12854: At Grey, Integrating Is Grating.

Adweek reported new Grey New York Chief Strategy Officer Jonathan Lee is focused on integrating creativity and technology at his new workplace. Um, despite having a Black CEO, the White advertising agency hasn’t even managed to integrate different generations—and Grey has fumbled in its attempts to foster cultural integration too. As previously noted, the industry’s inability to integrate digital mirrors the failure to integrate anything and everything else.

Grey New York’s New Chief Strategy Officer Will Help Integrate Creativity and Technology

Jonathan Lee brings track record of success

By Marty Swant

Starting today, Jonathan Lee is the new chief strategy officer at Grey New York.

Lee joins the agency from Huge, where he spent three years as global managing director of planning and strategy. Prior to that, he held senior leadership roles in strategic and account planning at both traditional and digital agencies, including the digital agency Rosetta and TBWA\Chiat\Day New York.

Grey North America CEO Michael Houston said Lee will be tasked with evolving the Strategy Group at Grey, where he will drive development and implementation of a single point of view encompassing every aspect of the agency.

“It’s been said that the future of advertising lies at the intersection of creativity, data, media and technology,” Houston said. “Jonathan brings a track record of success in all of these areas as well as traditional brand planning.”

In an interview with Adweek on Monday afternoon, Lee said his experience at both traditional and digital agencies provides the background necessary for understanding and implementing integration. He said it’s important to maintain the integrity of each component while also applying them in the “right way at the right time.”

“The analogy I use is sausage,” Lee said. “You recognize the ingredients, but you get something different out of it.”

In recent years, Grey New York has doubled in size. Enhancing its talent, creative products and digital capabilities has led to heightened new business performance, and the company says it’s on pace in 2015 for a seventh year of record financial and creative performance. Key new business wins have included The Whitney Museum of American Art, Pandora and Folgers Coffee. The success has also led to a number of awards. This year at Cannes, Grey New York was the second most-awarded office in the world.

“We have the collective firepower to actually realize the ideas,” Lee said. “Now we have to get the strategic alignment to support them so they will be even bigger and even better.”

10762: Putting The Con In Confession.

Has anyone really been impressed with the Digiday Confessions series?

Honestly, are the alleged insider exposés actually uncovering new insights or shocking revelations? If the stories were shared in a confessional, most priests probably wouldn’t feel compelled to issue penance. The typical response might be, “Is that all you got?”

The latest installment—Confessions of a Big-Agency Top Digital Exec—only underscored the failure of integrated marketing in BDA environments, while also providing plenty of “No duh” moments.

For starters, “Big-Agency Top Digital Exec” is almost an oxymoron. As the confessor admitted, big agencies do not know what to do with high-level digital talent. The interviewee literally declared, “…I don’t think there is…one single example of an innovation person or department doing well at a big agency.” The narration went on to criticize clients, BDA management and even the digital executives for taking jobs for the money, ultimately jumping from shop to shop. For bona fide big-agency adpeople, it’s all been common knowledge for at least a decade.

The “Big-Agency Top Digital Exec” didn’t spend too much time discussing the majority of “chief innovation officers” who are simply old-fashioned con artists. You know the type. Fast-talking hucksters who pontificate about breakthrough technological concepts yet never manage to execute anything of merit. Of course, their résumés take credit for lots of award-winning projects. But when you probe for specifics on their roles in the interactive extravaganzas, the conversation is quickly shifted to the latest Nike app that they had nothing to do with. And as the confessor acknowledged, these self-promoters are highly successful at replaying their hustle for any agency desperately seeking digital credibility.

On many levels, big-agency top digital execs are not much different than big-agency top execs. They just tend to own and operate more gadgets.

10750: Why Integrated Marketing Fails.

At Business Insider, Jim Edwards further investigated the mess involving a Kellogg’s CRM project at Publicis Groupe’s Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide. A bunch of employees from the agencies resigned en masse, threatening to take the project with them. The eight rogue workers are now facing a lawsuit, the agencies look bad and the client has yet to make a public statement.

Can’t help but think the scenario underscores the fallacy of integrated marketing as presented by holding companies—and holds implications for the continued failure of implementing diversity initiatives too.

Despite the hype by networks offering a variety of services seamlessly across multiple units, true and effective collaboration is still a pipe dream. In the past year, Leo Burnett has absolutely demonstrated the sad reality. The place has unintentionally created solid case studies for dismantling the system.

For example, Digitas apparently won the Sprint account last December, leading a mythical “Team Sprint” with Leo Burnett on the roster. Yet it seems as if Burnett has seized control of the branding—producing painfully awful TV commercials—while the digital and direct portions sputter aimlessly. The sole bright note has been the elimination of spots featuring CEO Dan Hesse. This is not integrated marketing. It’s old-fashioned, dysfunctional corporate politics.

The Kellogg drama stars Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide, a partnership of traditional advertising and below-the-line disciplines (although rumor has it that in the Chicago market, Arc’s bottom line is well above Burnett’s). According to Edwards’ probing, the defecting executives included SVP Kristy Gibbs, who allegedly is the only person who understands the Kellogg CRM database. Really? A $710 million account serviced by global agencies had just a single human being capable of overseeing a project? That’s not a very deep bench. Leo Burnett and Arc Worldwide obviously lack the resources and expertise to handle Kellogg’s broad needs. Hell, it’s likely that Burnett was too occupied churning out Allstate Mayhem commercials to notice what was happening with Kellogg. The agencies deserve to lose the project—and possibly the total business.

The illusion of integrated marketing goes beyond Leo Burnett and its mates. The same bullshit occurs with virtually every holding company coalition. And in most instances, the traditional advertising agency is the root cause of the problems, as these shops tend to believe integration starts with traditional advertising. This might work in an ideal universe, except the “big ideas” generated by traditional advertising agencies rarely consider the other disciplines, as these shops remain clueless about anything that is not traditional advertising. On the flip side, the non-traditional advertising agencies remain clueless about traditional advertising. Need proof? Find any commercial from Digitas or Razorfish that doesn’t thoroughly suck.

The dilemma extends to the simple fact that traditional advertising agencies, digital agencies, direct marketing agencies, promotional agencies, public relations agencies, etc. are each operating distinct business models. Clients even pay the different disciplines differently. Ever see a traditional advertising guy effectively run a digital agency, or a digital guy effectively run a traditional advertising agency? When the separate shops try to unify, the result is a contemporary Tower of Babel, where everyone is speaking their own language and no one can understand or translate the objectives and directions. Need more proof? Consider Draftfcb, Enfatico or the soon-to-crash Commonwealth. Hell, toss in Cavalry too.

So how does it all apply to diversity? Well, if adpeople have difficulty learning to coexist when there are actual professional motivations and benefits, it’s hard to imagine integration could succeed on a cultural level. As the above scenarios show, White folks can’t even stand dealing with White folks.

10483: DDB Integrates. Sort Of.

Adweek reported DDB Chicago hired a Director of Integration—a new role for the agency. Only in the advertising industry does integration have absolutely nothing to do with diversity. In fact, integration means bringing in more White men. Brilliant.

DDB Chicago Adds Integration Chief

Alan Snitow hails from Gotham, starts in 3 weeks

By Andrew McMains

Peter McGuinness poached a trusted lieutenant from his previous agency to drive integration at the Chicago office of DDB.

Alan Snitow was director of strategy and innovation at Gotham in New York, where McGuinness was CEO from 2008 to 2011. At DDB, Snitow becomes director of integration, a new position.

The new hire is joining a leadership team that includes McGuinness, the president and CEO; chief creative officer Ewan Paterson; and chief strategy officer John Kottmann. Each has joined DDB in the past two years and collectively they steer an office of about 375 whose top accounts are McDonald’s, State Farm, Mars and Safeway.

Snitow, 36, spent more than 3½ years at Gotham, where he worked on brands such as Denny’s, Best Western and Hitachi. Before that, he was a group planning director for Ally Bank and Miller Lite at Bartle Bogle Hegarty in New York. Earlier in his career, he held account planning roles at SS+K, Deutsch and Saatchi & Saatchi.

McGuinness, who just completed his first year at the helm of Chicago, described Snitow as a “talented, competitive guy” who “brings an entrepreneurial spirit, an innovative drive and a passion for creativity in all its forms.”

Primarily, Snitow will focus on existing business. As such, he will work across all agency departments. That said, he’ll also contribute to new business pitches, according to McGuinness.

In accepting the offer, Snitow cited DDB’s leadership team, “iconic” brands and “depth of talent and resource.” He added that his goal is to “contribute to the development of a culture that celebrates the primacy of the idea and is open to exploding that idea creatively.” He starts Sept. 24.

6906: MBA In Bullshit.

Build your brand online —with a Master’s Degree in Internet Marketing. The hype states, “The Internet Marketing Master’s Degree provides an in-depth exploration of Internet-specific marketing methodologies, Internet law, and interactive advertising design principles, as well as teaching the best ways to utilize social media networks and search engine optimization. Through it all, you’ll gain the necessary tools to create a viable marketing and strategic plan for selling products, developing and cultivating a brand, and for protecting a company’s reputation within the Internet community.”

Um, why is a college offering a Master’s Degree promising expertise in areas that the entire industry has not yet figured out?

6884: Silos & Towers Create Long Garbage Chutes.

Others have likely made this comparison before, but MultiCultClassics will present it anyway.

Integrated Marketing is the new Tower of Babel.

Contrary to the lies hype generated by BDAs boasting integration, there simply isn’t much evidence to prove it. The key issue involves the forced combination of players speaking different languages and operating different business models. Oh, and the disciplines are making money in different ways too. The end result is chaos and failure to build anything. The vision of erecting the grand edifice is never realized.

In this case, however, the confounding confusion cannot be attributed to God. Rather, it’s solely the responsibility—or irresponsibility—of men unwilling to listen, learn and collaborate.

The 2009 Cannes International Advertising Festival, it should be noted, handed the Titanium & Integrated Lions to the Obama/Biden Presidential Campaign. There were no BDAs listed in the creative credits for the winning entry.

Not surprisingly, the advertising industry’s inability to integrate practices mirrors the inability to integrate people. It’s yet another diversity dream deferred.