June 9th, 2009 - the last day Enfatico updated their blog
July 14, 2009
Enfatico’s last update was June 9th, 2009 on their blog.
We all read the press that the game is over…. even the Official Enfatico countdown clock went static.. then low and behold… Casey Jones comes out of the woodwork (the chief architect of the 4.5 billion dollar Enfatico disaster) to pitch is advertising agency skills.
This is an advertising agency nightmare… on par with the former Wal-Mart Julie Roehm that took advertising agency given Automobile joy rides to land accounts. It’s crap…. and it’s how business is run today.
ROI… solid creative… good social media skills… SEO… forget that… it doesn’t matter… it’s how bad you screw up is what gets you into the door.
Amazing … completely mind boggling amazing..
Pizza Hut to be known as “The Hut”
June 19, 2009
In perhaps the worst Advertising move the world has seen since Enfatico, Pizza Hut has decided to change their name to “The Hut”, MSN is reporting.
Honestly, I don’t care if they spend 300 million on changing all the signs, 30 years from now people will still call it Pizza Hut… because guess what… that is what Pizza Hut sells. Someone tell me who Pizza Hut’s advertising agency of record is? Because this one deserves a call. A re-branding of that size will cost in the tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, and will look exactly like what Tropicana’s rebranding did to their bottom line… for one thing it wiped out 20% of their sales… and several hundred million in rebranding costs.
Did Peter Arnell think of this one as well? Because if this rebranding works as most of us think it will, the below picture will be a very common sight.
Ogilvy loses Ericsson
May 6, 2009
WPP group plc owned Ogilvy Worldwide has lost their pitch to Ericsson. Ericsson has allocated their budget instead to Lowe Worldwide. This is another stunning defeat for Ogilvy, and points for even more layoffs within the Advertising Agency.
Ogilvy has rearranged the deck chairs so many times in the past few months that it’s hard to keep track who is doing what within the firm anymore.
The review, which took about 10-12 weeks from start to finish weeded out the early losers such as incumbent, Publicis, and McCann Erickson.
At the end it was Ogilvy vs Lowe, and Ogilvy came out second best.
If this continues, Ogilvy will be sitting in the same boat their sister agency is, Enfatico. Who wants to be part of that sinking ship?
Did Dell give WPP group plc 90 day notice?
April 23, 2009
Has Dell Inc. given WPP group plc owned Advertising Agency Enfatico / Y&R 90 days to “turn the boat around” or risk losing the $4.5 billion dollar account?
Speculation has been floating for months now that Dell has been looking at cutting their losses with WPP, but today a published report has surfaced written by Matt at Agency Spy that Dell has given Enfatico and Wpp Group plc 90 days notice… or better said the CEO of Y&R all of a sudden has come up with a definite timeframe to fix the problems…. where did he get that timeframe?
The account is so massive in size that it’s expected to put a serious dent in WPP’s financials if Dell does jump ship… and from the reports we are reading Dell has already started strapping on life preservers with other non-WPP owned Ad Agencies.
Advertising Age is SO wrong
April 20, 2009
Advertising Age is arguing that Enfatico was just poorly executed and overall not a bad idea.
If you wanted a fully functional advertising agency dedicated to a sole client, then go to Detroit or Chicago, and pick up any one of the dozen agencies sitting there with hardly any business coming in.
“Although WPP’s custom-built agency for Dell never got off the ground before it was folded into sibling shop Y&R this month, that doesn’t mean a marketing structure built for a single client can’t work. ” screams Adage
It then goes on to rail about Enfatico’s talent problem. “Then there’s the talent issue. As any recruiter will tell you, it’s not easy attracting top-notch talent to a shop that’s focus is just one client, and keeping good talent in such an insular culture is even harder — so there have to be measures that allow for some variety. ”
Well that’s the problem with any single client agency. Who is going to work for an agency where if the client leaves the advertising agency is forced to shut down and you lose your job.
But back to the main issue, if this model will even work? The answer is flatly a no, it’s not worth even entertaining.
See here’s the problem, you don’t build an advertising agency from scratch… complete with 10 year leases .. going on a monster scale like that… because they will never get the proper talent and the model simply cannot work.
If Dell wanted an advertising agency dedicated to them, simply floating out an RFP to the advertising agencies that just don’t have that many clients would fix the problem.
If an ad agency has 3 clients, all averaging about $100 million a year… then Dell walks in with $4.5 billion… the advertising agency is dedicated to Dell… end of story..
But this is where it matters and where Enfatico went wrong, see that hypothetical ad agency mentioned in the paragraph above already has a billing department, already has a creative department, already has a media department, already has an office, phone system, computer systems, everything is already there and just needs to be expanded on… whereas where Dell and WPP group plc went wrong has all the aspects needed didn’t exist.
It was doomed to fail from day one. The day Sir Martin and Michael signed that contract… it was $4.5 billion floating in promised money with nothing else.
You can’t build an advertising agency like that… and clearly Enfatico proves that it cannot happen.
Dell blew a ton of money on this project, and WPP blew a ton of time on this project…. and the funny thing is that virtually everyone knew that this was a bad idea from day one… We even created an official countdown clock from the day the project was announced till it collapsed… we setup the site from the day it was announced… meaning we just were counting the days until it crashed… it wasn’t rocket science, George Parker, Media Bistro even the New York Post, a dying industry itself, all said this is a bad idea.
What an epic failure… and adage, you might want to rethink that article…. this model can never work….
There is a reason the common term “one trick pony” is derogatory.
Superspy @ Media Bistro Defends Enfatico
April 14, 2009
“AdAge is wrongly assigning blame to Enfactico and yes, I’m defending them” was written by SuperSpy… yes.. the famous SuperSpy at MediaBistro!
This deserves an article by itself, mostly because SuperSpy is one of my favorite bloggers and I do consider her one of my friends, but honestly for as well versed and smart she is, she is really wrong on this one. She is lambasting the adage article written by Rupal Parekh that we cited in our article
Here are the two major tidbits on her story:
1. Agencies very, very rarely get to just go ahead and purchase URLs for clients who generally, demand all sorts of approvals before anything is ever done. We don’t have carte blanche like AdAge is implying. It’s possible that Dell stalled on Enfactico’s request and/or just decided not to purchase it. Anyone who has worked in an agency knows this is very possible. AdAge is wrongly assigning blame to Enfactico and yes, I’m defending them. I can’t believe it either, but right is right and this assumption is wrong.
The red tape problem you mentioned with this could have been settled easily with a phone call or an e-mail to Dell for approval. Afterall Dell has no problem spending 4.5 billion for advertising for 3 years, and they have a long history of buying domain names for their products.
Clearly http://www.inspiron.com goes to Dell … so why wouldn’t their other trademarked products. Such as the ADAMO covered by Trademark number:
77518661
and
77542633
Feel free to look them up at the US Patent and Trademark office There is no legal concern here, also worth noting that someone was already sitting on the domain… that had no legal right to it in the first place, Dell / Enfatico could have easily used the WIPO procedure hold up their already owned trademark and recieved the domain name using the legal framework that punishes cybersquaters and awards the trademark holder.
That being stated, I am now completely at a loss regarding how BDA’s appear to work, because we do everything in our power to help the client, including buying a domain name for them, making them the legal owner of it and just making us the technical contact. This is a no-brainer if the client already has the trademark.
Now for the worst part of this:
YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THAT THE DOMAIN NAME AND WEBSITE HAVEN’T BEEN DISCUSSED FOR THE PAST 2 YEARS WHILE THE PRODUCT WAS BEING DEVELOPED?
This is mind baffling, Enfatico hasn’t spoken to Dell about that domain name for the past 2 years while the product was getting ramped up for launch? WTF was going on?
Generally, we are looking at domain names even before looking at Trademarks, what’s the sense of owning a trademark if you can’t even brand it properly with a corresponding domain name?
This is not rocket science, this is good business.
Now for part 2 of the article:
2. The brand isn’t actually called Adamo. It’s called Adamo by Dell, so why would they even be interested in Adamo? Often, brands purchase similar URLS for their product and have it redirect users to the main client site. We all know this, as well. Dell already owns Adamobydell.com. What it sounds like is that the company was unsure as whether to fork over $750 for a like-minded URL.
Inspiron by Dell seems to go to http://www.inspiron.com … Next time I will try go go to “Wii by Nintendo” … but that seems to go to Wii.com ..
This is 101 in online Advertising, you make it as easy as possible for your potential clients to find you, that means using the common “street name” and “plain speak” of the products you sell if not offending…
oh.. and there was a third part of the article I wanted to address:
There. Case closed.
Not. Even close.
In closing, this is a clear lack of understand of Digital advertising, it’s why SEO and SMO firms are growing at the expense of BDA’s … because it doesn’t get any plainer than this, they have no clue what they are doing.
Enfatico is run by idiots
April 13, 2009
Rupal Parekh at Adage really dug up the dirt on Enfatico! I had to quote the entire article, because it was so perfectly written that there is no other way to rephrase it, or add to it.
“Either Madison Avenue still has a ways to go when it comes to embracing Silicon Valley, or Enfatico’s problems are bigger than we thought. According to reports this weekend, the Dell agency refused to pony up $750 a month to lease Adamo.com — the most obvious domain for Dell’s new ultrathin laptop computer, launched recently to rival Apple’s MacBook Air. Luckily for consumers, that decision didn’t stick once Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell caught wind of the situation; the domain was eventually bought”
Did you guys read that? Michael Dell had to buy the domain name himself. What did he pay $4.5 billion dollars for when he has to go out and purchase domain names himself because of the gross incompetence of his advertising agency.
Rupal I have to say, it’s not just Enfatico, it is Madison Avenue altogether. W+K lost a nearly $2 billion dollar account for lack of SEO.. and yet still has not developed the internal skillset to do it.
What gets worse is that these holding companies and large ad agencies charge the clients for this service, yet do not have the technical skillset to implement it.
Embarrassed WPP? You need to totally revamp your business if you expect to stay in business, start off by trying to buy SEO and Social Media firms… and good luck with it… they don’t think like you do Sir Martin, and hence why you can’t see the value in it.
We hope that a potential loss of a $4.5 billion dollar account is a good shot across the bow.
Steak n Shake sues advertising agency - wants to hire JWT now
April 11, 2009
The Indianapolis Business Journal has one hell of a story regarding just how bad clients can get.
Varnson the advertising agency in question, has filed a counterclaim accuses Steak n Shake of dealing in the definition of bad faith by floating out feelers to J. Walter Thompson, Empower Media, Zimmerman and ID Media.
So evidently contracts can be tossed out and forcing the advertising agency staffers to almost live in Steak n Shake’s HQ is part of the normal practice.
Sources within the local ad industry said Steak n Shake officials insisted Varnson Group employees work out of Steak n Shake’s local headquarters to keep a close eye on them.
WTF! Enjoy… I heard Enfatico has a bunch of open space that JWT can borrow for this new client.
Enfatico Shuts Down
April 10, 2009
WPP group plc is shutting down Enfatico, the advertising agency for Dell and sending what remains of it to Young & Rubicam.
Enfatico has been slammed from day one for it’s one client business model, cost overruns, lack of production and to make matters worse, last week the ad agency lost any potential of landing another client as Vonage selected another firm for it’s advertising.
Leaving Enfatico as a one trick pony.. more exactly.. as nothing.. as it’s closing down.
Exactly what we have been saying since it’s inception. Hell we even built an Enfatico Countdown clock… The clock is now updated with what will most likely be it’s last update.
* 496 days, 8 hours, 5 minutes, 56 seconds into the contract……Enfatico Shuts Down with 599 days, 15 hours, 54 minutes, 4 seconds left in the contract…
What is unclear is what happens to the 10 year leases and if WPP group plc / Enfatico will default on 100,000 sq foot Manhattan office spaces.
There was nearly 1000 people working there, it’s widely expected that most of them will be sent to the unemployment line in short order.
Sir Martin, you really made a mess of things.
Vonage picks TBWA - Enfatico’s Torrence Boone does dismal job
April 7, 2009
TRIBBLE AD AGENCY EXCLUSIVE : Vonage has selected TBWA as their Advertising Agency of Record. Enfatico’s pitch was so bad that during the meeting Torrence Boone evidently forgot the names of the people standing with him and this was leaked to us by someone at the meeting.. first hand.
It’s not that TBWA won the pitch for Vonage Holdings Corp, it’s that Enfatico lost the pitch. Enfatico, sitting on a massive surplus of unused assets has not yet been able to successfully land any business since it’s inception.
Enfatico is staffed with nearly a 1000 people, with only 1 client.. multiple locations .. with only 1 client… yet they still lost the pitch. This might be fatal for the agency, if Dell leaves, as is being rumored will happen.. it will leave a 1000 payroll strong ad agency with 10 year leases and no clients.
You’re talking millions upon millions being sent out of the ad agency, with nothing coming in. That’s a game over plan.
TBWA must be masters as the pitch, well not at the pitch.. but by picking the proper competition. The Circuit City marketing department could have beat Enfatico for this one.
Taking Bets on how long he has a job… any guesses?
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