News from Dick's Desk
TDH GETS facelift
Everyone gets one.
Goodby.
The San Diego Padres.
Even Joan Rivers. Okay she’s had twenty.
After 10 years in Chicago, we decided that our brand needed to evolve just as we have as a company. The best way to describe our business nowadays is inventing entirely new forms of creativity, not just in copywriting, design or digital but in all departments-- in everything we do. We’re so much more than traditional advertising and as our clients’ needs have expanded, so have we.
When we started in 2002 we looked at some old Leo Burnett logos and liked how they featured the word “advertising” underneath the Leo mark. So we put the word advertising underneath the Tom, Dick & Harry script for some context. But going forward, we’re going to be Tom, Dick & Harry Creative Company. It conveys a much broader offering and better defines our reason for being. Some factories make fasteners. We make creativity.
We needed a new mark to reflect this change. What we liked about our old logo was how it conveyed a workmanlike personality. We didn't want to lose any of that but sought a more contemporary flair. To balance that retro/contemporary feel we gravitated to colors like rustic orange and black and drew from old union seals as inspiration. We went through several iterations of a chevron shape before landing on a diamond as the right housing for our new name. We like how clean, simple and contemporary it feels. And moving away from a script font to a sans serif capped approach gives it an industrial chicness-- if there is such a term.
Once we landed upon this mark we had lots of fun blowing it out in alternate logos. Why should NBA teams have all the fun? So how’s the new logo been received? It's early but so far it's been given much love by http://www.designworklife.com/2011/04/20/mike-mcquade-tom-dick-harry-branding/. We'd love to hear how it rubs you on facebook.
CCC awards a chip off old brick
Chicago's ad industry gathered Wednesday evening at the newly remodeled United Club at Soldier Field to honor the best work produced by local ad agencies. It was supposed to be a new beginning for the Chicago Creative Club awards show, which didn't have a show last year after the 2006 show crashed and burned with a disastrously tacky event at the Auditorium Theatre.
Though there were new organizers this year and a new judging system that used creatives from each local ad shop that submitted entries, in the end the roster of 2008 CCC winning agencies and clients looked remarkably similar to those of years past.
The 2008 top CCC Best of Show prize went not to a television campaign, as might have been expected, but to a print effort from Energy BBDO/Chicago for Canadian Club whiskey that used the tag line "Damn Right Your Dad Drank It." The blunt campaign put a heavy retro spin on the liquor brand that captured the public's attention and fondness for nostalgia.
The Canadian Club campaign was developed under the creative leadership of Marty Orzio, who abruptly exited Energy BBDO last spring to return to New York and spend more time with his family. Orzio was replaced by a former DDB/Chicago creative, Dan Fietsam, who took the helm at Energy BBD0 last month.
As it had in previous CCC shows, Leo Burnett took home the most awards, a total of nine bricks, the designated CCC trophy. Burnett won for its stellar McDonald's outdoor advertising, as well as for a long-form Hallmark Cards television spot and various executions for Altoids, no longer a Burnett client. All of these clients had seen their work honored in previous local awards shows. Anheuser-Busch and its lead roster agency, DDB/Chicago, won in radio, television and interactive categories. Several local shops, including Cramer-Krasselt and Ogilvy, chose not to participate in the awards.
The city's hard-charging small and mid-size ad shops weren't entirely overlooked. Euro RSCG/Chicago, which had hoped to make a mark at this year's award show, won one brick for client Valspar paint. Tom Dick & Harry picked up two bricks for a campaign for the Village of Rosemont. Two by Four/Chicago, the shop that took a lead role in revitalizing the CCC Awards, also got two bricks for its work for former client the Chicago White Sox and for new client the Chicago Bears.
Korte Book Gets Regional Nod
A hard-cover book about the 50-year history of The Korte Company has been selected by Print Magazine for its Regional Design Annual. The special issue (on magazine racks in September) features work by advertising and design agencies categorized by region. This will be the third time in five years that TDH has made this prestigious list. Considering the fact that the first year, David and Michael forgot to enter, that’s a pretty good streak.
Credit for the work goes to designer Kim Knoll and writer George Mitterwald. Credit also goes to Carrie Seanor for not forgetting to enter.
Exhibit: Follett Name in the News campaign
Follett Higher Education Group, with more than 800 on- and off-campus locations, and the largest owner of college bookstores in the country, wanted to expand their student database. With the help of Chicago ad agency Tom, Dick & Harry, Follet launched this campaign. Print ads direct students to a Name in the News site where they can create fake news articles (complete with the ability to include both name and images) to send to friends, enemies and families. The site's 30 articles, all written with the The Onion in mind, center around the motivations of a “typical” college student.
Candy Freund, art director
Amy Markley, writer
Tom/Dick/Harry, creative directors
End Communications, game designers
Xeno Media, game programmers
www.nameinthenews.com
A year of recovery for Chicago ad biz: Here’s a look at the top five ads from local shops
Chicago's advertising business stabilized last year, after a couple of truly traumatic years.
Still much remains to be done.
DDB/Chicago -- once considered a creative powerhouse until things began to slip badly several years ago -- took the first solid steps toward revamping itself. In the fall, the shop said goodbye to CEO Dana Anderson, an outsider who never figured out how to run DDB, and welcomed Rick Carpenter from DDB's Los Angeles shop.
Carpenter vowed to make progress on the new business front and recruit the best creative talent he could find. But DDB is still struggling mightily to attract new business. It won -- and promptly lost -- the Kraft Miracle Whip account, and it will soon say goodbye to Dell Computer Co., once a huge piece of business.
At Leo Burnett/Chicago, worldwide CEO Tom Bernardin hasn't helped the legendary agency's cause by constantly toying with its management. Early in 2007, Bernardin imported Juan Carlos Ortiz from Latin America to become co-president of Burnett's North American operations alongside Rich Stoddart. Bernardin promptly sliced and diced the rest of the management structure to accommodate the unwieldy dual-leader structure.
The restructuring was a bust almost from the get-go. By November, Ortiz was gone, and Stoddart was running the shop solo -- again -- as he was before Ortiz's arrival. Now Stoddart must make the latest twist at Burnett, the so-called Insight Shop, a successful template for handling accounts. Still, despite the constant management shuffle, some quite respectable work has emerged from the shop.
Elsewhere, the local ad biz should get a boost in 2008 from the arrival of McGarryBowen, a growing New York agency now taking on Chicago. Two ex-Burnetters, Ned Crowley and Jonathan Moore, will run MB/Chicago, and they have promised to employ local talent, whom they believe to be among the best. We shall see.
And what of DraftFCB/ Chicago? Has anyone else noticed how quiet leader and self-proclaimed visionary Howard Draft was for most of 2007, after the agency's shattering conclusion to 2006 -- the abrupt loss of the $580 million Wal-Mart account? The agency's biggest account wins in Chicago this year were Kmart and Kraft Lunchables, but creatively the Chicago agency isn't asserting itself. Maybe it never will.
JWT/Chicago is perhaps the biggest mystery. It nearly was wiped out last spring when Kraft pulled more than $170 million worth of business from the shop. Top management was fired, and the search was said to be on for new leaders. But so far none has materialized. And the agency just sits there. Ogilvy/Chicago and Young & Rubicam haven't fared much better, though in December Ogilvy/Chicago brought in a new leader, Jack Rooney, to inject some needed pep.
On the small agency front, the challenge remains pretty much as its always is -- attract high-profile clients to shops with necessarily limited resources. Several local boutiques continue to display promising creativity. But it's not likely to get any easier for even the best of them, including Zig, Two by Four and Tom Dick & Harry.
As a final salute to 2007, we have cobbled together a list of the top five commercials and print ads from Chicago ad agencies or Chicago-based companies. We didn't have a huge number of options, but there were enough, thankfully, to make a more than respectable list.
So here they are -- our best of 2007.
"Traders" (Leo Burnett). The concept was as simple and obvious as the old light bulb joke. You know, the one that asks how many people does it take to change a light bulb. For client ComEd, Burnett came up with some fresh and fun ways to do the joke using characters with a distinctly Chicago aura. We liked almost all these 15-second executions, but this commercial with two traders in the city's financial district was especially well-acted.
"But He Has an Axe" (DDB). This agency has suffered through some tough times of late, but no matter the difficulties, it still tries to do right by longtime client Anheuser-Busch when the Super Bowl of Advertising rolls around. The spots DDB created for the brewery behemoth for the 2007 football extravaganza weren't all stellar, but we sure did like this one, because of the unexpected twist at the end, and the great comic timing demonstrated by all the actors.
"Boom Box" (Leo Burnett). We couldn't begin to tell you what kind of aesthetic McDonald's is striving for in its television advertising nowadays. Frankly, the work is all over the map. And sadly, too much of it is eminently forgettable. But every now and then an endearing effort sneaks through, like this charming spot about a little boy with a giant boom box who regales his disbelieving parents with a hip-hop performance at the dinner table using apple slices and dipping sauce for props.
"Soup" (Tom Dick & Harry). Religious advertising is among the toughest to do. Should the advertising push the envelope or should the work show more restraint? It's never an easy call. But in this execution, one of several TD&H did for the Evangelical Lutheran Church to help recruit new members, the shop seems to have struck the right balance. The message is delivered via a winning mix of photography and ad copy.
"Feather" (Barrie D'Rozario Murphy/Minneapolis). The year 2007 wasn't a banner one for the always fascinating, illustration-based advertising from Chicago-based United Airlines and its new lead agency BDM. There were, in fact, no new television spots. Still, we were impressed with this feathery print effort to introduce the carrier's new business class seat, just now being rolled out on select transAtlantic flights. United promises a much fuller lineup of work in 2008, geared to coincide with the Beijing Olympics. We can't wait.
TDH campaign among world’s best
Tom, Dick & Harry’s print campaign for boutique retailer Alikat is being seen by more eyes than its intended Chicagoland target area. The work is featured in Lürzer’s International Archive Magazine (Vol. 6-2007, page 128), an international review dedicated to presenting the best new print campaigns and TV commercials from all over the world.
Each 160-page issue of Archive features 70 of the world's best new print campaigns and short synopses of 50 TV commercials dated and classified by individual product groups.
The magazine has readers in America, Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa. Credit for the work goes to TDH art director Candy Freund and Copywriter Amy Markley. There is a rumor that they also may receive 20% discounts at the boutique.