Table of contents for December 6, 2021 in Adweek

Christa Pitts didn’t know a career in sales would give her the entrepreneurial foundation to run a global company beloved by families. Pitts—along with her twin sister, Chanda Bell, and their mother, Carol Aebersold—heads up The Lumistella Company, which makes The Elf on the Shelf brand of books, toys, entertainment and immersive experiences that has become a holiday tradition worldwide. Getting there, however, was no Christmas miracle. After college, her first job was at Aramark, selling uniforms to companies, which she continued to do for several smaller manufacturers before taking a friend’s suggestion to try out for a hosting gig on shopping channel QVC. She beat out more than 13,000 other candidates for the spot. “It was a shocking yet glorious moment, and a great opportunity for me to learn,”…

“The work” and “the grind” have become synonymous—so much so that when students are learning about advertising as a career option, they’re being taught less about the job’s day-to-day and more about the obstacles they’ll face. The focus has shifted from how to produce “the work” to how to suffer through “the grind” to meet the industry’s unrealistic expectations. Today’s junior associates want to get paid fairly, leave work at a reasonable time (which is most likely two hours earlier than the number in a senior leader’s head) and be allowed a life outside the office walls. These aren’t revolutionary requests, but interviews I conducted with junior associates confirmed there is an inability to question these things without being viewed in a negative light. Repercussions of questioning work-life balance One…

Key wins Terminix, Hasbro for Nerf, Clue and Monopoly, Anheuser Busch/Busch Light, Sabra, Snapchat (cultural moments AOR), Coinbase (cultural moments AOR) Losses Resigned Midas Revenue 15% growth in net new and organic revenue Strategic moves Martin hired 53 new creatives since November 2020, 37.9% of the agency’s total new hires. Of those hires, 55% are female and 35% are BIPOC talent. Promoted Jordi Martinez Ortega to become its third ecd. Diversity 25% BIPOC, up from 21% in 2020. The executive committee is 62.5% female/37.5% male and 37.5% BIPOC. The agency works with groups like Free the Work, Double the Line and Change the Lens to promote diversity behind the camera. Out of 26 projects Martin completed since November 2020, it chose BIPOC directors for 50% of them.…

Key wins Kraft Heinz, Eos, Alpha Foods, Molson Coors Losses None Revenue While 2020 gave Mischief a huge financial and creative start, the agency is on track to hit 504% revenue growth in 2021 year over year vs. 2020. Strategic moves After Canadian agency No Fixed Address linked with 15-year industry veteran Gregory Hahn to co-found Mischief, the team onboarded fellow BBDO alumni Bianca Guimaraes and Kevin Mulroy as executive creative directors. Diversity After opening with a 50/50 gender split and strong female leadership at the executive level and above, today, Mischief continues to over-index on female representation across all departments.…

Key wins Barilla (global); GSK Italy (local); Stroili Oro (local); Heineken Spain (local); Redilco Real Estate (local) Losses No clients lost or resigned since Nov. 1, 2020 Revenue Publicis Italy grew 19% in 2021 compared to the same period in 2020 (consolidated revenue figures for first half of the fiscal year). Strategic moves Publicis Italy launched Le Pub, a new agency model that integrates creativity, data and brand experience. The agency appointed Roberto Leonelli, the former managing director of Publicis Sapient in Italy, as CEO. It also named Mihnea Gheorghiu as co-chief creative officer of Publicis Italy and Le Pub. Gheorghiu works alongside Cristiana Boccassini to oversee creative for both agencies. Diversity Publicis Italy’s staff spans 30 different nationalities.…

The Martin Agency’s chief creative officer, Danny Robinson, knows the agency has always produced strong television work. Just look at the success of Geico’s “Scoop! There It Is!” spot featuring Tag Team. The remixed song bled into pop culture with the infectious lyrics “French vanilla, rocky road, chocolate, peanut butter, cookie dough—and sprinkles” (and after reading that, you almost assuredly yelled, “Scoop! There it is!” in your head). It’s the latest in a litany of iconic Geico commercials The Martin Agency is most wellknown for. But while “Scoop! There It Is!” is the perfect demonstration of what The Martin Agency has always been capable of, Robinson is proudest of what the agency has become: culturally focused and dynamic on social. And no work better epitomizes the agency’s evolution as a…

Key wins Philips, Discover, Moderna, Behr Paint Company, Virgin Atlantic (Lucky Generals), DirecTV, Lays, Amazon Prime Video (projects, Lucky Generals), Captain Morgan (Lucky Generals), P&G Media, DHL (180 Amsterdam), National Australia Bank Losses TD Bank (resigned to pursue larger and more creatively-aligned category opportunity), ANZ Bank (replaced with a bigger account, National Australia Bank, though the agency continues to work with ANZ Bank in New Zealand), Mini (offset by other automotive business) Revenue Omnicom’s policy prevents TBWA from disclosing numbers, but it stated that in 2021, the agency grew by double digits year over year and was also up when compared to its pre-pandemic performance in 2019. Strategic moves Hired Ben Williams as TBWA’s incoming global chief creative experience officer and Aliah Berman as chief diversity officer, TBWA\North America. Appointed…

Kraft Mac and Cheese: “Send Noods” It was the ad that had viewers doing a double take and marketing experts intrigued. In a spot rife with double entendres, comedian Vanessa Bayer encouraged Kraft fans to send “noods” to those in need of comfort (but definitely not nudes). Alpha Foods: “Class Action Lawsuit” When your plant-based products are so convincingly meat-like that you manage to fool some of the biggest icons in fast food, prepare to lawyer up. Mischief and the meatless brand cleverly alluded to Ronald McDonald, Colonel Sanders and Wendy’s red-headed heiress by casting them as the pixelated plaintiffs in a commercial for a faux class-action lawsuit. Molson Coors Brand: “Miller Genuine Draft Is Launching a Seltzer“ The agency kicked off its relationship with Molson Coors Brand by helping…

Twenty years ago this month, what the FBI termed “the most complex white-collar crime investigation” in the agency’s history began when Enron—the $100 billion energy colossus once hailed as the most innovative company in America—collapsed. At the time, it was the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Kenneth Lay, a minister’s son who found his way into the natural gas business, started Enron in 1985 and built it into the country’s seventh largest corporation. Technically speaking, Enron’s business was trading energy derivatives. The trouble was that nobody understood how Enron made its financial statements look so good. In fact, the company had used a magician’s cabinet of accounting tricks to hide losses and book “profits” that were little more than generous estimates. In the end, 4,500 people lost their jobs, the…

This year’s Agencies of the Year issue features The Martin Agency’s chief creative officer Danny Robinson (front, left) and CEO Kristen Cavallo (front, right), and Tag Team’s Cecil Glenn (back, left) and Steve Gibson (back, right). The rap duo stars in Adweek’s No. 1 Ad of the Year, “Scoop! There It Is!,” that The Martin Agency created for Geico. From the truck the brand used to tout the ad-inspired ice cream flavor, Tag Team is serving The Martin Agency execs a double scoop of ice cream to signify the IPG agency’s back-to-back U.S. Agency of the Year wins.…

How did you get to where you are today? Any noteworthy “aha” moments along the way? I grew up immersed in the arts and creativity—painting, dancing, Dominican folklore—and I was always surrounded by music. This was coupled with a deep love for mathematics and sciences. While at the Rochester Institute of Technology, I became involved with academic research surrounding online technologies such as blogs, social networks and virtual worlds to predict consumer behavior. Since then, I genuinely knew I wanted a career in marketing. ‘Ideation is an integral part of marketing, but the work doesn’t end there.’ What new or up-and-coming innovation are you most excited about, and how do you think it will change the future of marketing? The metaverse. I’m excited to see how the wide and varied…

CarMax: “The Way It Should Be” The Martin Agency tinkered with CarMax’s slogan “Car buying, the way it should be” by dropping “car buying,” and thus opened the brand up to new possibilities. “I felt that if they didn’t understand our brand as well as they do … we wouldn’t have had anything that would have resonated quite as strongly,” says Jim Lyski, CarMax CMO. UPS: Martin redesigned UPS’ packaging and executed a TikTok campaign to celebrate Latinx-owned businesses that scored 9 billion views. The campaign helped uplift its target audience of small-business owners, says UPS CMO Kevin Warren: “They really get an intimate view of our company, direction, purpose, business model and personality, and that allows them to strike the right chord.” Geico: “Bundling Made Easy” In addition to…

After two years of a pandemic that and holding on to its top 20 clients has completely altered how business is done, disruption has become a constant in the advertising industry. TBWA\Worldwide saw that disruption as a chance to grow. The global collective, a unit of Omnicom that proudly touts itself as a “disruption company,” feeds on a level of chaos that fuels some of the top creative work in the industry. “There’s something about disruption as our method and in our culture that we seem to thrive in chaos,” says Luke Eid, chief innovation officer at TBWA\Worldwide, which saw double-digit growth in 2021, its biggest year ever. TBWA, however, is not all about chaos. Its artistic innovation is tempered by process and methodology that assures its clients are cared…

Few advertising agencies would see an impromptu endorsement on social media as a chance to create a new product line—especially not an endorsement that promises to show viewers how to achieve a “smooth ass hoo-ha.” Most would have considered teen creator Carly Joy’s viral TikTok about her personal shaving routine—which effectively doubled as an ad for beauty brand Eos’ line of shaving creams—too risqué to acknowledge. But Mischief @No Fixed Address, an expansion of the Canadian agency No Fixed Address, recognized an opportunity for some clever reactive marketing. “Our ‘Bless Your F*ing Cooch’ project for Eos was created in a three-day turnaround,” Bianca Guimaraes, ecd and partner at Mischief, tells Adweek of the limited line of shaving products the brand dedicated to Joy. “You can’t pull those things off unless…