When Credit is Not Due

The battle to spot the real genius among the 'slash weasels'A decade has passed, but Mimi Cook still feels the sting. The associate creative director at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners was working as a junior copywriter at Chiat/Day in New York in the early 1990s when her team met with Jay Chiat to prepare for a pitch. As she remembers it, she'd written down and submitted an idea to her creative director, and he used it in his presentation to Chiat. The agency founder was thrilled with the concept, she says—"but the CD never mentioned the idea came from me." To win choice assignments, Cook knew that Chiat had to learn her name and see her contributions, but for that to happen, her boss had to cooperate. She says that when she confronted him, he told her the lapse was "unintentional." Still, according to Cook, a few months later, one of her lines was included in an ad her boss wrote for another client and again she received no credit, internally or externally. Not long afterward, she left the agency and headed for the West Coast.Assigning due credit is a highly subjective process. But having one's name attached to top-notch work can make all the difference to a career. In Cook's case, her talents were soon recognized. With job applicants feeling enormous pressures to reinvent their roles in a hot campaign, however, it's all too easy for the real contributors to see their names fall below the radar. The good news is that it's also all too easy to find out when credit is falsely claimed. Crispin Porter + Bogusky copywriter Mike Lear popularized the term "slash weasels" for credit thieves. As GSD&M group creative director Luke Sullivan explains in his book about the ad business, Hey Whipple, Squeeze This (John Wiley & Sons, 2003), "the slash weasel will creep around the creative department trying to get 'slashed' into the credit lines of other people's work. ... Upon seeing your work, he'll rattle off a couple of 'Did you try ...' statements and walk away. Later he'll insist he 'helped' with your work and will include your ad in his portfolio." Answering the crucial question of "Who did what?" is often far from simple. Lots of people can rightfully claim they provided small slices of the pie. And the hours devoted to an assignment are less crucial than the small adjustments in timing, wording or imagery that can transform an average ad into an exceptional one, say creative directors. "The creative process is organic and fluid," cautions Patrick O'Neill, group creative head at TBWA\Chiat\Day in New York. "It's a myth that two people sit down in a room and come up with the idea, and you go from there."TBWA\C\D itself was at the center of a small brouhaha over credits. After The One Show gave the shop a gold Pencil for an Absolut billboard in 2002, someone involved with the ad pointed out that copywriter Pete Lutos' name was missing from the credits submitted by the agency, according to sources. Lutos, who now works in Europe, had left TBWA\C\D before the awards show, and creatives say it is not unusual for employees who quit to see their names disappear from credit lists. O'Neill, who handles creative on the Absolut account, says that in this case, the omission was an "oversight."The One Club does a check when credits are first submitted and another before listing credits in its annual directory of winners. One Club staffers checked published credits for the Absolut ad and talked to people who had worked on the campaign, ultimately concluding that Lutos did contribute to the billboard. While he had worked at the agency for only six months and was not there during the ad's inception (his partner at the time, art director Joseph Mazzaferro, had crafted Absolut ads for about four years), he was included in the directory's credit list.Mary Warlick, executive director of The One Club, says that despite double-checking contributor lists, the organization gets about two requests a year to amend winners' credits, which usually means adding a name or two. She declined to comment on specific cases. The more common situation, she notes, is that agencies assign too many credits rather than too few in an effort to be ultra-fair. "But with a long contributor list, everybody gets a little credit, so no one gets real credit," she says. It's a fact readily acknowledged by creative chiefs who are generous when giving credits. When he looks at a creative's book or reel, "I often wonder about who really wrote this—did the creative director write this, but it was your assignment?" says Lance Jensen, co-founder and creative director at Modernista! in Boston. His skepticism, he says, stems from the fact that he prefers to give credit to everyone who was in the room at an ad's conception, even if only one creative was actually on the shoot. That's how it should be done, argues Hal Curtis, creative director on Nike at Wieden + Kennedy in Portland, Ore. "Creating advertising is a collaborative endeavor," he says. "And when it's done well, every person in the process—the director, the editor, the composer, the agency, the client—thinks they're the reason it's successful. They're right." But at times it seemed like every creative who spent a week in San Francisco worked on Publicis & Hal Riney's campaign for GM's Saturn, to give one example. Throughout the '90s, Saturn ads were a staple on the reels of job candidates and shops pitching new business, agency execs recall. When that's pointed out to Anne Saulnier, creative services director at Hal Riney, she's unfazed, explaining that at an agency that emphasizes group collaboration, "it is feasible" that everyone in the room played an important part. "If 25 people say they helped work on the campaign for the Saturn launch, it's possible they did," Saulnier says. The formal credit lists, approved by the group creative director on the ad, "usually have a lot of names [because] we don't leave anyone out," she says. While various West Coast copywriters and creative directors have claimed a hand in the brand's original tagline, it was not the result of teamwork but the work of copywriter Kirk Citron, according to Publicis & Hal Riney. Citron and his partner, art director Steve Diamant, were brainstorming back in 1988 when Diamant came up with the phrases "a different kind of car" and "a different kind of company." Citron switched the order and put the line at the end of their scripts, which were added to a stack from other creatives and reviewed by creative director Hal Riney, who conducted the pitch. Citron, now a Bay Area consultant and a novelist, says he's seen the line attributed to a lot of people—and every once in a while, to him and his former partner. Another campaign that's ubiquitous on reels is the yellow-motif work for ABC that the Marina del Rey, Calif., office of TBWA\C\D did from 1997-2000. Sallie Mars, creative services director at McCann WorldGroup in New York, says numerous job applicants claim they played some role in conceiving or producing one or more of the ads. The campaign, which poked fun at people's love for television, generated more than 100 ads, says Jerry Gentile, creative director at the agency. As many as 65 people worked on the account at a time, he explains, so it's not surprising many creatives say they have touched the work. But he emphasizes that only two people deserve the lion's share of the credit: copywriter Rich Siegel and art director Jon Shirley. Former Goodby, Silverstein & Partners copywriter Bob Kerstetter tells a strange anecdote when asked about masses of people claiming credit for one campaign. He says he was at a bar in Mexico back in 1998, and the bartender asked in mangled English, " 'What kind of job I am?' When I tell him I work in advertising, he smiles like we're old friends. Then without missing a beat, he adds proudly, 'You know "Got milk?"? I did that!' " Kerstetter himself wrote one spot in the campaign, showing a man in a full-body cast with a mouthful of cookies and no milk. (Jeff Goodby wrote the campaign's tag.) Now a principal at Lushadelic in San Francisco, Kerstetter deadpans, "To this day I have no goddamn explanation for this."While they're not usually quite as outlandish, bogus credits can often be quickly spotted. Riney's Saulnier says that every week she looks at the top handful of books that come in with executive creative director Kirk Souder and all six group creative directors. "Between us we are familiar with most noteworthy campaigns and can recognize if someone is trying to take too much credit," she says.Other agency executives and recruiters say they make sure a standout piece is consistent with the rest of the book, and they ask pointed questions about where the idea came from, how it was produced and what the other contributors did. Print work is a useful indicator of skill because usually only two or three people are credited. If the ad has won an award, execs check the relevant directory. They also rely on agency contacts—a call to a creative director on the account and the applicant's other former colleagues help confirm any suspect claims. Recruiters tend to be skeptical about campaigns that are touted as group efforts. More than half the time, just a few people are responsible for what's billed as a collaborative campaign, says one veteran agency recruiter. "It just makes it harder to identify the key talent," agrees New York recruiter Cathy St. Jean, principal at Marcus St. Jean. St. Jean chuckles when remembering an interview with an unlucky young applicant many years ago. The job seeker's reel included an ad that happened to have been done by St. Jean's husband, Paul Frahm, former associate creative director at J. Walter Thompson in New York. "It was a junior who was present at the shoot—no way should he have been taking any credit," she says. It's too small an ad world to get away with bold exaggerations. Several years ago, Eric Webber, marketing director at GSD&M, was helping the Texas Department of Health pick an agency for a small assignment that GSD&M had taken a pass on. He was surprised to see one of his shop's TV spots on a contender's reel. "The person presenting the reel suddenly saw me in the room and started to backpedal about how they included work done by their creatives earlier in their careers," he recalls. "Turns out one of their employees had once freelanced for us.""Slash weasels" are also found out when word-of-mouth spreads or when they're forced to work on a campaign by themselves, notes Luke Sullivan. Does that mean the good guys win? Sullivan thinks so. "Truly talented people just shine," he says. "You can see it in the little ads they get assigned. And you can see it in the bigger stuff."Plus, says Mimi Cook, credit confusion isn't typically the work of evil schemers. "Agency executives are busy, and details get overlooked—it's nothing personal; it's usually not intentional," she says, urging overlooked creatives to speak up. "But it's going to happen." It's an inevitable part of the business, adds McCann WorldGroup's Mars: "You've heard the expression 'Success has many fathers while failure is an orphan'? That's advertising." The Right Way to Stand OutCreative directors, recruiters, awards directors and other people who can make or break your career offer these guidelines for making sure you're duly recognized:When presenting your best work, show that you know it inside and out. Be specific—and accurate—about your contribution and the role of your collaborators. (And never claim credit if you were only a fringe player.) Make sure the rest of your book is of comparable quality. Along with the high-profile campaigns, seek out smaller print assignments that involve little or no collaboration. Showcase them in your portfolio to make clear what you are capable of on your own. Keep current and former colleagues informed of your best work. Agencies and recruiters lean heavily on word-of-mouth and referrals to identify talent. If your work wins a prize, show up at the awards, go up on stage and accept the honor. It's easier for prospective employers in the audience to remember a face than a name on a long credit list. Inside your agency, don't keep your nose down. Show pride in your best work and ask for feedback from your superiors. It's a diplomatic way to show busy executives what you can achieve—and to help get the word around.If you are overlooked on a credit list, assume it was an oversight and politely offer to help make a correction.

Brand Marketing

When Credit is Not Due

Joan Voight

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Joan Voight