Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 10, 1991 TAG: 9103090252
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Mag Poff
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The promotions were for Roanoke's Texas Tavern, a hole-in-the-wall downtown eatery. They were designed by the Jack Smith Agency of Roanoke, but the creative juices came from one of Jack Smith's friends in Minneapolis.
As such, say some in the Advertising Federation of the Roanoke Valley, they didn't meet the standard of locally produced ads and shouldn't have been allowed in the Addy Awards competition. Hotly contested definitions of terms such as "concept," "create" and "production" have deeply divided the ad club and could have ramifications in many markets like Roanoke.
It has pitted people working at two of the town's top agencies against each other and left others in advertising with uncomfortable positions in the middle.
At the crux of the issue is a rule by the American Advertising Federation that says for advertising to be eligible for the prestigious annual Addy Awards, it must be "concepted and created" in its local market.
Judith Perfater, president of the Advertising Federation of the Roanoke Valley, said the issue is whether local talent should be competing with out-of-town agencies. Although she termed the American Advertising Federation rule "pretty straightforward," until this year, Roanoke's Ad Fed had been "circumventing" the issue.
To her, the issue is whether local designers and copywriters should be competing with out-of-town talent.
Perfater, who also is advertising director of the Roanoke Times & World-News, named a committee to recommend a solution. The committee is chaired by Bruce Thomasson of the Edmonds Packett Group and is to report to the federation's board on April 9.
The committee has met several times, Thomasson said, but the problem is national in scope. He said the committee is waiting for the AAF to clarify its rule.
Thomasson also co-chaired the committee for this year's Addy Awards, which were presented Feb. 9. The issue was raised in January, but because there was so little time before judging of the entries, the board voted then to continue skirting the rule.
That complaint was in the form of a letter to Perfater and the board, from William A. Thomasson, Bruce Thomasson's brother and also an Edmonds Packett employee.
He accused the federation's board of placing "public relations above ethics" it its treatment of work from the Smith agency and Finnegan & Agee, a Richmond agency with sales staff in Roanoke.
"The truth is that the board was more concerned with what Jack Smith would say in the community than it was in upholding AAF rules," William Thomasson wrote. "I cannot understand how the respected members of the board let themselves be intimidated by Jack Smith."
Thomasson's letter prompted an angry reply from board member Lin Chaff, president of a Roanoke public relations firm.
"You have missed the entire point of the board's vote," Chaff wrote. "At the point the Addy Committee decided to pull the plug on the two agencies involved, it was clearly too late, both for ethics and P.R."
Edmonds Packett Group won 37 prizes at the Addy ceremony. The agency has an in-house staff of artists and copywriters, but produces its ads in out-of-state studios.
The Jack Smith Agency came in second with 25 awards as well as capturing best-in-show.
The Texas Tavern ads never appeared in major Roanoke media. They were printed in the Smith Mountain Eagle and in the local Shriners magazine.
Smith denies that those media were chosen simply to qualify the ads for the local Addy contest. The former was to support licensing of the Texas Tavern chili recipe at the lake's Foxsport Marina and at Stop-In Food Marts, he said. The latter was placed because Texas Tavern's owner is a Shriner.
The ads, Smith said, were "concepted years ago" by him and Luke Sullivan, then a copywriter for a Richmond agency. The two men free-lanced together under the name Drinking Buddies.
Having bartered advertising to support their bar tab at a Richmond cafe, Smith said, they came up with the concept in an unsuccessful attempt to get free lunch at a local eatery. That owner, however, rejected the trade.
Last year, Smith said, he presented the concept to Jim Bullington, who owns Texas Tavern.
Now with a major agency in Minneapolis, Sullivan showed his free-lance work for Texas Tavern to Bob Barrie, art director for the same agency.
Smith said Barrie asked to work on the Texas Tavern campaign, an offer Smith couldn't refuse. Barrie, Smith said, "is a national powerhouse, a tremendous national talent."
Smith said his agency has never tried to hide the fact that it hires free-lance talent from elsewhere.
But Smith contends his ads are "created" locally because he uses valley engravers, typesetters and studios. Edmonds Packett, he argued, sends such work out of town, a point that Bruce Thomasson confirmed.
Smith said until a recent staff expansion his agency's work was "concepted" outside but "created" in Roanoke. At agencies with in-house creative staffs, he said, the reverse is true.
Either way, the trend is away from agencies providing the full range of ad services with their own staffs. Only in the largest markets can an ad agency afford both creative and sales staffs in every office.
"This is the computer age," Smith said, where free-lancers working at home connect with agencies through computers and fax machines. He uses Roanoke free-lancers as well as those in other cities.
Another agency involved in the controversy is Finnegan & Agee. Under national rules it can enter its ads for Roanoke clients in the Addy competition in Richmond, where it has its headquarters and does all of its creative work.
But John Fisher, head of the agency's Roanoke office, said the agency wants to continue competing here with ads for its Roanoke clients. The office has no creative person on its staff because it's easier to manage at a central location, Fisher said.
He said there are many gray areas because Finnegan & Agee, like other agencies, seeks the best talent for each ad whether it's in the same building or in California.
Winning prizes such as Addys is not simply a matter of ego and pride for advertising agencies, Smith noted. It is recognition that attracts clients and often decides who gets major accounts.
He argued the local board should encourage the widest possible participation in the Addys. Any winners reflect favorably on the entire Roanoke advertising market.
One who shares that view is Russell McKenney, whose small agency captured 10 awards at each of the last two Addy shows.
Inclusion of more entries, he said, "makes it a more vigorous and better show."
Excluding the Jack Smith Agency and Finnegan & Agee, McKenney said, lowers "the overall quality of the show. I'd like to continue to compete against them."
In a letter sent to Ad Fed members last week, Smith said he "may be able to save everyone a lot of time and trouble by announcing the agency's newly appointed creative staff."
He said his eight-person staff now includes Jim Robertson as in-house art director and Curlin Reed as copy writer.
Bruce Thomasson, on the other hand, said the national organization "wants the competition to be local." It isn't fair, he said, for a local copywriter to compete with a Minnesotan who has a national reputation.
But he conceded to "a gray area" on interpreting the word "created," especially with the growing use of free-lancers. If the creative director is local but the copywriter works in Richmond, he said, the application of the rule "is a toughy."
It's possible, he said, that the AAF may require that all of the talent work in the local market.
The dispute may well carry over into the administration of Laban Johnson, who becomes Ad Fed president in May.
"I'm not afraid to take that on," Johnson said.
Johnson, special events coordinator for Roanoke city, said the issue extends nationwide and is a problem in nearby areas such as Richmond.
There's no right or wrong to the issue, he said, but he believes the rule clearly requires that the work be "concepted" in the area where it's entered.
What he hopes, Johnson said, is that the many local disputes "will get the attention of the AAF," which will come up with "some reasonable definition."
by CNB