Mullen Was a Shoo-in: Grasping Zappos' Culture Key to Shop's Win

Boston Agency Also Saw That You Can't Tack Social Media on as Afterthought

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Last Monday, at the swanky Simon restaurant at The Palms hotel in Las Vegas, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Sin City strip and the peaks of the Spring Mountains, a small group of Mullen creatives and account folks dined with Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, his top marketers and other key execs.

It was Mullen's first meeting with Mr. Hsieh, the pizzeria worker-turned-millionaire-shoe salesman and social-media guru, and represented the final, and most casual, in a series of "chemistry check" meetings between the Interpublic agency and the red-hot online retailer. The agency was one of three finalists that included holding company sibling DraftFCB and WPP-backed CHI & Partners.

Seventy-two hours later, back in Boston, Mullen got the call saying it had landed the account. It was the culmination of one of the more interesting agency reviews in recent memory -- interesting partly because Zappos put out a much-publicized RFP that attracted more than 100 competing agencies; partly because the review was briefly interrupted by the small matter of Zappos being acquired for $880 million by online retail ruler Amazon; but interesting mainly because this was possibly the first time that a company with social marketing baked into its DNA had set out to vet and choose the best of a bunch of ad agencies.

Zappos' review kicked off early this summer, and for some the report from AdAge.com that Mullen had come up trumps was like the smart of acid indigestion after a meal they'd already found unpalatable. Commenters called the pitch "a colossal time-suck" and said Mullen triumphed in a "frenzied lottery game." Their negativity was based on a feeling that Zappos' allowing so many agencies to spend so much time and money competing for business in the middle of a recession was irresponsible. During the process, one agency, California-based Ignited, underscored that point by tracking how much time the online retailer had spent reviewing its submission (14-seconds per page, it claimed), and publicly criticized the retailer for the way it ran the review.

It's unlikely to appease the critics to learn that Mullen had actually been talking to the retailer for the better part of a year, since participating -- and closely missing winning -- a PR pitch that the retailer held several months ago.

Weeks before the RFP was due back, a team of Mullen folks flew out to Zappos' Vegas headquarters for a complete tour. Mark Wenneker, managing partner and executive creative director at Mullen, recalled the culture at Zappos' Vegas headquarters as being even more fun-loving than he expected. After being greeted by a dancing, joke-telling receptionist named Jerry, the team toured the facility and shadowed customer-relations representatives.

Cultural understanding
"That visit was a big piece of discovery," Mr. Wenneker said. "A lot of times you do pitches and you don't get to the client until after you've already submitted the RFP." With ideas fresh in their minds, he and his teammates wrote the brief in the airport bar on their way back to Boston.

On July 16, the team was asked to fly out to Las Vegas to present the campaigns to Zappos' top marketers, Michelle Thomas, brand marketing manager and Aaron Magness, Zappos' head of business development and brand marketing. At that point it was one of 22 agencies. In mid-August, Mullen was told it was one of three final agencies Zappos was considering, and that Mr. Magness and Ms. Thomas would be visiting Boston for a follow-up in September.

Mullen greeted the duo by turning the reception area into a Zappos shipping box, entertained them with a boat ride and shared more ideas for the brand. Until the final round, only Zappos' Ms. Thomas and Mr. Magness were involved.

According to Zappos' Ms. Thomas, Mullen cinched the deal because it simply understood Zappos' distinctive culture better than the other agencies.

"One thing about our company is we're slow to hire employees and quick to fire," Ms. Thomas said. "We take the same approach with vendors. They were the one agency that didn't come in and try to change us and say 'This is what you need to do.'"

For many companies, that kind of "great chemistry, understood our culture," argument might sound like a flimsy cover for a more mercenary rationale. But for Zappos this stuff clearly matters -- it publishes an annual company-culture book, written by the employees, about what it means to work there.

One-stop shop
The fact that Mullen is a one-stop, integrated agency helped too, Ms. Thomas said. "They really have everything -- creative and analytics. ... We're a direct-response company, so the ability to tie offline metrics to an online world is huge for us. And we were impressed by their media-buying and planning capabilities and how they tie a lot of our loose ends together." Mullen's history of retail experience helped, as it's handled a range of retail accounts over the years including T.J. Maxx, Eddie Bauer, Stride Rite and L.L. Bean. But in the end, "It came down to the whole package," Ms. Thomas said.

But what of social media? Surely that would be a deciding factor, given Mr. Hsieh's 1.3 million Twitter followers and the fact he announced the Amazon deal via a tweet and a blog post? Surely, we can attribute Mullen's victory to its resident social-media guru, Edward Boches, with his thousands of followers? Well, actually, no and no.

Mr. Hsieh, as a true leader in the space, understands that social media isn't something you can simply bolt on; it's a way of doing business and something that has to be baked into the culture. In fact, during the last leg of the review he fired off this tweet: "Embarking on a social-media strategy to help with marketing is like embarking on a facial muscle strategy to help with smiling."

That was something Mullen understood. The agency didn't try to trot out social marketing as if it were an ad medium, and it even resisted the temptation to put Mr. Boches front and center. Instead leading the charge were Alex Leikikh, Mullen's managing partner and director of account service -- thrown into the pitch when he joined Mullen this past June from Publicis Groupe's Fallon, Minneapolis -- and Mr. Wenneker, who joined Mullen last summer from Omnicom's highly respected Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

The win for Mullen comes as the office is going through a bit of a reinvention, adopting a philosophy dubbed "Unbound," meant to convey the shop's media-agnostic beliefs. The agency -- which also has offices in Winston-Salem, N.C.; Pittsburgh; and Detroit -- recently moved its headquarters from an old mansion on the rolling hills of Wenham, Mass., into downtown Boston.

New environment
While a new office isn't precisely going to win an account, agency insiders note that the new digs' contemporary feel and the energy of being in the heart of a buzzing city didn't hurt. The addition of a hot new brand like Zappos to its roster is a boost in a year of churn for Mullen, which has included the addition of Ernst & Young, NHL franchise Boston Bruins, Nutrisystem and the loss of Orbitz creative, Panera Bread media, and T.J. Maxx creative after a decade.

As Zappos' new full-service agency, Mullen will take on and replace both of the retailer's former shops, Ad Store and Gotham Direct, both in New York. But Zappos will continue to work with Kel & Partners in Boston for PR, and King Fish Media, Salem, Mass., for direct mail and catalog products.

Zappos, which in its RFP said it expects to have an ad budget of just $7 million next year, said Mullen will spend the remainder of the year on research and brand development, and will roll out a new campaign in 2010 that will focus on showing customers that the retailer is about more than sneakers and pumps. Hinted Mr. Wenneker: "In one word, clothing."

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"Embarking on a social-media strategy to help with marketing is like embarking on a facial muscle strategy to help with smiling."

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh (@zappos) tweeted this gem while in the final stages of his company's review.

Kudos to Mullen out of Boston for winning the business. Not since Crispin's Microsoft win will work be more anticipated than when Mullen's first Zappos campaign hits in early 2010.

As fascinating as the story of the pitch may (or may not) have been, I kept gravitating back to Hsieh's comment. It was a great way to explain how intuitive social media has to be to your company's core. If you only use it as an add-on tactic intended to attract new business and not to better your shop’s competency, learn and share, you are driven by the wrong motives.

Companies that generally excel in social media are their own case study. While not everyone can have enough news said about them to generate and populate an entirely social media-driven site ala Crispin, any company can engage expose themselves to the outside world. Joining in conversations, starting conversations, avoiding sales pitches and instead conveying great thoughts, ideas, contributing without expecting anything in return (which, by the way, is when you tend to see the greatest returns).

A smart marketer (whether they are socially savvy or not) can smell sales bullshit from a mile away. They can also see the real thing for what it is. Account Mangers, take account of your company’s culture and see what level of social engagement you have. Who has blogs? Who tweets, is on speaking panels, engages in online discuss forums, etc.? You may not realize how social your agency is until you take inventory. Be sure your company’s website and blog (if they are different) aggregate every social media element related to your shop. Make it visible enough that business prospects can easily run a litmus test.

To Hsieh’s point, don’t do it as a thought to help with marketing. Let what’s done socially be visible, and let your social efforts be done with the intent of adding substance to conversations. In a time where only great work gets shared, those kinds of contributions will market themselves without pretense.

Interesting take on how JWT combatted Google with their Bing campaign.

While I don't know how Bing is a better "decision" engine than Google, I appreciate the delineation between "search" and "decide". It also touched on the challenge to sort through the infinity of search results any novice Google user can face. Decide is a much more powerful evocative word.

This is a good example of competitive positioning, especially against a brand such as Google, whose public reputation is almost beyond reproach. As long as the product pays it off, failure won't be for lack of good positioning.

Here's the story from Real-Time Advertising Week:
http://www.realtimeadvertisingweek.com/2009/09/rosemarie-ryan-outlines-jwts-b...

Interesting site created for New Balance by Mother. I love how they decided to pay off the literal authenticity of every pair of shoes for the 574 line. Each pair is absolutely unique, thus Mother went and assembled a video and polaroid mini-documentary tailored to each set.

What I like best is each customer lucky enough to claim a pair of limited edition shoes can visit the website, find their pair and publicly stake their claim as the proud owner.

New Balance is getting more longevity out of a limited edition supply than they could have ever hoped for.

I say it all the time...real value is when the consumer's takeaway from a product exceeds the investment. By executing a brilliant creative idea, Mother added elements to the brand experience that will no doubt spike highly on the real value scale.

What I love most about this spot is the esoteric way of linking humans and humanity to the Prius. Absolutely remarkable. It's stuff like this that helps me keep the faith that brand advertising isn't dead. Memorable content like this will always be relevant.