We are happy to bring back Katherine Wintsch from The Mom Complex. We met Katherine years ago from her time at The Martin Agency. Katherine’s webinar on surviving in the ad industry, juggling your role as ad professional and mom is both profound and moving. Check it out.

https://filamentinc.com/blog/webclinic/how-to-survive-and-thrive-as-a-woman-in-advertising-with-katherine-wintsch/

While we don’t talk to each of our clients as regularly was we would like, we would like to thank everyone for making this another great year!

Wishing you all a great holiday season!

It is hard to believe it has been 26 years since we started Filament. Over the years, we have grown from a few small clients to clients all over the world. We could not have imagined what an exciting and fulfilling journey it would be.

Thank you all for joining us on what to date has been a great trip. We look forward to more great times in the industry.

Great game! Congrats to the Chiefs and my friends in KC. The spots had some great highlights for me and a few head scratchers as well.

The Martin Agency’s Oreo “let me twist on it” campaign is brilliant. A never ending supply comes out of one perfect idea that no other cookie/snack company can own. The definition of great work!

Ogilvy’s Dove spot was wonderful. Great message and clearly ownable by Dove. It was great to see the next iteration of the campaign. Congrats!

DunKings – I laughed out loud:-)

Kawasaki’s business in the front, party in the back ad from Goodby was 80’s inspired genius. It seemed like there was a lot of 80’s influence in the commercials this year and GS&P nailed it. Putting on mullet on an eagle was impressive!

Arnold as the State Farm rep is perfect. Perfectly branded to State Farm. Plenty of territory for campaignability. Loved it.

Head scratcher #1 – It seems like a miss to me that Jeff Goldblum was in two different Super Bowl spots. Is he that critical a casting choice that you think “I just can’t do this without Jeff.”

Head scratcher #2 – I realize that there is no way to find out if Flashdance is being used by another agency but that was weird. I thought both commercials were great but they were so similar. The next time an agency thinks that a client stole their idea from a pitch and gave it to another agency… maybe two agencies came up with the same idea. Crazy stuff!

Head scratcher #3 – Taking politics out of the equation, I did not get the Kennedy ad at all. After a little research, I see that it is a recreation of JFK’s 1960 presidential campaign ad. So the idea was to run an spot that was a recreation of a 63 year old campaign… that only people well into their 70s would remember (or people that are bigger history nerds than me, which is a relative high bar). If my definition of great work is the Oreo “let me twist on it” campaign, the Kennedy spot is the definition of a headscratcher.

Congratulations everyone! Get some well deserved rest.

As is nearly everyone in the industry, we are excited to see what new spots are coming for the upcoming Superbowl. A few that are most interesting to me:

• E*TRADE – Love the way that they bring fresh, iconic, memorable work to the game. I am interested to see what they do this year.
• Budweiser – How can they breath new life into the clydesdales. While it is iconic, the ads can all start to look alike. Big ask of the agency.
• State Farm – Love their work.
• Reese’s – Is the marriage between peanut butter and jelly on the rocks?! I hear jelly is getting pretty upset about all the time peanut butter is spending with chocolate:-)
• Doritos – always exciting
• Oreo – TMA will certainly bring their A game!
• ??? – someone always surprises me.

Good luck to all our clients. Enjoy the game!

Filament normally work closely with ad agencies, PR/PA and research firms but rarely on the client side. Filament just signed a six-month contract to work with a large pharmaceutical company to help them change the way that they market products and engage with their agencies worldwide.

It will be a great opportunity to gain insight into the client side of the business as well as how the agency/client relationship works from the client’s perspective.

We are coming in at the beginning of team building process as the company assembles a team pharma marketing specialists to drive change throughout the organization. It will be an exciting journey that we are looking forward to taking!

Ross Chowles, industry veteran and professor at Michigan State University conducted his first webinar with Filament. It was great to hear him to a deep dive on the industry, the creative department, artificial intelligence, clients demands and his views on where this is taking our industry.

His insights were a great opportunity to step back from the day to day and look at where our industry is going and where we all fit in.

Thanks Ross!

It seems that every year, Doritos wins the Super Bowl. Granted there are always a collection of great spots every year, but rarely does one brand do a great job every year.

Owning the triangle is brilliant. Owning something as simple as a shape has endless opportunities and is a campaign that could live for years.

Love it…

We are very excited to have Ross adding his expertise to our webinar offerings. Ross has won all of the major awards since founding The Jupiter Drawing Room many years ago. He has since gone on to teach at Michigan State University and be a judge at both The One Show and The Cannes Lions.

Over the years, Ross’s main skill has been understanding how to motivate the creative staff and have the develop better and better work.

Welcome aboard Ross!

As a very small business, our idea of tremendous growth may be different than some of our clients who have staff measuring in the hundreds (or thousands) and revenues well beyond what we could ever imagine. Still, for many of our clients landing seven new accounts in a year would represent a good year.

In the last 7 months, Filament has expanded our portfolio of clients to include 7 new ad agencies and public relations/affairs firms. The new clients represent a terrific cross section of the industry including international public affairs, small ad agencies, large agencies, pharma, digital and consumer ad agencies.

All seven new firms came to us through client referrals which is always welcome from a business perspective but is more importantly an affirmation that what we are doing helps people become more effective communications whether that is in a management setting or in a new business setting.

It is an exciting time in our industry and we are thrilled to welcome our new clients into the fold.