I hadn’t intended to write any more about Wieden & Kennedy London
on the basis that if you can’t say something good about an agency, it’s
best to say nothing at all. But with the surprise appointment of the
WCRS marketing director, Amy Lawson, to the role of managing director of
W&K London, it’s time to recognise the triumph of hope over experience
and have another go.
W&K’s troubled history in London since 1998 offers ample evidence of the
truth of the saying that an agency’s only real asset is its people. A
stream of talent has been hired and dispensed with at an alarming speed,
requiring (or, you could easily argue, because of) heavy intervention by
the US parent. The founding managing director, Mike Perry, the creative
directors Nick Gill and Adam Kean and the recently departed managing
director, Hugh Derrick, have all thrived at other agencies but not at
W&K.
I’d suggest that the fundamental issue here is one of miscasting the
managing director. Perry, who now works for himself but carved a
formidable reputation as the account man on Nike at Simons Palmer, is a
better soloist than he is a team leader. Similarly, Derrick, hired out
of Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, is better suited to working in a big agency
environment. Both are technically gifted without being suited to the
task of carrying an agency’s cultural baton.
Will Lawson necessarily fare any better? Well, time will tell. The
new-business department - sorry, we have to call it the marketing
department now - is not the obvious route to the top of an agency, so
this will be the first time that her general management skills will be
allowed out of the closet to work alongside her well-stocked client
Rolodex.
Undeniably, her energy for the task in hand far exceeds that of her two
predecessors. She’s a good spinner, and adept at using charm and humour
rather than blunt coercion to get her way. And it remains as true as
ever that there is always room, even in this most crowded of advertising
markets, for an independent agency brand. As long as the bedrock client
Nike remains faithful, and with the addition of yet another talented
creative director, there is everything to play for.
Finally, and with this week’s front page news that its media pitch has
ended, I would like to put on record what an improved organisation COI
Communications (to use its new name) is. By definition it can’t please
everybody, and there are probably ways it could improve still further,
but I reckon it’s reached the stage where it satisfies as many people as
it’s possible to do - while, incidentally, having one of the best reels
in town. How nice to be able to say that about a stuffy government body
that cannot offer anything like the kind of salaries paid to agency
people in the unreal world, and how rarely we get the chance.
caroline.marshall@haynet.com.
