Hello from Midtown Manhattan,
This is Patrick filling in for Doug, who took a much-needed week off in Portland.
Since it's the end of another week and calendar month, many of our agency friends got paid today. Not so for DCX Growth Accelerator, whose experience with onetime client Payless might serve as a cautionary tale.
As reported by Adweek, the agency behind last fall's "Palessi" campaign in which the struggling retailer set up a fake store and conned fashion influencers into thinking its products were premium accouterments has only seen a small fraction of the money owed for work that cost several hundred thousand dollars.
Of course there's the technical matter of Payless declaring bankruptcy in February, three months after the campaign went viral and earned media coverage from nearly every publication you read. But our sources said DCX wasn't aware of the company's impending collapse, and the client encouraged its leadership to submit the work for awards. Putting all arguments about originality, impressions and conversions aside, there is a simple principle at work here: You shouldn't bite off more than you can chew—and if you do, you should still pay the people who made the sausage.
If that horror story sounds familiar, you probably won't be surprised by the narratives that came out of this week's 4A's Decisions 20/20 Conference in Washington, D.C. this week. Dentsu Aegis Network CEO Nick Brien said the ad industry is "in a bit of a mess" right now due to the same old agency-client trust issues, and executives on a D&I panel agreed that an emphasis on "diversity of thought" will not lead to equal representation.
But the news was not all bad!
For one, the Clio Awards jury is now perfectly gender balanced. Cannes Lions also announced the 15 extremely talented female finalists for this year's See It Be It, hailing from Sweden to L.A. to Mexico City.
Expect more to come this year on diversity as P&G's Marc Pritchard told the crowd at today's ANA #SeeHer that he will pressure agencies to improve their numbers.
On the new business front, Spark Foundry scored a big one by winning NBC Entertainment away from Essence. (Most of the media giant's portfolio was not up for review.)
Huge also picked up Brooks Running, with its first work set to debut this fall.
When it comes to mergers, acquisitions and rebrandings, everything's coming up experiential. San Francisco indie shop Duncan Channon acquired L.A.-based firm A2G while WPP's SET rebranded as Set Creative, specializing in—you guessed it—experiential work.
The Martin Agency also looks to branch out with a new cultural impact lab that will sit within its creative department and focus on complementing paid media with earned (also known as public relations). Martin hired Jaclyn Ruelle away from fellow IPG network MullenLowe to lead the practice.
Speaking of repositioning oneself, we had LOTS of design professionals weigh in on the new identities for DDB and Joan. Their reviews were encouragingly positive.
This week also brought quite a few executive-level hires ... at Omnicom.
BBDO's Richard Fraser is now CEO at Proximity.
Barbarian's Cathy Butler headed to Organic in the chief executive role.
PHD and OMD hired new chief media officers.
On the WPP side, GroupM named Nielsen's Amit Seth as chief product and data officer while JWT New York CCO Ben James headed to The Grey Lady to lead T Studio, the NYT's branded content division.
Finally, enjoy the work of creative star Kim Gehrig, who most recently made news for directing Grey's controversial Gillette rebrand.
Whew! Finally, here's our regular reminder to check out sister site AgencySpy for more ad world news. Highlights from this week include Mailchimp taking work in-house, Adidas seeking a new shop to promote its running line, and 72andSunny hiring a new president in L.A.
Have a great weekend and read your contracts carefully.
Patrick Coffee
Editor at Large
