And now, a little change of pace on the Grey memo front. Michael Houston, who was elevated to CEO of Grey NY this summer, takes the reins to send word out to staff about the agency picking up a major portion of the business for toy/board game giant Hasbro, which counts brands including Marvel and Transformers. According to reports, Grey beat out the likes of Droga5 (Update: We’ve been informed Droga5 was not involved) and Mother for the business. Anyhow, while we await the next GCD announcement, let’s give Mr. Houston the floor to discuss his agency’s second major win in as many months.
“Hello, Grey New York.
While we’re barely two weeks into Q4, I’m confident we can already claim 2013 as our best year yet. As if the Gillette win and our organic growth aren’t sweet enough, we’ve received the amazing news that Grey New York has won a sizable share of Hasbro’s brands. Hasbro is a true leader in worldwide innovation, a bold marketer that is, and continually strives to be, best in class. Beyond their stellar business acumen, our new clients are also great people to be around: savvy, fast, inquisitive, and demanding yet unafraid to have fun and laugh. Perhaps this is why they were named by Fortune as one of the “100 Best Companies to Work For” in 2013. Believe me, these are our kind of people.
We’ll be partnering with Hasbro to market some of their famous brands such as Transformers, Marvel (including Spider-Man, Iron Man, HULK and others), Star Wars, Telepods, Furby, My Little Pony and Littlest Pet Shop, to name a few. This is a particularly gratifying win because it marks Hasbro’s return to Grey. The iconic maker of toys and games earlier partnered with us for a decade from 1997-2007.
As many of you know well, we’re already hard at work on fully-integrated global campaigns that will include traditional advertising, digital, mobile and activation marketing. There’s a host of new product launches ahead that extend far beyond traditional toy advertising and position Hasbro to lead the way in children’s entertainment.
Our new client cited our insights into the category, the strength of our creative ideas, integrated capabilities and the instant chemistry we developed as keys to our being selected. A few weeks ago the core team had a celebration dinner at the Hasbro headquarters in Rhode Island and I asked our new client, Group Executive Jane Ritson-Parsons, what they saw in our agency. She described us as “a wily, nimble global agency with an entrepreneurial spirit and global capabilities and scale to match.” Good stuff, we’ll take it.
A ton of people across every discipline were involved in this effort—too many to name names, so thanks and congratulations to everyone who contributed to this tremendous win. Guys, this is a great way to roll into the fall.
Yes, another global account win, another agency celebration. Please join us for the next Dog & Pony on October 29 (full details headed your way from Gravy) for a proper toast to this great Hasbro news.
Thanks again for this huge win and thanks for an amazing 2013.
Cheers,
Michael”