Thursday, November 11, 2021

Things Go Better with Press Releases.

My well-worn baseball cap is off to my old compatriot, Rob Reilly and my recent nemesis, Mark Read for winning "Coca-Cola Co.'s massive agency review."

According to what passes for today's trade press, "[WPP] Ad Age, beats Publicis in final round, will form a bespoke unit called ‘OpenX’ to handle media, creative and data in some 200 countries."


The article--surely written by a slo-bot (even a computer could write more clearly, and with more precision) continues. For the convenience of my trillions of readers, I've highlighted and annotated Ad Age's reportage, pointing out lazy and unclear language that in better days than our own, would have been clarified by a professional journalist.:

     

"The holding company will form a bespoke team (what does bespoke team mean. And why have individual agencies only to form units made up of other agencies?) called OpenX (is that X a letter ex or Roman numeral 10? And what are they Open to? I presume they'll be open to working all weekend with 62 other teams generating storyboards of which fewer than two-percent will ever be produced) to handle the account, assuming a role Coca-Cola describes as “global marketing network partner.” (What does this mean?) WPP is charged (is WPP paying for this opportunity? That's what 'charged' usually means) with overseeing end-to-end marketing solutions (that means it lasts until Armageddon?) across Coca-Cola’s entire beverage portfolio, which includes some 200 brands (why would any company sell 200 different drinks. 90 percent of Coke sales probably come from Coke itself) including sodas such as Coke and Sprite, as well as sports drinks, juices, coffee, tea and plant-based drinks. 

“Consumers respond to an entire experience (sure they do. I had a great soda-drinking experience once. I called it a straw)—they don’t separate the message from the medium (how McCluhan of you)—and that’s why we’ve designed an agency model (a male model or a female model or a fluid model) to be truly consumer-centric (as opposed to possum-centric) and silo-free,” (I am so tired of Silo-ism. This discrimination against grain-storage must stop!) Manolo Arroyo, Coca-Cola’s global chief marketing officer, said in a statement. “This model is about seamless integration (oh. What if I prefer seamed integration?) of the power of big, bold ideas (in the past, presumably Coke bought small and timorous ideas) and creativity within experiences, (as opposed to creativity devoid of experience) amplified by media and data (could you speak up, someone's amplified the media and data too loud and I can't hear you.) It will enable us to create end-to-end (can we leave my end out of this please?) experiences that are grounded in data-rich insights (my name is Rich. Data Rich) and optimized real-time, at scale, as we learn from consumers.” (can't we ever pessimize something in non-real-time that's tiny and ignores consumers?)

OK. I still don't know what's been won.


Who's doing the work.


Where it will run.


How much money is involved.


And mostly, will I ever again see a good soda commercial?

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