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COLORADO ADVERTISING: GETTING NATIONAL RECOGNITION
For some time now I have heard people in the Colorado advertising community commenting that the Colorado advertising industry does not get the respect we deserve. Why do Portland, Minneapolis, and other areas of equal size get the recognition? To find an answer to this question and to determine what can be done to get recognition, Advertising & Marketing Review gathered a panel of four leaders representing various segments of the industry and posed the question to them. Under the able leadership of facilitator, Terri Maize of Resonant Research, the issue was explored by Dan Barnhart, Principal and General Manager of interactive marketing agency, Malenke/Barnhart; Michael Brandt, CBC, President, B2B Marketing Resources; Rick Souders, CEO and Photographer, Souders Studios and Square Pixels; and Bob Taber, Managing Partner, Thomas Taber Drazen advertising agency. Enjoy their comments and learn where you may fit in to help get advertising in Colorado the recognition it deserves.
Our topic is getting more recognition for the Colorado advertising industry. Dan, why don't you start us out? Give your thoughts on this.
DAN: That's the question that everybody poses in these advertising and marketing clubs, is how to get recognition. And there hasn't been a really good answer, yet.
BOB: I don't know if it's something that any individual or organization can do, per se. Not that we haven't been trying. I've often wondered why is it that no nationally recognized agency has ever come out of this market. What is it that makes a Wieden and Kennedy in Portland, a Fallon in Minneapolis, a Martin in Roanoke, a Crispin in Miami. That's one of the signs of market recognition, an agency creates a campaign that gets the public's attention. Not that we haven't been trying to do that, but we haven't accomplished that. I think that's one of the requirements for raising the profile of Denver and the advertising community, nationally.
MIKE: We've struggled with this issue even on a local level, trying to get local recognition in the advertising community, let alone get national recognition. Try to get your awards programs published in the Denver Post - it's not easy. And, I don't care whether you're the DAA, the BMA, or AMA, we just seem to have, as a group, some difficulty in doing that, and I'm not exactly sure why that's happening. As local firms and local companies, when we do get a big award, who do we tell about it, even locally? Are we doing a good enough job to even promote that kind of thing locally? If we can't do the job locally, we'll never be able to figure out how to get national recognition.
RICK: You're right, it's not that we haven't tried to do it. Sometimes I think that it's a combination of getting lucky with the right client that lets you create that national attention-getting campaign and then, once that happens, you're on a roll. I don't think we've been in a situation, for whatever reason, where the perfect client has come to one of our Denver firms and asked for that to be developed. Furthermore, I do think it's hard for creative people to go out and seek recognition, because there's a fine line between being really arrogant and pompous about peddling your own awards, and trying to let people know that you do good work. So it's really good for us to try and get the recognition for what we do. We just have to find the right venue to do it.
MIKE: One of the big reasons - talking about awards - that people enter an awards contest is not just for the self-satisfaction and the self-recognition, but to go out and toot your own horn. Good heavens, people, we're communicators, we're marketers, and sometimes I don't think we do a very good job of that.
BOB: I would disagree that awards are a way to get there. In the 7 years I have been in this market, I have seen agencies and individuals win national awards. I don't think that is what raises the profile of the market. If the public doesn't see it, and talk about it, then the industry doesn't talk about it.
DAN: Maybe we should define recognition, too. What you're saying is recognition could be winning an award, versus an account person who views recognition as getting the really big clients. We're not a big market, we're a mid-level market.
BOB: But, I think that's more the issue. The clients in this market that would give an agency national exposure for its work tend not to go to a local agency. Whether it's Coors or Frontier, or even Qwest, which is not national. They go out of market. Our work doesn't get seen nationally. The really good work that does happen here tends to be local or regional, and I think that that's one of the limiting factors. Wieden had an IT and a Microsoft in their early days to give it that national exposure. Crispin with the launch of the Mini, and the Truth Campaign before that, gave them national exposure. Nobody had heard of Crispin before the Truth Campaign. And so, that's what I think the local agencies lack, is that national exposure of good work.
At this point in time, how do we get more national recognition?
DAN: It seems like we could grow on a many of different levels at the same time. I have been around this business since I was 15, 16 years old, and I remember I was a runner at my dad's agency when I was 16. I was taking tapes for Pizza Hut and Total Petroleum, and that was national work. But, that was a 50- 60-person agency. And, now we have agencies that are over 100 people. I realized in the last couple years that there's now a sense of place for agencies, like the LoDo and Ballpark thing. They're within walking distance. I can walk to Bob's place, he can walk to mine. So there's that - it feels like there's some synchronicity.
BOB: I think there is starting to be more of a critical mass. I've seen a lot more talent coming to this market from other markets, which I think is a good thing - cross-pollination. The one obvious, and we all talk about it, is Crispin Porter + Bogusky coming to Boulder and how that's going to help us all. They're going to attract talent, and out of that kind of an organization there are spin-offs, which helps create that critical mass. Once you have critical mass and momentum - and, what Mayor Hickenlooper always talks about, the Creative Class -- it helps fuel that and get that going. I think that we're closer to that now than we have been in this market.
MIKE: Maybe we need to be talking about recognition. It's going to be very difficult to get national recognition among the general public as far as our marketing community is concerned. But, we can narrow it down a little bit and talk about recognition among our peers, recognition among potential clients. We're all interested in getting new business - isn't that what it's really about? We want recognition, we want that client, either within this community, or outside the community. We don't have big national accounts. We want them to know that they can get good photography done here, they can get good advertising done here. We talked about those awards earlier. We can talk about participation in national organizations. Some of our personnel should be on the Board of Directors of the AMA, national AMA, not just the local AMA, or speak at the BMA National Conference. Those kinds of things start getting more exposure for this community among those people who are really important to us, and the ones that are going to spend the bucks with us.
RICK: I agree. I think that it's more of a problem with just the economies of scale with the kinds of clients that are here in this region. And, maybe it is two different topics, how do we get that exposure out at our local and regional level and then, how it spills over into the national level. It's been a long, slow road, but I think we're getting there. I think that every time somebody like a Crispin Porter comes to town, it does help everybody, and I think that people are starting to be interested in Denver. When a community grows, the first thing that has to happen is, creative people have to be interested in living here. And, we're seeing that happen. We're seeing creative people want to come to this marketplace for lifestyle reasons. But, creative people are pretty savvy. They come here and they want to live near the mountains, they want to ski, whatever, and they look around and they see really good agencies and design firms. I've met a lot of people who have left Los Angeles because they didn't like the lifestyle. They left Chicago because they didn't like the weather. And, they've had all kinds of reason to re-jump-start their career in Denver. So part of it is speaking to the creative audience, and when you have a situation where more creative talent is moving into the area, you're automatically going to up the ante in terms of the types of work that eventually will show up here, and that everybody will be involved in.
BOB: One other element that has helped launch markets is there being a guru. San Francisco with Howard Gossich, Ron Anderson is considered the father of Minneapolis Advertising, or a Dan Wieden. These are individuals who seem to be able to jump-start an entire market by having a philosophy that gets promulgated and disciples go out and practice that philosophy. We haven't had that. I will say we have had people serve on national Boards. Dan's dad did, I have. I speak at national conferences. Maybe there are not enough of us doing that, but again, there's something about a spark that ignites a market, and it takes off immediately.
Just reviewing -- it's big budget, great creative, consumer exposure, and a guru. What else?
RICK: I think the philosophy thing is really important -- when you do look back at people like that, they bring the next level of thinking to the whole way everyone does business. And, that is important. It's important to elevate up to the next step.
DAN: It also makes you wonder if it's not a renaissance in that area, in general, too. I mean, Minneapolis may have had a renaissance at the same exact time that these people were coming out. So if the entire town is on, it might rub off on everybody else.
BOB: I'm glad that a photographer was included in this, because I think there is a point to the rise of the Creative Class, and Mayor Hickenlooper's intentions of making that a Denver focus, if you will. We need more than just advertising people. We need creative people broadly, because we feed off each other. Whether as artists, or musicians, or photographers, designers, illustrators, cartoonists, journalists...We need people to spark the intellectual thought and discussion broadly throughout the market.
DAN: Isn't Denver known for technology and education? As technology is released in marketing we're seeing, and all of you are seeing, technological changes are increasing. Have you ever been to secondlife.com? It's, basically, a virtual place. It's like our life online. And, this company came out, it's a media company and they're going to be selling media on secondline.com, just like banners in a virtual life for TV spots in a virtual life, or whatever, right there online. So looking at things from that perspective will be interesting as well.
BOB: There are some interactive agencies in this market that are getting some national business. There seems to be less of an issue in the interactive world about, "Are you New York, Chicago, San Francisco?" Clients don't seem to care where an interactive agency is from, it doesn't matter so much. That's not so true with advertising agencies.
RICK: It's funny how that works. An advertising agency has to have a base. It doesn't matter if it does work all over the planet, people want to know where that base is. And, that's definitely not true in the interactive world. And, you're right, a lot of people do an incredible amount of national work in the interactive arena that I think a lot of people in our area don't care about and don't know about.
DAN: It seems like more big clients, locally, are looking at local agencies, to a certain degree. At least, they're putting them in the top 5 or 10 people that they might look at and consider. They look at the work, and do you have enough people to manage it. And, if you've got a good track record that can make things work for them. It's a lot about metrics, too. If you've got ROI you can show them that, then they're excited. It's hard to tell right now if clients change interactive agencies as quickly as they change ad agencies. It's really important for a client to be with a branding agency, with whatever type of agency, that somebody can sink their teeth into that company and who they are to pull the best out of that company for the long-range.
Mike, one of your points was about building local recognition. Or getting local recognition, as a means of stimulating a community and creating an environment for that spark.
MIKE: You need that local recognition. You've got to build on that to build the regional or the national. I think it's an area that we could do a lot more work on. Our overall PR as a marketing community isn't as great as or as good as it could be. I'm not sure exactly how we could do that. Both of the BMA and AMA Chapters struggled for years to get good press coverage. The Denver Pos, doesn't really give a care about advertising, because most people don't care about advertising.
DAN: But, they used to. There used to be a half-page, sometimes a full page on advertising business.
BOB: In San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Orange County, every market that I've worked in, the local paper had a column about advertising. I'll give you an example. The Colorado Tourism office account goes to an out-of-state agency, and it gets front page, business section coverage. Praco wins Excel Energy, which was competing against agencies in Minneapolis. And, it gets a blurb - a blurb - followed up by a half column, which was tied to another story. They got another piece of business, I believe. That was so telling to me.
MIKE: That's the typical news coverage. The news about Plummer losing his quarterback job is bigger news. It always is. It's more fun to pick on the tourism office for taking their business out-of-state. Bad news always sells. Or, negative news sells. It doesn't have to be bad news. Negative news sells more.
If, collectively, we feel that local recognition via the newspaper is valuable and can spark interest in the community, has anybody touched on that with the paper?
BOB: We're starting to. One of the big catalysts for starting a new advertising club in Denver was a sense in the community that we need to raise the profile of the advertising community in Denver, nationally. And that we want to start a dialogue with the business reporters and editors in this market. The point is, there needs to be a discussion. And trade associations are part of facilitating that discussion. Part of that is having press coverage in the market, and having intelligent people cover the industry. My experience in this market is that the reporters who cover this industry don't have a clue about the industry. They don't know J. Walter Thompson from Ford Motor Company.
DAN: Well, it's interesting, because just knowing some of those people that do some of the business reporting, and they do reporting on advertising agencies and things like that, is that they're juggling 5 beats. Anything related to what we do is like the fifth thing that they do.
BOB: And, there are some very good business reporters in this community.
RICK: I do think the point of difference that you made between getting self recognition and talking about the industry, the newspapers really haven't picked up on that. A few people that have come and gone that know a little bit about our industry, actually, wrote about the industry. But, when you get somebody that's uneducated about the industry, it becomes Thomas Taber Drazen just trying to market themselves. They don't really have a sense of what it is to have a discussion about the industry.
MIKE: The Metro Denver Economic Development Commission goes out and tries to recruit businesses to come here. And, part of the recruitment package is all benefits and all the good things about the Denver Metro area. But, there's not one thing in that package that tells a company that's going to move its corporate headquarters that there's an advertising community that can serve their needs correctly. Why don't they do a brochure, get it over to the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation? Get it to the Office of Economic Development over here in the state. And, let's get it out to trade shows. Let's get it into the packets. That's one way to tell our story. We can start building the community, we can take that and start building it with the local press, whether it's the Denver Post or the Rocky Mountain New, or The Business Journal and Colorado Biz. They're going to talk to the business community, and that's probably where we need to do more with our building. That's one way that I think we could start building our community, promoting it, talking about it. And, it's going to take a while.
DAN: We can talk about getting the word out to everybody, and there's getting the people that buy what we sell, making them understand that we do really good work. And, you know that whole adage of good work leads to good fortune, but it would be good to have big work leads to big fortune, and have some of the big clients in town realize that there are really good agencies here. That there's really great creative here. It just hasn't, honestly, been recognized.
RICK: I think there is truth to painting yourself as being a little more interesting. We, probably, as a community, could figure out a way to do that a little better. And, I think a small buzz is what starts the engine going. Everybody has families, and they're interconnected. If people are talking about advertising at the lowest level, it always goes back up hill. So people that are purchasing are talking about what all the rest of us are talking about. I think creating that buzz is a good thing. And I think that we have an opportunity in the Denver market. I know you're recreating or starting anew with DAA, now, and I think there are a lot of people that should be encouraged to join one of the organizations that we have here in town. I hear a lot of people sitting around, not having a constructive conversation like this, but, "Gee, why do the clients always leave town?" And, that conversation also spills over and the big guys end up hearing that. And they say, "That's why we leave town." But, I think in the short-term, it goes back to that little conversation about buzz. If we get people more involved in the organization and stop people talking about why clients are leaving town, and if we do something creative and inventive to move forward as a creative community, we start, automatically, generating that buzz and then there is less negative talk about why clients may or may not choose to leave town. And, that also helps with that philosophy. I think it would be great if some ad guru would just decide that Denver is where I'm going to move tomorrow, and bring that philosophy with them. Or find one locally.
BOB: I think Rick has a good point about what I call petty competitiveness. And, I don't mean, "The big clients don't stay here," "woe is me" kind of statement, because I think you have to earn that right. I noticed when I came to this market in '99, a petty competitiveness between agencies that I thought was not healthy. And, I think that has, largely, gone away. I hope. I see it in starting the new Denver Ad Club, that there's much more desire to collaborate and work together. We still have to be competitive. And, in the end, it's an agency that gets the attention, not a community that gets the attention. But, the petty competitiveness had to go away before we could ever achieve anything great. As much as we talk about there being good work here, I don't think that there's great work here. And, I think we need to work much harder at being better at what we do. I think there's a great deal of onus on each of us as individuals and as agencies, and on creative people to be better. It's not easy being good. Mentally and physically, it's hard. It hurts. It's a challenge. It doesn't just happen - "Wow, look at me, I can do this with one hand tied behind my back." It doesn't happen like that.
MIKE: It's even harder to be better.
BOB: It's even harder to be better. And, I think as a community, we need to work at that. We need to look at ourselves and say, "Are we doing the best we can do?" "Are we working as hard as we can work?" There is a reverse to the lifestyle here, and part of that is, does it attract a certain kind of individual that lifestyle is more important than career? Maybe it does, I don't know.
RICK: I think it does to some degree.
DAN: When I was in Atlanta, in a band, I was sitting there with a producer. We had to leave Denver because the scene here was horrible for music. So we went to Athens, to Atlanta, where the scene was better. We were talking about the scene being awful here. And the producer is like, "Well, art is never good in a place that's more beautiful than the art." And, I was like, "Good point." People come here to live their lives, not work their entire lives away.
BOB: Well, I'm one of those, and I think there are those that like to say, "I like to work hard, play hard, and this allows me to do both." But, I think as a community, we need to work harder.
RICK: We need more of that philosophy. I think, sometimes, people think good is good enough, and it's not. It never is good enough in the advertising arena, not if you want to elevate - not just the community - but, your own personal stature. If you want to do better, that has to be an inspired thing. You can't just show up and say, "Okay, today I'm going to better work." That doesn't work. But, I don't know how you get around that. I don't know how you take that population that lives here for sports and lifestyle, and all that stuff, and still somehow we have to co-exist and merge our creativity into the community. I think a lot of times, if we would just broaden our involvement as a creative community and get more involved in other issues with the arts and music, we would be doing ourselves a big favor. Because we tend to talk about what we know about in our own little part of the art world, but we don't tend to - a lot of times as organizations, or as a community - support those things that will make us a more grand community.
MIKE: Over the last few years, the various organizations in the community have gotten together a little more on a social level. We've done a little more networking between AMA, BMA and all these others. But, there's another level. I think we should be able to take this beyond that personal networking, having a drink at Braun's. Do something as a group, relative to the arts, or focus that energy that we put together for Summer Toast and turn it into something to help promote growth in the community, here.
BOB: One of the exciting components of starting this new ad club is that we will have an Ad 2 chapter. Ad 2 is a national organization, part of the American Advertising Federation for those under 32 years of age. And, a component of that organization, nationally, is public service. Ad 2s choose a nonprofit in their market, create a public service campaign, get placed in the media, and compete on a national basis. And, part of the great excitement for the under 32's for Ad 2 is that component of it --the ability to get to contribute at a level that they really can't contribute at at their workplace because they're just not senior enough yet, and, get some national recognition for that. I think public service is an area where you can do something that is very exciting, creatively, very attention-getting, meaningful, and spread that nationally as coming out of this market. And, there's another collaborative opportunity. It's not any one agency. It's a group of people getting together and doing that.
To your point, is it your thought that those kinds of opportunities exist for everybody else?
RICK: I think opportunity exists wherever people want it to. Sometimes we talk a lot, but we don't walk the talk. There are a lot of organizations in town that could benefit from creative groups getting together and choosing the right organization and doing a pro bono campaign. And a lot of people would get involved and ask, "What we can bring to the table?" versus discuss how the industry has left us behind as a community. That also elevates the philosophy, elevates people's work ethics, the good that's good enough becomes not as good anymore, and people start working a little harder.
BOB: But, what I hear you say is, good work inspires good work. And, when the bar gets raised, it gets raised on all of us. And, I think that's one of the big motivators. That's that notion of one agency creating something and it inspires the other agencies in that market. And, in fact, that creative talent spins off and starts their own agencies. Now, the bar has been set, and you've got to do a lot more to achieve the same level of good.
You mentioned, Rick, about reaching out to the arts community. Earlier, Bob, you had said that you gets ideas by investing in the arts community, that by getting exposure to other elements you, in turn, get fed and sparked, ignited, and some of these other words.
RICK: I think it's true, inspiration breeds creativity, and the more you go out and you're inspired by the other arts forms, the more you are a whole as a creative person, I believe.
BOB: Yeah, I think the Denver Art Museum, for example. And the Denver Center for Performing Arts is a good feeder into that. I think Denver has a good music scene for national touring companies, but not for local musicians. There's also something to be said about just the street art, however you want to define that. San Francisco and New York, you get inspired just by what's going on in the street --what the kids start to do first, inventing their own stuff, inspires you.
We are about at time, and I would like each of you to have the opportunity to share final thoughts on national recognition for the Colorado creative industry.
MIKE: It was mentioned earlier, about creating opportunities. I think taking advantage of opportunities is one thing we have to look forward to. I think it's hard to create the ones we want, but I think we have to take advantage of those opportunities when they're presented to us -- when that big campaign comes out, when that creative guru happens to appear on the scene, whatever it is. And, while we can't control those opportunities, I think we have to be prepared to take advantage of them the best we can.
DAN: Like practice being interesting and creative. You just can't suddenly become interesting, you have to work at it a little bit. So doing that could be a start.
RICK: I still go again, to what Bob said. I think that we all individually have to work harder to be more creative and be better at what we do. And then, collectively, as a community, we need to work together to create opportunities where we can inspire and promote art, and music, and all of those other things. And, I like the Ad 2 concept. I can see why that would be very successful, because it gives a venue to people to raise their own bar and participate in a collaborative effort to create good work. And, I think that's how we elevate our community. I think that's where we put forth and then, hopefully, people will start noticing. What I've heard all of in this room say is that if we're not noticing it, we can't really expect other people to notice it.
BOB: And, let's not mistake creative for creative sake. Whether advertising or art -- If it's advertising, it's about effectiveness. If it's art, it's about it's interesting, or it's engaging. I think there are a lot of technicians who have exhibited in the art world who are not artists. You've got to touch a human emotion. You have to look at something that is so familiar in a different way that we go, "Wow, I never looked at it that way." It's not about creative for creative's sake. It is to a point -- depending upon what part of the creative industry that you're in - there's a point to creativity, and in advertising it is a business. It is to get people's attention and make such a statement about a brand that they go, "I'm interested in that brand; that's about me." But, I would echo what Rick said. It's up to each of us to strive to achieve and accomplish, and perform at the very best we can perform. I don't think any of us are so good that we can just do this on a good enough, mindless basis, and in advertising. I think we have to strive to be superior.
If you would, please finish this sentence: "It's up to each of us to do great work. And then, it's up to all of us to..."?
BOB: Support great work when we see it.
RICK: I echo that: support and inspire great work.
DAN: Get a little crazy sometimes.
THE PANEL
Dan Barnhart has over 15 years of experience in successfully mixing marketing & technology fields. He has created successful marketing strategies for Coca-Cola, Apple, IBM, GE, Qwest, Ford, Sun, Quiznos, Hitachi and Janus. As Principal/General Manager of one of Denver's leading interactive marketing agencies, Malenke | Barnhart, Dan handles general operations and leads strategy development for their clients. With a foundation in brand development using technology and traditional marketing disciplines, Dan considers the broad marketing landscape when evaluating methods to increase his clients' success in the interactive realm. His outstanding natural ability to develop unique solutions flavors the agency's work and inspires the team to constantly push beyond the norm.
Michael Brandt, CBC, is President of Marketing Resources Ltd., a Lakewood-based B2B marketing consulting firm. His marketing communications background includes the Wisconsin Electric Cooperative Association, Eli Lilly and Company, Vinyl Plastics, Inc. and Wausau Tile, as well as numerous clients in the B2B marketing space. He has served as President of the Colorado Chapter of the Business Marketing Association and is the current Co-Executive Director of BMA International. He can be reached at 303-274-1222 or mtb@mrlweb.com.
Rick Souders, honors graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, has been in the photography business for 20 years. Rick is CEO and photographer for Souders Studios and he owns the award-winning digital manipulation company Square Pixels. Rick's work has been featured at the International Photography Hall of Fame. Leaf America is featuring Souders as one of "America's Top Pros". Rick has written a book entitled "The Art and Attitude of Commercial Photography." Souders Studios is recognized as one of the top 10 food and beverage studios in the world.
Bob Taber, Managing Partner, Thomas Taber & Drazen, has a diverse, 30-year career in advertising, including a five-year stint teaching at the University of Oregon School of Journalism; as Vice President, Professional Development at the Association of National Advertisers; and with advertising agencies in New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Denver. He has developed brand and communications strategies for the Milk Mustache campaign, The New York Times, Ray-Ban, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Taco Bell, Dunkin' Donuts and Ralston Purina to name a few. He has served as Western Region Chairman and a member of the American Advertising Federation Board of Directors. Currently, he is spearheading the launch of the new Denver ad club.
Terri Maize, President, Resonant Research, is a facilitator of research for major corporations. Her capabilities include everything from forming and moderating focus groups to complete planning, implementing and evaluating research projects. She is an active member of the Business Marketing Association and American Marketing Association where she serves as Vice President of Volunteers.
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