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The St. Louis advertising community has seen better days, so the
conventional wisdom goes. Locally-based business behemoths, the
conventional wisdom adds, create their advertising in New York,
in Chicago, on the West Coast—anywhere but St. Louis. When the esteemed
D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles recently closed its St. Louis office,
conventional wisdom has it, the coffin containing the remains of
the once-proud St. Louis advertising industry was nailed shut.
Of course, conventional wisdom is often just plain dumb. And, when
it comes to St. Louis advertising, the conventional wisdom is, to
borrow the title of the pop culture film, Dumb and Dumber.
Just ask the folks at Procter & Gamble, Jack Daniel’s, Anheuser-Busch,
American Express, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Miller Brewing, Con-Agra,
KV Pharmaceutical, SBC Communications, Spectrum Brands, Gillette,
and Boise-Cascade, to name more than a few but certainly not all
of the high- profile businesses doing business with St. Louis advertising
agencies. As any creative director worth his nerf basketball-hoop-in-the-office
knows, great advertising is never about conventional wisdom anyway.
“We like to think that the state of the agency business is pretty
good right now,” says Ted Simmons, the Arnold Worldwide- St. Louis
chief executive officer who has been creating Jack Daniel’s advertising
for more than 30 years.
“I don’t see the work suffering at all,” agrees Tim Rodgers, partner
of the Rodgers Townsend ad agency. “It’s just being done differently
at different places than it used to be.”
In fact, Simmons, who is something of a legend in St. Louis advertising,
says some things are better than ever.
“The quality of work today is superior to what it used to be,” Simmons
observes. “There is some really outstanding work coming out of St.
Louis.”
And a lot of that work is being seen throughout the U.S. and overseas,
too.
 Arnold
Worldwide’s global Jack Daniel’s ad campaign transcends
across multiple borders, effectively translating the
brand’s different appeals to dissimilar cultures. |
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At Arnold Worldwide–St. Louis, advertising created at 701 Market
Street for Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey and the brand’s owner,
Brown-Forman Corp. of Louisville, can be seen in many of the 140
countries in which the whiskey is sold. According to Bill Mueller,
the agency’s director of account management, Jack Daniel’s print
advertising is appearing in 35 nations, while television and cinema
ads are appearing on viewer screens in 14 countries.
Simmons, a writer who is credited with the long-running, homespun,
slow-talkin’ Jack Daniel’s print ads featuring life in Lynchburg,
Tenn., says the overseas brand promotion has been so successful
that 50 percent of the brand’s sales are now generated offshore.
ARNOLD
WORLDWIDE-ST. LOUIS, (Left to right): Bill
Mueller (EVP, Account Management Director); Les Diveley
(President); Mark Ray (EVP, Creative Director); Sue
Chapman (EVP, Account Planning Director); and Ted
Simmons (CEO). |
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“It’s the appeal of things American,” explains Sue Chapman, director
of planning for Arnold Worldwide–St. Louis. “It’s a taste of America’s
culture.”
Actually, it’s more than a single taste. Although the Jack Daniel’s
account team in St. Louis is adept at executing a single campaign
emphasizing what strategists call “universal truths” across multiple
borders, the brand has distinctly different appeals to dissimilar
cultures.
“Our conversations with Jack’s friends worldwide have taught us
how local culture impacts consumer values,” says Chapman, who manages
consumer research and brand marketing strategy on six continents
for Jack Daniel’s.
“Germans appreciate that the whiskey is well-made; Australians are
attracted to its manliness; Japanese worship its coolness; and the
Brits appreciate the understated way in which we set forth our message.
It’s as if these friends all like a different aspect of Jack.”
But, as Simmons adds, it’s all one Jack. It’s also one Southern
Comfort, another liquor brand promoted globally by Arnold Worldwide–St.
Louis, and one Glenmorangie Single Malt Scotch, a brand being promoted
in the U.S. on behalf of the Scottish distiller.
At Rodgers Townsend, fortunately, there’s more than one Bell, as
in Bell Telephone. There’s Southwestern Bell, Pacific Bell, Nevada
Bell, Ameritech, and Southern New England Telephone, and all are
clients of the St. Louis creative shop.
| Rodgers
Townsend recently launched a national alcohol awareness
campaign for Anheuser-Busch that focuses on underage
drinking. |
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For Tim Rodgers, who is an account guy, and Tom Townsend, who handles
the creative side, it all started when the two were at D’Arcy. Townsend
was a Twix, Milky Way, and Skittles man, while Rodgers was an A-B,
Enterprise Rent-A-Car, TWA, and Southwestern Bell kind of account
guy. Rodgers and Townsend left the mother lode (that would be D’Arcy)
in the mid-1990s to run their own agency. The partners had just
a handful of employees when old D’Arcy client, Southwestern Bell
came a-calling with some business-to-business work. A decade later,
Rodgers Townsend has 60 employees on three floors of the 1880s-vintage
Balke Building they call home in downtown.
RODGERS
TOWNSEND , Tom Townsend (seated)
and Tim Rodgers |
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Along the way, Rodgers Townsend picked up assignments for, among
others, Ameren corporation, ConAgra, Microsoft, a bunch of other
Bells around the country, Maritz, Anheuser-Busch, Enterprise Rent-A-Car,
First Bank, the St. Louis Rams, and Spectrum Brands. Their work
for Spectrum included a joint venture with Home Depot for in-store
promotion of a termite control product, and they’ve just completed
a new alcohol awareness and education program on behalf of Anheuser-Busch.
The A-B campaign is a back-to-school program encouraging parents
to talk to their kids about underage drinking. It’s a national effort
incorporating television, radio, newspapers, magazines and transit
shelters.
“This new work is rooted in something that everyone on all sides
of this issue can agree with—that parents have the most influence
on what their children will do,” Rodgers says. “What we’ve done
to drive home that message is to remind parents of something else
we can all agree on—that it may be the only thing your kids value
your opinion on.”
Another local agency doing some national work is Adamson Advertising,
which has handled promotional assignments for Hardee’s, Mobil, Corona
Beer, Applied Food Technology, Empire Comfort Systems, KV Pharmaceutical,
and others.
One national account is Hortica, an Edwardsville, Illinois-based
company that provides insurance to the horticultural industry, including
nurseries, growers, garden centers, and florists. The more than
100-year-old company, formerly known as the Florists’ Mutual Insurance
Company before Adamson created its new name last year to better
position the firm in the marketplace, has thousands of policyholders
in 49 states, according to Norm Berger, an Adamson partner.
| In
renaming the more than 100-year-old Florists’ Mutual
Insurance Company to “Hortica,” Adamson Advertising
launched a national advertising campaign and new e-commerce
strategy to better position the firm in the current
marketplace. |
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Adamson is generating awareness of the new Hortica name among targeted
audiences and implementing a new e-commerce strategy for the company,
according to Berger.
The national and international advertising work is doing more than
keeping the St. Louis advertising tradition alive here; it brings
people to St. Louis, many for the first time.
New hires working for Jack Daniel’s or its overseas distributors
routinely come to St. Louis to participate in a Jack Daniel’s brand
orientation session at Arnold Worldwide–St. Louis. Why meet in St.
Louis?
“We’re the guardians of the brand called Jack Daniel’s,” Mueller
says. And St. Louis agencies remain the guardians of great advertising
that is still to be found around the U.S. and around the globe.
William V. Poe is principal of Poe Communications, a St. Louis
advertising and marketing communications firm. |
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