A Sweep for the <i> Swoosh</i> : Ads starring Bo Jackson and an old jogger help Nike’s agency run off with the television Clios.
Bo Jackson may be best known for lugging footballs and slugging baseballs. But Monday night a Nike TV commercial featuring the dual-sport superstar on a bicycle was selected as the best national ad campaign of 1988 at the “Oscars” of advertising, the Clio Awards.
The commercial, in which Jackson calmly deadpans, “When’s that Tour de France thing?” was picked as best ad campaign along with two other Nike spots, including one that features an octogenarian who jogs 17 miles every day. Yet another humorous Nike TV spot, which features a fast-paced training walk as seen through the droopy eyes of a long-eared dog, also won a Clio for apparel advertising. All of the Nike ads were created by the relatively tiny Portland, Ore., ad agency Wieden & Kennedy.
Meanwhile, the New York office of a big Boston ad agency and a Chicago production company walked away with four Clios each. The New York office of Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos won most of its Clios for scenic TV spots for the Irish Tourist Board. And the Chicago production company, Sedelmaier, owned by director Joe Sedelmaier, had several spots named to the Clios “Classic Hall of Fame,” including the 1984 ad for Wendy’s that showed long-faced participants in a deadpan depiction of a Russian fashion show.
From New York’s Lincoln Center, Clios were handed out in 106 TV ad categories. The TV broadcast portion of the competition attracted more than 10,000 entries. Winners were previously selected by advertising professionals in a series of judging sessions held in 36 cities worldwide.
At a time when the advertising world’s eyes have recently been focused on ad agency mega-mergers--including British-based WPP Group’s proposed acquisition of Ogilvy & Mather--the outcome of the 30th annual Clio Awards seems to indicate that bigger ad firms do not necessarily create better advertising. Nor, for that matter, is award-winning advertising limited to Madison Avenue.
“You create ads in a little office and sit around wondering if they’re any good,” said Dan G. Wieden, president of the 7-year-old agency that came into national spotlight several years ago with its first Nike ad campaign that featured the original Beatles song, “Revolution.” The ad angered many fans of the Fab Four for commercializing Beatles music.
“Sometimes,” Wieden said in an interview several days before the awards ceremony, “you forget that the ads you create can really affect people.”
Have they ever.
Sales of Nike’s cross-training shoes have rocketed to more than $200 million from zero since they were introduced two years ago, said Liz Dolan, director of public relations at Beaverton, Ore.-based Nike. In fact, the cross trainers already outsell Nike’s running shoes, she said.
And Bo Jackson has proved to be so popular in Nike advertising that he will also star in Nike’s “back to school” ad campaign, which will break during major league baseball’s All-Star game this summer. In one ad--which Nike officials have kept mum about until now--Jackson will certainly be cast as a man of many sports. He will hit tennis balls with John McEnroe, play hockey with Wayne Gretzky and even take part in a musical duet with guitarist Bo Diddley.
At Nike, officials jokingly refer to the recently filmed ad as the “Bo-lympics.”
But it isn’t just Jackson who is capturing the public’s imagination. So is Walt Stack, the 83-year old San Francisco jogger who was featured in a Nike ad. “Some people wrote and told us that the ad made them reassess what they were doing with their lives,” said Wieden. “A lot of people looked at him and said, ‘Heck, if he can do that, why can’t I?’ ”
That must also be the attitude at Wieden & Kennedy, which until Monday night had mostly been ignored by the Clios. “It’s the one awards show we haven’t linked up well with,” said Wieden, whose agency has about 50 employees--a fraction of the number employed by most major ad firms. “I suppose now there’ll be a lot more attention paid to what we’re doing. Of course, it shouldn’t matter what the Clios say, but it often does.”
And what the Clios seemed to be saying about Southern California was that 1988 was not a very good creative year. Although nine TV broadcast Clios were awarded to Los Angeles-area outfits, more went to production companies than to ad agencies, and none received more than one award.
Even Joe Pytka, whose Los Angeles production company has made it a habit of virtually sweeping the Clios the past several years with its splashy ads for Pepsi, won just a single Clio this year. And the Venice ad firm Chiat/Day, which prides itself on its creative ads for clients such as Nissan and Eveready, went home without a single Clio this year, although its New York office did win one Clio last week in the print advertising competition.
Yet Bill Evans, president of the Clio Awards, said the West Coast has not lost its advertising luster. “The results simply suggest that there is no longer any central point for creativity in this country,” Evans said.
“But at the same time, I didn’t see any really fresh ideas this year such as the old ones like, ‘Where’s the Beef?”’ said Evans. “Is the problem that ad agency people are short on ideas, or are they so busy with mega-mergers that they’ve taken their eyes off creating great ads?”
