Home People Tracy Wong – Seattle’s “Mad Man” – Follows Don Draper on Bravo!

Tracy Wong – Seattle’s “Mad Man” – Follows Don Draper on Bravo!

Last night’s double-header on the Bravo television network had nothing to do with baseball. But it did feature two heavy-hitters.  Right after Mad Men, Bravo programmed a “sneak preview” episode of  their newly minted  reality series on the world of advertising titled “The Pitch.”

Which raises the question: Which one of the Mad Men on Bravo was the most compelling?

Don Draper, principal of Sterling, Cooper, Draper, Price of  Madison Avenue, New York, NY, weighed in at the  7:00 p.m. time slot and and did battle with a few creative issues, but as usual, a number of  personal demons.

Tracy Wong, the chairman and creative chief of Wong, Doody, Crandall, Weiner of  Seattle’s Western Ave. and  California’s Culver City, cut an equally  impressive profile at 8:00 p.m. and took up the battle for a few campaign-winning ideas. Matthew Weiner, are you listening?

Sterling Cooper is working on improving its creative product, (having hired its first Jewish copywriter.) In the ad business, you’re only as good as your last idea. Sterling’s last idea fell flat, a “Bean Ballet” for Heinz. Don Draper also whiffed in an attempt to pitch the Rolling Stones to sing a jingle for Heinz, sung to the tune of “Heinz, Heinz, Heinz is on my Side.”

Wong Doody (“WDCW), has racked up a first-class string of creative awards. On “The Pitch,” the agency was pitted against McKinney Advertising (of Durham, NC) in a review to raise the appeal of  Subway Restaurants’ Breakfast.

The Seattle sluggers came out of the dugout with a high-profile concept for overcoming the Zombie state at breakfast.  Wong’s “counter-culture” notion for Subway, (pun-intended), was a natural instinct for nailing the 24-38 year old demographic with the campaign zinger: “No Be ZAMBIE!”

What was palpable in comparing the fictional TV agency of the 50’s to a real-world campaign in 2012 is the willingness (vs. fear) of risk taking.  It’s the same difference in contrasting Draper and WongTracy Wong (like WDCW) takes risks in his professional life  that are on the same razor’s edge Don Draper walks in his personal life.  Both Wong and Draper are fearless.

“You never succeed if you go against your gut,” said Wong. Draper would agree. But Don’s agency can’t hold a candle to WDCW’s creative firepower.

Whereas Sterling Cooper is bogged down in a 1950’s mind set, struggling to understand the significance behind the “Think Small” campaign for Volkswagon it sees rolling out from Doyle, Dan, Bernbach, WDCW is swinging for the fences with every pitch.

Writing for AdAge, Tracy shared why his agency decided to expose itself on the TV show. “Why did our agency say “yes”? Quite simply, we were not afraid to be naked in front of the cameras. We don’t have a “secret sauce.” But we don’t work in a snake pit either. We’re built around a creative process called “The Democracy of Good Ideas,” the belief that anyone can have a good advertising idea, not just a creative person. We invest everyone in the process, especially the account folks and, yes, the client. No prima donnas. No backstabbing. No shouting. No scheming. No egos.”

He added: “Come the premiere April 8 our agency will be exposed with full frontal agency nudity to millions of TV viewers and, perhaps worse, to the entire advertising industry. Our biggest worry is the final edit of the show. We have no control over it, and we know what an editor can do to a story. (Just think how Stephen Colbert can skewer a member of Congress with the splicing of a few choice sound bites.)”

But in the end, I think that a lot of agencies that said “no” will wish they hadn’t. Being honest and real makes for the best client/agency relationships. Having those qualities revealed about yourself on national television, showing that you have nothing to hide, is some of the best publicity anyone can get.”

“The “Democracy” isn’t meant to be secret or proprietary. A lot of agencies try to work this way. But it’s hard to pull off, simply because creative people are by their nature ego-driven. We wanted the world to see our process, experience our “Democracy.” That is why, after weeks of internal debate weighing the pluses of publicity for our work against the possible minuses of embarrassment or failure, we said yes to “The Pitch,” wrote Wong.

According to Ben Weiner, CEO of WDCW,  “The Pitch” took two weeks in the lives of two agencies busting their butts and condensed it to 42 minutes of television. You got to see the highlights from the Subway pitch — the struggle to come up with ideas, the production of those ideas, the presentation of those ideas, and then the crowning of the victor. But it’s what you didn’t see on TV that defines WDCW as an agency. And since I don’t think a three-hour director’s cut of “The Pitch” Episode 101 is forthcoming, here’s some of what you missed.”

View WDCW’s creative for ‘The Pitch” to Subway here, including three campaign ideas that never made it to airtime. [24×7]