle, foundation and security they provide."
As for WongDoody, whose work Wong describes as, "idiosyncratic, off-color and unexpected," Wong says that as a growing agency they wondered "how much help do we need making contacts? And how much help do we need from O&M?" The agency, says Wong, whose client list includes adidas, FOX Broadcasting, Microsoft and the Seattle SuperSonics, concluded that O&M could "offer us services we can’t do ourselves, like media and research. We work for The Syndicate, but we use Ogilvy’s resources."
Perhaps the smallest leap of faith that needed to be made was by Work, a company founded in Los Angeles in ’93, as a resource to other agencies. (Work, however, has since expanded, and now some 50% of its workload is for its own clients.) According to Harris, over the years they’ve been associated with some 70 agencies, including O&M. Clients have ranged from NYNEX Yellow Pages to The Smithsonian to CNBC. "The Syndicate allows us to have a more long-term open commitment with Ogilvy than another agency," he explains. "Other agencies want you in and out as soon as possible, want to stop paying you as soon as they can. I feel with Ogilvy, we’re more a partner now with a common goal."
There has, however, been a backlash of sorts. Harris says Work has gotten fewer calls from agencies. "They feel because of The Syndicate, we’re part of Ogilvy," he explains. "But we hope we can recover from that with more work from Ogilvy." And the relationship, he adds, has the potential to improve their bottom line. "It all comes out to how we perform. I realize my goal right now is to make Rick happy; help him do this job."
"Our first reaction was "Nah,’ " recalls Grant Richards, partner/creative director at Grant, Scott & Hurley, San Francisco. " "We don’t want to be associated with a big agency, we know how these things go. It’ll get ugly and nasty.’ But the more Rick told us about it, the more we realized, gee, this is actually a good deal for us. A low-risk proposition."
It was also an opportunity for the one-and-a-half year old shop, which has so far focused on local and regional clients such as the San Francisco Chronicle, to work on big, national brands. It was the looseness of the affiliation, he adds, that convinced them to join. "Rick came to town, we went out to lunch, and he basically asked us what we’re looking for, and we told him. We knew we weren’t going to have a lot of time to sell. We said, "If we’re going to be in this thing, how small can we be?’ "
Conflicts
Despite the fact that Syndicate members could conceivably be pitching against each other, the party line is that competition is a non-issue. "We compete with those agencies, every agency out there, all the time," says Vitro. "Maybe it’s because none of them are sitting in our backyard, but it doesn’t seem quite a threat. Anyway, I think that’s sort of a healthy competition; if there weren’t other very strong agencies in the group, I’d feel less enthusiastic about being in it."
Pyro potentially has the biggest conflict-of-interest problem, but Tilford isn’t concerned, either. The company was formed by Tilford and John Beitter in ’94 as a creative and strategic think tank within The Richards Group, Dallas. While it’s now a separate company, they do occasionally work together, such as their recent strategic/creative assistance for a Porsche pitch; they also use The Richards Group’s media department as a resource.
"I don’t see a conflict coming up, although I’m sure it could," says Tilford. "Sure, if Ogilvy’s in a pitch against The Richards Group for something, we’d probably have to remain a neutral country. But I think that’s going to be rare."
Another source of conflict is purely philosophical: Are these small, creative shops selling out? Giving up their creative integrity? For example, here’s what Grant, Scott & Hurley notes in a new-business presentation: "In our years of experience, we’ve seen agency after agency grow to a size where the principals-the hearts and souls of these places-are no longer closely connected to their clients’ businesses. We have vowed to do things differently."
And Pyro touts itself as "A brand development company, an interdisciplinary think tank that takes a more seamless, holistic approach to problem solving. … There are no separate departments. No profit centers with separate agendas. Just one core team that knows how to build a strategic vision for your brand and can execute all of its communications seamlessly."
Despite the rhetoric, how "independent" can any agency, given the service nature of the beast, ever be? Can these shops remain offbeat and idiosyncratic while dipping into the Blue Chip pot?
"I look at Pyro as being in a constant state of evolution," says Tilford. "The Syndicate is doing what we’re trying to do, which is a whole, new exciting way of looking at things, and I wanted to be part of that."
"Our mission statement is to create as much great advertising as humanly possible," says Dillon. "That’s the reason we were interested; it’s Rick-and Ogilvy’s-commitment to doing that type of work."
As for The Syndicate’s future, its members are a practical crew. "If we don’t have proven successes over time, it won’t work," says Hunt. "If work doesn’t get produced, what’s the point of The Syndicate? But we don’t anticipate that happening."
Several caution, however, that size counts, and hope The Syndicate won’t get too big, literally, for its britches. "It’s a fairly tight group of well-respected agencies," says Vitro. "As soon as it goes broad and big, it would lose some of its cache."7
