Today in agency-client relationship gossip, we bring you a scathing voice-mail (embedded below) allegedly left by an Ocean Spray employee on a former Arnold Worldwide creative’s machine.
Before we begin, we have reached out to Ocean Spray to see if they can confirm that an employee at some point called one of their ad agency’s former creatives and said mean things on his voice-mail. In the interest of not getting anyone in trouble, we didn’t provide them any names, so their response time will probably be slow.
Update: Ocean Spray VP of Marketing Larry Martin responded in the comments, stating,
“I’d like to address the unfortunate circumstances that led to this blog posting on Agency Spy. Ocean Spray would like to apologize to Dan for the voicemail left on his answering machine, which is not indicative of Ocean Spray’s values. We will, of course, also be contacting him directly to apologize in person.
If there are additional concerns, please contact us on our hotline at 800-662-3263.
Thank you.
Larry Martin
Ocean Spray”
Also, we cannot confirm the validity of the voice-mail recording (below) or whether or not this actually happened. What we do know is that the name left by “the reamer” is also the name of someone at Ocean Spray whose title seems to match the issue she’s trying to resolve. Got it? Here goes.
According to our source, the former creative at some point posted an Ocean Spray package design on his personal portfolio site. The product either never launched or failed — we can’t be sure because we have no idea what it actually is. However, we have learned from another source that the brand intends to reignite the product, and for that reason may not have wanted the old package design anywhere public — that’s our best guess.
While on vacation, the creative (no longer at Arnold) apparently got a phone call from an Arnold account person, who asked him to remove the work from his site. He did so, “ten minutes later,” according to the source (who, btw, has gone underground since sending us this info) — but we have heard the same from another source.
When he returned home, the creative found the message below on his machine. And then, somehow, it got to us.