Like the perspective afforded us by BBDO New York creatives in HBO’s breakthrough “Voyeur” initiative, peering into the windows of that advertising agency’s Avenue of the Americas offices would undoubtedly yield varied sights and stories in 2007. One view might be of a creative team brainstorming the multi-platform “Voyeur” campaign and deciding that RSA director Jake Scott would be an ideal collaborator with whom to shape the project.
Another window could take the form of a TV screen, on which plays big ticket Super Bowl commercials for Fed-Ex and the like as well as the three spots–for three different clients–that earned primetime Emmy nominations for BBDO New York this year: AT&T/Cingular’s “Battle,” Pepsi’s “Pinball” and GE’s “Jar.” A more recent TV screen window displays the already well received “Shop Victoriously” campaign for eBay.
In a bit of repetition but with far different content, another TV screen portal could offer a primetime TV series, Fast Cars & Superstars, which debuted on ABC-TV in June for BBDO client Gillette.
Yet another “window” screen could bring us to a VOD channel developed for GE where we can get an eyeful of GE’s “Imagination Theater” shorts.
We might in another window spy a planter–except it’s in the shape of a flip-flop shoe, part of a guerrilla marketing campaign to place the floral colors and designs of Havaianas casual but stylish footwear in public places and in the public consciousness, complemented by a series of viral films.
Another pane of glass could double as a computer screen as we log on to find our “Inner M,” creating M&M characters based on our facial appearances, lifestyles and individual personalities.
Furthermore, panes upon panes of window glass could form a giant movie theater screen on which appears GE’s “Serengeti” cinema commercial tying into the release of Evan Almighty.
And there might even be a window to the past, showing us the work of the legendary Phil Dusenberry, the inspired and inspiring former BBDO North America chairman, who was inducted a couple of months ago into the One Club Creative Hall of Fame.
Also akin to the apartments and their occupants shown on the building projection–and web rendering–in HBO’s “Voyeur,” we see in our voyeuristic view that BBDO artisans spanning such disciplines as creative, production, interactive, design, media and behavioral analysis are interconnected with one another in collaboration. “It’s like an integrated campaign–all our people are integrated together with a sense of purpose to engage audiences and communicate to them on behalf of our clients,” observes Bill Bruce, chairman/chief creative officer, BBDO New York. “We have to work together in this giant petri dish to come up with that big-ass idea to answer our ongoing question: How do you reach out to consumers in a way that will inspire and excite them and live up to the brand?”
Digital switch
David Lubars, chairman/chief creative officer, BBDO North America, reflects on ’07 by characterizing it as the year BBDO New York “switched to becoming kind of a digital agency. That doesn’t mean that we are not going to continue to be great in commercials–that’s kind of a BBDO birthright. But this year we made the transition from a big TV agency to being a communications company. There were hints of this happening in 2006 with such work as Snickers’ ‘Instant Def’ digisodes but these were isolated pieces of work. The more work we did, though, it bled into other creative groups and a full transition occurred this year.”
Indeed Lubars has been in the business too long to view this transition as happening overnight. “That’s never the case. You keep pounding away until you create muscle. By that I mean we consciously trained our heads over the past couple of years to think of an idea way upstream–not in terms of let’s do three TV spots, four print ads, two radio commercials but rather letting the idea take us wherever we can do it justice: a guerilla installation, a great website, traditional and nontraditional forms. But even that distinction is becoming obsolete. All this nontraditional stuff is soon just going to be called ‘campaign,’ becoming part of the whole, which encompasses both new and tried-and-true forms.”
Bruce concurs. “It used to be you’d hear at a creative meeting, ‘This spot opens on…’ We don’t talk that way anymore. We don’t understand that language anymore. The conversation now is simply, ‘What’s the idea?’ And the idea takes you where you need to go relative to forms of content and media.”
For HBO, the idea took BBDO New York across varied platforms on an atypical creative and strategic ride spanning a building-sized “peep show” in Manhattan, online content at hbovoyeur.com (a website which has drawn millions of viewers, both new and returning “voyeurs”), mobile fare and a film titled The Watcher appearing on HBO On Demand. BBDO New York Senior Creative Director Mike Smith (a copywriter on “Voyeur”) observes that the campaign brings a new dimension to branding. Rather than an outdoor billboard proclaiming that HBO tells good stories, you see stories unfold on the projected film along the side of a building on New York’s Lower East Side.
Online you can peer further into these people’s living spaces and lives, with a video featuring 30 actors in a dozen apartments. Delving deeper you see that some of these lives and goings on in the apartments are connected to one another. You can even select from different pieces of original music tracks to set the tone and discover how sound affects what you’re watching.
Via HBO Mobile on AT&T (another BBDO client), people can view exclusive content which gives insights into the various storylines.
Putting viewers in the position of accessing and in some respects being able to orchestrate stories that aren’t part of HBO network programming is indeed a progressive way to brand HBO as a special place for storytelling.
Client catalyst HBO is “a special place,” which is the point relative to “Voyeur” getting off the ground to begin with, relates Greg Hahn, executive VP/executive creative director, BBDO New York (and a writer on “Voyeur”). “We had multiple plotlines and theme lines playing at the same time in real time on the projection as well as on the website. A lot of advertisers are scared of that–they want viewers to get it the first time. But HBO didn’t mind challenging the viewer and respecting the viewer’s intelligence. The content becomes more interesting each time you watch it. The viewer is rewarded the more time they spend with it–and HBO understood that.”
Smith notes, “You could spend seven minutes with the content and walk away feeling rewarded. Or you could spend hours on the Internet and feel the time was well spent.”
John Osborn, president/CEO of BBDO New York, affirms that across the board clients are crucial to realizing great creative. “Part of my role is to create an environment that best enables creatives to flourish. And clients are key. I work closely with them to broaden their horizons and to try to open the aperture so that they’ll experiment and try new things and learn from doing things differently–not to replace TV advertising because that will remain strong. This is an ‘and’ game [inclusive of TV and new unconventional forms], not an ‘or’ game [one at the exclusion of the other]. Using different media, techniques and forms of content, we create the total work. A total work approach to the marketing is what we’re about and clients have been receptive, opening up new opportunities for our creatives.”
Osborn adds that for creative to be relevant, it needs strategic and behavioral grounding. For example, BBDO New York has a cultural anthropologist on staff. “Watching and having insights into how people behave can be as simple as observing them on the train, seeing folks who read magazines, are on the Blackberry, looking out the windows, taking in billboards, generally multitasking. We have to understand and need to be respectful of how people behave if we have any chance to influence or change their behavior on behalf of our clients. A strategic driven insight into behavior can be a springboard for creative, account and planning folks to create content that is relevant.”
Tracy Lovatt heads a 30-person department as director, behavioral planning for BBDO New York and BBDO North America. Sheron Davis is director of marketing services, overseeing marketing sciences, research, cultural discoveries and information services. And Dr. Timothy Malefyt is director of cultural discoveries. He heads the agency’s ethnographic studies, one of the research methods employed to uncover new levels of consumer understanding that can lead to changes in behavior.
But the cognitive isn’t enough to nurture relevant creative, notes Osborn. A positive attitude, philosophy and esprit de corps are essential, he says, citing several of the qualities that the agency has defined as making “a great BBDOer.” These include, “A hand raiser. Not a finger pointer” and “Radiates. Not drains,” “We…not me” and “Healthy paranoia.” The latter, says Osborn, is to guard against complacency.
Old and new Lubars finds it gratifying that the turning of the proverbial corner to “communications company” encompassing conventional and new content forms has sprung from a collection of long-time and relatively new BBDO staffers. “Open-mindedness on the part of this combination of talent has yielded incredible results and enabled the agency to progress and evolve,” relates Lubars.
BBDO New York mainstays such as Bruce, vice chairman/executive creative director Al Merrin and executive VPs/executive creative directors Don Schneider, Eric Silver and Susan Credle have diversified meaningfully into nontraditional creative fare, meshing with such artisans as Hahn, Smith, and director of integrated production Brian DiLorenzo who worked with Lubars earlier at Fallon, Minneapolis.
Indeed a self-described “old dog,” Merrin learned some new tricks over the past couple of years bringing Fast Cars & Superstars to fruition, a seven-episode primetime hybrid sports/documentary/reality series on ABC. The project marked the first foray into longer form branded entertainment for Merrin, an accomplished broadcast spot creator.
“It’s a long and intensely collaborative process to get a primetime series on the air,” relates Merrin. “This show must have died 30 or 40 times along the way but somehow we kept it alive and overcame the obstacles. There were many approvals to secure–NASCAR, our client Gillette and then the most difficult drawn out process is with the network. You’ve got to meet the right people, you’ve got to sell it and you have to have a great deal of resilience. Once you sell it, there’s still no guarantee that it will happen.”
But Merrin had a pivotal established component in place, Gillette’s Young Guns team of six NASCAR drivers. Add to that a dozen celebrity drivers (including football star John Elway, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, tennis champ Serena Williams, singer Jewel, actor William Shatner) who learn to drive high speed stock cars in competition, tutored by the Young Guns. The primetime show attracted some 20 million viewers. Entertainment Weekly listed Fast Cars & Superstars as one of their top shows to watch.
Merrin says the experience was invaluable and positions BBDO to make other entrees into TV programming. Lubars relates, “Al’s work laid the groundwork for what we’re working on now–another TV show, a BBDO-owned property in which several clients can participate.”
“Inner M” In many respects, Credle’s exploits in ’07 reflect the wide ranging creative at BBDO New York. She made what she characterizes as her first significant, high-profile move into “new media” with Mars/M&M’s “Inner M” campaign in which TV spots showing what people would look like when turned into M&M characters helped drive traffic to BecomeanM&M.com. Visitors (there were 2 million in just the first three weeks) got in touch with their “Inner M,” building their own avatar M&M character based on their self-image, selecting such features as color of the candy shell, eye shape and hairstyle.
At last count 3 million unique “Inner M” avatars had been created, with many visitors going to the online M-emporium to place their avatars on T-shirts and mugs. Fans are posting their own inner M blogs, sending their avatars to friends and families, and displaying them on MySpace pages.
The campaign brought a new dimension to branding. While it’s great to bring consumers to a brand, the “Inner M” initiative had them become the brand.
“To be able to get consumers to play with the brand this way has been gratifying to see–and I applaud the client,” says Credle. “It’s been said that when you get into the Internet world, you have to let go of your brand a little bit as people play with it. Ultimately that’s good for the brand. It certainly has been for M&Ms. I see M&M avatars popping up all over the place, some with personalized messages.”
For an iconic brand like M&Ms, moving into new territory is a delicate balance, Credle observes. “You want to make things fresh and reinvent the brand while at the same time not making people feel you left the brand that they love. The Inner M campaign managed to do this balancing act. A lot of times people use new media to learn something, as if it’s almost more for the ad industry than for your client’s business and brand building. This campaign was absolutely to support the brand and the right thing to do for its business.”
Stage 2 of the “Inner M” campaign is slated to roll out in January.
Getting back to Credle’s endeavors representing BBDO’s creative reach this year, another prime example can be found on the ’07 awards show circuit, specifically with AT&T/Cingular’s “Battle,” which was not only nominated for a primetime commercial Emmy but also won a Gold Effie Award for its effectiveness in the marketplace.
“To have this work acknowledged by the Television Academy nomination as entertainment and by the Effie competition for attaining results as a piece of advertising communication is the best of both worlds,” Credle relates.
“Battle” is indeed a clever comedic dialogue tour de force, further reflected in its garnering an ’07 AICP Show honor in the Performance/Dialogue category. The commercial shows a mother and teenage daughter “arguing”–at least that’s their tone–but the incongruity is that they are conveying positive messages to each other, as the parent entrusts her teen with a cell phone.
What is particularly appealing about “Battle” to Credle is that it respects the audience’s intelligence. “The human brain is a problem-solving mechanism. This spot requires you to work a little bit. If you lay something out that requires no activity for the brain, you might be missing more of a connection that you can make with the consumer.”
In retrospect, Credle believes “Battle” served as a catalyst for AT&T to embrace more high-level creative work, such as the subsequent “Dropped Calls” campaign, which earned Silver Lion distinction at Cannes. Among the latest installments of that is the TV spot “Butcher” in which a butcher orders 50 pounds of roast beef from a supplier who doesn’t have the meat on hand. “What, did your wife wolf it down for breakfast?” jokes the butcher, at which point the man at the other end is laughing but since the call was dropped all the butcher hears is dead silence. The butcher tries to get his foot out of his mouth, offering an impromptu apology, “That came out wrong. Look at me. We probably weigh the same…”
Then there’s the cell phone users whose lives take them to different parts of the world–with AT&T giving them connections to all those destinations. Each spot shows an individual in one continuous take remaining fairly static yet figuratively trotting the globe as slices of life behind him or her change before our eyes, forming a combined destination that is an amalgam of all those collective city names lumped into a single word.
“Typically a year and a half ago or so if I called and asked if you wanted to work on a telecommunications account, I might get a not so enthusiastic ‘maybe’ from a creative,” says Credle. “That’s not the case today. AT&T is regarded as a great piece of business to work on creatively.”
Big “boutique” In terms of developing a culture that’s conducive to breakthrough creative, exec creative director Silver relates, “A lot of agencies talk about being a big shop that runs like a boutique. BBDO is one of only a handful of places that truly adheres to this doctrine.
“David Lubars came in and told everyone he wanted to reinvent the place and have it feel like a ‘kick-ass ’60s agency.’ I obviously never worked at an agency in the ’60s but I interpreted the mandate to mean we needed consistent smart work across as many platforms as possible.
“When I look back on it,” continues Silver, “Cliff Freeman was a terrific place to creatively experiment and grow but, in my opinion, BBDO is the perfect marriage of art and commerce. By that I mean we still get to work on small accounts but to me the home run is cracking the code on established brands.”
Hahn adds, “At many agencies, there’s the feeling that if you had one of those nontraditional ideas, you would have a hard sell up through the shop’s hierarchy. But with David, it’s different. He virtually demands the untraditional all the way down throughout the agency.”
Jim Lesser, executive VP/executive creative director of BBDO West, feels Lubar’s imprint in the form of a positive energy impacting the agency’s Los Angeles and San Francisco offices. “Prior to Fallon, David ran BBDO West so he knew the challenges out here when he returned to BBDO and in fact had a great idea to transform the West Coast operation, which was to in a very real sense make it a part of New York. We’re connected to New York with ‘long hallways and no doors’–that’s David’s philosophy. We can tap into the resources in New York and bring to bear the strength of multiple offices like we did when we pitched and won the Mitsubishi business. From the get go, there was work being done in L.A. and New York. And now all the work on Mitsubishi is being done out of BBDO’s Los Angeles office.”
Conversely, continues Lesser, Lubars and Bruce have given assignments to BBDO West that include agency network business and work that would have normally been BBDO New York’s domain. “We’re working seamlessly with New York on creative for Mars [for Sheba cat food and Cesar dog food],” notes Lesser. “We’re independent yet a connected shop and that makes for a positive, best-of-both-worlds situation for us.
Production Regina Ebel, BBDO New York’s executive VP/director of TV production, observes that ’07 has been “an exciting year. We are moving in all directions: GE Imagination Theater, the Gillette TV show, AT&T web work, Mars’ ‘Inner M.’ We’re working more closely with our digital partner, Atmosphere. And still delivering some of the best TV stuff in the business.
“These new opportunities have forced us to be more creative. For example, on GE’s Imagination Theater, we had to come up with less expensive ways to produce the work since the concept was so new. At BBDO, production has always been involved from the outset of a project. However, with production now coming in more shapes and sizes, this has become more important than ever. Moving in new directions has created opportunities for some of our younger producers to get involved, too.”
She also credits the talented artisans her department works with from outside and within the agency, the former including great directors and among the latter being BBDO’s resident music maestros, including Rani Vaz, senior VP/director of music and radio production, Loren Parkins, VP/executive music producer, and Melissa Chester, senior music producer.
As for what’s ahead, Ebel relates, “We are continuing to explore opportunities to do some production in house. I can’t divulge all the details at this time but expect to hear something from us soon.”
Working closely with Ebel and many others is DiLorenzo whose role as director of integrated production is constantly evolving. “I began here working on integrated projects in nontraditional mediums–and that continues,” he says.” But now I’m also serving more as a connective tissue and a liaison between and among different departments at BBDO while still seeking outside alliances with potential new production partners who can help us create the varied projects we’re involved in. The ideas come–sometimes with brands attached, sometimes not. And we find ourselves in the embryonic stage talking about how something might be put together for a particular idea or project. But it’s always an organic approach to decide what’s best for an individual project–my working with Regina’s department, her department working independent of me, my working independent of her.”
Currently, for example, DiLorenzo is working on a website for a client based on an original idea that came out of the print department. “The idea, though, took us to something far more complicated than print–there are layers of photography involved, talent issues, the need to create a web site, banner ads, microsite production,” he relates. “From there I’m now working with our broadcast and business management resources, with Regina’s team fully engaged. It all comes down to what’s right for an idea–that’s what dictates the production approach.”
For HBO’s “Voyeur,” for example, the original intent was to do an outdoor projection. “Given the nature of the project–its nontraditional origin–it made a lot of sense for me to take it on as a content producer and put it together with support from business affairs and talent.” DiLorenzo assembled a core producer team featuring BBDO New York content producer Jiffy Iuen, brought in a freelance interactive producer and facilitated collaboration with interactive company Big Spaceship. “There were so many different fronts to ‘Voyeur’ as we moved along that we needed to move quickly and have a point of interface for each front. So I put a producer on each front, which also included producing a blog and ancillary content. I had, for instance, a writer/producer who oversaw the blog.
“At the same time, even though we had producers on each front, they all ended up being in hybrid capacities–an interactive producer who was also on a production shoot, an experienced, more traditional producer making sure elements were in place for banner ads. Everyone ended up having very much a 360-degree view as well as their specific role and responsibilities. In a way it was almost a temporary mini agency that popped up just for the HBO project. With the resources of BBDO, we are able to put together powerful teams to tackle most anything. For ‘Voyeur,’ we produced all this content across different platforms and kept it affordable–that’s due in large part to the breakthrough production model we applied to the project.”
By design 2007 was also the year that BBDO New York branded its design operation–as DesignWorks at BBDO under the aegis of design director Craig Duffney, with four other designers on staff.
“Now more than ever, design cannot live without great ideas. And ideas cannot live without great design,” affirms Duffney.
“We started the design unit here about two years ago and we were brought in to push creative in a new way and build design more into campaigns, to surround and help advance great ideas with great design. We are constantly looking to surround brands with interesting design, ranging from packaging, characters, even a race car.”
The latter reference is to a souped up car DesignWorks designed for client Motorola and noted woman driver Danica Patrick. The race car’s design was loosely based on a black Razr phone, with indigo blue highlights.
“The projects here and how we work–not just thinking aesthetically but conceptually and using design to shape and do justice to a concept, working closely with the agency creatives–makes DesignWorks at BBDO a place where designers want to work, where they know they will get the chance to do great work,” contends Duffney.
The collaborative relationship is such that design can inspire ideas as in the case of client G4 Network’s block of programming called Midnight Spank. Working with Eric Silver’s group, DesignWorks came up with a logo consisting of two monkeys holding fraternity paddles to connote Midnight Spank. “That campaign from last year was kind of reverse engineered–the spots were born out of the logo.”
More recently, DesignWorks teamed with Greg Hahn’s group on a animated web film series for half.com (eBay’s book selling site aimed at college kids). The films took a tongue-in-cheek approach to warning students about the perils of over-studying. DesignWork’s Duffney and Jesse Kaczmarek designed assorted characters for the films–working with New York-based animation studio Curious Pictures and BBDO art director Brandon Mugar–and beyond the films were born T-shirts, posters, comic books, comic strips and stickers.
DesignWorks has even turned its design acumen inwards, coming up with a branding identity, The Kitchen, for BBDO New York’s production department headed by Ebel. The logo and collateral elements–as well as color themes for the department’s office space–were designed by DesignWorks’ Anchalee Chambundabongse.
Duffney is particularly proud of how DesignWorks and BBDO collaborate from pitch to real-world assignments. “From the get go we work together with BBDO–and [interactive agency] Atmosphere BBDO as well,” he relates. “DesignWorks has been an integral part of winning new business for BBDO New York, spanning Sony, Splenda, New Balance and Best Buy. The collaboration between creative and design makes pitches strong and provides different, fresh perspectives that set them apart from others. And after winning new business, we go on to work very closely together on jobs for those very same accounts. It’s just a cool vibe and a great way of working.”
Black Friday Upon hearing of SHOOT selecting BBDO New York as Agency of the Year, Bruce hearkened back to before ’07–specifically to the so-called “Black Friday” period after Thanksgiving in ’06. To make that after-holiday stretch a rousing sales success for Target, the much publicized David Blaine escape event was held in Manhattan. The illusionist was placed in what looked like a foolproof trap suspended over Times Square and had to escape in time to make Target’s two-day sale.
The results included some 5 million hits on the Target website–a spike of 3 million more than any other year. Target sales went up nearly six percent, setting an all-time high. Some 1,000 stores worldwide were devoted to the event, promoted by a BBDO campaign encompassing such elements as TV, digital and old-fashioned word of mouth, tons of free publicity and media coverage.
“When we created that event, everything came together–Blaine and the Target brand, record sales, and in some respects all of us at BBDO. To me,” says Bruce, “that started the ball rolling that we took straight through to 2007 and this ‘Agency of the Year’ performance. It reinforced our course of starting with the idea and then doing whatever is right in terms of execution and media to make it work and to build business and brands.”
And momentum has built and continues to build steadily in other key ways, says Don Schneider, executive VP/executive creative director, BBDO New York.
“New clients are coming to us because they are excited about the new ideas and 360 thinking we are able to bring to their businesses. And because of the recent past successes we’ve had with our existing clients, they have afforded us the trust to try new things. It’s made for a great recipe for success.”
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