• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, November 18, 2013

Pizza, Pizza. No, wait. Wrong chain. Papa John's wants your attention, Madison Avenue! The world's third largest pizza chain is looking for a new advertising agency. Yes. Here's your chance to outdo Barton F. Graf 9000's High 85. Which won't be very easy because that work was a thing of beauty. So the brand's current creative shop, ZGroup, is out, declining to participate in the review. But everyone else is welcome. Predictably, this has occurred just one month after Bob Kraut, formerly with Arby's and Pizza Hut joined the brand as global CMO.  In a statement, Papa John's CEO John Schnatter said the brand needs an agency to "help advance our brand to the next level through fresh thinking, brand messaging and more innovative, integrated marketing." Ouch, ZGroup, ouch! We feel your pain.

We here at Mediapsssst enjoy taunting Madison Avenue and pointing out its common failings but that's not all we do because that's not all Madison Avenue does. In fact, the advertising community does many great things and last week many jumped to the aid of Philippine typhoon victims with an outpouring of support. BBDO Guerro/Proximity Philippines solicited UNICEF donations with an "unselfie" campaign that asked people to take pictures of themselves with a paper over their face carrying the words, "support unicef.org/philippines" with the hashtag #unselfie. And the agency's deputy chairman, Tony Harris set up a page through JustGiving  to tap the London ad community which he is very familiar with having been deputy CEO of RKCR/Y&R. To date, the effort has raised $10,412 from 102 donations. BBDO's efforts were in concert with other agencies as well as from brands such as Comcast, P&G, Unilever, Time Warner, Hearst, Yum Brands, McDonald's, Disney, Pepsi and others.

OK, now back to the business of questioning the actions and motivations of our beloved ad industry.  It's clear that something involving $100 million usually catches the attention of the media. Oh, like when DigitasLBi and Razorfish promise Google they will spend $100 million across display, mobile and YouTube. But isn't that what ad agencies do? Spend money on behalf of their clients? Why is this news other than to garner a little more ink in the press? Which, ironically, I know I am falling for at this very moment. Then again, if none of the "normal course of business" stuff was given any press, we'd have next to nothing to read about, right ?