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What health/pharma agencies are in SF?
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What’s the WLB at Droga like?
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Rising Star
You’re surprised Nike hasn’t left the agency that single handedly built their brand from nothing?
Rising Star
Nah. Wieden made Nike and Nike ads made Wieden. You could credit Jordan or other athletes as well, but Phil Knight not giving them credit means nothing. If W+K wasn’t getting results, he would’ve moved on a long time ago.
I’m in-house at a brand about the same size as Nike and we still use like 6 different agencies for our big brand campaigns. It’s super normal. As the in-house team we handle a majority of the social and digital work, repurposing work, product and innovation design and launches, work with trade, and do some activation and experiential work. When you go in-house you get sucked DEEEEEEP into the messy marketing side of everything and the work truly does suffer because of it (we try but it’s all in vain because of c-suite 🫠). We need the outside agencies to push out the award winning/super creative stuff. I hope Nike never goes fully in-house.
Probably worth adding that I come from agency side with tons of awards to my name. Talent is generally not the problem with most in-house teams, it’s who we’re selling the work to internally.
In-house take real investment on a level most companies have zero interest in investing. It’s why many who have done in-house scale back and reinvest in agencies. And brands realize the real cost of work which they force agencies to do for less. So they are not saving money either.
Rising Star
Nike has a huge creative campus in Beaverton already. They still need W+K because of something no in-house creative department could provide: An outsider perspective. It’s impossible for brands not to drink their own kool aid and lose their footing when they do branding in house.
Rising Star
@ ACD2 I never said it was because of working for only one client. A lot of agencies have dedicated teams that only serve one client.
The reason an internal agency usually does bad work, is because internally the company culture will suffocate any questioning of beliefs that are held. Internally people drink the corporate kool aid and are not free to think outside of it. My wife works internally in the creative department of a Fortune 500 company. You would not believe how ass backwards the process is and more importantly, how frowned upon it is to question it or try to change it.
They honestly behave like they have to reinvent the wheel every time, but somehow never arrive to the conclusion that it should be a round one.
It’s sort of a death pact at this stage. They’ve given bits of it to other agencies in the past - Goodby,
R/GA, etc - and while the work has been good elsewhere, it’s never felt very Nike. Hopefully the relationship survives Neal and Karl’s “reimagining” of the WK brand and they start putting out great work more consistently again.
What’s the reimagining?
Rising Star
They’re not stupid.
Creatively, working on different types of clients keeps you sharp. Working on only one client erodes creative quality.
Media-wise, there’s no way a single in-house brand could ever compete with an agency that works with dozens of brands.
It’s called relationships. If and when Phil Knight passes as well… I’m pretty sure things can change very fast or maybe not. Nike might honor their relationship and keep it as is. Who knows.
I’ve talked to CDs at Nike and they would if they were allowed.
Rising Star
Obviously the in-house team would, but they’re the only ones who would benefit.