Like I was saying...
6/17/2008 12:59:21 PM by Gary Lessner
As many of you know, for years I've been saying that independent agencies can outperform the big multinationals in local and regional markets such as ours. This article from the June 9 edition of Adweek proves the point. We should be going after those local and regional, if not national and international accounts, in our markets. They are being underserved by the big guys. Hope all is well with everyone. --Gary Lessner
It's Sunset for L.A.'s Ad Agency Outposts
Local shops just got a little harder to find: Omnicom will pull creative out of the L.A. branch of BBDO West
June 9, 2008
-By Gregory Solman
LOS ANGELES Two of the outcomes of the Mitsubishi Motors North America review had been determined before the finals: The winner was not going to be the undefending incumbent, BBDO West, and there would only be a 1-in-4 chance that a network office, Omnicom's DDB L.A., would prevail. (A decision was still pending as this story was being prepared.)
The other finalists, all independents, made for an oddball lot: Erstwhile Ford and Lexus creative director Tom Cordner's startup, Traffic; WongDoody, a Seattle and L.A. combo with no obvious automotive résumé; and Ignited, a digital specialist started by a former Activision executive.
As an unintended consequence of the review, local agencies just got a little harder to find: Omnicom will pull creative out of the L.A. branch of BBDO West.
"It's not difficult to have a large office in L.A.," said Andrew Robertson, president and CEO of BBDO Worldwide, New York. "All you have to have is a car account or Apple. However, if you don't have one of those, then you need to decide where to have your West Coast talent center of gravity, in L.A. or San Francisco. We've chosen to concentrate our talent in San Francisco."
Robertson said the shop here -- which housed creative directors Steve Hayden and David Lubars and clients such as Apple, Pioneer and Best Western during peak years in the mid-'90s -- would become "a satellite office for San Francisco as well as any network clients in the vicinity."
BBDO's move is only the latest example of a business trend that is nearly as perplexing and frustrating to locals as why the nation's second-largest city can't field a pro football team. In just two decades, agencies that once dominated L.A.'s advertising landscape have disappeared or diminished significantly. In the last five years, many once-giant network offices along the Wilshire corridor -- JWT, FCB, Grey -- have pulled out entirely or been reduced to shells of their former selves.
The exceptions are few and do not disprove the trend. For example, despite some effort, Publicis Groupe's Saatchi & Saatchi has not expanded much beyond Toyota. McCann Erickson has struggled to grow Sony media or its part of Nestlé. DDB L.A. is on the comeback trail after winning Activision and making the Mitsubishi finals, but when Ameriquest departed last year, its biggest client was Wells Fargo ($55 million, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus). Once a top-three agency here, WPP's Ogilvy & Mather (known as OgilvyWest since last year's combining of Ogilvy One S.F. and Ogilvy L.A.) has relied on Cisco's growth (now $70 million in billings) while its grasp on Mattel ($290 million) has slipped.