Are the best copywriters English or American? This is a question we often ask ourselves when watching the SuperBowl and studying legendary copywriters.
Even though Madison Avenue’s Mad Men remain in our hearts, Californian advertising agencies have been doing very good work for years.
And since Silicon Valley emerged, many tech budgets have been entrusted to these prestigious advertising agencies in Los Angeles or San Francisco.
Because this week is the SuperBowl and we’re here, discover the 5 most famous Californian advertising agencies.
First named “Agency to Watch” in 2016, then “Agency of the Year” for agencies with fewer than 150 people by Advertising Age, it is notably part of this marketing operation for Netflix “The Finals Guinea Pig”:
This is a post that starts with a very simple idea: in the middle of exams, students wonder if they should be revising or if they can take a Netflix break. And it’s a guinea pig that will determine their fate! It wanders around in a box divided into 2 parts: one half of the box corresponds to revision while the other is associated with Netflix.
The idea is simple but fun, especially since it is based entirely on the unpredictable behavior of the rodent. In 3 days, no less than 34,000 students took part in the experiment.
This idea even won the Gold Pencil at the One Show in 2016, one of the most prestigious awards ceremonies in the advertising, design and digital marketing sectors. Ideas like these are not revolutionary, but they still have the merit of making people smile.
Founded in 1949, DDB Worldwide has established itself as a giant in advertising and marketing.
This agency has one of the largest and most influential networks in the world with more than 70 subsidiaries spread across the globe. Among its most important clients are Kroger, Mars, McDonald’s, Molson Coors, Johnson & Johnson, Unilever, Novartis and Volkswagen, among others.
(And yes, while some brands have their own communications department, others use communications agencies which then constitute a “portfolio” of clients.)
DDB’s Californian subsidiary has accumulated no fewer than 138 awards listed by Adforum . The most recent one dates back to 2021 at the D&AD Awards for its IShare campaign (a collection of exchange-traded funds managed by BlackRock), for its visual effects and quality of execution.
DDB California’s creatives have also won the agency many other awards. For example, thanks to their campaign “The reverse graffiti project”, DDB California won 8 awards in 2009, including 1 Golden Lion for their client Greenworks, an ecological brand, which for the occasion partnered with Clorox, a cleaning product company.
Here’s the background: The Broadway Tunnel in San Francisco handles over 20,000 motor vehicles each day. This heavy traffic has completely covered the tunnel walls with soot and dust. To address this problem and promote Greenwork’s environmental work, DDB’s advertisers came up with the idea of hiring artist Paul Moose Curtis.
The graffiti artist therefore created a huge reverse graffiti in the form of a lush mural, using stencils and a high-pressure water flow, without painting or degradation. It was therefore the cleaned areas that constituted the work.
A nice work on cleanliness and respect for the environment to raise awareness among the population without making them feel guilty.
It’s worth noting that the El Segundo-based agency often adopts an offbeat tone.
One example is this surreal ad that aired during the 2016 Super Bowl for Kia: “Walken Closet,” which won third place in the New York Festivals Advertising Awards in the copywriting category.
The same goes for this short commercial released in 2003 for Outback-Steakhouse , which won a Silver ADDY at the American Advertising Awards. This ad doesn’t revolutionize the genre, but it’s still a good laugh.
She has notably won 7 awards for her campaign for Gatorade “Water Made Active” , a promotional film about the brand’s sporting spirit: sweating is more than just a physical phenomenon. This water has value, it represents the efforts you have made, the determination you have shown. So to launch the new Gatorade G-Active energy drink, TBWA took on the challenge of creating the first human figure made of 100% water, animated outdoors in a stop motion style.
In short, a great technological achievement in the service of a message that restores all its value to the act of sweating.
But Chiat\Day is above all this monument of advertising culture from 1984 straight out of Apple to announce the arrival of the Macintosh! The spot plays with its release date to take place in a dictatorship where each individual must correspond to a standard, in reference to the novel by George Orwell.
The advertisers won around ten Andy Awards, including for this campaign called “Life Below Water”.
One last one for the road, the film ” Not a Gun ” very well denounces the racial discrimination perpetuated by the police towards the African-American population.
And you, if you had to join an advertising agency in California, would you rather aim for Los Angeles or San Francisco?
Or maybe, like me, you’d prefer an advertising agency in New York?
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About the author: Sélim NIEDERHOFFER
Welcome to Les Mots Magiques! Here, discover the latest news on copywriting in French, the best techniques to better write your sales pages, improve your SEO, build a brand content strategy to help you reach your customers and sell more. My goal: to train you or your teams in copywriting to enable you to attract and seduce your customers. In short: write better, sell more!