Blue Flame Forsakes Agency Mission

NEW YORK The president of Blue Flame Marketing + Advertising—better known as Sean "P Diddy" Combs' ad agency—has left the shop to join Damon Dash's Roc Brands as chief brand strategist.Jameel Spencer's move leaves the future of New York's Blue Flame somewhat cloudy and signals Combs' retreat from the agency game. The marketing firm had worked on Anheuser-Busch's World Select, Calvin Klein's Crave perfume and also counted Bacardi USA, Hewlett-Packard and Sony Pictures among its clients.Since Spencer's departure, Blue Flame has abandoned its primary mission of attempting to be a full-service promotion and ad agency serving corporate clients. Now it is mainly an internal licensing dealmaker for Combs' Bad Boy Worldwide Entertainment Group, Spencer said."I don't think the [ad agency] business makes sense for who he is," Spencer said about Combs. "Puff is not the kind of person who is interested in helping ... a marketing campaign for Xbox; he's going to create his own Xbox."Spencer's exit came after his family and Combs' family spent a New Year's holiday together in Miami, Spencer said."We went to the Orange Bowl with our sons together. He said, 'You know what? He [Dash] needs you and I can't be mad at that,'" Spencer said, adding that Combs "remains a good friend to this day."Executives at Blue Flame and Combs' main business, Bad Boy Entertainment Worldwide, did not return calls.Other executives whose companies have worked with Blue Flame in the past were more blunt. Combs couldn't understand that his clients' needs had to take priority over his individual projects, like running the New York Marathon and the voter registration drive, said one source.Another source noted, "They're lovely people who are not businessmen."Spencer, however, denied that any Blue Flame client was unhappy. At Roc Brands, Spencer will oversee 14 different lines, including the Roc Box MP3 player that will be relaunched in March, he said. The upgraded model will be smaller and have more memory. The original Roc Box launch, in November, "was one of those things that was rushed to get it done because there was a retailer who wanted it," Spencer said.Aside from the Roc Box, other projects in the pipeline include the promotion of Shadow Boxing, a movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr.Roc Brands has a marketing budget of between $10 million and $20 million, Spencer said, which is split 50-50 between traditional and nontraditional advertising.Spencer sees his main role at Roc Brands as reorganizing the marketing structure and have all the labels working harmoniously under the "Roc for Life" theme. Currently, the brands are marketed more independently, and that has created the potential for one label to steal resources or energy from another, he said.

Brand Marketing

Blue Flame Forsakes Agency Mission

Jim Edwards

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Jim Edwards