Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 1, 1990 TAG: 9003290046
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: BUS-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MAG POFF BUSINESS WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
At the very least, Saturday night's performance by The Jack Smith Agency demonstrated the many anomalies of the advertising business.
The firm won five bronze medals in the American Advertising Federation's third district Addy Award competition in Columbia, S.C. There were more than 800 entries from agencies in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia.
Smith concedes that he was disappointed in the earlier Roanoke Addy competition, even though his agency took 13 awards there.
Edmonds Packett Group, which dominated the Roanoke contest with 28 awards, came away from the three-state competition with a single bronze - and that medal did not go to either of Edmonds Packett's two best-in-show creations from Roanoke.
An even greater irony is Smith's loss of the Frances Kahn account, the genesis of all five of its bronze medals in Columbia Saturday.
Smith gives the standard agency explanation for a rift with a client. They had, he said, a difference in advertising philosophies.
Frances Kahn didn't switch agencies. Rusty Lester, owner of the women's apparel shop, said he is now handling his own advertising.
The Smith Agency is very talented, Lester said, and its ads for Frances Kahn were clever and very well done. But, he said, "they didn't reflect the mood of what we do here."
JoAnne Rock of Charlotte, Third District Addy chairman, recalls the Frances Kahn ads "very vividly" among more than 800 entries.
To her, Rock said, "they made a strong fashion statement."
American Advertising Federation rules require that judges come from outside the market they evaluate.
Rock said they bring their own experience to each judging even though they use the same criteria. They view work in the different "texture" of entries at each level.
There are, Rock pointed out, many definitions of effective creativity. There's no one solution to an ad campaign.
Any difference between local and district level judging, she said, might be the latter's bent toward "innovative and breakthrough advertising."
Debbie Smith of Charlotte, co-chairman of the award committee, said the tri-state district entries are judged on a national level.
The Jack Smith Agency differs in many ways from other full-service firms in Roanoke.
Smith calls it an "emerging young agency," founded just 18 months ago.
Yet he himself is a veteran of the industry in Roanoke.
He has worked in marketing for Media Works of Virginia and for Finnegan & Agee, where a client was Magic Carpet. When the carpet company took its ads in-house, Smith became advertising director for Magic Marketing.
On the side, Smith and some friends from Richmond free-lanced, doing their creative work at a local lounge after office hours. They dubbed themselves Drinking Buddies.
That name dominated local awards at the district Addys in 1988. Smith opened his own agency shortly afterward and did well in last year's district contest too.
He took the Magic Carpet account as his first client and quickly attracted several others.
About a year ago, he won the Tanglewood Mall account away from two other local agencies.
"Overwhelmed" by Smith's work for the mall, Andy Cohen just hired the agency for Leatherhous, a store at Tanglewood. Cohen said he had an agency years ago that seemed interested only in spending his money.
He thinks Smith's work for Tanglewood is "just superb, very tasteful" with humor and intelligence.
The agency's latest coup was landing ASSA High Security Locks, a Swedish company with a U.S. headquarters in Chicago.
The world's two largest lock manufacturers now have Roanoke agencies because Edmonds Packett Group represents Medeco Lock.
Thus the world's war for the security lock market will be waged from the Roanoke Valley.
The Jack Smith Agency is unusual in another way. Smith, a copywriter and director, is the only creative person on the staff.
Most agencies keep a creative staff, but Smith relies almost entirely on a network of free-lancers.
Smith said that cuts costs (and controls prices) while allowing him to match the needs of each client to creative people around the country.
The network, he explained, is connected by fax, Federal Express and long-distance phone calls.
Even so, he said, 90 to 95 percent of the agency's work is produced in Roanoke.
The Tanglewood ads, for instance, are written out of town. But they are produced in Roanoke by local artists, photographers and printers.
Seven people are actually employed at the agency, including Smith and Tucker Crolius, the chief financial officer who owns 30 percent of the firm.
The agency also has an office manager, three marketing and account managers and a secretary.
Two of those people will join the staff officially April 15 when the agency moves into its new headquarters.
The new office is in a renovated 150-year-old farmhouse, half-hidden on a wooded hillside above the intersection of Brandon Avenue and Mudlick Road.
Smith is trying to be "the agency of the '90s" which, he said, means it has to be better.
The industry is imploding with buyouts and mergers, he said. It's only a matter of time before that trend filters down to Roanoke.
Local agencies must compete for the limited business in Western Virginia or, as most of them already do, seek clients out of town.
Story boards and mechanicals are obsolete, he said, and artists create directly on computers.
A successful agency must raise marketing to an art form, Smith said, and advertising today must fit within a strategic plan for promoting a product.
by CNB