Wieden and Kennedy Essay Example for Free

Wieden and Kennedy Essay Chapter 1: The agency and how it fits within the context of the industry W+K Inc. is an independent, full service, creatively driven advertising agency based in Portland, Oregon. W+K was founded by Dan Wieden and David Kennedy in 1998. Upon working together, the duo recognized great similarities in their advertising philosophies and nurtured a strong business relationship that led them into creating their own advertising agency. Since the establishment of W+K on April 1st, 1982, the company has grown to become one of the world’s leading creative agencies with offices in the United States (Portland and New York), Amsterdam, London, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Shanghai and Delhi. W+K has been built around the founders’ common tendency to break from the status quo advertising with intention of creating a firm and solid relationship between their clients and their customers. The business structure was formed around the ambition to provide an environment where employees would be able to produce their best work, and in turn offer a diversity of talent unparalleled by any other agency. Till this day the company continues to acknowledge and give credit to its staff for the agency’s superb creative reputation, as its shows below of some of their most prestigious and prized awards that have allowed them to propel the agency and therefore becoming a tough competitor to compete with, within the industry. Few factors that sets them apart from their competitors, are show below: The picture on the left shows â€Å"the 2012 Creativity awards report†. You can clearly see that the most successful creativity agency is W+K, Winning the Best Creative director of 2012, the best campaign along with best advertising agency in the world, compared to some of their competitors such as ServicePlan Munich, BBH and BETC EURO RSCG. Furthermore to prove why they are the top competitor within the industry; they’ve recently been voted by ‘ADWEEK’ the â€Å"Agency of the year† and from the picture on the left you can see some of the many awards they’ve won due to their innovative and creative work. What makes W+K so successful compared to other competitors, is arguably a result of the companys arcane understanding of current trends and, as of more recently, digital media such as ‘Social networking’ websites. The agency has latched onto the idea of making advertisements for its major clients that go the distance. For example, More recent success for the agency can be found in their current Old Spice campaign titled, ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like,’ which recently won the 2010 Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Commercial. This campaign featured former professional football player Isaiah Mustafa to rebrand your grandfathers cologne into a modern mega-b rand beloved by young and middle-aged men alike. Isaiahs swagger and strange but enticing acting captivated the country by means of the agencys knowledge of the digital marketing. The campaign generated more than 94 million views for the brands YouTube spots, over 90,000 additional Twitter followers, and up to 675,000 Facebook fans. Another reason for W+K success is down to the co-founder and global president Dan Wieden attributes that creative consistency to building a culture that’s â€Å"just more fun than you can believe and harder than hell. That generates ideas, great enthusiasm and new ways of looking at old issues.† They hire some of the most talented people from around the world, where they are trained by experienced ad gurus and moulded around the agencies goals, to ensure they come up with the most innovative, unique and outstanding advertising campaigns for their clients. Although they can come-up with the most unique and the most creative ideas; but what they do better than anyone else, according to Ian Armstrong- Honda, is that they: â€Å"Truly ‘understand’ who we are as a client, to a point where they feel more like long-standing Honda employees than an agency. It is wonderful to see them truly immersing themselves in our business, even if that does mean racing cars around the track most of the time!’ – This is the main reason why W+K stands out from the crowd as they have a strong desire to protect the truth in communicating the brand values and objectives, whilst keeping a unique voice in a crowded market. W+K uniqueness in the industry, their success and the reason why they’re the top competitors, can be seen below through the eyes of their clients: Chapter 2: The different roles within the agency: The process of creating a TV ad for Honda The first stage of the process starts when the Client calls and asks to arrange a meeting with the Account management of W+K. The account management of W+K are responsible for getting their clients messages across the public and they act as the main point of contact between the agency and the client. More importantly, Account management will ensure that project are completed on time, and within budget, whilst ensuring they create a sociable and friendly relationship with the clients. The strategic planner will than consult work with the client, to discover what the real business problem is that they’re trying to solve. The planner would also find and draw conclusions from factors such as the consumer wants, needs , behaviours, that are then conducted through exhaustive market research and testing. For example the strategic planner of W+K was given a brief from Honda which was to: With this in mind, the strategic planners must incorporate research from focus groups, survey’s, questionnaires, in order to aid them, in development of the overall advertising strategy. From their in-depth research on Honda they discovered that: Based on the research shown above the planner than concludes by detailing how the goals will be achieved. When the communication brief is created, it would outline and instruct the W+K creative team on where they need to advertise, who they need to be targeting and the message that they want to send. The communication brief states: With the needs understood, the strategic planners of W+K would then travel to the headquarters of Honda, in japan in order to gain insight to what this car manufacturing company is all about and also to help them generate a marketing strategy. With strategy in place and the client’s approval of the strategy, the next step of the process would be providing down all these valuable information about Honda to the creative directors and designers of W+K. Tony Davidson: Executive Creative directorKim Papworth: Executive creative director The main roles of creative directors within W+K, are to be responsible for the overall supervision of the agencies creative products, meaning they will be monitoring progress, discussing ideas and suggesting changes. The directors will than arrange a meeting, where they would be presenting the client’s needs and wants to the design directors and then pass down through to junior designers, in order for them to generate some creative ideas. The creative minds of W+K were than able to turn the â€Å"The power of dreams† and â€Å"telling the truth about Honda† marketing strategy into cleverly thought out campaign called â€Å"Hate something, Change something†. The overall Honda communications strategy is about simply getting the truths of Honda out there. This strategy led them into discovering an interesting truth; the diesel engine from the company that hated diesel engines. During the two years that W+K having been working with Honda, sales have consistently beaten industry expectations and brand tracking has been incredibly satisfying. Thanks to creative minds of W+K, Honda beat brands like Ford, VW, Renault and Toyota. Honda’s voice is now in the public domain, and they’re starting to mean more than small, dull, reliable cars. Most of this was down to a fantastic client and agency team and some inspired creative thinking. But I believe the new ways they’ve invented to integrate strategic and creative thinking made a significant contribution to their success. Chapter 3: The agencies clients and case study of a client and campaign of your choice with critical analysis According to Nike company lore, one of the most famous and easily recognized slogans in advertising history was coined at a 1988 meeting of Nike’s ad agency W+K and a group of Nike employees. Launched in August of 1988, Nikes â€Å"Just Do It† tagline was conceived by W+K. â€Å"Just Do It† is without a doubt one of the most Powerful lines in marketing, which Dan Wieden credits the inspiration for his â€Å"Just Do It† slogan to Gary Gilmores last word, â€Å"Let’s Do it†. â€Å"After stumbling badly against archrival Reebok in the 1980s, Nike rose about as high and fast in the ‘90s. It took on a new religion of brand consciousness and broke advertising sound barriers with its indelible Swoosh, â€Å"Just Do It† slogan and deified sports figures. Nike managed the deftest of marketing tricks: to be both anti-establishment and mass market, to the tune of $9.2 billion dollars in sales in 1997.† —Jolie Soloman â€Å"When Nike Goes Cold† Newsweek, March 30, 1998 From the above source you can see that before the creation of the â€Å"Just Do It† Campaign, Nike was losing ground to Reebok and other competitors, therefore something had to be done to get them back on track. With the help of W+K and its â€Å"Just Do it† Campaign and Nike’s strong products, they were able to increase its share of the domestic sport-shoe business from 18 % to 43 %, from $877 million in worldwide sales to $9.2 billion in the t en years between 1988 and 1998. Thanks to the creative mind of W+K Nike were able to gain a stronger brand to expand their market share, command higher prices and generate more revenue than its competitors. The main message behind this campaign is to get everyone urgently too loose weight by either: running miles, joining a sports team and basically not being lazy and being productive in their lives. What Just Do it, means is that they want you to ‘Just do it!’ don’t think twice and don’t have second thoughts start exercising!. The main success of the â€Å"Just Do It† campaign was the timing, when Nike was able to tap into the fitness craze of the 1980’s, by releasing a tough, take-no prisoners ad campaign that practically shamed people into exercising, and more importantly, to exercising in Nikes. They propelled their campaigns by endorsing celebrities such as Michael Jordan, who is considered the best basketball player of his time. Nike were than able to cleverly use the success of Michael Jordan, to create a whole new line of Nike apparel coined, â€Å"Air-Jordan†, which persuaded the customers into believing that his shoes were performance enhancers. In their TV advertisements with the basketball star, there were several instances where at the end of the ad, they concluded, â€Å"It must be the shoes† that makes his success. Along with Jordan’s rise to fame, Nike was able to tap into the spot light. Where ever Jordan succeeded, Nike was close behind offering the swoosh and the healthy saying of â€Å"Just do it.† Celebrity endorsement also helped to forge a relationship with the consumers, whilst also appealing to their sense of belonging and â€Å"hipness†. Nike went on to become a self-fulfilling image prophecy: meaning if you want to be hip, wear Nike; if you are hip, you are probably wearing Nike. The â€Å"Just Do It† campaign was able to turn sweaty, pain-ridden, time-consuming exercise in Nike sneakers into something sexy and exciting. Perhaps most importantly, even those who were not in fact exercising in Nikes (the vast majority) still wanted to own them. By focusing on the aura and image conveyed by the fitness culture, Nike was able to attract those who wanted the image without incurring the pain. Chapter 4: The agency as a Brand and rational for why it fits to you as brand The company’s personality, culture, and style resonate greatly with me; it’s about thinking outside the box, forgetting the rules, and bringing out the best in its team. ‘Thinking outside the box’ is one thing that I try to apply in life, as it allows me to think differently to others, see things from different prospective and not being afraid to try something that seems different. From the in-depth research that I’ve completed, there is a little doubt remaining that W+K has proven itself continuously throughout the past three decades as a leader and bar setting agency in the advertising world across the globe. W+K attention to detail and their commitment to hiring only the best employees comes through strongly in their work. While modern marketing expects an understanding of digital media and popular culture, to truly push the boundaries of what is achievable, a deeper current understanding is needed. As an agency, its collective critical eye into the vortex of technology, commercial art, and all types of media gives Wieden + Kennedy the advantage of foresight into campaign ideas that otherwise would go undiscovered by their competitors. Bibliography/reference Berry, Matt. Making of Honda Diesel Ad. Http://wklondon.com. N.p., 12 Oct. 2009. Web. 13 Dec. 2012. http://wklondon.com/general/about/further-reading/Making-of-the-Honda-Diesel-ad.pdf. Daniel Seijo , (2006), http://www.motorpasion.com/videos-de-coches/otro-precioso-anuncio-de-honda-impossible-dream [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.motorpasion.com/videos-de-coches/otro-precioso-anuncio-de-honda-impossible-dream [Accessed 13 December 12]. Ed Cotton, (2010), Goodby talks to weiden and kennedy [ONLINE]. Available at: