Austin-Based Kolar Supporting Underdog

As a very recent marathon finisher, I have a new found respect for those who train and work hard to hit their goals. Adfreak recently posted about how Austin-based ad agency Kolar is helping with one man’s dream of running in the Olympics.

Austin agency gets behind a real underdog

Awesome!

Worst Ad Agency in Austin Award 2008

Ok readers, you’ve all seen the best of lists, the top ten lists, and all the others but, while those are all good, here’s something a bit different:

**The Worst Ad Agency to Work for in Austin Award 2008**

Cast your vote by posting a comment and make sure to share why you feel the way you do.

Vote early and often….We’ll crown a ~winner~ on Friday May 9th, 2008.

GSD&M still in wild blue yonder

I’m so happy to be able to post some really good news regarding GSD&M. The greed, sex, drugs, and money gang, that keeps west 6th street bars in business, has retained the United States Air Force account (9 nine year / ~$372 million contract). Interpublic Group of Cos.’ DraftFCB was the other agency invited to pitch for the business which GSD&M had first won back in 2000.

Thank you USAF for not dropping a bomb on GSD&M…this time.

Da Vinci – Not interested in award winners

Here’s a piece of an article recently posted to the online version of the
Austin American Statesman regarding Dell/WPP’s Da Vinci (with my thoughts in parenthesis):
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The new agency in Austin will work with Mark Jarvis, Dell’s new chief marketing officer, and Casey Jones, vice president for global marketing, as well as and Dell’s worldwide marketing and communications teams in Round Rock and elsewhere.

The approach of creating an agency geared toward one large client created some consternation in the advertising industry (of course it did, along with layoffs), but it also sparked a heated and closely watched competition for Dell’s advertising business. WPP eventually beat out Interpublic Group of Cos. (I wonder if Interpublic will be thankful for the loss in the near future), the other finalist for the account.

The project to consolidate Dell’s advertising and marketing into one agency account was spearheaded by Jarvis (What’s the average tenure of CMOs these days?). Dell had set out to create an advertising partner that would “spend 100 percent of their time thinking about our customers (I guess someone has to think of Dell’s customers), rather than how they will get the next assignment,” according to an entry by Jarvis on http://www.direct2dell.com, the company’s official blog (Who outside of Dell reads the blog?).

Rather than looking for talent focused on nabbing industry awards for their creativity (ok so maybe the title of this post should be – Da vinci – Not interested in award winners or creatives), Jones said, “we want people who get up and come to work every day at the agency for the same reason we do: to create success for Dell. (I won’t mention the ~successful~ Dell MP3 player)”
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McGarrah Jessee – A SEO Test

McGarrah Jessee is an Austin-based advertising agency founded by ex-GSD&Mers Mark McGarrah and Bryan Jessee back in 1996. The point of this post is not to give McGarrah Jessee any extra link juice, but it is to test how well the post will be viewed by Google. The last post I made regarding McGarrah Jessee’s recent new business win is coming up in 11th place. It might as well not exist. We’ll see if this one does better and how quickly it gets indexed.

GSD&M Gets a Good Call…Really!

GSD&M, who lost a majority portion of AT&T business last year got a good call this week. They have been tapped to do marketing and advertising for AT&T 411 and 1-800-YELLOWPAGES.

From that Austin Business Journal article on the win:

~”We’ve had a long, successful relationship with AT&T,” says Duff Stewart, president and chief operating officer of GSD&M. “We are honored that AT&T selected us to help drive the marketing efforts that will position AT&T as the premier choice for local search information.”~

Congrats to GSD&M!

Event to attend…11/29/07

This Thursday, the 29th, the Austin Interactive Marketing Association is holding an educational breakfast. I posted about this event a couple of weeks ago, so you can get all the details here. I look forward to these events and hope to meet a bunch of new folks at this one. See you Thursday.

My Move to the Other Side

After 10 years on the client side, I’ve made the move over to an agency. It’s obviously a rather big change. I’m looking forward to the challenges and new experiences. I’m sure I’ll write about some of them from time to time on this blog.

Here’s a bit about my new home: Based in Austin, Texas, Adlucent helps online retailers generate qualified sales leads, increase brand awareness, and streamline the process from search to conversion. Through item specific merchandising and conversion optimization services, Adlucent brings entire product catalogs to the forefront of the search engines. The company also utilizes historical data and predictive algorithms, offering a scaleable solution for tracking keyword performance and measuring product level return on investment.

Austin’s Adlucent Adds Ace

Austin-Based online marketing/advertising agency, Adlucent has brought on Robert Gilbreath (me) as Director of Operations. In his new position, Robert will be responsible for corporate strategy, client services, product management and operations. Robert brings over 10 years of e-commerce, online marketing/advertising, process management, and operations experience to the Adlucent team.

Prior to joining Adlucent, Robert was with online retailer Academic Superstore as Director of Online Marketing where he built and managed a department responsible for paid search, search engine optimization, email campaigns, affiliates, comparative shopping engines, and web analytics. Prior to his time at Academic Superstore, Robert was with McCoy’s Corporation, a building supply retailer, as part of the marketing team, where he was responsible for developing integrated marketing campaigns and acted as lead on e-commerce initiatives. Robert holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Marketing from Southwest Texas State University and a Master of Business Administration in e-Commerce from St. Edward’s University.

GSD&M to Layoff

I know I give the GSD&M gang a hard time, but no kidding today. The Idea City announced that they would start laying off workers this week. Analyst are saying as many as 200 will be let go. GSD&M President and COO, Duff Stewart, was quoted in the Austin American- Statesman: “This is not about numbers, This is about people.” Duff, I must disagree with you. This is about the numbers and the people, the number of people you will be walking out the door this week. My inside sources at The City say that lack of future planning and drumming up new business is as much to blame as losing some key accounts.

Maybe with 200 ex-GSD&Mers out on the streets, some new boutique shops will form.
Think McGarrah Jessee or The Butler Brothers.