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Last Blast Of Cool.. As with all good things, with this episode we bring our Ad Hoc Campaign for Coke to a close with the presentation of our group's television spot for the campaign. Six spots were finalists but we chose to present only the one that stood head and shoulders above the rest and represented the kind of work we believe would make the most impact in today's world. |
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| It has been very rewarding, personally to experience the outpouring of comment and sentiment expressed by readers of this column and others on the efforts of the group. |
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What is the best school for getting an education in advertising- Bobby R. Denver Harvard B-School -HW |
| It has been our objective to stimulate discussion and discourse on the messaging path taken by what may well be one of the greatest brands on Earth. |
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I work for Coke and I wanted to tell you that they tested your "Cool American" campaign and it scored miserably. - Anon, Atlanta I work for Pepsi and I wanted to tell you that we created the "Cool American" campaign just so Coke would waste their time testing it while we got national exposure on Apprentice for Pepsi Edge..- HW |
| Yes, we have been contacted by at least two of the many agencies on Coke's roster to join in their efforts ( we will decide in the next few days.) Yes we have been encouraged by present and former TCCC employees and stockholders, world wide. In each and every case, their comments, suggestions and support has made this exercise a joyful undertaking. No, we have not been contacted directly or officially by Coke Management. |  |
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Yes, it has been confirmed that they are aware of the campaign, which was after all, our prime objective. The most persistent critique of the campaign has been whether or not "flag waving" will do anything to move a product that is, as described by many, "colored sugar water." In response, I offer this. First and foremost, the only "Flag" we are waving with this campaign is the flag of "Brand Coca-Cola." We perceive the Coca-Cola Classic product as both refreshingly cool and uniquely American. Secondly, this product is infinitely more than "Colored Sugar Water" as Band-Aid Brand Adhesive Bandages are more than strips of plastic and patches of gauze. A bottle of Coca-Cola is a thing of beauty to behold. Put one up to the sunlight. As a pure product form, it is a work of art. The Coca-Cola glass is perhaps the most photographed, retouched, spectacularly lit product representation of all time. I personally have watched as the great Henry Sandbank ( perhaps the greatest tabletop photographer that ever lived) hand-etched the water drops on a Coke glass with a secret formula of glycerin and water. When I see that amazing caramel-colored rainbow filtered through that pale green bottle, something in the back of my throat starts sending signals to my brain to check my pocket for change and the nearby vicinity for a tall foamy one. Such is the power of Brand Coca Cola. To paraphrase the words of the Genie in Disney's Aladdin, "You Ain't Never Had A Friend Like Coke." In essence, no product-centric advertising could ever do justice to the experience of an ice cold bottle of Coke on a scorching hot day. That is why the great Coca-Cola advertising has always depended upon the icons of borrowed interest to deliver on the product promise. Football players, hilltops, endless singing smiling happy faces, tragically hip, slackers in their pitifully shallow moments of glory. Irrelevant bookends for a product shot that can never do justice to a product that defies description. "Double-Think" didn't consider venturing down that well-worn path. Throughout the "A Cool American" campaign we have attempted to take the "Product as Hero" mantra to another place all together. In print, it was the individuality of the Brand and those who personified a few steps beyond the perception of "those arrogant yanks." Television is the chosen arena for Global Superbrands. In everything we did, our criteria was the same. If it looked, sounded or felt like a Coca-Cola Commercial, we had not accomplished our stated mission. More than a hundred ideas and executions were conceived, examined and rejected. We looked at the work of the agencies that were competing and said to ourselves which of these executions would they approve. Once we eliminated those, that left us with a field of 14. We did flash demos of the 14 and exposed them to a global reader panel and asked them to rank the spots 1-14. Last week we took the top six and lived with them for a week. Monday morning I polled everybody for their favorite two. One spot was the clear winner, hands down. To view it click here.
The Hunt for Bread In October. Many of the people who wrote asked me to provide them with an introduction to the agent I alluded to a while back, who allowed me to walk away from my staff position on Madison Avenue and set up a lucrative practice as a freelance "Brain For Rent." If she could do that for me, she could obviously do that for them. I actually felt bad in telling them that the legendary Judy Wald has been retired for some years now and the woman for whom the term "Head Hunter" was coined had sold the Judy Wald Agency to two of her longtime employees and in doing so changed the nature of "talent acquisition" in the ad world forever. But the issue of search firms being ( or not being ) responsive to job candidates was an interesting topic. So I called up a few friends in high places and asked them to give me a heads up when they posted a job with a search firm. My intention was to wait until I had four or five of these "Job Tips" in hand that were placed with the five largest placement companies and try different techniques to see which worked best in enlisting a quick response. I'm not going to reveal the names of all five agents because I told the people who gave me the Job Tips I would only mention the agency that was most responsive. But I will give you the five strategies in the order of least responsive first. The Cold Resume Drop. Surprisingly, this technique of simply firing off an e-mail resume to an online job posting on Monster, Craigslist or HotList is how most folks do their job hunting these days. I think that people who do this sort of thing are totally myopic about how the system works; how many resumes actually show up in people's mailboxes and what their competition is like. I actually put a blind ad for one of my clients recently. They wanted to hire an art director with at least 5 years of experience. I posted the ad on Craigslist in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York. Each anonymous address fed into a separate HotMail account. Within one 24 hour period these are the responses by city. Los Angeles 563, San Francisco 349, New York 422. Obviously, the Test Resume I sent to a New York City search firm that advertised in the NY Art Directors Club Job Bank got no response in the five business days I afforded the test. The Cold Resume Drop and Telephone Follow-up. Every want ad I've ever seen says "No Phone Calls Please." To me, that means most people won't call, which means I won't be confronted with a busy signal. From the search firms point of view that phone call positions the candidate as a non-responsive jerk who can't or won't follow orders and is therefore a none starter. Your call has to have a spin, to avoid such a stigma. My spin was "I'm just calling to get the name of the recruiter because my portfolio is insured but I have to give the messenger service the exact person who will be responsible to be adequately covered." I get the name, I call back that afternoon, give the name, get shunted to voicemail and give the spiel that I'm up for another job, but theirs sounds much more in line with my qualifications. If I can just get a quick yes or no review I'll know whether to stall the first offer. I also drop the hint that if I get their job I'll tell them about the job I turned down along with the contact person and hiring decision maker. Response time: 3 days. Automated Resume Foil. One of the jobs was through a corporate recruiter in a Global 100 company. My first step was to determine whether this company ran all of their inbound resumes through an automated profiling system. That was simple to determine. I called the company, asked to speak to the IT department. Told them I was from IBM and I wanted to arrange a "proof of concept" meeting for our new Websphere automated resume/applicant screening solution. The automatic response was that they were perfectly satisfied with their present HR screening app and if that changes they will contact their existing IBM sales contact. That told me they had such a program in place. My next step was to take their recruitment ad and rephrase it slightly to reflect my qualifications, which were actually their qualifications in drag and send it into the machine. Response time: 2.5 days.
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MARKETERS
FROM OGILVY
& MATHER ADRANTS BANK
OF AMERICA DELTA
AIR LINES And
You. |
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Relationship/ Distant. If somebody made money selling your head
once, chances are they can do it again. Search firms are always
on the lookout for former placements because they can always add
on that personal endorsement tag to the submission that will invariably
give them a leg up over the competition. Oh yes. Didn't you know?
Nobody lists their jobs with just one search firm any more. They
hope for multiple responses so that if they get the same candidate
from two search organizations, they can pit one against the other
and negotiate a lower fee. Response time: 2 days.
Past Relationship/Recent. Recruiters are extremely well insulated from the multitude of job seekers out there. So if you get the opportunity to establish even the most casual relationship with an administrative or management member in a search firm, even if you're not in the job market at the time, do so by any means possible. The winner in this "Responsiveness Test" was Creative Circle. Now, I'm in the business of divining opportunities, so I am a religious reader of at least 8 online want ad sites a day. This practice lets me know who is looking for Marketing Directors and that is the first warning that an account is about to go into play. Some months ago Creative Circle was looking to hire a recruiter and ran an ad on Craigslist. Naturally they posted the e-mail address of a member of their management team so as not to have the recruiter candidates lumped in with the blizzard of job seeker responses that fill their mail boxes every day. "Ah-ha," says I. Knowing that I might need this "back door" to one of the largest creative search firms, one day, I sent off a playful commentary to their ad for a new recruiter, and pinged them on "responsiveness." Unexpectedly, I got an equally playful response right back. As luck would have it, Creative Circle had a job posted during the period of this test that fit right into the profile of the other four jobs. I advantaged the earlier contact, referenced the prior contact, gave a few career highlights and sent it off. Again, within the hour, I had a response from the manager who stated that he would have the recruiter contact me. 24 hours later I had no response from the recruiter and pinged the manager. Miffed at my aggressive tone of voice, he promptly put me in my place with his response. I promptly wrote off Creative Circle as yet another burned bridge until, to my surprise I got a note from said recruiter sent at 7:15am on a Monday morning with a smiley face and an explanation that they had receieved more than 100 apps for the job on Friday and the recruiter assigned to screen them only worked a half day. In my book that made Creative Circle the winner in the responsiveness test for a total initial response time of 33 minutes. Stay Tuned. |