12327: The More Things Change…

The New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott published his final column titled, “The Top 5 Changes on Madison Ave. Over the Last 25 Years”—and the old man ultimately showed that the more things change in adland, the more they stay the same (and even regress). Worth noting was the first change on Elliott’s list:

THE RISE OF DIVERSITY MARKETING As America has come to resemble the “gorgeous mosaic” of David N. Dinkins, advertisers responded—slowly at first, certainly—with inclusive, multicultural campaigns. The results of the 2010 census, which showed the Spanish-speaking population becoming a national presence, produced a boom in Hispanic marketing.

And as same-sex marriage becomes more prevalent and accepted, Madison Avenue is running ads with gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender consumers in mainstream media, not only in media aimed at this market. This year alone, brands climbing aboard the rainbow bandwagon included Beats Music, Brita, Cheerios, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola, Heineken Light, Honey Maid, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Mr. Clean, Revlon, Starbucks, Taco Bell and Tide.

Unfortunately, the rise of diversity marketing—which is highly debatable—has not sparked a rise of diversity. Representation of Black executives has actually declined in the field. On Madison Avenue, Mad Men era exclusivity lives on. Diversity remains a dream deferred and denied. Hell, the very definition of the term has shifted in recent years to focus on elevating White women.

For Elliott to state “advertisers responded—slowly at first, certainly—with inclusive, multicultural campaigns” is a little misleading (and perhaps a lot mistaken). The majority of clients responded inadequately; plus, it could easily be argued that a growing number are responding improperly with their non-White initiatives.

As for the “boom” in marketing to Latinos, it’s more like the backyard beating of a piñata—that is, it’s an event isolated from the general market fiesta. Multicultural marketing constitutes a separate-but-unequal ghetto where practitioners scratch and scramble for crumbs from the overall marketing pie. Change is essentially spare change. Plus, executives at minority advertising agencies within the White holding companies are almost indentured servants.

The LGBT pride parade seems fabulously segregated too. Additionally, some advertisers recognize a legitimate audience while others recognize an opportunity to spark interest via borrowed interest. Elliott is right to dub it “the rainbow bandwagon”—and it’s only a matter of time before Skittles incorporates its “Taste the Rainbow” campaign in the selfish hopes of landing a Cannes Lion.

Oh, and although White women are enjoying progress at Cannes, minorities are more apt to be the entertainment or wait staff versus active participants.

Elliott witnessed five top changes on Madison Avenue over 25 years. Minorities witnessed a twisted, discriminatory version of Groundhog Day.

12154: ANA Grabs More Ass(ociations).

The New York Times reported the Association of National Advertisers is on a merger tear, planning to acquire the Business Marketing Association. In May, the ANA picked up the Brand Activation Association. Wow, it’s just one blockbuster deal after another. Publicis Groupe Chairman-CEO Maurice Levy must be green with envy—but he vehemently refuses to comment on it or any other merger-related incident. Plus, it’s yet another opportunity for ANA President and CEO Bob Liodice to build troops for the Army to Advance Industry Diversity.

Association of National Advertisers to Acquire the Business Marketing Association

By Stuart Elliott

For the second time in five months, a venerable marketing trade association is acquiring another.

The Association of National Advertisers in New York, founded in 1910, has agreed to acquire the Business Marketing Association in Naperville, Ill., which was founded in 1922. The two associations are announcing the agreement on Friday morning.

It was the Association of National Advertisers that also made the acquisition in May, taking over an organization known as the Brand Activation Association, which had dated to 1911 and was long known as the Promotion Marketing Association. The Brand Activation Association became a division of the Association of National Advertisers, and that is what will become of the Business Marketing Association, effective on Nov. 30, pending approval of its members in a vote that is to begin on Friday.

The Business Marketing Association and the Association of National Advertisers are in many ways two sides of a similar coin. The Business Marketing Association has 2,500 members in what is called business-to-business marketing or b.-to-b. marketing — say, a maker of jet engines selling its engines to an airline or a maker of X-ray machines selling them to hospitals.

And the Association of National Advertisers, which has more than 630 member companies, represents business-to-consumer marketers, the firms that sell goods and services to the public.

The deal, for undisclosed financial terms, is being announced during the annual conference of the advertisers association, which began on Wednesday in Orlando, Fla., and is to continue through Saturday. The conference, called the Masters of Marketing, has set an attendance record, with more than 2,800 registered attendees.

Although “giving up your independence is emotional,” Steve Liguori, chairman of the Business Marketing Association, said in a phone interview from the conference on Thursday, “the A.N.A. can help us because of its scale and breadth.”

“The A.N.A. reached out to us several months ago and said, ‘We want to be all things marketing,'” Mr. Liguori said. “We’ve got the passion and expertise in b.-to-b., but we lack the scale.”

In becoming a division of the Association of National Advertisers, he added, the Business Marketing Association will move to New York from Naperville and its board of directors – which has approved the acquisition — will become a board of advisers. Al Maag, executive director of the association, will remain in his job, Mr. Liguori said.

Robert D. Liodice, president and chief executive of the advertisers association, said the agreement “enriches and complements the A.N.A.'s offerings,” adding, “Through the B.M.A. integration, the A.N.A. will be able to enhance its programs and the insights we deliver to our members.”

In announcing the acquisition in May of the Brand Activation Association, Mr. Liodice described his organization as “always looking to see how we can add to our portfolio” as it seeks to be “a full-service association for our members.”

The pair of acquisitions suggests that additional consolidation in the crowded field of marketing industry organizations may be forthcoming if executives start believing that fewer, larger associations may be more effective than many, smaller ones.

12129: Fearless Is Scary Stupid.

The New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott reported on an Advertising Week panel titled: Fearless—where advertisers were encouraged to be edgy risk-takers.

“Being fearless is the only answer right now,” declared Mondelez SVP CMO Dana Anderson, because “if you play it right up the middle you really don’t [accomplish much]. If it’s not good enough to tell somebody about, then it’s not good enough for you.”

Okay, but Mondelez is hardly fearless across the board. And a lot of the work for its brands—including the Honey Maid shit trotted out as an example—is closer to being scary versus fearless. Sorry, but the borrowed interest employed for Honey Maid is patronizing, self-absorbed dreck that jumps on emotional bandwagons already driven to death by other advertisers.

The bigger issue with the panel’s theme is the highly subjective nature of being fearless. Letting a digital agency, for example, produce videos and TV spots is not displaying fearlessness, but rather, foolishness. Ditto allowing traditional adpeople to pontificate on digital. Additionally, employing agencies like Droga5 is risky—as their output is wildly inconsistent—yet not fearless. It’s closer to being reckless. And handing the reins to in-house hacks is mindless. In short, agreeing upon a universal definition for fearless is no longer possible in a multimedia, multidiscipline industry featuring multiple levels of taste and talent.

It’s easy for Anderson to challenge her panel audience to be fearless, especially when the overwhelming majority of the attendees were probably sycophant agency partners or self-delusional peers. But when someone—particularly a traditionally conservative client—thinks they can standardize what it means to be fearless, be afraid. Very afraid.

Besides, Anderson should know that any fearless advertising for brands like Honey Maid will never match the ROI of simply posting S’more recipes online. Plus, persuading parents and their children to eat such toxic, unhealthy garbage is downright frightening.

12125: Dearth Of Dames Drivel.

The New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott spotlighted Advertising Week “diversity” discussions that exclusively focused on the industry’s alleged dearth of dames. To be clear, regardless of anything said to the contrary, the talks were really about promoting White women. A panel titled “Women Aren’t Creative?” featured adwomen staging the standard bitch session. Charlotte Beers remarked, “Let’s assume no one’s going to clean up their act,” which Elliott interpreted to mean that the White men in charge shouldn’t be expected to change. But the truth is, Ms. Beers made a safe assumption because industry leaders including Beers have absolutely failed to make good on diversity since at least the 1950s—and there’s no evidence to indicate a revolution will occur anytime soon. Leo Burnett CCO Susan Credle presented the increasingly common clueless comment by saying, “Diversity is necessary to stay relevant. [But] not just women: geographic diversity, racial diversity, religious diversity.” Okay, Credle, let us know when your irrelevant agency delivers on any of those categories. Ironically, White women comprise the only group to experience significant success in regards to increased representation and opportunities in the field. Yet adwomen were the sole “minority” group to receive a soapbox during Advertising Week. How pathetic.

At Ad Week, a Push to Make Diversity a Reality Beyond Conference Discussions

By Stuart Elliott

AS has been the case during previous iterations of Advertising Week in New York City, there were several panels, presentations and discussions about diversity during this year’s event, which concluded on Thursday. Still, the debate continues as to whether efforts to make the industry’s work force reflective of America’s changing face are truly a priority for executives or rather something to pay lip service to at annual conferences.

“Today, we still do not have enough women” in creative roles, Laura Agostini, worldwide chief talent officer at JWT, said Thursday morning while introducing a panel that carried the provocative title “Women Aren’t Creative?” The panel, sponsored by JWT, part of WPP, and The New York Times, signaled the formal start of a $250,000 scholarship program financed by JWT and named after a pioneering female copywriter at the agency, Helen Lansdowne Resor. The Resor Scholarship program is intended to nurture female advertising students in Canada, China, India, Japan, the Middle East, South Africa and the United States.

“So it’s a start,” Ms. Agostini said, “but it’s not enough.”

A panelist, Charlotte Beers, said, “Let’s assume no one’s going to clean up their act” — in other words, do not wait for the men in charge to mend their ways. Ms. Beers — a former chairwoman of JWT as well as a former chairwoman and chief executive of a sister agency, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide — told the women in the audience to “sign up, say ‘I’ll do it,’ step out in front of your PowerPoints” and “learn how to claim your victories.”

She added: “Keep your own scorecard. Write your own approval sheet.”

Another panelist, Maureen Dowd, an Op-Ed columnist at The Times, began her initial remarks by saying, “I’m going to have to say this softly, because I’m in this building,” referring to The Times Center, where the panel was held. She proceeded to read a list of Times columnists using their given names, among them “Nick,” “Joe” and “Frank” — as in Nicholas Kristof, Joe Nocera and Frank Bruni — before concluding, “And then Gail and me,” referring to Gail Collins.

Ms. Dowd also read the audience something that she described as “the most up-to-date, modern advice for women,” which included a need to “develop skin as tough as a rhinoceros hide.” The punch line came when she attributed the advice to Eleanor Roosevelt in 1936.

A third panelist, Shelley Zalis, chief executive of Ipsos Open Thinking Exchange, was responsible for a vehicle parked outside The Times Center during Advertising Week that was designated as the Ipsos Girls’ Lounge, offering women amenities like makeup touchups. “I don’t want a seat at the table because I’m a woman,” Ms. Zalis said. “I want a seat at the table because I’m the best.”

The panel was one of three that were for or about women on Thursday morning. There were, by one count, four such panels on Wednesday, an Ipsos Girls’ Lounge dinner on Tuesday and a panel on Monday called “Rethinking Marketing to Women” as Advertising Week began. “There’s still real stagnation for women at the top” of the advertising industry, Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, said as she moderated the Monday panel.

Among those taking part in a Thursday panel devoted to creative inspiration was one of the highest-ranking female creative executives in advertising, Susan Credle, chief creative officer of Leo Burnett U.S.A. in Chicago, part of the Leo Burnett division of the Publicis Groupe.

After the panel, Ms. Credle said in an interview that she took the position at Burnett because it was important to have women in senior posts “on the creative side” of agencies.

“Diversity is necessary to stay relevant,” she added, but “not just women: geographic diversity, racial diversity, religious diversity.”

During her panel, Ms. Credle talked about Burnett’s decision last month to join agencies like DDB, FCB and Ogilvy & Mather in a diversity initiative called “No. 2.66,” which refers to the idea that at the rate of hiring as of 2013, “true equality will not be realized in the advertising industry” for another 66 years, according to the initiative’s website.

When recruiting employees, Ms. Credle said, agencies also should seek people from diverse backgrounds with nontraditional types of résumés because “we’re getting the same types of people in advertising” and “we’ll become myopic” if the issue is not addressed.

“It’s why boutiques are doing well,” she added, referring to smaller agencies. “We have to make sure in more traditional shops we have people coming in from different walks of life.” She listed among those poets, artists, actors and designers of skateboards and sneakers.

The interest in women in advertising was not confined this week to those who attended Advertising Week. Adweek.com on Thursday published an article by Nils Leonard, chief creative officer of Grey London, that carried the title “Why the Perfect Modern Creative Is Fierce, Fearless and Female.”

The article began: “The perfect modern creative is a woman. Because we have enough men, and men like it is the way it is right now.” The article ended with Mr. Leonard’s announcement that he was resigning so that a woman could take his post.

Just kidding.

12109: Key In On Lost Boys Of Sudan.

From The New York Times…

Film on Lost Boys of Sudan Uses Keys to Stand Out

By Stuart Elliott

THE creators, producers and distributors of a new film are hoping that keys will be the key to helping their movie stand out in a crush of fall releases.

The film, “The Good Lie,” is a drama featuring Reese Witherspoon that is to be released by Warner Bros. on Oct. 3. The film tells a fictionalized story based on the arrival in the United States more than a decade ago of African refugees known as the Lost Boys of Sudan; Ms. Witherspoon portrays an employment agency counselor who helps a group of Lost Boys arriving in Kansas City adjust to American life.

A campaign to build awareness of — and sell tickets for — “The Good Lie,” which is to begin on Thursday, is centered on two tactics that are significantly reshaping the way movies are now promoted: social media and cause marketing.

The campaign involves a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles, the Giving Keys, that was coincidentally started by an actress, Caitlin Crosby. The organization hires people who are trying to escape homelessness to make jewelry from repurposed keys that are inscribed with inspirational messages; buyers of a key are asked to “pay it forward” by giving it away to someone “you feel needs the message” and then blogging about the experience on the organization’s website, thegivingkeys.com.

In connection with “The Good Lie,” 250 keys inscribed with the word “Give” on one side and “Good” on the other will be distributed to celebrities and other so-called influencers who have a large and loyal following on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. The campaign will have elements that include a hashtag, #GiveGood; a video clip; events like engraving of keys for those attending screenings of “The Good Lie”; and giveaways of 50 additional keys to fans whose posts in social media are deemed inspiring and carry the hashtag.

Plans also call for the conversations generated in social media to be amplified by, among others, Ms. Crosby, the Giving Keys and Warner Bros., using their own social media accounts.

The cause-marketing aspects of the campaign are part of an attempt to aim “The Good Lie” at religious audiences. Another example is a philanthropic effort, the Good Lie Fund, in conjunction with the Tides Foundation, raising money to help Lost Boys in real life.

The campaign is being created by Ignition Factory in Los Angeles, which works for Warner Bros. and is part of the Omnicom Media Group division of the Omnicom Group. Although Warner Bros. and Ignition Factory declined to discuss the budget for the campaign, the social media focus suggests it is a thrifty initiative, estimated in the low tens of thousands of dollars.

“This kind of promotion, a way to give back, is inventive and in line with everything we’re trying to do on a grass-roots basis around the country” to interest moviegoers in “The Good Lie,” said Molly Smith, a producer of “The Good Lie” who was executive producer of the Oscar-winning movie “The Blind Side.”

“What I like about it is that it’s like a call to action,” she added, “giving people another way to be proud of giving back” and giving celebrities a way to “talk about something positive they’re doing instead of selfies.”

“The Good Lie” is not an easy film to market in that it has “themes and values” that may appeal to religious ticket buyers, Ms. Smith said, but “isn’t strictly a faith-based movie; it isn’t ‘The Ten Commandments.’ ” Ms. Smith financed “The Good Lie” through her Black Label Media and it is being released by Warner Bros. through a distribution deal with Alcon Entertainment, a company in which her father, Frederick W. Smith, founder and chairman of FedEx, is a primary investor.

The campaign is the first time that the Giving Keys has been involved with a “major motion picture,” Ms. Crosby said, adding, “I love what this film represents.”

“We’re going to encourage our followers and influencers, and their followers and influencers, to do random acts of kindness,” she added, “from the smallest gesture to big things like Reese’s character.”

The emotional components of the campaign echo some themes for the traditional advertising for “The Good Lie,” including posters and print ads that carry the headline “Miracles are made by people who refuse to stop believing” and these lines that are superimposed on screen during the theatrical trailer: “She opened her home. They opened her eyes.”

Chris Denson, West Coast director of Ignition Factory, said: “At the end of the day, we wanted this to be an extension of the storytelling and not make it feel like marketing. ‘Give Good’ is so central to what the story is.”

It is crucial that potential audiences not perceive the campaign as “a stunt,” he added, and the social media platforms will achieve a goal to “develop a community of like-minded people.”

At the same time, “one thing we like about this program is that it has a physical component” in the form of the keys, Mr. Denson said, in contrast to many social media efforts that have no tangible presence in real life.

Still, the number of keys will be limited to “close to 350,” he added, because “creating exclusivity is key, no pun intended,” to stimulating buzz online.

12068: The Dumb Leading The Dumber.

The New York Times reported Google is schooling Madison Avenue on digital. Not sure who would lend a helping hand to whom if the subject shifted from digital to diversity. Google and Madison Avenue could endlessly swap stories of abject failure, cultural cluelessness, institutionalized ignorance and deliberate discrimination.

Google Lends a Helping Hand to Madison Ave. on Digital Proficiency

By Stuart Elliott

GOOGLE is inviting Madison Avenue to go to the head of the class, offering tutorials to up-and-coming employees of advertising and media agencies on how to more effectively use digital tools like mobile, social platforms and video for marketing purposes.

Google is calling the digital school for agencies Squared, after the idea that squaring a number or letter in a formula — for instance, e = mc2 — exponentially increases its size or power. The Squared program is coming to the United States after being tested in Britain in 2012 and given a green light a year later; more than 300 employees of more than 60 agencies, including Carat, DigitasLBi, JWT, Mindshare and Starcom, have taken part there.

In this country, the first classes are being held in New York, beginning this week, for more than 40 employees of 17 or so agencies like Leo Burnett, Carat, Initiative, JWT, Ogilvy & Mather, OMD and Starcom. Some additional employees, of client companies, are also expected to take part in the program, which is scheduled to run for six weeks.

In addition to presentations by people who work for Google, participants will hear from other digital firms, among them BuzzFeed and Twitter, and from agency executives recognized as digital leaders. (Twitter recently announced a training program of its own for agencies, an online tutorial named Flight School.)

The Squared sessions are the most recent in a skein of efforts by Google to reach out to agencies. Among them were Google Partners, an online educational program; Project Re:Brief, which gave modern-day makeovers to vintage campaigns for brands like Alka-Seltzer (“I can’t believe I ate the whole thing”) by adding digital components; and Art, Copy and Code, which reworked Project Re:Brief to concentrate on present-day ads for brands like Volkswagen.

“The purpose is to make digital core to the agency experience by helping to educate the next generation of agency talent,” said Torrence Boone, a former senior Madison Avenue executive who is now global head for advertising sales and services of Google, and “exposing the industry to the possibilities unleashed by digital.”

Although “there’s been an incredible amount of progress in terms of the agency ecosystem’s embracing of digital platforms and products, the ask for the industry is, How do we get digital more embedded as a way we think about campaign development?” Mr. Boone said. “Digital acumen still can be thought of, used as, an add-on. We want to make it a starting point.”

The decision by Google to offer the Squared program reflects that while digital advertising may have come a long way, baby, to quote another vintage campaign, digital specialists like Google could certainly benefit further if Madison Avenue became more skilled at — and comfortable with — the likes of social media, search engine optimization and web video series.

“We are simply trying to provide a baseline of exposure to all of the amazing things that are happening across the digital landscape,” Mr. Boone said. “It’s not just about Google; it’s about the entire digital landscape.”

As for what Google is spending, all Mr. Boone would say is that “it’s a significant investment, and something we plan to scale, assuming the pilot here in the U.S. is successful.” The agencies are making an investment, too, he added, in paying the salaries of their employees for the 30 weekdays the workers are detached to attend the Squared sessions.

That, said Kathleen Brookbanks, chief operating officer for the OMD U.S. unit of OMD — part of the Omnicom Media Group division of the Omnicom Group — represents “a big commitment” for the agencies, and “it’s obviously something we gave more than the usual thought to.”

“We are sending three people from OMD in New York,” she added, “based on feedback from our U.K. office as to how valuable the learning was” from the Squared classes in London.

“As more and more money goes into the digital space, it’s a great opportunity for our people to get a deep dive into it,” Ms. Brookbanks said, adding: “We feel a strong confidence there will be more teaching about the space than just about Google. If it’s just about one vendor, you’re not going to send people for six weeks.”

Although Google competes in some ways with Madison Avenue — inspiring references to the company as a “frenemy,” as once famously remarked by Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP — “that doesn’t change our belief this program has a lot to offer,” Ms. Brookbanks said.

That sentiment was echoed by Sarah Baehr, executive vice president and managing director of Carat; Carat and its parent, the Dentsu Aegis Network unit of Dentsu, are sending six employees to Squared. “As managers and proponents of our industry, we should be training people to be bigger thinkers,” Ms. Baehr said. “We don’t always do as good a job as we can in helping people be successful in their roles.”

As for fears that Google might use the sessions for “recruiting the best and the brightest” from agencies to work at Google, “that’s not a great way to endear yourself,” she added, laughing.

Mr. Boone sought to reassure participating agencies about Google’s intentions. “The dialogue we’ve had with our agency partners has been productive,” he said. “They’re looking at this as a way to retain and develop talent, and drive differentiation in the marketplace.”

“What’s important to recognize is that the agencies have asked us for this,” he added. “It’s absolutely a friendly initiative where we’re coming together to invest in the next generation of talent.”

12063: Mad Men On Mentoring…?

The New York Times reported on a partnership between Esquire magazine and three advertising agencies to promote male mentorship. Honestly, what the hell do most White ad shops know about mentoring? The agencies—72andSunny, Barton F. Graf 9000 and Makeable—appear to be a standard collection of firms dominated by White males. Heaven forbid anyone would have thought to tap the Marcus Graham Project for insight and advice. Lincoln Stephens and his partners have done about a million times more with mentoring than all three of the White shops combined.

Esquire Partners With 3 Agencies to Promote Male Mentorship

By Stuart Elliott

ESQUIRE magazine is teaming up again with Madison Avenue for a new cause-marketing initiative, seeking to encourage more adult men to mentor boys and young men.

The initiative comes eight years after a collaboration between the magazine and an up-and-coming agency to raise money for clean drinking water in the third world. That effort proved successful enough to become a permanent Unicef fund-raising program — and helped the agency become better known.

This time, Esquire has recruited three agencies deemed on the cutting edge of creativity to produce multimedia campaigns to demonstrate how valuable mentors are to youth and the benefits to the mentors of helping out. The initiative begins with the October issue of Esquire, now making its way to newsstands and subscribers.

In addition to the 30 or so pages in the issue devoted to mentoring — focused on the theme “Who made you the man you are today?” — Esquire is creating content online and working with a social publisher called RebelMouse to invite readers to share their mentoring experiences through videos, photographs and posts on platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Esquire also plans to promote the initiative on the Esquire Network cable channel, a unit of NBCUniversal, and to involve other magazines like Popular Mechanics that are also part of Hearst Magazines.

The goal of the initiative, which includes a partnership with a national mentoring organization, Mentor, is to enlist 100,000 men as mentors by 2020.

“We’ve been concerned about the state of boys and young men, covering the way the education system and the criminal justice system fail them,” said David M. Granger, editor in chief of Esquire, which is based in New York.

“As we’ve talked to experts, we’ve found one consistent path to success is a relationship with a strong male role model,” he added, “so there’s a need for men, the next generation of mentors, to get interested in the idea of mentorship,” and a need to make it easier for them to volunteer.

To increase the appeal of mentorship to men in their 20s and 30s, “we wanted to make the idea more ‘sexy,’ ” Mr. Granger said, and make the word “mentor” seem less fusty.

Just as Esquire sought out the New York agency Droga5 in 2006 to create the effort to improve access to drinking water — originally known as the Tap Project and since rebranded as the Unicef Tap Project — the magazine decided to ask three agencies to develop campaigns to put more men into mentoring.

The intent was to find agencies that are filled with potential the way the now well-known Droga5 was eight years ago, said Richard Dorment, a senior editor at Esquire.

“When we worked with Droga5, it was before they were Droga5,” he said, laughing.

After considering a list of agencies considered fresh on the scene, Mr. Dorment and Mr. Granger reached out to Barton F. Graf 9000 in New York, which works for clients like GoDaddy; Makeable, formerly Poke, a New York agency that specializes in design and product development; and 72andSunny, a Los Angeles-based agency that works for clients like Samsung.

The campaign from Barton F. Graf 9000 is centered on a proposed Mentor Act, which would establish mentorship “as a legal excuse from jury duty.” A website explains the concept: “Stay out of the court system by helping young men stay out of the court system.”

Gerry Graf, the agency’s founder and chief creative officer, said: “I was pretty excited when they contacted us. I have, I think, three subscriptions to magazines, and Esquire is one of them.”

The campaign was developed by approaching the issue as “a standard marketing problem,” he said, adding: “How do you get people to try something? Give them something back. We thought, if you’re a mentor, there’ll be less reason for jury duty.”

The work by Makeable is focused on webuildmen.org, a website now under construction, offering potential mentors what the home page calls “the know-how, the people and the tools for today’s man to build tomorrow’s.”

Michael Kantrow, a co-founder of Makeable with Tom Ajello, said: “We’re all very busy. So we thought, let’s help guys figure out this mentoring thing in today’s world by giving them a tool kit, a platform we call the beginning of a community that would appeal to contemporary men.”

The campaign by 72andSunny, part of MDC Partners, suggests that by mentoring, men can have fun, tapping into their inner boys with their mentees, while doing something important. The ads use a censored version of a vulgarism in offering a phrase mentors can say when questioned about what they are doing; the expression is something like “Back off, I’m helping.”

The variation on the vulgarism is “not just glib,” said Matt Jarvis, partner and chief strategy officer of 72andSunny, but part of the agency’s attempt to “bring a populist sensibility” to mentorship and make it more accessible to more people.

“Our insight was that mentorship has an earnest, worthy sensibility to it, so much so that a lot of men feel they don’t qualify to be mentors,” Mr. Jarvis said. “So we say, ‘You don’t have to read Shakespeare together, you can eat hamburgers together, jump off a high-dive together.’”

Mr. Dorment and Mr. Granger said they intended to devote pages of the November and December issues of Esquire as part of plans to keep the initiative going into next year.

Esquire is not the only brand seeking to bolster the ranks of male mentors. The Dove Men-Plus Care line of antiperspirants and deodorants sold by Unilever is starting a campaign centered on mentoring through youth football.

12021: The Fine Art Of Mad Men.

The New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott published a report on an exhibit at the Museum of the City of New York titled, “Mac Conner: A New York Life,” featuring Conner’s illustration work from the Mad Men era of advertising. Three examples of his work appear below.

It kinda makes one wonder which artists were responsible for illustrations like the following examples below.

12002: Milking Cross-Cultural Crap.

The New York Times advertising columnist Stuart Elliott reported on a new campaign for the California Milk Processor Board that demonstrates cross-cultural marketing—yet ultimately displays cultural cluelessness. It’s a total market approach that’s total bullshit. Or cow shit, since the commercials are trying to sell milk.

BTW, the commercials suck, which hardly helps promote the cross-cultural/total market propaganda. The only thing tying the spots into a campaign is the injection of the iconic “got milk?” tagline. The individual executions—“Champion” and “Brave”—are contrived, clichéd and crappy. Seriously, these could be the worst installments in a collection that has featured breakthrough ideas for many years. If this stuff is indeed representative of cross-cultural thinking, one could easily argue in support of sticking with segregation. That is, let the Whites and minorities continue to toil in their respective advertising agency silos.

What’s most bewildering is that the two shops responsible for the commercials—Goodby Silverstein & Partners and Grupo Gallegos—typically do award-winning work. Did the cross-cultural collaboration lead to committeeism? Or could it be that deliberately catering to all markets waters down the milk?

California Milk Processor Board Executive Director Stephen James explained, “This is the first time our agencies have worked as a cohesive team on creative strategy, creative execution and media planning. … It’s happening now as a result of a coming together of trends, in California especially, that seem to be getting more and more pronounced. … Terms like ‘the Hispanic market’ and ‘the general market’ seem so quaint at this point because you’re seeing such a cross-pollination of media, language, food, culture, you name it. … We’re looking at Californians as they evolve into one market.” Wow, James has obviously been drinking something much stronger than milk. If the Hispanic market and the general market seem so quaint, why does James continue to employ separate shops? Why was collaboration necessary? Couldn’t one agency have handled the total market solo? Hell, a roomful of monkeys could have outperformed GS&P and Grupo Gallegos on this initiative.

According to the NY Times story, Jeff Goodby “was the lead creative director for the campaign, overseeing creative employees of his agency and Grupo Gallegos.” Um, when did Goodby become qualified to lead such an endeavor? Handing him the reins is like asking Donald Sterling to emcee the ADCOLOR® Awards. Goodby’s role underscores how the cross-cultural/total market trend is essentially a thinly veiled attempt to give complete control to the White agencies. It’s not progressive; rather, it’s absolutely regressive, as well as repressive, oppressive and depressive. Besides, Goodby failed to establish harmony in a White coalition, so believing he could run a multicultural affair showed utter ignorance and insanity.

Goodby stated that in the “Champion” spot, the Black mother, Black girl and Black decathlete were cast so they could “easily be Caribbean Hispanic.” Huh?! Anyone who has ever produced work for Caribbean audiences knows Goodby’s culturally clueless contentions are laughably incorrect. The man deserves a sixth appearance in the C’MON WHITE MAN! series.

“We flew [Grupo Gallegos] teams up [to San Francisco] and vice versa,” Goodby said, “to work together in the same room on the ads.” Why? Grupo Gallegos has historically hatched spots that nabbed Cannes Lions, as has GS&P. This team-up resulted in awfulness that stinks worse than grossly sour milk.

To wrap up, somebody owes Pepper Miller an apology—and kudos for being downright prophetic.

Selling Milk to All Audiences, With a Unified Campaign

By Stuart Elliott

THE California Milk Processor Board, like many marketers, has one agency creating campaigns for the general market and another creating campaigns for ethnic audiences, in this instance Spanish-speaking consumers. Now, in a shift indicative of a movement on Madison Avenue known as cross-cultural marketing or a “total market” approach, the board asked its two agencies to collaborate on a campaign encouraging all Californians, regardless of ethnicity or the language they speak, to buy and drink more milk.

The campaign is to begin on Wednesday with two television commercials, each with soundtracks in English and Spanish; plans call for the spots to be followed by radio ads, digital ads and social media content. The ads are the result of the teaming of the board’s general market agency — Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco, part of the Omnicom Group — and the Hispanic agency Grupo Gallegos in Huntington Beach, Calif.

The board has worked since 1993 with Goodby, Silverstein, which created the familiar “Got milk?” slogan that the board licensed for national dairy marketing efforts from 1995 until earlier this year. Ads from Grupo Gallegos, the board’s Hispanic agency since 2005, carry the theme “Toma leche,” or “Drink milk.”

“This is the first time our agencies have worked as a cohesive team on creative strategy, creative execution and media planning,” said Stephen James, executive director of the board in San Clemente, Calif. “It’s happening now as a result of a coming together of trends, in California especially, that seem to be getting more and more pronounced.”

“Terms like ‘the Hispanic market’ and ‘the general market’ seem so quaint at this point because you’re seeing such a cross-pollination of media, language, food, culture, you name it,” he added. “We’re looking at Californians as they evolve into one market.”

That expresses a philosophy of those who advocate the total-market approach: As the American population becomes more diverse, they prefer to focus on the similarities among consumers rather than the differences.

“Total market is where things are headed,” said Michael Fernandez, chief executive of Factory 360, an agency in New York not involved in the milk campaign. “You’re marketing in a ‘Modern Family’ world, not an ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ world.”

The commonality celebrated in the campaign, Mr. James said, is that “the most important job” for the target of the ads — parents who buy milk, particularly mothers — “is making sure their children have a healthy future: a universally powerful force that transcends culture and language and ethnicity.”

In one commercial, a bedraggled woman speaks to a girl in a shopping cart in the milk aisle of a supermarket. “I’m you, from the future,” the woman tells the girl, who replies disappointedly, “You’re me?” The woman says: “I know. Drink this.” As the girl drinks milk, the woman exclaims, “It’s working, keep drinking,” races out of the supermarket and transforms into a champion decathlete. “We did it,” the woman shouts to the younger version of herself back in the store, where the girl’s mother is frantically filling the cart with milk.

The mother, the girl and the decathlete, who are black, were cast so they could “easily be Caribbean Hispanic,” said Jeff Goodby, the co-chairman of Goodby, Silverstein. He was the lead creative director for the campaign, overseeing creative employees of his agency and Grupo Gallegos.

“We flew their teams up” to San Francisco “and vice versa,” Mr. Goodby said, “to work together in the same room on the ads.”

The other commercial also plays with the passage of time. It begins with a firefighter of no discernible ethnicity pouring himself a glass of milk as a mother is heard talking to her young son, who is scared of the dark. “Let’s think about some people who make you feel brave,” she says, and when the boy replies, “Firemen,” the firefighter is shown rescuing a boy from a house fire and reuniting him with his mother. The commercial ends with the on-screen words “What you say with a glass of milk lasts forever.”

A lot of the “soulful, emotional tone” of the commercials “came from working with the guys at Grupo Gallegos,” Mr. Goodby said.

The lead strategic director for the campaign was Andrew Delbridge, chief strategy and engagement officer of Grupo Gallegos; he oversaw employees of his agency and Goodby, Silverstein.

“For milk, what we and Goodby had done was to take parallel paths toward the same goal,” said John Gallegos, president and chief executive of Grupo Gallegos. “This is about today’s market, and tomorrow’s, recognizing that in California we’re on the front edge of what’s happening in the rest of the country.”

“There’s a fine line” in adopting cross-cultural marketing, Mr. Gallegos said, in that “if you try to say too much to everybody, you wind up saying nothing.” Still, “our philosophy has always been that it’s one marketplace,” he added. “You have to go forward with one collective voice.”

To that end, Mr. Gallegos is making Marty Orzio the agency’s chief creative officer; Mr. Orzio, who had been serving on an interim basis, was chief creative officer of general market agencies like Energy BBDO and Gotham.

“You’ve got to put the best talent on client assignments,” Mr. Gallegos said, “talent that understands the U.S. as a whole.”

The budget for the campaign is around what the milk board typically spends, a bit more than $10 million on an annualized basis. Plans call for the ads to run through January, Mr. James said, “and then we’ll see what the results are” before deciding whether to ask the two agencies to collaborate again.

11995: Memo To Edelman—STFU.

The New York Times reported on the recent fuck-ups from PR shithole Edelman. The story—written by the typically polite advertising columnist Stuart Elliott—was hardly flattering. Makes one wonder who the hell is handling PR for the alleged public relations experts. Maybe Edelman should create a multimedia campaign to promote itself—like what bp did to counter the hate ignited by the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Or even like the propaganda Edelman shat out during the Rupert Murdoch scandal. Then again, maybe not. The problem is, the Edelman wonks in the NY Times story came off as if they were trying to be contrite; however, they didn’t sound sincere. Even worse, they didn’t appear to realize the full depth of their own ignorance. Edelman executives should be instructed to assume a fetal position under their desks and keep their fucking mouths shut—plus, please step away from the keyboard and stop publishing blog posts!

Edelman P.R. Firm Acts to Correct Faux Pas

By Stuart Elliott

A GIANT public relations agency that has been under fire for a couple of gaffes in the last couple of weeks says it is taking steps to try to make sure such blunders do not recur — the kinds of steps it would recommend to clients in the same predicaments.

“What the leadership team decided,” Ben Boyd, president for practices, sectors and offerings at Edelman in New York, said in an interview on Friday, is that “we will treat ourselves like we treat a client.”

“Lesson learned,” he added.

“Just because you advise clients on the complexities of today’s world, that doesn’t mean they’re easier to manage,” Mr. Boyd said, adding that “it would have been smart” to have had in place at Edelman some of the internal protocols and processes that the agency’s 5,000 employees suggest that clients adopt.

Edelman, the largest independent public relations firm in the world by revenue, found itself having to re-examine its procedures after two episodes that generated unwelcome media attention. The first involved the agency’s response to a survey of large public relations agencies, conducted by The Guardian and an organization called the Climate Investigations Center, about representing clients that deny climate change. The second incident, less fraught than the first, was centered on a blog post suggesting that the suicide of Robin Williams represented “an opportunity” for a national conversation about depression.

The Guardian, in an article on Aug. 4, reported that Edelman, unlike many of its competitors, “did not explicitly rule out taking on climate deniers as clients,” and included a sentence that read, “An initial response to C.I.C. from Edelman inadvertently included an internal email which said: ‘I don’t believe we are obligated in any way to respond. There are only wrong answers for this guy.’” The article was illustrated with what was described as a screen grab of the conversation inside Edelman showing that the email had been written by Mark Hass, who was at the time United States president and chief executive of Edelman. He left the agency last month.

The Guardian published a follow-up article on Aug. 7 reporting on a subsequent statement on the Edelman website in which the agency said it “fully recognizes the reality of and science behind climate change” and does not “accept client assignments that aim to deny climate change.”

Two related articles by Brian Merchant were on the Motherboard channel of Vice, one on Aug. 5 castigating Edelman and one on Tuesday about a telephone call from Richard Edelman, president and chief executive of Edelman, to Mr. Merchant, during which, Mr. Merchant wrote, Mr. Edelman told him that Edelman had “fired” Mr. Hass “in part because of that stupid note he wrote” and describing Mr. Hass as “the ham-head who filled out the questionnaire to be a little, uh, slick.” (Earlier, in a blog post, Mr. Edelman said that the agency “did a poor job of filling out” the questionnaire.)

That, in turn, brought online articles questioning Edelman from publications like O’Dwyer’s and PR Week because, when it was reported in April that Mr. Hass would leave the agency, his departure was described by Edelman as his stepping down rather than as a dismissal. “It wasn’t the best interview I’ve ever seen,” said Steve Barrett, editor in chief of PR Week, referring to Mr. Edelman’s conversation with Mr. Merchant. “It certainly wouldn’t be in line with the media training they give their clients.”

In an email statement on Friday, Mr. Edelman, who took issue with the first Motherboard article in his blog post, wrote this about the second article: “In a recent interview my intention was to simply clarify Edelman does not accept client assignments that deny climate change. I regret several of the remarks I made beyond that.” Mr. Hass could not be reached for comment.

“I don’t feel sorry for Edelman for mishandling” the questionnaire, said Kert Davies, executive director of the Climate Investigations Center in Washington, because inquiries about climate-change policies “have been posed multiple times for 20 years” to other companies in fields like energy, transportation and consumer products.

Although how Edelman handled the matter was “a bit of shooting one’s own feet,” Mr. Davies said, and cast shadows “on a firm that handles crisis communications” for others, “I’m not gloating.” He said, however, that he remained skeptical about Edelman’s eschewing of climate denial when the agency works for clients like the American Petroleum Institute. Mr. Barrett of PR Week estimated that 10 to 15 percent of “the business in the P.R. industry comes from energy companies.”

As for the blog post after Mr. Williams’s death, Mr. Barrett said he believed it “was written in good faith,” adding, “Personally, I don’t think it was a crass attempt to cash in on a tragedy.” The post described “a very careful line” that mental health professionals and people with depression “need to walk so as to not seem exploitive of a terrible situation” and added, in parentheses, “We too are balancing that line with this post.”

Mr. Boyd of Edelman said, “We should have been more thoughtful about the headline” — it read, “Carpe Diem,” quoting a line from the Williams film “Dead Poets Society” — “and about the timing of the post.”

The agency apologized in a post on its Twitter account. “We talk to clients about being nimble, about being engaged in real time,” Mr. Boyd said, but there ought to be “checks and balances in place” to address problems as they arise or prevent them from intensifying.

“We’ve already asked a team” inside Edelman “to look at issues, reputation management issues, that we as a firm have,” he added, and that examination will be “global in nature and across all our areas.”

11414: Creating Cross-Cultural Confusion.

The New York Times reported on the latest attempt to make sense of cross-cultural marketing: the launch of the Cross Cultural Marketing and Communications Association. At first blush, the organization appears to be nothing more than the usual cross-cultural suspects—OgilvyCULTURE, Draftfcb and Millward Brown—officially hooking up in an attempt to build momentum behind their fuzzy agenda. At second blush, it’s just kinda pathetic.

For starters, the cross-cultural mouthpieces are saying absolutely nothing new—although it might sound new to the overwhelming majority of adpeople, most of whom never paid attention when cross-cultural fanatics began squawking in earnest back in 2011. The problem then is the same now; that is, the core message lacks clarity and focus. More importantly, there is no legitimate motivation for supporting the cause.

It doesn’t help that the cause is rooted in flawed thinking. The New York Times article spotlighted the erroneous rationales when stating, “Cross-cultural marketing tries to reach diverse consumer groups, addressing similarities rather than differences.” The statement seems to imply typical multicultural marketing deliberately tries to exploit or exaggerate differences. This is simply false. In fact, multicultural marketing ordinarily attempts to be synergistic with the mass-market efforts. And multicultural marketing, incidentally, often has greater crossover appeal to all segments than the mass-market stuff produced by White agencies.

The truth is, multicultural marketing originated from a basic advertising tenet: know your audience. In that respect, it shares primary objectives with the mass-market communications versus merely “addressing differences.”

But wait, there’s more. The fragmentation of media—accelerated by the digital revolution and globalization of markets—makes it silly to believe one campaign can cover everyone. The mass market is dead, killed by societal shifts and evolutions. Multicultural marketers have been saying it for years, and the rest of the advertising world is finally getting around to reading the autopsy report.

The New York Times article offered further bullshit via a quote from OgilvyCULTURE Honcho Jeffrey L. Bowman: “The industry says you have to be in the general market box or in the multicultural marketing box…Cross-cultural is inclusive of both boxes.” Huh? Sorry, Mr. Bowman, but let’s be honest. White agencies are to blame for the segregation in our industry. Clients too. Cross-cultural as defined by the Cross Cultural Marketing and Communications Association is what the White agencies should be doing if they are charged with reaching the mythical mass market. Unfortunately, what is dubbed “mass market” is shorthand for White. If cross-cultural is not happening today, it’s only because White agencies remain culturally clueless.

Cross-cultural arguably has little to do with multicultural marketing; rather, it exposes the major dilemma of exclusivity at White agencies. Indeed, OgilvyCULTURE and the cross-cultural components at Draftfcb are segregated silos. Bowman sings the praises of cross-cultural, yet he can’t even get his own office partners to join the chorus.

In short, cross-cultural clowns should not seek to distinguish themselves by criticizing multicultural marketing; rather, the judgments should be hurled at White agencies boasting mass-market expertise. For drones from OgilvyCULTURE or Draftfcb cross-cultural units, that would require confronting one’s bosses.

Draftfcb Executive Vice President and Chief Global Strategy Officer Vita Harris blurred matters by insisting cross-cultural demands agencies and advertisers must have their “fingers on the pulse of consumers…[and] a lot of that comes out of hiring people who reflect the consumer base.” So is cross-cultural a diversity initiative too? Talk about tying an albatross to the crusade.

It’s unclear what the Cross Cultural Marketing and Communications Association hopes to accomplish—just as it’s still unclear what OgilvyCULTURE is trying to do. However, the new organization is holding The Total Market Conference on September 9-10 in New York City. Look for a cross-cultural awards show, perhaps followed by a minority internship program, in the near future.

::

New Ad Organization to Promote Cross-Cultural Marketing

By Stuart Elliott

Five big names on Madison Avenue are joining forces to start an organization devoted to promoting what is known as cross-cultural marketing: pitches directed at a general market whose demographic makeup is becoming much more diverse.

The organization, called the Cross Cultural Marketing and Communications Association, is being started by the American Association of Advertising Agencies; Draftfcb, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies; PepsiCo; and two divisions of WPP, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide and the Millward Brown research company.

The new association plans to introduce itself at the Total Market Industry Conference, which is set for Sept. 9 and 10 at the Ogilvy & Mather headquarters on the West Side of Manhattan. Speakers are to discuss subjects like demographic trends, how to engage new kinds of consumers, technological trends and how to attract and keep talented employees.

Cross-cultural marketing tries to reach diverse consumer groups, addressing similarities rather than differences. An example would be a recent commercial for Cheerios cereal, sold by General Mills, which featured an interracial family. That approach diverges from multicultural marketing, which is directed at specific demographic groups like Hispanics or African-Americans.

“The industry says you have to be in the general market box or in the multicultural marketing box,” said Jeffrey L. Bowman, the founder of the new organization. “Cross-cultural is inclusive of both boxes.”

Mr. Bowman’s day job is as the cross-cultural practice lead at Ogilvy & Mather, where he is also a managing director and senior partner. He has long advocated an approach that recognizes a “total market” rather than more narrowly focused marketing messages; before speaking to a reporter, he said this week, he had attended “a total market summit with Kimberly-Clark.”

The new association is “not a commercial for Ogilvy” or its cross-cultural practice, Mr. Bowman said. “We should think of the total market as a new revenue vertical for the industry.”

A member of the advisory board of the new association, Vita Harris, executive vice president and chief global strategy officer at Draftfcb, said one of its goals was “to start to ignite a community of people taking the total market seriously.”

A total market approach requires agencies and advertisers to have their “fingers on the pulse of consumers,” she added, and “a lot of that comes out of hiring people who reflect the consumer base” — that is, having a work force that is more diverse.

Ms. Harris and Mr. Bowman acknowledged that the new association joined a lengthy list of industry associations and organizations.

“We want to complement the other associations out there” rather than compete with them for attention and resources, Mr. Bowman said, adding: “If we’re successful, other organizations will adopt the total market approach. If we go away, great, it would mean we’ll have been successful.”

11260: Black To Lead Grey.

From The New York Times…

Executive From the Agency Grey New York Takes On a Larger Role

By Stuart Elliott

A LEADING agency is promoting an executive to a new, senior-level post where his responsibilities will include considering expansion through adding offices in more American cities.

The executive is Michael Houston, who since last year has been chief operating officer of Grey New York, part of the Grey North America division of Grey. (Grey, in turn, is a unit of the Grey Group, which is owned by WPP.) Mr. Houston, who turned 41 on Wednesday, is being promoted to chief executive of Grey North America while continuing to share the leadership duties at Grey New York with Tor Myhren, who is president and chief creative officer there.

Mr. Houston’s promotion makes him one of four regional chief executives at Grey, all reporting to James R. Heekin, chairman and chief executive of the Grey Group. Mr. Heekin most recently handled the Grey North America duties with his other responsibilities.

Mr. Houston, in assuming his new post, becomes one of the few African-Americans in the executive suites of the large, mainstream Madison Avenue agencies — even, perhaps, the most senior. No black person has been chief executive of such an agency since 2006, when Ann Fudge, chairwoman and chief executive at the Young & Rubicam Brands division of WPP, retired. “By no means do I define myself only by that,” Mr. Houston said in a telephone interview. Still, “I do think it’s unfortunate that my appointment potentially makes me the highest-ranking African-American,” he added. “It sends a signal there aren’t a lot of African-American people in the industry in the highest ranks.”

That is problematic, Mr. Houston said, because “we’re meant to appeal to, tap into, popular culture” on behalf of marketer clients, “and it’s hard to do that without diversity.”

“I do applaud the industry for trying to diversify,” he added, but “in our industry ‘diversity’ ought to mean diversity of thought, diversity of background, different ages, different approaches, different sexual orientations. We need to ensure we’re taking the broadest definition of diversity, really being able to appreciate, respect and value others’ points of view.”

Mr. Houston joined Grey New York in 2007 as executive vice president and director for marketing after working at agencies that included Chiat/Day, Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners and Y&R as well as at firms like And Partners, Elias Arts and Landor Associates. He was named global chief marketing officer of Grey in 2010 and managing director of Grey New York in 2011.

“I think a lot of Michael,” said Catherine Bension, chief executive at SelectResources International in Santa Monica, Calif., which helps marketers with agency searches.

“He’s a terrific person,” she added, “and one of the young new leaders of our industry.” (Last year, Mr. Houston was named one of the “40 Under 40” by Crain’s New York Business.)

“Michael has been at Grey New York since the start of its transformation or metamorphosis into a more future-facing, more contemporary agency,” Ms. Bension said, referring to Grey New York’s winning a skein of new accounts with billings estimated at more than $3 billion, among them DirecTV, E*Trade Financial, Gillette, Marriott Hotels and Resorts, RadioShack and Sargento Foods (although one, E*Trade, recently departed.) She praised Mr. Houston for being “a great partner to the creatives” at the agency.

Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, the world’s largest agency holding group in billings, also had nice words about Mr. Houston.

“I’m delighted for Michael,” Mr. Sorrell wrote in an e-mail, describing him as “a key member of the Grey management team.”

Mr. Houston has “done an outstanding job,” Mr. Sorrell said, “and thoroughly deserves this recognition for his success, which is based on an exceptional track record.”

Mr. Heekin, in a phone interview, said he would be turning to Mr. Houston for three primary tasks: prospecting for new business, expanding services like digital and working on “a smart, strategic approach to expanding our footprint in the U.S.”

Grey North America has, in addition to Grey New York, offices in San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. It has no presence in other prominent American markets after closing offices in Atlanta, Los Angeles and other cities.

Among the markets Mr. Heekin listed as having potential were the Southwest and the Midwest, “whether it’s Chicago or Kansas City,” because “our footprint in the middle of the country is nonexistent.”

He said he would consider both starting offices and making acquisitions, and added that the latter was more likely, as he and Mr. Houston had already been talking to agencies that Grey might buy. In the meantime, Mr. Houston and Mr. Heekin are making changes in San Francisco, hiring Milan Martin as president of Grey San Francisco, succeeding Brad Fogel, who is leaving to pursue other interests, a spokesman said. Mr. Martin, 39, most recently was managing director and chief strategist at Anthem Worldwide in San Francisco, part of Schawk Inc.

“We’re getting things moving in San Francisco,” Mr. Houston said. “We’re excited about what we could do with the office if we can build on the history there and bring in some of the fervor we have in New York.” Clients of Grey San Francisco include Purolator, Reliant Energy and Symantec.

Mr. Houston’s new post includes other duties, among them overseeing Grey Activation and Public Relations. He will share the oversight of Wing, a multicultural agency with offices in New York and Miami, with Alain Groenendaal, who is president and chief executive of Wing and Grey Latin America.

11216: Guaranteed Trivial Bullshit.

The New York Times Advertising Columnist Stuart Elliott posted the following Q&A in his latest online installment:

Q. Is the bearded guy who ends every Men’s Wearhouse ad with the line “You’re going to like the way you look — I guarantee it” an actor who was chosen for the furry, reassuring tone of his voice, or is he actually connected corporately to the outfit?

A. The guy, dear reader, is George A. Zimmer, who helped found the Men’s Wearhouse clothing chain in 1973 and is now its executive chairman.

Really? This is insightful journalism demanding the skills of an industry expert? A simple Google search could have revealed the answer to such a baffling brainteaser. Thanks, Stu. Now Americans will be able to sleep tonight.

10594: Stupid Is As Stupid Does.

New York Times writers Tanzina Vega and Stuart Elliott opened a story by declaring, “Advertising Week in New York is, to borrow a concept from Forrest Gump, like a box of chocolates inside a box of chocolates.” Yeah, but the lack of chocolate ad executives led to the annual event sideshow titled, “Where Are All The Black People?” Culturally clueless is as culturally clueless does.

10549: Heineken Hearts Hispanics.

From The New York Times…

In a Sponsored TV Show, ‘H’ Is for Hispanic … and Heineken

By Stuart Elliott

A cable channel devoted to Hispanic viewers is scheduled to present a special show on Saturday evening that offers another example — this time with a Spanish accent — of the popular marketing trend of branded entertainment.

Branded entertainment involves embedding products in program content to avoid the fate of traditional commercials, which can be zapped or zipped through by viewers as they try to avoid paid pitches. In the show on Saturday night, as is increasingly the case with branded entertainment projects, the selling is done discreetly rather than in your face.

The special, which will be shown on the Discovery en Español channel at 10 p.m. on Saturday, is the documentary-style “Gen H,” for “generation Hispanic.” The program looks at the lives of three young Hispanic people — a chef, a rock musician and a gallery owner — trying to achieve success in the United States.

The “H,” as it turns out, also alludes to the involvement of Heineken, the beer brand that is sponsoring the show. But the sponsorship is presented in a low-key way.

For instance, Heineken is acknowledged at the end of the program, with a title card, but not at the beginning; there will be commercials for Heineken during the show, but there will also be spots for other advertisers.

While Heineken bottles turn up in various scenes of the show — at the chef’s restaurant; the rocker’s concerts; and the gallery owner’s art shows — the appearances are nowhere near as blatant as they were in earlier versions of branded entertainment efforts like “The Restaurant” on NBC.

“We as a brand don’t want to be overly intrusive,” said Colin Westcott-Pitt, vice president of marketing for the Heineken brand at Heineken USA.

The program is “a showcase for the three subjects,” he said, rather than for Heineken.

Although Heineken has “done quite a few things” in the realm of branded entertainment, Mr. Westcott-Pitt said, “this is the strongest and deepest” involvement that the brand has had in a program. “In the future, you will see us do a lot more in this space.”

More information about “Gen H” can be found on a section of the cable channel’s Web site. The show is being presented as part of the programming on Discovery en Español for Hispanic Heritage Month.

Making sure a branded entertainment program does not turn off viewers with overt placements is “hard, but not difficult,” said Enrique Montoya, vice president of Discovery Solutions at Discovery Networks Latin America and U.S. Hispanic in Miami, which is part of Discovery Communications.

“It requires a lot of energy to see one of these through,” Mr. Montoya said, but it is worth the effort because Discovery executives “want to do more” such shows, and “advertisers want to do more and agencies want to do more.”

“Gen H” was created for Heineken by Discovery en Español as part of efforts for advertisers that make “a certain level of investment” in the channel, Mr. Montoya said, meaning those that buy a certain level of commercial time. (He declined to discuss specific amounts.)

“They reach that level and we enter into content production,” he added, “either a new production or something that’s already in the works.”

10511: The British White Men Are Coming!

The New York Times Advertising Columnist Stuart Elliott reported on British agencies expanding to the United States. Oh boy! Just what we need—more White men on Madison Avenue!

British Agencies See Opportunity in the Americas

By Stuart Elliott

WHEN it comes to the advertising and media industries, the trans-Atlantic traffic between the United States and Britain has long been robust. Initially, the flow was West to East, but in recent years it has largely trended the other way.

That directional shift is being underlined as two firms based in London set up shop in this country. One, Frank PR, is establishing its American operation, called Frank PR USA, in New York. The other firm, Grace Blue, which specializes in finding senior executives for agencies and media companies, is opening offices in New York and on the West Coast.

The two newcomers typify a change in the expansion plans of British firms in that both are independently owned rather than units of giant holding companies. Of course, the reason may be just that by now, almost every major firm with British roots and a well-heeled parent is already in the United States.

Whatever the ownership profile of the British arrivals, the start-ups tell a story that has been heard for some time: despite the woes of the American economy, the opportunities arising from a presence in the United States outweigh the risks.

“We’re certainly entering in with caution and humility,” Andrew Bloch, the vice chairman of Frank PR who founded the British firm in 2000 with Graham Goodkind, said during an interview last week in New York. “Someone once said to me that Madison Avenue is littered with the carcasses of failed U.K. agencies, and those words have rung in my head.”

Read the full story here.

10451: Bermuda Short On Big Idea.

New York Times Advertising Columnist Stuart Elliott reported on the new Bermuda Tourism campaign from Fuseideas in Boston. After all the drama and alleged illegal activities surrounding the account and former AOR GlobalHue, this latest campaign seems criminal in its absolute lameness.

Bermuda’s New Pitch Is Short: ‘So Much More’

By Stuart Elliott

A popular vacation destination is trying again to encourage tourists to expect the unexpected, as well as all that visitors have traditionally traveled there for.

The goal is explicit in the theme of a campaign on behalf of the Bermuda Department of Tourism: “So much more.” The campaign, now under way, plays up cultural and culinary attractions and diversions like scuba diving and golf along with mainstays like the pink sand beaches and Bermuda’s proximity to the East Coast.

The campaign is the first work for the Bermuda tourism department from a new creative agency, Fuseideas in Boston, which was selected after a review that concluded in March. Fuseideas has also worked on travel campaigns for Florida, Maine and Massachusetts.

The budget for the Bermuda campaign is $4.8 million through early next year. The campaign is wide-ranging, including television and radio commercials; print, outdoor and online ads; the official tourism department Web site, gotobermuda.com; promotions; direct marketing like e-mail and newsletters; brochures; public relations; and social media like Facebook and Twitter.

The “So much more” theme replaces ads that urged potential visitors to Bermuda to “Feel the love.” Before that, Bermuda used ad themes that included “Let yourself go.”

There is a “fundamental difference” between “Feel the love” and “So much more,” says William Griffith, director for tourism at the Bermuda Department of Tourism in Hamilton, Bermuda.

The previous theme “is a statement,” Mr. Griffith says. “ ‘So much more’ evolves out of everything that is Bermuda and encompasses all that is unique to Bermuda.”

“‘So much more’ came from the Bermudians themselves,” he adds, and points tourists to “adventure, culture, history, restaurants and food.”

The theme also underlines initiatives by tourism officials to make Bermuda “more of a 12-month destination,” Mr. Griffith says, and continue efforts to differentiate Bermuda from the Caribbean.

(Yes, although Bermuda is “not the Caribbean,” Mr. Griffith notes, being “much farther north,” it still needs to remind Americans exactly where it is — and is not.)

The campaign is part of a national tourism master plan that Bermuda recently adopted, Mr. Griffith says, with a strategy of “leveraging the top strengths of the island” to help market it.

Read the full story here.

10324: Imagining The New Agency Model.

New York Times Advertising Columnist Stuart Elliott spotlighted the latest happenings at R/GA, where two new offerings are launching: 1) consulting services designed to rival Accenture and McKinsey & Company, and; 2) product innovation services to compete against the Ideos and Frog Designs of the world. R/GA Chairman and CEO Bob Greenberg declared, “I really wanted to create a new agency model.” Oh, really? When considering things like Digitas claiming to be the lead AOR on Sprint, Droga5 thinking it can produce Kraft branding campaigns, Razorfish shitting out wannabe viral videos for All detergent, or DigitalKitchen simply executing a lame self-promo, it seems to be the old agency model for digital shops to overpromise capabilities where none exist and push into areas where they have no business being.

9935: Being Open With Recruiting Tactics…?

The New York Times reported on a new 4A’s brainchild designed to recruit young people to the advertising industry. The online video looks like someone tried to sneak a diversity initiative into the project too. However, if one really wants to woo a youth audience, don’t do it with work that appears to have been conceived and executed by, well, Old White Guys. The grand scheme is called Open Advertising, which sounds oxymoronic. Wonder if the openness will include revealing the issues surrounding diversity—as well as gender and ageism. Plus, the Digital Set being targeted should be apprised that digital salaries are lower than traditional advertising salaries.

Pitching the Ad Life to the Digital Set

By Stuart Elliott

THE leading trade organization for advertising agencies is intensifying efforts to cast a wider net when recruiting employees with an initiative aimed not only at students, but also at talented younger people who work in other industries.

Executives of the organization, known as the Four A’s, are to describe the initiative during their annual Transformation conference, to be held in Beverly Hills, Calif., beginning on Monday and concluding on Wednesday.

The centerpiece of the initiative, called Open Advertising, will be a video-focused Web site, openadvertising.aaaa.org, that is to go live on Wednesday. It is meant to address a survey last year that concluded the industry was falling short in its attempts to attract and keep talented employees.

The contents of the Web site will be devoted to subjects like creativity, technology and agency work life. Another survey, conducted this year by two Four A’s members, Colle & McVoy and Partners & Napier, found considerable misconceptions on those subjects among the target audience.

“The No. 1 thing you hear from students and young people in other fields is, ‘Wow, I didn’t think you could do that in advertising,’ ” said Andrew Benett, global chief executive of Arnold Worldwide, part of Havas. He is to announce the initiative during the conference along with Sharon Napier, president and chief executive of Partners & Napier, part of Project WorldWide, and Nancy Hill, president and chief executive of the Four A’s.

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The goal is “to tell the story of the industry in a high-touch, high-engagement way,” Mr. Benett said, and show advertising in a way that makes it appealing to “career switchers” as well as those seeking their first jobs.

Mr. Benett acknowledged that “you can never ‘solve’ the talent problem for the industry, because talent is going to constantly evolve.” But the industry needs to move beyond “a communications effort or a P.R. campaign,” he added, and address its recruitment problems in a substantive manner.

Among the initial participants in Open Advertising, Ms. Hill said, are digital and social media specialists like Razorfish, R/GA, Rokkan and Socialistic as well as agencies like Arnold Worldwide; Deutsch; Euro RSCG; McGarryBowen; McKinney; Mullen; JWT; Rapp; Saatchi & Saatchi; and Y&R.

“Three months ago, I was on a panel and someone asked, ‘How do I get into advertising?’” Ms. Hill said. “We want to make it easy to answer.”

“This is about bringing in a generation that’s been content creators all their lives,” she added, on social media like Facebook and YouTube, “and making advertising the preferred career choice for talent of all stripes.”

To underline the target audience for Open Advertising, anyone will be able to watch video clips on the Web site but to comment, share content or upload work, visitors will need to log in through their Facebook accounts.

The discussion of the initiative is among steps being taken by Ms. Hill and the Four A’s to make the conference agenda more compelling than “a bunch of agency talking heads saying the same stuff over and over,” as she put it.

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Speakers and panelists are to include Rebecca Campbell, president of the ABC Owned Television Stations Group; Charlie Collier, president at AMC Networks, whose AMC channel presents “Mad Men”; Carolyn Everson, vice president for global marketing solutions at Facebook; Jack J. Haber, vice president for global advertising and digital at Colgate-Palmolive; Jason Kilar, chief executive of Hulu; J.B. Perrette, chief digital officer at Discovery Communications; Robert Pittman, chief executive of Clear Channel Media and Entertainment; Randall Rothenberg, president and chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau; Larry Scott, commissioner of the Pacific-12 Conference; Kristin van Ogtrop, managing editor of Real Simple magazine; and Chuck Woolery, the former game show host who is now a “senior citizen marketing specialist” at Western Creative.

The fact that registrations for the conference, at 1,300, are higher than had been expected indicates that “a lot of people think they’re going to get value out of it,” said Chuck Porter, the 2010-12 chairman of the Four A’s who is also chairman of Crispin Porter & Bogusky, part of MDC Partners, and chief strategist of MDC.

“People are busy, and the Four A’s has begun to understand this is business,” Mr. Porter said. “Nobody feels comfortable flying off to Bermuda.” (In 2000 and 2005, the organization, formerly the American Association of Advertising Agencies, held its annual management conference, a predecessor to the Transformation conference, in Southampton, Bermuda.)

“It’s less about socializing and golfing,” said Greg Stern, a Four A’s board member who is chief of Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners, and more about offering “a results-oriented conference” with “substantive, significant topics relevant to everyone in the business.”