Once the grande dame of Seattle advertising and the marketing soul mate of many of the Northwest’s leading brands (Boeing, Weyerhaeuser, et al.), Cole & Weber has reemerged in 2001-2 in the form of a prototype agency for the new era of digital media convergence and global collaboration. Trust us, this isn’t press spin or brand positioning we’re talking about. The agency has atomically and organically reengineered the way it works, where it works and with whom. Brandishing a new, multi-national networked capability, the new entity is known as Cole & Weber / Red Cell and the “Network” was born world-class. A recently announced all-star acquisition is advertising wunderkind Andy Berlin as co-CEO. Berlin achieved some serious fame as founder/partner of Goodby, Silverstein & Berlin in SFO and later Fallon, Berlin in NYC. This is the stuff that marketing DNA is made of.
A perfect example is Brad Harrington. As Red Cell’s Executive Director of Interactive, Brad and his “people” aren’t occupying adjunct space on another floor or wing. Interactive is thoroughly enmeshed in the creative workflow from the outset. That could be a key reason why Interactive is responsible for 60% of the agency’s total revenues. Even the company’s historic Pioneer Square address has become virtual. Most of the business Cole & Weber now handles is outside of Washington state including international assignments and clients. That’s the way of the world for a member of the WPP advertising family and the way to do business for a company that is using the Net to create and connect global partnerships.
Before joining C&W/ Red Cell, Harrington conceived e-business strategies for Nestle S.A., (Microsoft) Visio, Sony and Texas Instruments. We engaged Brad to bring us up to speed on how Red Cell’s new approaches, bearing names like the AcCELLeration(TM) process and Eclectic Network, are more than whirlwind concepts, they’re breakthrough ways of creating better interactive and traditional marketing
inside and out.
Seattle24x7: Cole & Weber / Red Cell has come up with some iconoclastic ways of describing the way it does business. Can you explain AcCELLeration and the Eclectic Network for us?
Brad: In terms of the process, “AcCELLeration(TM)” is about truncating the typical planning and research phase of an assignment by doing it in a way that is much more collaborative. Typically it is done with a lot of energy and can be fun as well as insightful for the client. The workshops at the front-end of the process allow us to get to their knowledge, and when I say ‘their’ I mean key stakeholders from inside and outside the company, really quickly. You can’t underestimate the importance of including these stakeholders, particularly sales.
Seatttle24x7: You’re using the online medium to make that happen?
Brad: Right, a part of the process has to do with bringing individuals together who help provide insight for the industry including trends and financials , all brainstorming the potential for the brand. Those could be people from Goldman Sachs or other planners and strategic thinkers around the world.
Seatttle24x7: How does the online interaction take place?
Brad: For the most part it’s a threaded discussion room. So there’s a string of ideas that flow from topics. It will be lead by the head Planner who can say ‘we’ve done enough thinking in that direction, let’s take a look at this idea now that someone had come up with earlier in the string.’
There’s another place that we use online and our Eclectic Network as well for global brands that we call Online Jams. We bring in creative teams from different offices of Red Cell, people from the team in Italy, people from the Seattle office, Paris and elsewhere, that are intermixed with what I call media talent, such as fashion designers, window dressers, film makers and other freelance creatives, many of whom are outside of the advertising world. The idea is to draw on the world’s best talent in order to come up with a creative solution for whatever strategy that we’ve developed through the AcCELLeration(TM) process. For instance, we just did an Online Jam with this Eclectic Network for the launch of the new Alfa Romeo 156 in Europe.
By bringing in the creatives up front in the process– rather than after the creative brief has been developed — our clients can share their ideas with the creative team. This is somewhat self serving as it ultimately helps us sell better work to the client because they understand where it is coming from, because they’ve helped develop it. So we’ve seen it as a tremendous tool to get better work done for our clients.
Seattle24x7: How did Red Cell get started?
Brad: Red Cell launched last January and is now a year old. A gentlemen by the name of Luca Lindner was running a company in Europe called Conquest and attempting to pull together a worldwide network to work on some premiere “Challenger” brands, Alfa Romeo being the catalyst. Conquest was owned by WPP which is also our parent. WPP was talking to Luca about us. There was a tremendous amount of likemindedness between us as well as with the Batey Ads in Asia. So we came together, sat down and started talking, “What would the agency of the future look like, would it be integrated, how would it ensure better creative, and is there a market opportunity, in other words did we perceive a need for what at the time was completely theoretical, and do we all buy into that?” The answer was “Yes.” So, we decided let’s do this thing.
Seattle24x7: So you’ve prototyped the agency of the future?
Brad: We’re now at the first phase of that potential vision.
Seattle24x7: The forerunner of your digital publishing group in Seattle was called The Rodeo?
Brad: The interactive group was born out of The Rodeo. That was digital print production. They were the ones within the agency world that were working with computers and graphic programs and had a real interest in where that was going in multimedia. When I came onboard, the interactive offering had just been pulled out of the Rodeo.
Seattle24x7: You were looking for the best configuration?
Brad: We went back and forth as to the model for the interactive group and how other groups had aligned and associated with agencies. A lot of other agencies were spinning out their interactive groups looking to cash in on an IPO like Poppe.com. We actually were of the mindset that it needed to be an integrated unit within the company. We have left it named after the company for that reason.
Instead of going onto our own floor within the building, or out to another building, which a lot of companies were doing at the time, we decided to take our interactive art directors, copywriters, producers, what have you, and integrate them in with the traditional creatives and account people. We stumbled into a situation where there was a lot of cross-pollenization which was of great benefit to our clients.
Seattle24x7: The buzzword going around the industry was integrated services?
Brad: A lot of people were paying lip service to the idea of being one integrated agency, but their interactive offering was usually an add-on. In a lot of circumstances, they were purchased entities that were tacked on. They were really stand-alones. It was like ‘we have this integrated interactive offering, and it’s got this sexy new name,’ but when it came down to working in an integrated fashion, it didn’t happen.
Seattle24x7: So you put interactive at the head of the process?
Brad: In the AcCELLeration(TM) process, before we get into creative execution, there’s what we call a creative communications plan. Interactive is part of that plan. So we’re at the table at the start of the process, where you’d probably never have seen an Interactive presence. As a result, a lot of even the general advertising ideas are coming out of, or influenced by, interactive creative. We’re seeing an incredible relationship, at least here within these walls, between general and interactive creatives and the spawning of ideas.
Seattle24x7: How does your business break down?
Brad: We’re doing around 50% online advertising or traffic generation, and 50% Web presence or site builds. That’s a dramatic change for us from just a year or two ago when we were 70-80% Web presence. We’ve had some real successful case studies as far as generating sales leads for different particular clients, and that’s really boosted that side of the business. And we’ve seen less investment dollars available for Web site development in just the last year.
Seattle24x7: Online and offline are reinforcing one another?
Brad: We’re working with Microsoft now providing them with Direct Marketing and CRM services. What’s great is that we have a direct offering here that’s tied very closely to what we do online, especially for tech clients like Microsoft whose audiences are online. We’ll use a multiple contact strategy. We do this by understanding the purchase paths of the different target audiences. By truly understanding these paths, when and where decisions are made, we can help influence decisions by being in the right place at the right time or by just being consistent and omnipresent through multiple mediums. For example, our first contact with their audience may be through direct mail which could try to drive them online to learn more, purchase what have you, which could in turn trigger a sales call. Of course, this is a one-off effort but that one off effort leads into the relationship management side of things. The question is once they become customers, how do you touch them again online or offline?
The other thing we’re getting into is what we call Cascading Strategies which
are automated contacts. You come up with business rules based on the strategy of the problem you’re working towards. For instance, I’ll touch somebody with a direct mail piece, and depending whether they respond to that or not, something else happens. Or first, I may send you a blanket E-mail because that’s my cheapest alternative, but if I don’t get response to that, I will send you something physical in the mail. And all of that is an automated process, an automated contact strategy.
Seattle24x7: What kinds of projects are you networking with your overseas clients?
Brad: As a network, many exciting things have been for Alfa Romeo. We participated in a campaign launch across Europe from here in Seattle. There is also work being done for Ermengildo Zegna, a rapidly growing men’s fashion line based in Milan that is taking on Armani. We’re doing all of that work in the Network as well and we’re participating in the strategy sessions here in Seattle.
Seattle24x7: Kind of a distributed creative process?
Brad: One of things about the Eclectic Network and people in Seattle feeding off ideas from people in Italy is that you’re getting perspectives from all of those countries at the front of the process. By involving the different regions at the front end, global appropriateness of the final work is not as much of an issue. This way of working also allows us to attract better local talent as our people get the chance to work on some really sexy global brands…it just ups the game.
Seattle24x7: How do you feel about online personalization?
Brad: I think the potential of personalization is huge. I also think the way that it’s been implemented is not very effective. There’s a difference between inferred personalization, which is looking at behavior, and based on logic rules, personalizing the experience, (the most involved and expensive to implement), and customization where you tell me everything about you and then I customize your experience based on that data.
Eventually the inferred will be much more effective, but there’s also a lot of risks There’s financial risk, and there’s also the risk that your logic rules are wrong, which could backfire and end up alienating customers rather than building a stronger bond with them.
Seattle24x7: Are you doing a lot with E-mail?
Brad: We’re running a bunch of E-mail campaigns for Xerox at the moment. What we’re seeing is that E-mail is starting to become less effective. I think that has a lot to do with the anthrax scare. You probably have noticed it in your E-mail box as well. You’re starting to become inundated with E-mail. Is it effective [in that environment]? As a first contact for lead generation, probably not so much. But on the relationship side, after a lot of other things have come in line, including the product and the pricing, it can be very effective.
Seattle24x7: How important is research to you in evaluating online?
Brad: We spend a lot of time on database analysis. We actually developed one of the first proprietary online ad tracking tools here at Cole and Weber, and actually we are using new versions of this tool to date. We needed to develop the tool for a particular client because we had no clue what individual components of our online buy for them were working and nobody could tell us past click-thru.
We were trying to do creative optimization and we were just not getting the information. Creating a database driven tool based on variable code allowed us to see what was working best and calculate ROI in real time. Now we’re actually bringing that into the DM world.
We’re getting ready to launch a tool here that will allow us to track direct mail campaigns in real time. Those are campaigns where they either call an 800#, send in a BRC, or go online, This allows our clients to go online and track how their direct marketing is doing that day. Pretty powerful stuff.
Seattle24x7: Clearly, “this is not your father’s Cole & Weber.”
Brad: The mind shift that has occurred from a traditional advertising agency, and one that’s been around since 1935 is truly amazing. This company has really embraced technology like no other agency I have seen. So much so that it has become a major part of our overall business.
Seattle24x7: Thanks, Brad, for networking with us!
Larry Sivitz is the Managing Editor of Seattle24x7.
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