A random note to start off this recap:
At some point I noticed that I was hoarding all the bottles of water that the agencies gave us. And what struck me as extremely apt was the fact that Publicis, CDM and BBDO each gave us different brands of bottled water. Here’s the breakdown:
There’s never a missed opportunity to create brand awareness, right? Of course, Publicis has worked with Coca-Cola internationally (which manufactures Dasani) and BBDO works with Pepsi, which owns Aquafina. Just an interesting point. Now onto Day 3!
Kaplan Thaler Group
Clients You’d Know: Aflac, Champion, Dawn, Trojan, AdCouncil
First impressions: We were in a standard conference room. Nothing too fancy, but they gave us Snapple. We watched a very personalized reel (the same one they use to bid for clients) followed by a lot of Q&A with Creatives and Acct/PR people. We even had Linda Kaplan Thaler herself speak to us for a few minutes.
What I took away from it:
·The impression I got from some of their creatives was that traditional is still King. Sure, they’ve moved onto the web, but traditional still makes up a large percentage of their business.
·Creating a PR stir (as they did with their banned Trojan pig ad) whether intentionally or unintentionally will generally lead to good things for the company and the client.
·Regarding Creative interviews: focus on getting across who you are. The book already got you the interview, so after the weeding process is done, the interviewee just wants to know the person behind the book.
·BU kids are all spoiled brats with trust funds. (OK, that one’s a joke, even if I got the impression that one of the Creatives didn’t think so)
Final impression: Linda Kaplan Thaler is the shining star of the agency (which is not to say all other aspects are subpar). She definitely believed in what she was preaching and made us believe in it too (the mark of a good Advertiser). She also graciously gave each of us the two books she had written with Robin Koval- “The Power of Nice” and “The Power of Small.” The creatives were pretty straightforward with us and seemed surprised at how accomplished individuals in our group already were prior to graduating. We also toured the agency afterward and the offices were really nice.
TBWA\Chiat\Day
Clients You’d Know: Snickers, Absolut, Jameson, Skittles
First impressions: The place was really yellow! Also, the view of St. Patrick’s Cathedral from the area where we had our meeting was pretty cool. We had five to six speakers from different sectors tell us about what they do and they allowed us to prod them in a pretty intensive Q&A session.
Onto the key points:
·DISRUPTION is the big idea. Find conventions within the category and then disrupt them.
·The retention rate at TBWA is pretty high. People love working there and they stay.
·Personal chemistry, work and attention to detail will get you far.
·TBWA has recently gotten new clients…
Final impression: This was the last agency tour we had, and it definitely helped round out the theme of duality. Each day, we visited two agencies that were completely different from each other. TBWA has some huge clients and is the big dog of the yard, so to speak. As such, it was clear to me that their employees knew exactly what to expect and how to deal with everything (which may be related to the high retention rate).
(Tequila is a Worldwide agency involved in a recent merger with TBWA)
Well that’s that.
Six agencies in three days. Now I have to write a ton of Thank-You notes. Super-Special thanks to BU COM Professors Berkovitz and Cakebread, as well as COM Event Coordinator Lauren Glaser.
