A Bit Of Fancy Footwork

How Burnett's Part-time Consultant Helped The Agency Land Full-time Duties With Fila CHICAGO--Call it serendipity or visionary thinking, but Joe McCarthy arrived at Leo Burnett last fall as a consultant without a defined mandate and ended up playing a key role in the agency landing the $15-20 million Fila U.S.A. Last year, McCarthy abruptly left Nike, where he had been worldwide ad director. The former Saatchi & Saatchi executive said he wasn't sure whether he wanted to stay on the client side or return to an agency. He did consulting work and gave a few marketing speeches, one of which brought him in contact with Burnett chairman and chief executive officer Rick Fizdale. Fizdale invited McCarthy to join Burnett full-time, but he declined, citing family matters that kept him at his New Jersey home. "So Rick asked me if I'd be a part-time consultant, and I said, 'What would I do?,'" McCarthy recalled. "He said, 'I don't know. But come.' I liked Rick, I trusted him, and I liked what he was trying to do with the reorganization of Burnett. I just wanted to work with people I like at a place that isn't afraid of change or to be innovative, so I came." Part of Fizdale's reorganization plan has been to bring in fresh thinking from "outsiders" like McCarthy. But it was still difficult being a part-time creative/strategic consultant at the agency, without any formal role, McCarthy said. "I didn't really feel satisfied," he said. In fact, he and Fizdale were meeting about defining a more tangible role for McCarthy when the word was passed in that Fila was reviewing its account. Fila was a perfect target both for Burnett, which had resigned the Reebok account last year, and Nike alumnus McCarthy, and they set to work immediately. "My impression of Fila's brand positioning was that it was superficial, trying to be cool and not true to itself," McCarthy said bluntly. "You can't just try to be like Nike. Reebok owns that positioning." McCarthy said his counsel on Fila was that the brand needed more than anything to "go back to what it was and be true to that. There's a European sensibility to Fila that's an ownable positioning." "Joe and [Burnett account planner] David Rabjohns went to Italy and walked the halls at Fila's headquarters," said Fizdale. "They learned what the Fila culture is about and the right way to communicate that culture. They didn't want to make up a personality for Fila that isn't who they are." That approach impressed Fila. So did McCarthy. "He'll know what not to do so we don't become emulative," said Howe Burch, Fila's senior vice president for advertising and sports marketing. "We don't want to try to out-Nike Nike." Burnett's pitch included TV spots that featured an Italian-accented voiceover, complete with charming, slightly broken syntax and grammar, and a mix of both English and Italian words in print work that was subtle in its ability to express the "Italian heritage of the brand without banging people over the head with it," Burch said. The agency's first task will be to create advertising for Fila's Grant Hill 5 shoe line. McCarthy will head the account team, but will remain a part-time consultant, working in Chicago three days a week. "I'm not interested in titles any more. I've had titles," McCarthy said. "I came in on a handshake with Rick, and that's fine. I'm interested in doing good work with good people. That's all there is." --with Sloane Lucas

Brand Marketing

A Bit Of Fancy Footwork

Scott Hume

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Scott Hume