In Levi's Review, Client Is Easily Distracted and Price-Sensitive

(MoneyWatch)  Good luck to the six shops who've reached the final of the Levi Strauss & Co. review. You'll need it -- because Levi's is a company that has a track record of not knowing what it wants, trying a mish-mash of unrelated strategies, and then switching horses midstream.

The company dumped Bartle Bogle Hegarty last month, the agency that had led its creative since 2001.

Before that, if memory serves, Levi's shop was TBWA/Chiat/Day, which won the business after agreeing to do a large number of unconnected campaigns in the hopes that one of them would stick. (Anyone remember "Hard Jeans?" Anyone? Bueller? No. Didn't think so.)

Before that, the business had been handled by Foote, Cone & Belding for about 60 years. That partnership resulted in one of the best ads of all time, "Doctors," by Spike Jonez. (See video below.)

So this is a company that, once given the best creative money can buy, isn't satisfied.

On the media side, it picked Zenith Media to handle buying, only to change its mind and tap OMD after failing to "come to terms" with the shop it really wanted.

If you want more proof that this is a company that doesn't really know what it wants to be, check out its corporate web site. The background theme seems to be "authentic history." Jeans for women are being advertised with a butt-lifting capability even though the company touts itself as "champions of real women for more than 100 years." The retail site's theme is simply "Christmas." But the only marketing Levi's has done that has gotten attention recently was an online viral ad which showed people back-flipping impossibly into their denims.

The sole piece of good news for the winning shop is that sales are currently going up. That will not last long in this retail environment. The company expects the fourth quarter to be horrible. So the winning agency should expect to be fired or asked to drop everything and start anew sometime in spring 2009.

One final note: Like Pepsi, Levi's marketing expenses are going up -- which cannot last. You don't want to be the most expensive shop in this review. As if the Zenith fiasco wasn't enough of a signal, the client has already made it quite clear that it is price-sensitive in terms of its marketing vendors.