ONDCP Sees A Brand New Day With FCB

new york By selecting Interpublic Group's Foote Cone & Belding for its anti-drug media campaign, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is hoping to turn the page on a past troubled by the billing problems of its former lead shop, WPP Group's Ogilvy & Mather, sources said. FCB in New York knows government accounts—it currently handles the Internal Revenue Service's eFile account, once handled the U.S. Postal Service account and has created ads for the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, which coordinates creative for the national anti-drug account pro bono from a roster of about 40-60 shops.A key item atop FCB's to-do list is carving out a good relationship with the Partnership, which tussled in the past with Ogilvy and ONDCP over creative control. The Partnership's president and CEO, Stephen Pasierb, called FCB's win "a good day for the campaign. If you look back three years, this is an entirely different campaign today." He added, "We are all focused on driving this campaign forward in the future and accelerating the results." The win is a big one for FCB CEO Brendan Ryan, who sources said has wanted to grab the business since losing out to Ogilvy in New York in 2002. At that time, FCB pitched the account after ONDCP placed it in review following questions over Ogilvy's billing practices. Despite Ogilvy paying $1.8 million to settle civil charges in February 2002, it re-pitched and retained the business that July, a move that angered lawmakers who set ONDCP's budget. It is also good timing for FCB as the shop is awaiting word—which could come this week—on its $400 million Samsung business, currently in review. FCB's winning pitch focused on how the client could improve copy testing for ads aimed at parents and kids (all ONDCP ads are copy tested against focus groups for effectiveness) as well as on a strong Internet component. That tipped the balance in FCB's favor over WPP's J. Walter Thompson in New York. (Since ONDCP's lead agency is the strategic and media planning overseer of the account, the pitch did not include creative.) Aside from management and media buys, which will be done through its IPG sibling Initiative, FCB, like Ogilvy before it, will also work on Web ads and some ads that cannot be done by the Partnership. Ryan attributed the win to the agency's focus on a strategy that demonstrated how it would communicate anti-drug messages to diverse multicultural groups, an element important to the client that was not part of FCB's brief in its Partnership ads. (FCB's most recent ONDCP work debuted during the Super Bowl last winter. A spot titled "Rewind" featured a girl's high-school day in reverse chronological order that begins by showing her getting high and passing out on a couch.) FCB's winning strategy, Ryan explained, acknowledges the fact that the way parents and kids interact with each other varies from subculture to subculture. "Given the daunting task ahead of us and them, we needed to be sensitive in terms of getting the right insight about the targets," he said. "It's not a one-size-fits-all audience." Multicultural components were a requirement of the government brief. FCB teamed with multicultural shops Danya International in Washington, D.C., LaGrant Communications and IW Group in Los Angeles, G&G in Albuquerque, N.M., and Latinvox in New York. As for the client, "We look forward to a fresh perspective and continuing our relentless efforts to reduce teen drug use," said Robert Denniston, director of the ONDCP's media campaign. "We have undergone continual improvement, and every year we get stronger." JWT competed for the business using senior staffers from WPP sister Ogilvy who helped pitch the business during the shop's oral presentation on Aug. 16 [Adweek, Aug. 23]. One source noted that ONDCP as recently as two weeks ago was still raising questions about the team JWT assembled. "Maybe they didn't like the team as much as" some WPP executives thought going in, the source said. The impetus for using the Ogilvy staffers was a belief that they "had a good relationship with [ONDCP] and they wanted to keep that team," the source said. Executives at Ogilvy referred calls to JWT. Brian Martin, JWT's evp and director of business development, said his shop heard nothing but glowing reports from ONDCP about the quality of the Ogilvy staffers. Martin said that had JWT won, it would have hired some of the Ogilvy executives. "We went into this knowing there was a chance this wouldn't work out, and we wanted to keep those people working on this business," he said. "We did what we thought was right and hoped in the end that good sense would prevail over politics." FCB did some recruiting of its own, although it brought in only one ex-Ogilvy staffer, and that was back in the spring, before presentations began. At that time, Mach Arom, who had handled online and interactive efforts on the campaign for Ogilvy since 1999, joined FCB. He was present the day FCB made its oral presentation on Aug. 16. When the campaign began in 1998, it had a budget of $195 million. It is now $145 million but faces serious cuts in Congress for next year. The House of Representatives has proposed giving the program $120 million, while the Senate is offering only $100 million. Sources estimated revenue on the business to be $7-10 million.

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ONDCP Sees A Brand New Day With FCB

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