13324: Introducing McBabel.

Adweek and MediaPost also reported on the Mickey D’s and Omnicom McMarriage, which will feature an “Agency of the Future” hand-made for the fast feeder. It’s somewhat ironic that special orders lead to messy customer experiences in McDonald’s restaurants, but the corporation required customized service for its advertising and marketing. Regardless, the PR hype from Omnicom and McDonald’s warrants examination and speculation.

DDB Worldwide President and CEO of North America Wendy Clark gushed the following:

“Exactly 18 weeks ago today, we received a dream brief from one of the most iconic brands in the world … to create ‘the agency of the future.’ The best and the brightest talent across multiple Omnicom agencies came together over the last 4 months to create, operationalize and deliver on that brief. The result is a customized agency built with intelligence at the core, to fuel brilliant creative work, that’s delivered at the speed of the marketplace at an efficient cost. We are thrilled and honored to be selected and excited about immediately creating impact for McDonald’s business.”

McDonald’s USA Chief Marketing Officer Deborah Wahl issued the following gobbledygook:

“Part of building a better McDonald’s means not only making changes to our food and our restaurants, but also how we conduct business, and we’re excited to announce McDonald’s USA has selected Omnicom as our partner to create a new agency which is yet to be named, to build the agency of the future. This new agency will become our partner for all U.S. National Marketing initiatives. In selecting this agency, we will have access to top talent, technology and thinking with digital and data at the core.

They are fast, fluid and flexible and poised to deliver the caliber and volume of storytelling needed to support our business today and into the future. This new model will, over the next few years, create great work at the speed of the marketplace at an efficient cost.

Their creative approach and bold use of channels will elevate our connections with customers in new and innovative ways.”

Okey-doke. This all sounds like a McDonaldland fantasy. Were Ronald McDonald and Mayor McCheese consulted on the grand scheme? The Hamburglar could have offered ideas to enhance speed and cost efficiencies.

Has anyone noticed that “Agency of the Future” is a term typically embraced by professionals who are firmly stuck in the past? From Draftfcb to Enfatico, agencies of the future quickly become history—and never generate sustainable, futuristic innovations. The holding company itself is the root problem. Holding companies are the only enterprises with the resources and scale to fabricate an agency from scratch for a huge client; at the same time, holding companies are comprised of established-yet-outdated firms and executives, so the end product is more of the same. Scooping together distinctive turds ultimately leads to one, big pile of poop. Additionally, integrated marketing—where multiple disciplines and practices work in harmonious collaboration—is still a myth. It becomes a Tower of Babel 2.0, with individuals unable to communicate via a common language—not to mention a common P&L or compensation structure. Hey, here’s a name for the new shop: McBabel.

Wahl babbled about the new agency having “digital and data at the core”—which is a scary thought, as Omnicom does not have strong digital capabilities. Granted, WPP, Publicis Groupe and IPG aren’t much better, but at least they’ve made greater (albeit foolhardy) acquisitions of digital properties over the years.

The big question is, will digital and data be accompanied by diversity? Inventing a new business model without consciously incorporating inclusion is obscene, especially given the history of our industry. Surely the “Agency of the Future”—hatched by the holding company with a Pioneer of Diversity at the helm—will reflect the customers McDonald’s hopes to connect with in newly elevated and innovative ways.

Will McBabel deliver on the dream brief—or will the dream remain deferred, diverted, delegated and denied?

10062: Transitions And Bloodbaths.

Advertising Age presented a fluff piece on “Chief Transition Officers”—executives charged with orchestrating the moves and maneuvers involved after acquiring a major piece of business. Heaven forbid an advertising agency might have a plan in place when pitching a big client. It just goes to show how agencies will completely lie about resources during reviews. Or create some Enfatico-Team Sprint-Commonwealth scheme to con advertisers into believing the work can be handled. Of course, Ad Age didn’t consider that for every “Chief Transition Officer” there is an HR Director scrambling to fire hundreds at the agency that lost the account. Spotlighting the trials and tribulations of the executioners would have made for a much more compelling piece of journalism. Hey, if the trade publication dispatches a few writers over to Draftfcb right now, they might have a scoop.

8936: Agency Of The Foolish.

Memo to Industry:

If you’re going to call yourself an “Agency for the Future,” avoid running an announcement ad that looks like it was created in the distant past.

P.S., Places claiming titles like “Agency of the Future” tend to become history—or just plain suck.

8897: Strategic Stinking.

Adweek reported on a new invention designed to create advertising briefs for marketers. Dell’s former global vp of marketing, Casey Jones, introduced the gizmo at Internet Week in New York. According to Adweek, “Through a series of customizable inputs, the product standardizes the assignment process for marketers, with the idea of eliminating the money wasted by bad briefs.” Wait a minute. The architect of Enfatico thinks his contraption can shit out automated briefs that will lead to breakthrough work? Don’t need a series of customizable inputs to recognize a standard bullshit artist/certified hack.

Getting Ad Briefs Down to a Science

New Web service helps marketers create and manage assignments

By Erin Griffith

Ad briefs—the physical assignment a client sends to its agency confirming details of a campaign—are a pain for both parties involved. Agencies complain they’re too vague; clients lose time and money if the resulting campaign doesn’t reflect their desires.

And when briefs arrive at the agency in the form of text messages or half-baked emails, agencies scramble to read the client’s mind, then cross their fingers that whatever they come up with pleases the client.

That’s an approach Casey Jones, a former global vp of marketing at Dell, wants to change. “We use less data and discipline for monitoring briefs than we use for travel policies,” he says.

So with support from former IPG chairman David Bell and former Hyperion Solutions chairman Jeff Rodek, Jones created BriefLogic, a Salesforce.com-style Web service that helps marketers create and manage assignments. Through a series of customizable inputs, the product standardizes the assignment process for marketers, with the idea of eliminating the money wasted by bad briefs. And, Jones’ thinking goes, better briefs can eliminate noise and improve return on investment. Or at least that’s the hope. And if it works, there’s a big market out there for a product like this one.

Launched last week at Internet Week New York, BriefLogic is currently operating beta versions with Whirlpool and Verizon.

7790: Sandbox In A Pine Box.

Adweek reported Interpublic Group dissolved Sandbox, a 3-year-old New York unit created to win Johnson & Johnson communications planning work. IPG reassigned President and Chief Creative Officer Wayne Fletcher to McCann Erickson. Why do the holding companies always hire the Black guys to run enterprises destined for failure?

IPG Folds Sandbox
Unit chief Wayne Fletcher joins McCann

By Andrew McMains

Interpublic Group has quietly folded Sandbox, the New York-based unit it created three years ago to win a share of Johnson & Johnson’s communications planning duties in North America.

Unit president and chief creative officer Wayne Fletcher and an assistant have joined IPG’s McCann Erickson, where Fletcher has assumed the new position of innovation partner.

The creation of Sandbox was key to IPG winning a significant chunk of the North Americ an communications planning account, alongside Naked and WPP Group’s JWT. Initially, IPG staffed the unit with communication planners from different types of agencies, including media shop Universal McCann and digital shop R/GA.

Sandbox subsequently added projects from Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (Hennessy) and Coca-Cola. The shop, however, failed to gain enough critical mass to operate on its own, and new McCann Worldgroup CEO Nick Brien wants communications planning to be integral to McCann’s offering, according to sources.

At McCann, Fletcher, 40, will continue to work on Hennessy and Coke as needed, an agency representative said. The J&J assignment has been absorbed by J3—a 125-person unit of IPG’s Mediabrands that handles most of the holding company’s media business from J&J—and sister creative shops that work for the client.

In his new role at McCann, Fletcher is expected to forge connections between client brands and Hollywood, the music industry, technology companies, media owners and content-production firms.

“Wayne will be tasked with increasing the depth and breadth of our creative network and to connect us to the leading creative minds across many industries and to use those connections to help inspire new ideas and new solutions for clients,” said McCann New York president Thom Gruhler, to whom Fletcher reports.

Additionally, Fletcher will lead the development of new communications platforms that McCann can sell to clients. In this capacity, Fletcher will work with brand planners and creatives under the banner of Brand Farm.

Fletcher, who holds a doctorate in applied social psychology, described his role as being a “catalyst for different types of solutions via different partners,” adding, “Innovation will be a strategic imperative for the agency.”

7445: Do A Google Search, Boone’s On Top.

From Adweek…

Google Adds Ex-Enfatico CEO Boone

By Brian Morrissey

Google is beefing up its agency relations team with the addition of former Enfatico CEO Torrence Boone.

Boone is Google’s new managing director of agency relations for North America. He will work under Penry Price, vp of global agency and industry development, as Google attempts to craft close relationships with shops that have often viewed it warily.

Boone led the WPP Group’s unsuccessful attempt to craft a dedicated agency for Dell. Prior to being named to head Enfatico, Boone was president of Digitas Boston.

“Agencies are some of our most important partners,” Price said in a statement. “They’re crucial to the growth of the advertising industry and Torrence will work closely with them to ensure that Google adds value for agencies and their clients, and develops products to address their most important needs.”

Google’s agency relations team works with shops to craft campaigns that use Google’s analytics and tech products.

Boone’s appointment follows the departure of Erin Clift, Google’s previous head of North American agency relations. Clift left the company in June to join AOL, now helmed by former Google top ad sales executive Tim Armstrong.

Prior to joining Digitas, Boone held roles at Avenue A (now Razorfish) and Bain & Co.

Boone was tapped to lead what was then called The Da Vinci Project in May 2008. At the time, the effort was heralded as an experiment in crafting the agency of the future by bringing together an integrated shop dedicated to Dell. The shop struggled from its inception, and WPP finally folded it into Y&R last April.

5765: Seeking Simian Version Of Shackleton.

This actual job listing for WPP-Dell enterprise Enfatico demonstrates the startup’s Herculean challenge of recruiting candidates. Like the iconic classified advertisement attributed to Ernest Shackleton, the message lures thrill-seekers. Applicants are only offered a “competitive compensation package” for the possibility of producing “great work for terrific clients”—although the plural form of clientele is currently a pipe dream—alongside “a talented team” still being assembled. In the end, the job specs tell the true tale: Enfatico needs a trained monkey to run the computer maker’s catalog conveyor belt.

ENFATICO

We are looking for people who love a challenge and want to get in on the ground floor of an amazing new venture—the founding of a new WPP company that has initially partnered with Dell Computers. Play a role in the creation of a global entity. We offer a competitive compensation package and the opportunity to do great work for terrific clients with a talented team.

We are currently seeking an Associate Creative Director to oversee the creative team that is responsible for the B2B and catalog advertising for Dell. This individual will be responsible for leading our creative teams in best practices and helping maximize sales and profitability of Dell’s catalog channel and B2B, domestically and internationally. The Associate Creative Director functions as the lead creative contact on accounts under his or her supervision. He/She reports to the Creative Director who supervises his/her creative responsibilities. The ACD formulates concepts and leads staff engaged in executing designs and copy.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES:
• Produce intelligent and on strategy creative solutions that reflect brand personality.
• Train and supervise assigned staff of designers and other creative personnel.
• Oversee the execution of all creative efforts to insure they are on strategy, on budget, and on schedule.
• Participate in account team and client planning sessions regarding campaign strategy and the approach to any significant project.
• Lead certain creative projects and team members with a hands-on supervisory approach while facilitating a collaborative team environment.
• Maintain quality of the agency’s advertising, as well as the quality and operation of assigned personnel within the Creative Department. By example and direction, the ACD fosters a departmental reputation for creative excellence.
• Maintain an effective departmental structure, and help create and maintain a high energy level throughout the Creative Department.
• Participate in and contribute to the new business activities of the agency.
• Provide clear/objective critiques of creative work during development.
• Make presentations internally and /or with senior level clients.
• Remain current and communicate industry trends and techniques.
• Keeps Creative Director informed about the creative work progress for clients, and about the ways in which those projects are being produced.

REQUIRED SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE AND ABILITIES:
• 4-7 years of creative team leadership experience.
• Knowledge and experience in performing a variety of advertising assignments is required.
• The ability to think strategically and work autonomously.
• The ability to handle and prioritize multiple projects and multiple creative teams to adjust to changes in timelines, deadlines, and project goals.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills and organizational skills.
• Ability to train and mentor creative staff.