I’m Beth Cotter.
I’ve been a Partner in an agency startup, a Business Director for Grey Worldwide, a Research Director specializing in branding and branded Ag products for 8 years at Quarry.
I've been a Marketing Manager for University of Waterloo digital media campus, a Marketing Manager for Business Products and Visual Environments for manufacturer Christie Digital and I dabbled in financial services marketing with Manulife Financial.
Diverse. Yep that's me.
Grey is the only advertising agency to be featured in Fast Company Magazine’s “50 Most Innovative Companies In the World” issue in each of the past two years. Very Cool!
Hey, Baby, Look Who's the Most Innovative Ad Agency
When Grey New York's new chief creative officer, Tor Myhren, decided to boot his team of 120 creatives from their posh offices into a sea of '70s-brown cubicles, he skipped the pep talk on the cultural virtues of the open office. Instead, the bald newcomer shot a music video spoofing Sinéad O'Connor, crooning his own "Nothing Compares to Two" -- the new floor -- and setting an example of the new DIY spirit being unleashed at the stalled 93-year-old Madison Avenue shop. In the two years since his arrival, Myhren has transformed Grey New York into a multimedia powerhouse that is anything but colorless: In 2009, as ad spending plummeted 11%, the WPP -- owned agency's operating profits were up 44%.
One of Grey's most effective moves was to build up its own production department, allowing it to produce TV and Web spots in-house quickly and cheaply, rather than outsourcing them. That lightness of foot helps explain how Grey won a startling 17 out of 19 new business pitches in 2009, including BMW, DirecTV, Ketel One vodka, and the NFL. The work, best exemplified by Grey's now ubiquitous E-Trade babies, oozes zeitgeisty appeal -- from its thousand-frames-per-second Phantom HD spots for the NFL to the creepy YouTube videos that transformed Penguin's teen novel 13 Reasons into a best seller to the viral "Obammcain" ad for the presidential election. "We have to keep pace with the rest of culture," says Myhren. "If news is coming out in real time, we have to be able to get our marketing out just as fast."
Ok, for us Canadian viewers we get ripped off in a key part of the whole Super Bowl experience because we get the Canadian version of the TV spots, they are not all fresh and new and wrapped in the American Super Bowl Hype. (Check our this blog for thoughts on how the Super Bowl has earned its position as a US cultural phenomenon.)
Following the tweets during the game yesterday I wasn't able to agree or disagree with the various opinions that were expressed about each spot. I had to focus on the game action, which was a tad lopsided until the 2nd half ... I was cheering for the Steelers.
For those who work in the ad biz, Super Bowl Sunday is like a redemption to all the negative things people say and believe about the value of advertising. The spots get just as much hype as the game so we claim it as a small demonstration that indeed Advertising works. The buzz around the spots demonstrates that good advertising can create new awareness and new found perceptions. As Fast Company reported last week, " Three years ago, during Super Bowl XLII, eTrade entrusted its public image to a talking (and puking) baby. The next day, eTrade registered more new accounts than it had on any other day in the company's history."
Thankfully there are now sources for us to view all the great spots we miss on game day...and many of them were available long before the coin toss. YouTube has been filled with posts for all the spots. So enjoy today what you missed on game day.
Prior to Sunday you could enjoy a few previews and here is site to scroll through the last few years of spots. ETrade released a compilation as a fun way to wet appetites before game day. As of Friday morning this YouTube video was at 1.2 million views after being posted for only 2 weeks. And yes, Etrade is a Grey client:
