Rise and Fall of CP+B…?
Has Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the agency that for the past three or four years has been the poster child for the Revolution of nontraditional marketing, finally peaked?
Maybe.
To many industry observers the evidence is certainly mounting: their campaign for Orville Redenbacher popcorn that uses a dead Orville as its reanimated spokesperson, has been criticized for being tasteless; their remake of the ‘Hilltop’ TV commercial for Coca-Cola, perhaps the most iconic commercial for the brand ever, was dull; they lost the Method Home Care account to Chiat Day in LA; its high profile ‘Men of the Square Table’ campaign for Miller Beer hasn’t translated into sales; and there are rumors that VW, the car account that was handed them on a plate in September 2005, might leave the shop following the untimely departure from the automaker of Kerri Martin , its director of brand innovation and major champion of the agency (Kerri was their client at MINI and hired the agency soon after taking her new job at VW).
As an ex-Coke employee who longed to remake ‘Hilltop’ to say something about today’s world, I have to admit I was damned disappointed with how CP+B wasted this golden opportunity. I mean it’s not like you can do a remake again, at least not until the last one is dead and buried. And as an ex-CP+B employee it’s tempting to proclaim, “Ah, those were the glory days. It’s not been the same since I left” and cite the fact that Method was an account I helped win and is now gone. And as a viewer I always hated the Miller campaign because, while based on a good strategy, creatively it was always trying too hard.
But still, I don’t think they are falling. They are still the only agency in The US that is pushing boundaries creatively and redefining the meaning of advertising to be something far broader. They have made their clients’ brands part of popular culture. And they are still delivering work that is incredibly effective. The Burger King campaign, for instance, has been partly responsible for 10 consecutive quaters of positive comparable sales.
I knew them in 1997 when they were a 90-person shop working on two floors in a corporate looking office tower in Miami and even then they were doing amazing work. For me the creation of the anti-tobacco Truth brand is still one of the most brilliant marketing strategies ever developed. Not just because the work was cool to look at, but because it actually worked and reversed the upward trend in teenage smoking.
Many people have seen CP+B rise since 2003 when the agency won high profile accounts like IKEA and MINI and think their history of great work is brief, but really the work has for the most part been consistently good for almost 10 years.
But of course schadenfreude (delight in another’s misfortune) is natural from those jealous of others’ success.
Having said that, I do think the agency has some challenges. They are now BIG and split into two offices thousands of miles apart. When the creative and strategic force that is Alex Bogusky cannot interract face-to-face with everyone to shape their thinking and their work, some less than brilliant advertising is sure to slip between the cracks.
Watch this space.
