Creative: Adidas, American Style

Keeping Score With Leagas Delaney In San Francisco During the spring of 1996, Harry Cocciolo and Sean Ehringer faced a decision that most 30-something art directors and copywriters could only dream about. Should they work on the new Nike account in the creatively fertile environment of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners? Or should they create their own culture at a small new agency while trying to kick Nike's butt for the underdog Adidas brand? The two embraced the Adidas "adventure," as they call it, hitching their star to promises from Adidas' global agency, Leagas Delaney in London, that they would be given great autonomy to run the office in San Francisco. "It was almost like our own startup, but with a big national TV account right out of the gate. And we didn't even have to move," says Ehringer. Naysayers laughed, insisting the U.K.-based Leagas would never give the fledgling operation enough support or creative independence. But timing has been on the duo's side. Copywriter Cocciolo and art director Ehringer, who cut their teeth on "Got milk?" and other signature Goodby accounts, came on board a year after Leagas opened the office--its first in the U.S. The London-based agency had already tried rather unsuccessfully to operate the U.S. office under the long-distance creative leadership of Leagas' founder and chairman Tim Delaney, and everyone was looking for a better way. In the last 16 months, the former Goodby duo has managed to create a separate, locally controlled agency that extends the London agency's reputable creative standards to the U.S. and is giving struggling rival Nike a run for its money in its own backyard. Cocciolo, 34, creative director, and Ehringer, 37, head of art, are senior members of the San Francisco shop's management team, which also includes managing director Courtney Buechert and media director Rob Kabus. The arrangement is in keeping with Delaney's belief that creatively oriented agencies should be run by creative executives. All four managers also sit on Leagas' board of directors. The energy between the San Francisco creative duo, Portland, Ore.-based Adidas America and the strong-willed Delaney has picked up considerable speed this year. Cocciolo, Ehringer and their staff of 20 created only about a half-dozen Adidas spots in the last eight months of 1997. During the same period this year, they have doubled their staff and will have crafted about 26 Adidas spots and 26 print ads, backed by $60 million in media spending, compared to $15 million the year before. The San Francisco office now has almost half as many employees as Leagas' London headquarters. "It is time to tell our story in the U.S., and the Leagas ads are doing a great job of [expressing] our brand's young, fresh and hardworking image here," says Karyn Thale, director of marketing communications at Adidas America. San Francisco's Adidas work blends a solid sense of the American work ethic with subtle, often self-effacing humor, much like the two creative executives overseeing it. Nowhere in the work is the glitz, the lofty platitudes or the in-your-face attitude frequently exhibited by athletes in sports ads. Nor is there even a tagline in most of the ads. "The Adidas brand is like this guy that moved out of town for a while and now he's back," says Cocciolo, a softspoken, easygoing bear of a man who favors golf and whitewater rafting. "First, he listens to what is going on, then bit by bit he tells people about himself and what he's been up to, steadily building his identity in the minds of his neighbors," he explains. "We handle the brand very differently here than in Europe, where it is a well-known dominant player." That difference, as well as other distinctions between European and U.S. advertising, such as humor and legal restrictions, help give Cocciolo and Ehringer a high degree of creative independence from London, often a sticking point with overseas agencies that open a U.S. base. Ehringer, a devoted suburban dad who can be the more fiery of the duo, has another way of describing the approach behind their work. "I am so tired of this huge trend where ads keep telling you that you are not adequate in some way. 'Be that' or 'Do this.' Advertising doesn't need to preach or guilt-trip the audience into performing better, pushing harder or being more balanced. Please. What is wrong with celebrating the fun-ness of the brand?" he asks. "Better to have a conversation with people, not a conversation at people." One of the shop's smaller campaigns, a handful of regional ads about five rabid, shirtless New York Yankee devotees has prompted the biggest buzz and helped establish Cocciolo and Ehringer's creative credentials in the sports category. Written by Scott Wild and directed by Peter Nicholson, the ads about the corpulent, comical "YANKS guys" have captured the hearts of Yankee followers and beyond. Each man has a letter on his chest spelling the word "YANKS," and they demonstrate their baseball fever by doing everything together, from shopping for the right shade of blue body paint to helping pitcher David Cone rest his arm. The campaign snatched two silver Lions at Cannes and two bronze awards at the Clios this year. Adidas is now running the work nationally during baseball's American League playoffs. While Cocciolo and Ehringer handle all major pro sports and athletes for Adidas, their eccentric style is perhaps most apparent in the campaigns for collegiate or lesser-known sports. This fall's batch includes funny Adidas work for Notre Dame football. In one, quarterback Joe Montana visits his alma mater and runs into a priest who recalls Montana's best college passes, then quizzes the football great: "What did you ever end up doing after college?" Another series for BMX bike shoes and clothes features cycling champion Dave Mirra haplessly trying to play golf and joking about losing his spleen after a bike accident. While shooting the spleen spot, one of the agency's staffers unexpectedly pulled out a jar with a human-looking organ floating in it and told Mirra it was his spleen. "I couldn't believe our guy did that. I almost stopped him," says Cocciolo. But Mirra's impromptu, ironic response to the jar, "I haven't seen you in a while, dude," became the high point of the ad. As a turning point in the pair's growing international role with Adidas, one of the agency's national magazine campaigns, showing arty close-ups of basketball shoes, was expanded in January to include about 10 executions for use overseas. They later nabbed overall ad duties for Central and South America. Last week, when Adidas-Salomon AG's global ad director Neil Simpson selected an agency to help with Leagas' growing ad load in Europe, the client made it clear from the start of the review that no U.S. assignments would be involved. When Leagas bought its independence from parent Abbott Mead Vickers Group in March, the U.S. managers were given a stake in the agency and seats on its 10-member board of directors. The duo consider the 110-person London office a "sister" rather than a parent agency. "We share information and ideas with London, but not approval," says Ehringer. It helps that Adidas America is successful and operates quite independently from Adidas in Germany, he adds. In the first half of 1998, Adidas' sales in North America rose 85 percent compared to 1997, making it the fastest-growing region for the German company. Leagas' London and San Francisco offices often work together on Adidas, says Delaney, noting that "the interaction is one of kindred spirits. We share opinions, but talking about work is highly voluntary." Delaney defers to Cocciolo and Ehringer's knowledge of American humor, the American advertising environment and American sports marketing customs. The U.S. managers sit on the agency board because "it is important their ideas are incorporated into the central part of the agency brand," he says. "They are so far away from London, I want them to be involved in the sense of destiny we make for our brand." In addition to the advertising it has created, Leagas San Francisco has expressed its individuality in a number of other ways. One of the team's recent decisions was to move to a bigger space next door to their favorite tavern, Grumpy's, in the waterfront district. For the agency Christmas party last year, they put on a joint bash with two other local agencies, ignoring rivalries. "We aren't into building empires or trying to become legends," says Cocciolo. The flip side, however, is that Cocciolo, Ehringer and their team have had little success attracting other clients to the San Francisco office. Despite several new-business attempts squeezed around their Adidas demands, it took more than a year for the creative chiefs to win a non-Adidas piece of business to add to the Sebastiani Vineyards account, which they inherited when they joined the agency. Finally, last July, the shop won the new $5-6 million account for Beyond.com, an online software retailer in Silicon Valley, bringing billings for the office to about $70 million. Yet the lack of new-business success does not worry Delaney. "The way to grow an agency is to do good work on the business you've got," he says. "I don't believe in commercial pressure. I don't think wanting business creates business. The way to do it is create good advertising." Creating strong work like the Yankee ads is "how great agencies got to be famous," Delaney says. "The campaign struck a chord with people [because] it was something that seems natural--a refreshing idea about a famous institution. It has the right flavor and is absolutely true to the sport." "We are like the Wieden & Kennedy and Nike model back in the 1980s," says Cocciolo. "We have only one big client, but, boy, what a great client."

Brand Marketing

Creative: Adidas, American Style

Joan Voight

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Joan Voight