shots Awards 2011: Agency of the Year

“We’re pretty hard on ourselves,” states Mark Fitzloff, executive creative director at Wieden + Kennedy Portland, “and I think when you go through 12 months of self-flagellation any award at the end of it is a pleasant surprise.” A modest response to claiming the inaugural shots Agency of the Year award, but given the consistent quality of work produced by the Portland agency, most of us won’t be too surprised to see it edge out the other contenders on an impressive shortlist.

“We had a great year in 2010,” Fitzloff continues, “and sometimes you can’t help wondering whether we might be slowing down or dropping off, so it’s nice to get that recognition.” For the record, the last 12 months have not borne witness to any slowing down or dropping off – the contrary, in fact, could be true.

The 2011 shots Awards judging period stretches from November 2010 to October 2011, and in that time W+K Portland has brought us some extraordinary work for brands including Coca-Cola, Old Spice, Chrysler and, of course, Nike, and Fitzloff concedes that without the trust and support of those clients W+K would not be where it is. “There’s absolutely no such thing as good advertising with bad clients. It defies the laws of physics,” laughs Fitzloff. “We’re extraordinarily lucky to have found these partnerships.”

The geography of success

Fiztloff and W+K Portland managing director Tom Blessington put the success of the agency down to a number of things, including it being in Portland. “I think the geography helps and when you think of where this agency is and who started it...” says Fitzloff, tailing off before continuing. “Dan Wieden and David Kennedy are about as grounded a pair as you’ll ever come across and I think that keeps us grounded as an agency. Dan is a born and bred Oregonian, so his values reflect the state in which he grew up and I think that keeps us pretty humble. Also, geographically, Portland is pretty isolated so, while the internet has made it much easier to connect, I think we’re still healthily removed from a lot of our peers.”

Geography aside, Blessington believes that W+K’s independence and unwavering belief in a creative approach has stood them in very good stead, and that this belief in creativity is something that fewer agencies are buying into. “I don’t think the creative level is as high as it should be,” Blessington states. “I think we’re seeing the economy really affect a client’s decisions to take risks and what we’ve been noticing is that some of the emerging markets don’t perceive a value in creativity. Where the economy is strong – in places such as China, India and South America – advertising is a new industry and the concept of needing anything beyond the ‘here’s my product and here’s how much it costs’ approach hasn’t been fully embraced.”

Blessington also believes that it’s not only clients that need to lead a creative charge and that some of the blame for a drop in creative standards lies with the agencies and their lack of ambition. “There’s a tendency [for some agencies] to play things more cautiously, and simple retention of clients becomes the focus. Our independence is everything and that allows us to take those chances, plus there aren’t those quarterly profit plans that govern a lot of other agencies.”

The shortlisted work, which our panel of judges viewed, included a variety of clients, styles and approaches and this too is what pleases Fitzloff and Blessington, and highlights W+K’s ability to tell different stories in different ways. “Hopefully our work is as varied in tonality as our clients,” Fitzloff says. “We’ve never had a house style, but people say there’s an authenticity to our work and I think that comes from the fact that we base it, first, around something that’s true to the brand. We’re not responding to what a particular consumer group is into, or even what we’re into. We have to look at what this particular company is all about. We can do something that’s a tear-jerker followed by something extremely juvenile.”

Emotional highs

Examples of that variety include the slick, high-octane work for Nike, Throwdown, Rise and Boom; the epic sweep of animated extravaganza Siege for Coca-Cola; the continuing adventures of the laugh-out-loud Old Spice guy and, for Fitzloff and Blessington, possibly their most rewarding piece of work, the powerful message of Chrysler’s Born of Fire. “The Chrysler work was an emotional high because there’s a lot of interesting backstory on that one, in that it was a company that had been written off and was proving that it was still alive,” Fitzloff says. There was also a city [Detroit] that felt the same way, and a musical artist [Eminem] who had fallen from his peak. There was even a director [Sam Beyer] who had frankly been off people’s lists for a while, so there was everything to gain and nothing to lose with that.” The spot had huge resonance within America and seemed to embody the fighting spirit of a city, as well as the continuing struggle of a brand. The work was picked up and mentioned by Barack Obama and, Blessington reveals, the script was read out on the floor of the House of Congress. “We always talk about wanting to be culturally relevant or timely,” says Blessington, “and you can do that by simply making a joke, but to actually affect the health of a nation is pretty cool. The depths to which that spot stirred people emotionally was amazing.”

As for the coming year, Fitzloff seems to only be part-joking when he says that what motivates him is fear. “Fear is what pushes us, I suppose,” he laughs. “You get into this cautionary tale of, ‘if you fly too high...’. But it’s kind of a conundrum unique to a creative business in that we put such stock in novelty. If we have a campaign that’s tremendously successful then on some level you feel like you’re not allowed to continue it. So with the Old Spice guy we could clearly see a diminishing return – at least from the industry – on it, though consumers still seemed to love it, and that makes things difficult because if you’ve got a good thing going you can’t just let it keep going. Even if you put in an A+ performance on it, you’ll only ever tie, you’ll never exceed. The only thing you can’t do is the thing you’ve already done, which can drive you insane.”

Agency of the Year Shortlist

Wieden + Kennedy Portland

BBH London

Fallon London

Wieden + Kennedy London

Publicis Conseil Paris

Agency of the Year Judging Panel

Julien Chavepayre, EP, Les Telecreateurs Paris

Flavio Pantigoso, ECD, Y&R Peru

Jon Kamen, chairman and CEO, @radical.media

Toby Talbot, ECD, DDB New Zealand

Matthew Bull, ECD, The Bull-White House New York