Yours truly was out at the U.S. Open yesterday, so we’re kicking ourselves that we this missed an email from the Victors & Spoils camp on this. Anyhow, despite being a tad late to the game, since V&S always seems to merit some dialogue on this site, we figured we might as well go ahead and bring those of you who are unaware up to speed.
By now, we all know Carmichael Lynch parted ways with Harley-Davidson after 31 years, so Victors chief John Winsor, basically sent a note to Harley saying that the shop has created a brief for the brand based on some preliminary research and entered it into their new digital platform The Squirrel Fight as an open-call for ideas. The reward for the best one? $5,000.
Read Winsor’s full message regarding the brief, which apparently got Harley’s blessing late yesterday (really, how could they say no?), after the jump.
More: “Victors & Spoils Work for Dish Network and a Very Short Story”
Hey, Mark-Hans, We’re Working on Harley
Mark-Hans–
It looks like you’ve been busy. We noticed that you ended your relationship with Carmichael Lynch after 31 years. Sounds tough. We also heard that you’re not going to put the account up for review. Sounds smart. AOR relationships tend to be expensive and can lack the kind of flexibility that it takes to succeed in today’s rapidly changing culture.
Anyway, it all got us thinking. We love the Harley-Davidson brand (just like most everyone). And we’ve talked to a bunch of our creatives and strategists (I dare say some of the best in the world) in our 1,800-strong creative department, and H-D was also at the top of the list of the brands they most loved. So, instead of going through the typical steps of credential decks and pitches, we thought we’d try something different.
We’re getting to work.
Just yesterday, the Victors & Spoils team did some quick strategic research pulled from public sources and went ahead and wrote a very open brief. Today, we launched it on our simple work-creation platform called The Squirrel Fight ( http://thesquirrelfight.com ). And right now, creatives and strategists from all over the world are working against your brief.
It’s really fun. And we imagine we’ll be getting in hundreds of great ideas in the next three weeks or so. As we start shaping up some of the ideas, we’d love to show them to you and your team. For every idea you want to buy and produce, we’d propose that you simply pay the V&S creative behind the idea a flat fee of $5,000. (We’re confident enough that our creative process will yield great work that we’ve decided to award $5,000 of our own money to the best idea.)
We hope you’ll give us a call. We’d love to show you what our model can do.
John