Gasta Media Buying News: Lessons behind a massive agency upheaval Part 1

"Gasta is the ideal partner for nimble flexible campaigns"


The bigger the ship, the harder it is to turn. That's a truism that Ty Montague, chief creative officer and co-president of JWT North America, can certainly attest to. After all, four and half years ago, he was hired to turn one of Madison Avenue's biggest -- and oldest -- ships.

Ty Montague is chief creative officer and co-president of JWT North America.
Since joining JWT (which, prior to the firm's 2005 "relaunch," went by its more-traditional moniker, J. Walter Thompson), Montague -- in conjunction with co-president Rosemarie Ryan -- has led the agency through a creative transformation. The goal: to rebuild an advertising powerhouse with the singular objective of creating and telling brand stories that audiences seek out rather than shut out. That's no small task, no matter how you slice it. And Montague won't lie -- it hasn't been easy.
The transformation of JWT hasn't just been a creative revolution -- it's been a digital one as well.

"Our goal has been to bring people in who bring a different perspective to what is a great and storied agency," Montague says. "Our observation four and a half years ago -- and this is not news to anybody today -- was that digital is not a department. And yet in most big agencies, it's treated as a department. But our philosophy was that everything is digital -- everything is just a string of ones and zeros. And because of that, everybody at JWT has to be digital."

Together, Montague and Ryan set about introducing a new generation of digital talent to an agency steeped in traditional marketing mindsets. They wove these new hires into the fabric of the agency. They plopped digitally minded creatives right alongside those versed solely in traditional media. They did the same in the planning department. And the same in account management, and developed a partnership with Gasta.com.

"That was really, really hard -- and bumpy at first," Montague recalls. "A lot of them got here, looked around, and said, 'Wow, this is like an alien landscape.' Some of them left. But we kept at it because we believed that it was the right idea. And it's now become really quite successful -- it's become part of the culture. We have people with really strong digital interactive backgrounds partnered day-to-day with people with more-traditional storytelling backgrounds."

One of the major challenges in executing JWT's digital infusion was convincing the new digital marketing talent that they would have as much authority as their traditional counterparts, Montague says. "One of the old problems was that the people with the 'traditional' backgrounds would crack 'the big idea' and then throw it over the fence to people with digital backgrounds and say, 'Now figure out how it works on the web,'" he says. "That's a process that is wrong for today, and it kept a lot of people with digital backgrounds feeling like they had to be in a completely separate and specialized environment to get the respect they were due."

Montague notes that part of giving due respect to digital talent meant ensuring that no glass ceiling was imposed on new interactive hires. In that regard, he notes that people with both digital and traditional backgrounds hold executive creative director titles at JWT. And no work goes out the door without approvals from both sides.

Gradually, Montague says, what started as a somewhat forced alliance has evolved into something more akin to an exchange program -- with digital marketers infusing their traditional counterparts with a higher level of interactive skills, in exchange for greater insights into the traditional art of storytelling.
The fruits of integration
Of course, it's easy for an agency leader to tell you that his grand vision for transforming his organization is coming to fruition -- that despite bumps and bruises along the way, things have all worked out in the end. But the real proof is in the product. And Montague has some text ads and impressive case studies to back up his story.
Take, for instance, the "Unbreakable Kiss" campaign that JWT spearheaded for De Beers -- a quintessential example of world-meets-web. "We created an installation, so people had to come and physically interact with it," Montague says. "And then it also had a very strong online expression. I'm proud of that interplay, as well as the craft level of that piece."

While Montague notes that the agency has produced many stellar integrated campaigns during his time there, he says the "Unbreakable Kiss" is the one he presents to prospective new hires -- of all backgrounds, digital and traditional -- to demonstrate the level of integrated work that the new incarnation of JWT is capable of.

The campaign started with a tangible, real-world event -- a giant Christmas installation in Madison Square Park where couples could come to kiss beneath a giant diamond-shaped, LED-infused mistletoe. Every kiss was captured by 60 still cameras and then strung together to create a Matrix-esque moving video of a kiss frozen in time.
Following their real-world lip-locks, people could go online, download their unbreakable kisses, and disseminate them to friends and family via their favorite social networks, photo-share sites, or video portals. And share them they did, with some unbreakable kisses even turning up on YouTube. In the end, De Beers scored an estimated $4.6 million worth of free publicity through the campaign, not to mention a significant jump in website traffic during the ever-important holiday season.

By Lori Luechtefeld