Note to Crispin: Hip Is Good; Sales Are Better

"(poor operations management, poor product, only-looking-out-for-their-jobs Brand Managers)"Totally agree, and I probably should have been more specific in referring to the interactive world in this case, rather than print, TV, etc. I don’t know of Joe's work outside of the interactive arena, but I would assume that much of what he is advocating is for the traditional agency to morph into an online one. Also agree agencies have and always will be held accountable – just look at the recent failed Super Bowl spot for Cadillac that I believe cost the agency the brand. That definietly had nothing to with an online campaign, rather, creative that pissed the brand off. (Most times, they won’t publicly say that is the reason – they may have in this case – but you and I know when this happens it’s what the brand will use as the reason behind closed doors to get rid of an agency.)As far as the interactive world goes, the technology will catch up with agencies where brands will see how many conversions they actually get vs. a generic TV spot that may track well on a USA Today poll, but can’t really be measured more specifically than whether a viewer liked it or not.And as for the consultancy part, he must be doing ok. I lived near Jaffe-land in Westport, CT for a long time, and there are far worse places in the U.S. to be a consultant.;-p

I touched on this over at Adverb in a post about IPG, but the "new model" isn't very new at all. I'm referring to Chiat/Day's efforts to win a harness racing track account back in the early 1970's. The gist of the story is, as I read it years ago in the Chiat-celebratory book "20," they bet the track owner they could pull in a 15% bump in attendance. At 15%, they'd do the work for free; below 15% and they'd pay the track owner a dollar per head; anything over 15% and Chiat/Day would collect a dollar per head. A year after the agreement was struck the track's owner renegotiated the contract because he was losing too much money on the deal. Regardless of Jaffe's "new" model, the fact is agencies are held accountable for results, even when falling short is the result of market influences outside their control (poor operations management, poor product, only-looking-out-for-their-jobs Brand Managers). I like Jaffe; I've heard him speak here in Dallas and I think he understands the nuts-and-bolts of interactive really well-- a no-brainer, given his experience and background. Still, when it comes to modeling a new future for the industry that is advertising, while well intentioned I'm sure, it's painfully obvious at times that he now resides in the land of the consultancy.

At the end of the day, it still comes down to whether they got the order for the #1 combo with cheese correct or not.No amount of cool viral work, POS materials or other stunt will overcome bad word-of-mouth when it comes to experience. (And I love a lot of Crispin’s stuff.)Just as it can be said that GM became known as the health insurance company that made cars. BK is a viral brand that oh, by the way, makes burgers.My theory is that somewhere inside BK HQ, (or any other fast food) is a tobacco industry smoking-gun type memo that says: Screw it. We know we’ll lose x-amount of biz because we choose to hire anybody with two arms to work the drive-thru, but so what. Customers are hooked on junk food and will still come back no matter how poor the experience.But, the bigger point you bring up Scott is important. Joe Jaffe over at Jaffe Juice talks about it a lot. It's the new model where agencies will be accountable for results per click, per view, etc. No longer will a blanket media buy to hopefully get impressions be enough. But, it's not just BK we should hold accountable, we then have to do it for every brand as well.

That's a really good point, Mack. I've had the same thing happen in my experience. Back in the day -- when I was with PageNet -- we supported one of our offerings with a major advertising and PR push that was extremely successful by all measures -- and the product sunk VERY quickly. It would have failed anyway, but the awareness made it fail faster.I guess the reason this did not occur to me in the BK case is that -- well, maybe I think of fast-food as more of a commodity business than it actually is.

I agree with you 100% that making the cash register ring is the goal of advertising, but an interesting tidbit of information can be pulled from your referenced article: the fact that, after CP+B's campaign broke in 2004, BK reversed course and grew same-store sales 9% but began backsliding a mere six months later. This seems to indicate a lack of operational follow-through and not a failure of advertising; you knock the cover off the ball with a big campaign, drive people back to your restaurant in droves and then they don't return because either the product or the experience failed to deliver on the promise. I know I've experienced this first-hand with the brand. So, while I'm someone who'd crawl to BK before he'd drive to McDonalds if only given a choice between the two (just not a fan of Micky D's burgers), the old adage of "the fastest way to kill a bad product is through good advertising" seems to apply, here, especially if the product is, in all reality, not a burger but rather a little something called "customer experience."