Car advertising account reviews are the stuff of legend — and legendary books.
So maybe I shouldn’t be surprised to read Adweek’s look at Cadillac’s current review. It doesn’t really instill any confidence that a coherent decision will be made.
I could quote at length all the red flags I see in this interview, but you really have to read it for for yourself. A few highlights:
Multiple traditional agencies in a holding company being asked to pitch the account together. And in the case of holding company Publicis, their agency Fallon (the incumbent and recent winner of an Effie for its Cadillac work) being asked to defend the account against other Publicis agencies. Strategy and creative from different pitches with the potential to be mixed and matched, and the client insisting that nothing presented has yet to pass muster, because it’s all “iterative.”
There’s a lot of money, pride, prestige, egos, and jobs at stake. Frankly, I feel for anyone laboring in the lower ranks of agencies involved in this pitch. It may simply come down to the all-important “chemistry check.” And if you want a chemistry check, consider this: The decision-making client interviewed by Adweek has a Twitter account with only 15 tweets — 13 of them aimed at companies whom he feels have given him poor customer service. According to his official bio, he began his career at GM 22 years ago as a “financial analyst.” Which we all know is an ideal qualification to lead a multi-million dollar advertising account review.
