CPB is Agency of the Year (Again)

This might be a bit of old news to many of you, but Creativity recently named CPG "Agency of the Year" for the second year in a row.

Here's a quick blurb from the editors at the mag about the agency's success in 2005:

Most of you won't be surprised by the appointment of CPB to its now familiar post as Agency of the Year. You might be surprised though by how utterly boring were our reasons for the choice (those imaginative readers who email us every year alleging that our picks are the result of everything from payola to sex favor swapping, step away from the keyboards, monkeys, and prepare to be disappointed): the agency just did better, more resonant work for more clients than anyone else.

Though we naturally gravitate toward forward-thinking work and the companies behind it, we're not blinded by channel chicanery for its own sake. Great ideas that come from great audience insight, executed with greatness, win. All the things we spend the whole year talking about—breaking through, engaging audiences, creating content that can compete with any kind of entertainment—the agency just does, and for an inarguably wide range of brands—the client roster includes fast food, cars, household and beauty products, an airline, dried meat, big retail, beer, a search engine, bike gear, a lad's magazine, and an anti-tobacco body among others. All of the work CPB submitted—from TV spots to fake print ads in Auto Trader, to DVDs to masks and rubber grips—just worked. It got into faces and into lives and into the cultural stew, which isn't a wank on the agency's part nor a lapse in marketing judgment on ours for recognizing it. It's what we think makes a difference, ultimately, for brands. We could be wrong. CPB could be wrong. But right now, at a time when the smartest people in the industry are making shit up as they go, the agency's brain trust is making up stuff that often seems, in its own sometimes silly way, important. And it's translated into business success for the agency. After parting ways with Ikea, Molson and Mini, the agency's well known M.O. translated into nothing but upgrades—including new business from Miller, and the Volkswagen and Sprite accounts.

Overall, I'd say this award is well deserved. I can't say I'm a fan of all the work the shop turned out. The Slim Jim stuff is terrible and the article failed to mention that they are responsible for what has the be the worst spot of the year by far: "Chilltop" for Coke Zero. Still, no agency is 100% perfect. All-in-all, they are still doing the best stuff around.

Nice work, CPB.

Comments

[Joe Drimmer]

You're pretty much dead on in your assessment, AWP. However, both you and "Creativity" neglected to mention another sizable account that recently parted ways with the agency: Earthlink. And while I agree that Crispin's Coke Zero "Chilltop" commercial was truly cringeworthy, the stuff they did for Earthlink wasn't much better.

Still, they have a better batting average than just about anyone else around. The funny thing is, while they did some great stuff this year, very little was particularly memorable. There was the BK commercial with Hootie and. . . well, not much else. Certainly nothing on the order of their by now infamous "Subservient Chicken." The BK "Coq Roq" campaign, for example, was more noteworthy for the (possibly contrived) controversy surrounding it than for the campaign itself.

So when "Creativity" says that their work "got into faces and into lives and into the cultural stew," well, I think that's a bit of a stretch. Other than the Subservient Chicken, what has Crispin ever done that wormed its way into pop culture?

Of course, "Creativity"'s kissing Crispin already overkissed ass is nothing new. In fact, it's why I stopped reading their magazine. It's like, enough already. We know they're great. While I agree that Crispin's being named "Agency of the Year" is indeed "well deserved," it's also anticlimatic given "Creativity"'s incessant pimping for Crispin the other 11 months of the year.

[advertisingwithoutpity]

Well said, Doctor Drimmer.

Hootie was certainly a classic but I'm not sure that "The King" is the cultural phenomenom that Creativity makes it out to be.