Brenda Atkinson
MIXED MEDIA
It’s been a good month for eye-catching advertising and provocative media commentary. Andersen Consulting’s recently launched electronic commerce ad campaign hits where it hurts.
Featuring a sheep in wolf’s clothing trying to blend in with a pack of the real yellow-eyed beasts, the advert poses the rather chilling question: “Trying to fake your way through e-commerce?” Chilling, that is, for traditional advertising agencies who are lagging behind the predatory pack of IT companies, agencies and digital hot shops looking to make a kill online.
Witness the fact that Times Company Digital, the Internet business division of the New York Times Company, announced this week that Ogilvy & Mather has triumphed as the agency of record for its $40-million United States advertising account. The main reason? Ogilvy & Mather and its worldwide Interactive and Direct Marketing division offer something which consulting firms like Andersen do not: a solid understanding of brand-building, both online and off.
Amusingly, the Business Wire release notes that AAR/Bob Wolf Partners managed the review for Times Company Digital.
Net#work creative director Mike Schalit hit the business and media headlines again for his cheeky retorts to the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) regarding Net#work’s cunning parody of the Benson & Hedges ampersand campaign. In Net#work’s send-up of the campaign, which offers smokers such delusional golden ideals as “Taste & Enjoy”, “Mild & Free”, and so on, the killer combination is “Cancer & Emphysema”. Same typeface, same everything, down to the scarlet fullstop. The legal wrangle which has ensued is positively delicious as an intellectual property case study: one cannot own a typeface, a colour, or a typographical symbol, but if the ASA argues convincingly that one can own a crafted combination of these, the staff at Net#work might be reaching for their smokes. Watch & wait.
Also stepping eloquently into the legal breach of late was Ogilvy & Mather for Volkswagen, with a text-only print ad in Business Day headlined, “We’re sorry”. The apology is repeated as a mantra at the beginning of the seven paragraphs that follow, each addressing the financial and production implications of trade union squabbles at the Uitenhage plant that have been in the news since December last year. The ad is a captivating exercise in public relations that pulls off sincerity without being trite. It’s also a highly strategic, subtly articulated political comment that underscores the power of the Volkswagen brand.
That the advertising for VW can communicate skilfully, and consistently, across segmented platforms – witness the launch this month of the new Citi Golf TV commercial, which has a bemused-looking, sucker-pawed Garfield losing his grip on the back window as the Citi Golf speeds off – is testament to Ogilvy & Mather’s comprehensively strategic approach to brand-building.
Relatively new kids on the block Hurricane Films are developing a fresh, funky and accomplished portfolio of work, thanks in part to the talent of recently appointed director Llewellyn Roderick, whose “Lighthouse” commercial for Telkom nabbed AAA Ad of the Month in December. In the commercial, developed by The Agency, Telkom’s Y2K compliancy allows a worn old lighthouse keeper and his dog to track the countdown to the new year by calling the Telkom time service in a blackout. Roderick’s visual execution, which combines chocolate warmth with bleached-out greys and greens, shares atmospheric style with his music video for pop group Noa Noa. Coming primarily from a music video background, Roderick brings fresh hope to the film and television industry in South Africa. Much as Crispian Plunkett’s work has done for fashion photography, Roderick’s work will no doubt forge new paths for directors, by educating clients along the way.
And finally, although DDB Worldwide New York still stands as agency of record for the Compaq Computer Corporation, Compaq has thrown its $250-million global account into review, throwing the ad industry into a flap in the process. DDB will defend the business at a yet to be decided time against yet to be named opponents.