Our Chief Cre­ative Officer’s Lat­est Col­umn: Who’s to Blame When an Ad Incites Anger?

Recently, a new ad for the snack brand Popchips, fea­tur­ing Ash­ton Kutcher in eth­nic dress and brown makeup, was pulled by the brand after alle­ga­tions of racism. If my descrip­tion of the inci­dent sounds con­spic­u­ously non­judg­men­tal, it’s inten­tional: This arti­cle isn’t about the valid­ity or sever­ity of the pur­ported faux pas, but rather the roles that clients and their agen­cies play in cre­at­ing and respond­ing to these mishaps.

The Popchips ker­fuf­fle is hardly unprece­dented. Early in my career, I took a job at an agency that had pro­duced a Super Bowl spot for a sneaker retailer called Just For Feet. Dur­ing my first week, the exec­u­tive cre­ative direc­tor invited me into a small con­fer­ence room to show me the 30 sec­onds of film he hoped would launch the agency and its client into the pub­lic spot­light. And the day the ad first aired — dur­ing the fourth quar­ter of a rel­a­tively for­get­table game — that’s exactly what happened.

The Just For Feet com­mer­cial, fea­tur­ing a bare­foot Kenyan run­ner who is tracked by mil­i­tary men in a Humvee, drugged, and forced to wear sneak­ers against his will, was declared: “Appallingly insen­si­tive,” by the New York Times; “neo-colonialist … cul­tur­ally impe­ri­al­ist, and prob­a­bly racist,” by Ad Age; and “unac­cept­able and shock­ingly unpro­fes­sional,” by Harold Rut­ten­berg — the CEO of Just For Feet.

That last quote, how­ever, wasn’t part of an apol­ogy Mr. Rut­ten­berg was issu­ing on behalf of his com­pany; it was part of the first-ever adver­tis­ing mal­prac­tice suit he was fil­ing against his agency.

Mr. Ruttenberg’s suit went on to claim that the agency, “…assured Just for Feet that the com­mer­cial … would be well-received by the pub­lic.” In state­ments designed to assuage the back­lash, he told the press, “We said ‘no.’ They said ‘yes.’ They said they knew bet­ter. And we are pre­pared to swear that under oath.”

The truth, as every­one who works in this busi­ness knows, is that launch­ing a cam­paign is like launch­ing a nuclear mis­sile: both the agency and the client have to turn their key. To place the blame entirely on the agency is to ignore the real­i­ties and respon­si­bil­i­ties of being a client. And since an agency has lit­tle choice but to refer the press to the client when a cam­paign goes awry, it’s unfair for the client to impli­cate the agency.

Of course, agen­cies are hardly inno­cent bystanders when such events unfold. So what, exactly, are an agency’s respon­si­bil­i­ties in these instances? And, per­haps more crit­i­cally, how can agen­cies help clients avoid them in the first place?

Part of the answer may be as sim­ple as estab­lish­ing and respect­ing a client’s tol­er­ance for risk.

Risk tol­er­ance is a phrase most com­monly used in the invest­ing world; it’s how finan­cial advi­sors match their clients with the prod­ucts that best suit them. Pre­fer sta­bil­ity even if it lim­its growth poten­tial? Put your money in a CD. Com­fort­able with the pos­si­bil­ity of big losses if it means the oppor­tu­nity for big gains? Invest in stocks. We’re all famil­iar with the con­cept, but rarely apply it to our industry.

Agen­cies talk a lot about “push­ing clients out of their com­fort zone,” and use sound bites like, “if it doesn’t make you ner­vous, you shouldn’t be run­ning it.” These sen­ti­ments are both valid, but only to a degree; when clients get pushed too far out of their com­fort zone, and when cre­ative work makes them more ner­vous than enthused, an agency’s fail­ure to respect its clients’ risk tol­er­ance con­sti­tutes negligence.

There’s a mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence between push­ing your clients and impos­ing your will on them: the for­mer involves the thought­ful, nuanced process of help­ing clients gain a new per­spec­tive, the lat­ter involves bul­ly­ing them until they con­cede. Agen­cies are likely to be bet­ter served by the for­mer. It may not win them as many cre­ative awards, but it could save them from los­ing a few clients.

Arguably, adver­tis­ing that can be per­ceived as cul­tur­ally insen­si­tive should never be pro­posed, even if it is within a client’s com­fort zone. So con­sider an ad like the Paris Hilton “car wash” spot cre­ated for Carl’s Jr. in 2005 as another exam­ple of under­stand­ing a client’s risk tol­er­ance: what worked for Carl’s Jr. would likely cause a brand like McDonald’s con­sid­er­able discomfort.

Sev­eral months ago, I went so far as to present a client with an actual “risk-tolerance con­tin­uum” in an effort to col­lec­tively and visu­ally estab­lish how far they wanted to devi­ate from the mar­ket­ing con­ven­tions of their indus­try. It was an eye-opening process for every­one involved, and has influ­enced our approach to their busi­ness ever since.

I don’t know the peo­ple who were at Just For Feet in 1999, so it’s hard to say whether the afore­men­tioned Super Bowl spot was aligned with their risk tol­er­ance. Regard­less, it should serve as a les­son for any agency that con­fuses “push­ing” clients with advis­ing them: after all, it’s tough for clients to pat you on the back while you’re twist­ing their arm.

The new doc­u­men­tary Last Call at the Oasis may be about the impend­ing global water cri­sis, but it’s not with­out a few lighter moments. In the film, High Wide & Hand­some presents brand names and pack­age designs that aim to help make puri­fied sewage water (a pro­posed solu­tion to the inevitable drinking-water short­age) more palat­able to con­sumers. As is often the case, we devel­oped a range of ideas from thought pro­vok­ing (CH2OICE) to tongue-in-cheek (Porce­lain Springs, Source Der­riere). Here are some of the designs that made it into the movie, and a few that didn’t.

CCP Games, the renowned Ice­landic pub­lisher of the PC gam­ing phe­nom­e­non EVE Online, has cho­sen High Wide & Hand­some to launch its first con­sole title: the PlaySta­tion 3 exclu­sive, DUST 514. Her­alded as the future of video games by Fast Com­pany, Forbes and PC World, DUST 514 will be the first PlaySta­tion 3 game to seam­lessly inter­act with a PC game (EVE Online) in real time. In sim­ple terms, EVE Online play­ers (who obtain space­ships, fly them through a futur­is­tic uni­verse with 7,000 star sys­tems, form cor­po­ra­tions of var­i­ous sizes and engage in epic bat­tles that eter­nally alter the phys­i­cal, polit­i­cal and eco­nomic land­scape of the galaxy) will be able to hire DUST 514 play­ers (mer­ce­nar­ies on the plan­ets in EVE Online) to fight ground bat­tles on their behalf. And when a ship in EVE Online fires upon a planet in DUST 514, the bom­bard­ment will appear across both plat­forms and affect each, in real time, for­ever. As if the tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion itself isn’t enough, DUST 514 will also be the first free-to-play “shooter” (e.g., Call of Duty, Bat­tle­field and Halo) avail­able on a major gam­ing con­sole. DUST 514 is slated to launch later this year. Need­less to say, we couldn’t be more excited about the oppor­tu­nity and the pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Last Call at the Oasis, a thought­ful, com­pelling and beau­ti­fully made doc­u­men­tary about the water cri­sis fac­ing the world, hits the­aters May 4. The pro­duc­ers of the movie, who opened eyes to inhu­mane and unsus­tain­able cor­po­rate farm­ing prac­tices in 2008 with the film Food, Inc., believe puri­fied sewage water is one of the solu­tions to the impend­ing drinking-water short­age. Of course, most Amer­i­cans have a strong aver­sion to drink­ing “reclaimed” water, so High Wide & Hand­some was enlisted to help make the con­cept more palat­able. Below is a six-minute excerpt that includes a por­tion of our appear­ance in the full-length film. To find out when Last Call at the Oasis will be appear­ing near you, visit http://www.takepart.com/lastcall.

High Wide & Hand­some was recently named a 2012 North Amer­ica Effie Award win­ner for our cam­paign to pro­mote the video game RIFT. The Effie Awards is the only adver­tis­ing com­pe­ti­tion High Wide & Hand­some enters because it eval­u­ates an agency’s work based exclu­sively on its effectiveness—which we believe is the only mea­sure that mat­ters. Our “We’re not in Aze­roth any­more” cam­paign for RIFT helped the title become the fastest video game of its kind to reach one mil­lion users, and the first to cause World of War­craft (the cat­e­gory Goliath with more than 60% mar­ket share) to report sub­stan­tial sub­scriber losses. For the com­plete list of 2012 North Amer­ica Effie Award win­ners, click here.

In his lat­est arti­cle for Ad Age, our chief cre­ative offi­cer encour­ages brands and agen­cies to look beyond the num­bers when mak­ing mar­ket­ing deci­sions. Click the image below to read the full arti­cle on AdAge.com.

Seven-feet tall and gen­er­ously bespan­gled, a danc­ing white glove will for­ever hold cen­ter stage in our col­lec­tive mem­ory of HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME’s 2011 Hol­i­day Party in Las Vegas. Our eyes filled with won­der (nay, hor­ror) as a Ham­burger Helper-esque fig­ure con­torted to the strains of the King of Pop dur­ing the enter­tain­ment por­tion of our evening: Cirque du Soleil’s stage spec­tac­u­lar, “Michael Jack­son THE IMMORTAL World Tour.” When a pair of 12-foot-long black loafers with scrunched-down white socks rolled in and dis­patched two writhing dancers, we knew it was our cue to flee for less risky odds in the casino.

Ear­lier in the evening, our team gath­ered around a table at José Andrés’ crit­i­cally acclaimed tapas restau­rant, Jaleo. Our fes­tive din­ner cul­mi­nated in the pre­sen­ta­tion of a pan of paella so enor­mous, it could’ve fed a fam­ily of anthro­po­mor­phized giant gloves.

Yes, it can be said Vegas showed us a very good time before tuck­ing us in at The Cosmopolitan’s posh resort to dream of sugar plums, moon­walk­ing and the like. Now when asked how we’re going to top our­selves for Hol­i­day Party 2012, there seems to be only one viable answer: Cirque du Bieber, Dubai.

After almost two years in Venice, HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME is relo­cat­ing to a 1920s build­ing in Cul­ver City between the Cul­ver Hotel and Pacific The­atres. Con­struc­tion in the new office is sched­uled to fin­ish by Thanks­giv­ing, and our offi­cial move-in day is Decem­ber 2. While we’ll miss the sirens, heli­copters and read­ily acces­si­ble med­ical mar­i­juana for which Venice has become famous, we think being 20 yards away from a Chipo­tle and a Trader Joe’s is a decent trade-off. Our phone num­ber will stay the same, but our sub­scrip­tion to SMOOTH mag­a­zine will now be deliv­ered to 9430 Wash­ing­ton Blvd., Cul­ver City, CA 90232. Hope to see you there.

We didn’t sub­mit our name for con­sid­er­a­tion, and we’re not sure whether we should be flat­tered or insulted (actu­ally, we’re hon­ored to be in the com­pany of so many well known and respected agen­cies), but for now we’re cel­e­brat­ing our #7 spot on ADWEEK’s inter­na­tional list of the “40 Strangest Agency Names.” Click here to read the article.

Build­ing on the star power of Curb Your Enthu­si­asm’s J.B. Smoove and the momen­tum of the “Smoove on Smooth” video series HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME devel­oped for Paul Mas­son Brandy in 2010, we tai­lored the new cam­paign ele­ments to the par­tic­u­lar media vehi­cles and mar­kets in which they would appear. From bill­boards and bus shel­ters in Bal­ti­more, Detroit, Chicago and Atlanta to full-page ads in ESPN and VIBE, smooth­ness always hit home.

HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME recently launched a new Clos du Bois cam­paign by show­cas­ing the brand’s French sophis­ti­ca­tion and approach­able Cal­i­for­nia style. The mar­riage of these influ­ences is encap­su­lated by the tagline, “Made in Cal­i­for­nia. Flu­ent in French.” Fea­tur­ing real women from the West Coast, the cam­paign expresses the effort­less sophis­ti­ca­tion that Clos du Bois embod­ies as a brand.

The plan is dig­i­tally dri­ven with pro­gres­sive video units, pro­mo­tional part­ner­ships and a heavy empha­sis on social media. The Face­book page, man­aged by HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME, invites fans to find their wine with an app that rec­om­mends the best vari­etal match for each individual’s taste. Along with a branded Tum­blr page, the first for a major wine brand, an active Twit­ter pres­ence keeps Clos du Bois flu­idly in touch with its con­sumers. From inte­grated point-of-sale col­lat­eral to a com­pletely redesigned brand site, HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME has posi­tioned Clos du Bois to rein­tro­duce itself with unde­ni­able chic.

WEBSITE

TUMBLR

OUTDOOR

“FIND YOUR WINE” FACEBOOK APP



ONLINE VIDEO AD

To help intro­duce Black Vel­vet to a new gen­er­a­tion of whisky drinkers, HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME devel­oped an inte­grated cam­paign that posi­tions the brand as “The start of every great story.” Three 30-second radio spots, an online ad cam­paign and a strong out-of-home pres­ence encour­age the 25– to 35-year-old male demo­graphic to cre­ate and share bet­ter sto­ries with the ulti­mate blended-at-birth, bar­rel aged bev­er­age: Black Vel­vet Whisky. In addi­tion to the ad cam­paign, HIGH WIDE & HANDSOME also man­ages all social media activ­i­ties on behalf of the brand. Lis­ten to all three radio spots and view the online cam­paign below.


RADIO



OUTDOOR






ONLINE ADS