Chicago Advertising Deathwatch: The Bell Could Be Tolling for DDB
Another major Chicago ad agency has been placed on the deathwatch, calling into question the Windy City's historic significance in the advertising business. DDB Chicago is a "sinking ship," according to the Sun-Times' Lewis Lazare. It is "losing its touch," according to Ad Age, which points the finger at the crumbling of DDB's relationship with Anheuser-Busch. And its creative staff have been stricken by dozens of layoffs last month, per AgencySpy.
Meanwhile, DDB worldwide CEO Chuck Brymer (pictured) seems to be at odds with DDB North America President Dick Rogers. Brymer reportedly wants DDB merged into Tribal DDB; Rogers thinks he's just a few steps away from installing new creative leadership. The two moves are not incompatible, but mixed messages never bode well.
If DDB is folded into Tribal DDB -- a digital agency that parent Omnicom (OMC) started from scratch a few years ago -- it will be the second major Chicago agency nameplate to fall from the city's doors. JWT Chicago, once that network's lead office, was all but shuttered in 2009.
It raises nagging doubts, again, about the future of advertising in Chicago. Advertising was once dominated by three cities: New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. The agency business has since consolidated in New York and Los Angeles. At the same time, upstart agencies -- such as Miami's Crispin Porter + Bogusky -- have demonstrated that clients need not pick Chicago if they don't want the bicoastal groupthink that sometimes dominates agency thinking. Whereas Midwest clients may once have needed an agency resource nearer than New York or California, the web has since rendered geographic proximity less relevant to clients. (Besides, clients like to visit their agencies, and Manhattan and Santa Monica sound like a lot more fun in summer or winter than Lake Michigan.)
DDB created Budweiser's ads for years, but the key executives at the client and agency have since gone. It's a well-known rule of thumb in advertising: when the main agency-client relationship is disrupted, it doesn't matter how good everything else looks on paper. The account is walking out the door:
A-B last month dealt DDB a major public embarrassment, rejecting every one of DDB's Bud Light ads for last month's Super Bowl in the wake of the worst sales year in the brand's history.Part of the State Farm account has been reassigned to DraftFCB, also.
Call it the curse of Paul Tilley. It is now two years after DDB's executive creative director threw himself out of a window at the Fairmount Hotel. Tilley's death came after he was roundly criticized by anonymous commenters on various ad blogs, including AgencySpy and Adscam. Some suggested he was hounded to his death.
A year ago, DDB made the misstep of creating a Bud Light Super Bowl ad that featured a joke about a man throwing himself out of a window. Budweiser was one of Tilley's accounts.
Tilley's death came after the 2006 passing, from cancer, of DDB Worldwide CEO Ken Kaess. He was replaced by Chuck Brymer, who has not yet signed off on a replacement for Tilley.
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