Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

HP announced yesterday that Goody, Silverstein, which I still consider to be America’s best all-round ad agency has been awarded a $300 million global assignment for its Personal Systems Group, effective Jan. 16^th. This will involve international work previously handled by Publicis Groupe and its Publicis & Hal Riney unit, in San Francisco. This will be a major blow for the people at Riney (some of which are old pals of mine from O&M days) as they have been chasing Goodby’s share of the HP business like a dog in heat. The announcement came after HP, which spends $2 billion on advertising, conducted an evaluation of agencies following the departure of CEO Carly Fiorina. Queen Carly was a big fan of Goodby, so it was thought that after she got kicked out and departed to run the World Bank – Well, those were the rumors!!! Riney was in with a real chance to pick up the entire account. Not to be guys, ‘cos I hate to say it, but Goodby is a great agency that has proved that unlike 90% of the BDA’s out there, you can get really big, and still stay really good. Meantime, Carly is writing a book about “How she wuz robbed!”

I blame Goodby for putting me in those ads wearing leather trousers that made my bum look huge!