For Lee Clow, chairmanchief creative officer of TBWA Worldwide, the TBWAChiatDay culture parallels that of client Apple in several key respects. Indeed the TBWAChiatDay persona is much more akin to the human embodiment of the Macintosh than its PC counterpart as wittily depicted in this year’s “Mac vs. PC” series of commercials out of the ad shop’s Los Angeles office.
So it’s most apropos that Apple’s “Mac vs. PC” campaign, which has weaved its way into the fabric of pop culture, generating buzz, Web chatter, blogs and comedic parodies, serves in a sense as a signpost of what makes the agency behind it tick.
“One of the most special opportunities our agency has had twice now is our collaborating with Apple and my relationship with [Apple CEO] Steve Jobs–first on the introduction of the Macintosh years ago [with the legendary “1984” Super Bowl spot] and in the second go around with the Think Different campaign and now our work for iPod and ‘Mac vs. PC’,” relates Clow. “The cultures of the agency and Apple are simpatico. We’re both passionate about what we do, are always trying to do something great, we won’t settle for the ordinary and we place a high value on being creative. I think that’s why we work so well together. There’s a lot of Mac in us and that has helped lead to iconic advertising ranging recently from the iPod silhouettes to the ‘Mac vs. PC’ guys.”
At the same time, Apple has maintained another delicate balance which mirrors that attained by TBWAChiatDay, observes Clow. While Apple is a major worldwide renowned company of considerable heft, it has not become corporate but rather retained a brand identity marked by its entrepreneurial, innovative spirit. “We’ve kind of done the same at TBWA,” relates Clow.
“Yes, we’re a large company–bigger than I ever had imagined years ago. But we’ve maintained boutique sensibilities, right down to our architecture. We have 800 people in our Los Angeles warehouse setting but it feels like a community. The small agency dynamic is the best for creating great work. It’s more fun being the pirates than the navy. Now we’re as big as the navy but still want to act like pirates.”
In this figurative pirate ship, continues Clow, “Everybody feels they’re in it together. We’re looking to be the smallest big agency in the world. We have small units around Apple, adidas, Pedigree, PlayStation, all our clients. Even though we’re housed in big overall quarters, each unit is a little agency trying to do really good work for a good client.”
And there’s a healthy competition among these units–and different offices of TBWA, continues Clow. “I encourage that brand of competition. It’s essential to our culture. I don’t want to be a one-style agency or a one-star agency. Every office has its styles, its stars and does famous work that looks different than anyone else’s.”
Part of that, says Clow, springs from TBWA Worldwide CEO Jean-Marie Dru who advocates the philosophy of “disruption.” “That’s something I’ve embraced–to be the most disruptive agency on the planet,” relates Clow. “We look for the disruptive idea, what’s going to be noticed and talked about while helping to advance the brand.” Clow, who’s been inducted into the One Club Hall of Fame, the Art Directors Hall of Fame and the Museum of Modern Arts’ Advertising Hall of Fame, hearkens back to his start in the business some 35 years ago at the then fledgling ChiatDay in Los Angeles.
“For me, it all started with the culture that Jay Chiat built,” recalls Clow. “He simply said that ads don’t have to suck. We don’t have to be embarrassed about being in the advertising business. It was inbred in all of us to be as creative as we could possibly be. Advertising can be an art form, helping to express a company’s point of view and to connect with consumers.”
ChiatDay lived by the motto, “Creative is not a Department.” And the agency back then helped others to realize that great creative could be found in agencies outside of New York and Chicago.
Fast forward to today and that same expansive, creatively driven philosophy remains the foundation for TBWAChiatDay. notes Clow. The expansive part is reflected in what he describes as “our mission for the last couple of years, which is to become a total media arts company, with brands having to use all the elements that are touch points for people–packaging, stores, the Internet, street stickers, wild posters, movies, TV shows and so on. We have film ideas of all kinds percolating. We haven’t gotten the coolest ones done yet but we’re moving towards making them a reality.”
At the same time, Clow says he’s not one to jump on the branded entertainment bandwagon. “A lot of this branded content Hollywood stuff is b.s.,” he assesses. “Content has to be organic and feel like it truly comes out of the brand–and from a real honest place. We’re not willing to just throw films up on the Web to be hip.”
For TBWAChiatDay and its new media arm Tequila that “honest place” paradoxically took the form of a hoax for the Sony PlayStation game Colossus. The agency created news footage, which saw a TV reporter on a beach in India telling of the remains of a giant Colossus found in an archaeological dig there. Another Colossus was uncovered along an ice flow in Antarctica. This fare hit the Web, sparking scores of hits, blogs, stories, speculations about whether this was fact or fiction, in turn generating a Colossus buzz that helped propel sales of the game beyond expectations.
“It just underscores the fact,” says Clow, “that the industry has reached a new window of opportunity to do even more interesting, creative stuff. It’s what keeps me going after all these years–that and being able to encourage all our people to be as creative and inventive as they can possibly be in the media arts.”
Client support While media arts are not an exact science, Clow sees a new criterion for evaluating the success of creative content. “It used to be a parody on Saturday Night Live was the best indicator that your work had slid right into pop culture,” relates Clow. “And that’s still a terrific accomplishment. If your idea gets mimicked and becomes part of the culture, that’s high praise. But now it’s been taken to another level with parodies on the Internet. I’m seeing kids doing their own Skittles and Starburst commercials now.”
But the key, obvious yet often overlooked dynamic contributing to creating work worthy of parody is a great client, observes Gerry Graf, executive creative director of TBWAChiatDay, New York. Consider Masterfoods with its advertising for Skittles, Starburst and Combos. Indeed, says Graf, when seeing the premise for Starburst’s “Factory” on page, one understandably would be standoffish.
We open on a curly haired factory worker asking a colleague for a Starburst. The coworker tosses the candy over, but it falls into a vat. The curly haired guy reaches deep into the vat to retrieve the pack of Starbursts. However, it turns out the vat is filled with acid, which eats away his entire arm. “Whoa” is his deadpan verbal response. Undaunted, he then places his remaining arm in the vat, only to lose that limb as well.
Witnessing all this, the coworker then rolls up his sleeve as he prepares to immerse his arm. A tagline simply reads, “Starburst. Blame the juicy goodness.”
Graf notes that the agency, with client approval, piggybacked production of the spot onto another shoot, relocating to a nearby factory to capture the extra footage. “The deadpan execution of the humor is what made it work,” assesses Graf. “Thankfully we have a client that’s willing to give ideas a chance.”
Another prime example of that is the campaign for Combos pretzel snacks (with cheddar cheese and pizza flavor fillings). “When the creative directors Ian [Reichenthal] and Scott [Vitrone] came into show me what they had–‘What your mom would feed you if your mom were a man’–I was sold,” remembers Graf. “That line did it for me. I didn’t have to hear or see anything else.
“Again, it comes back to the client,” continues Graf. “The idea of having a heavyset man in drag–wearing a wig and a muu muu dress–would make most clients nervous. But the idea was big and good. We didn’t have much of a budget for Combos but the client came through, responding to the power of a great idea….It’s the kind of idea that would come out of a boutique. The fun behind the idea kept pushing it forward…The MasterfoodsMARS people let us be as creative as we can be. They respect creativity because they see how it can get sales moving. The challenge is on us. In the case of this client, we can never say if sales don’t move up, ‘you should see what they didn’t buy.'”
Going against the grain is only possible with an understanding client, notes Graf, alluding to Embassy Suites Hotels. “Most of the time you see a commercial about business travel, there’s some poor guy lugging suitcases, missing a plane, standing in line. We opted to instead show getting chosen by a company to go on a business trip as something to be proud of, addressing why people are selected in our Embassy Suites campaign.”
In the case of “Likeable,” it was the likability of an employee that earned him the trip. His boss throws a small potted cactus plant at the back of another seated worker. When the victimized worker angrily turns around, the boss points at the likeable guy as the culprit. The victim can only smile because his colleague is such a good guy. “That was some great dialogue work and it was a blast to do. It reminds me of the classic FedEx stuff, that I used to work on [while at BBDO New York prior to joining TBWAChiatDay three years ago],” says Graf.
Client support can also take the form of going with a simple idea on the biggest stage of all, the Super Bowl. Sprintextel did that with “Locker Room,” resisting the temptation to push for an over-the-top extravaganza. “Lee [Clow] got involved and we went with this nice little, simple spot with two guys ‘bragging’ about their cell phone capabilities, with one trumping the other with his ‘crime deterrent’ feature,” says Graf. “The other guy wonders what crime deterrent is until he finds out the hard way.” The guy with the crime deterrent “technology” asks his buddy to try to steal his phone. When the other man approaches to snatch it up, the first guy throws the phone at his head, knocking him to the floor. The spot scored with the public and the industry at large, garnering honors at such competitions as the AICP Show.
While it was a great awards season this year for TBWA spanning Cannes and other shows, perhaps most telling about the agency is the work it has opted not to enter into competition, namely the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation’s “Bringing Objects.” The spot is pure and simple, showing people bringing their remembrances of loved ones, as well as lit candles and flowers to the hallowed site, forming a makeshift memorial. A supered message reads, “We needed one then. We need one now,” followed by a tag for the Memorial Foundation.
“We came up with a lot of good ideas for this piece,” recollects Graf. “But some of them were too good and too smart, which would be doing a disservice to what we were trying to do; it would almost be like taking advantage of the assignment. The spot wasn’t as clever as we could be–but that wasn’t the point. We don’t want to enter it in any award shows. We don’t want to get anything out of it. The only good we want to come out of it is to get that memorial made.”
You media
For Rob Schwartz, executive creative director of TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles, 2006 was a special year for the agency based on its going beyond TV with not only its TV work but also other film fare. “It’s about applying film to a variety of different connection points to consumers,” he observes, citing Nissan’s “Seven Days In A Sentra” campaign which entailed seven broadcast spots and 20 separate film elements. The spots drove traffic to the Web films, the Web got people to notice the spots on TV and even on TiVo. “We were driving traffic both ways,” says Schwartz.
At press time, the two-minute introductory piece in which protagonist Marc Horowitz embarks on seven days of living in his Sentra generated some 400,000 views on YouTube. Indeed pieces ranging from 15 seconds to two minutes garnered hundreds of thousands of hits.
“It’s a new brand of connectivity that is emerging,” relates Schwartz, noting that the recently debuted introductory PlayStation 3 spot “Baby Doll” sparked close to a half-million hits on YouTube right out of the gate. Hundreds of thousands of hits were generated for the other two ads in the campaign, in which the PlayStation 3 is also shot in a sexy manner, set in a stark white room.
“People have been talking about the advertising almost as much as the product,” says Schwartz, noting that the creatives were disciplined enough to promote the system’s capabilities while keeping the curiosity level up. “There’s a lot of what I call ‘broccoli’ product points–like the system’s great processing power and brilliant colors but you have to convey those in an engaging way to connect with the viewers.”
Towards that end, a prime example is the “Rubik’s Cube” spot in which the famed multicolored cube puzzle is face to face in a showdown with the PlayStation 3 in the stark white room. Before our eyes, the Cube, while suspended in midair, is solved, with all its colors put in their proper places. Next the cube explodes, casting its multiple colors all over the room. Solving the cube and displaying the explosion of color showcase the game system’s sophisticated processor and its rich colorful renderings.
This is juxtaposed in sharp contrast with the PSP campaign earlier in the year consisting of rudimentary black-and-white animation, including a memorable commercial in which rats talk about mobile cheese music “you can listen to outside,” paralleling its portability to that of the PSP. “The buyer of PSP lives in a world that loves South Park, The Simpsons and Adult Swim. We needed to speak their language with a snarky style of animation that’s a far cry from the highly advanced PSP technology,” relates Schwartz. “It was a way to be distinctive in a world of clutter. Distinction is an ad creative’s best friend.”
And the rarest of friends to a creative is a project which allows one to be virtuous and capitalistic simultaneously, says Schwartz, referring to the touching Pedigree dog food campaign in which canines are shown in animal shelters. Proceeds from the purchase of Pedigree products go to an adoption fund which helps put these dogs into loving homes. “That work has been most gratifying to be involved in,” affirms Schwartz.
Also gratifying was the Olympics work for Visa as well as the latest fare for the account. Indeed that newest endeavor shows that the creative beat goes on. Visa Check Card’s “Lunch” from TBWAChiatDay, Los Angeles, is this week’s SHOOT “Top Spot.” And currently airing are two spots for Nissan Titan trucks tying into the Heisman Trophy. In the tour de force live-action/visual effects campaign, college football team mascots–including a bizarre menagerie of a gator, a bear, yellow jackets, a buffalo and other creatures–wildly pursue a Titan which has in its truck bed the coveted Heisman as it’s being transported to New York for the awards ceremony.
Human bond “I think 2006 proves that our past performances haven’t been a fluke,” quips Chuck McBride, the San Francisco-based executive creative director for TBWAChiatDay North America. Indeed over the span of his career, McBride’s work has garnered every major creative and effectiveness award in the business, including a primetime Emmy. This year was particularly satisfying, he says, because the true test is maintaining “some level of consistency while trying to keep the creative bar high.”
That, he relates, can be a daunting task, particularly for example in the athletic shoe category with adidas. “You throw out 30 or 40 ideas to get one,” says McBride. “It’s one of the most mined categories over the last 10 years.”
But the human factor helps to meet the creative challenge. “We’ve always looked at the athlete as a person, as a character–not just what he or she can do as an athlete,” observes McBride, citing the ongoing work with basketball superstar Kevin Garnett, the latest installment coming earlier this year, “What’s Inside,” from TBWAChiatDay, San Francisco.
“It’s an investigation into Kevin and what makes him a special multifaceted person,” says McBride of the spot, which shows Garnett’s exploits and dreams acted out on different stages–from a comedy club, to an emergency rescue, to a gladiator battle in a stadium and to the basketball court itself. “What’s Inside” is tagged by the now well known adidas brand slogan, “Impossible Is Nothing.”
Adidas also scored with its Web film 3 Court in which an average looking guy jumps into different street basketball games, performing superstar caliber in-your-face feats, including sinking a mid-court shot and unloading a hellacious reverse slam dunk.
While 3 Court further diversified adidas’ communication repertoire, the simple humorous underpinning of the Fox Sports campaigns out of the TBWAChiatDay, San Francisco office remains intact. To promote local Fox Channel NBA games, we see people trying to live their lives by the 24-second clock, including a barber who administers a fast break shave to an unsuspecting customer, and a couple who can’t even start–much less complete–their lovemaking within the required ticks of the clock.
Similarly for Fox’s Major League Baseball, different facets of the game are examined. In “Wall,” we see people in everyday walks of life backpedaling and crashing into barriers–a guy runs into and shatters a large pane of glass perched on the side of a parked repair truck, a woman crashes into an art gallery wall, causing a painting to fall onto her body which is laid out on the floor. The inspiration for their actions is then revealed as we hear Dodger announcer Vin Scully do play-by-play of outfielder J.D. Drew crashing into the right-field wall to make a game-saving catch. A supered end tag reads, “We’re all Dodgers.”
Figuratively McBride is inspiring others to go to the wall for the best creative possible.
“It’s part of what motivates us creatively, the healthy competition within the agency,” relates Graf.
“You know the next thing from Apple is going to be great, you can count on Chuck to come up with something wonderful. The people at all the offices are a positive catalyst for all of us. “It’s what keeps you on your toes creatively, setting a high standard and trying to live up to it.”
