Tuesday, July 17, 2007

American Express, um, Open to Crispin

Quite intrigued to read that American Express has handed its Open account, targeted to small business, to Crispin, Porter + Bogusky, an agency that isn't exactly known for business-to-business advertising. It's been quite some time since Amex really broke out from its usual habit of sticking with Ogilvy & Mather (which had the business), and Digitas, which, like Ogilvy, has been a long-time direct response/digital shop for the client. Putting Crispin on board shakes this little ship up, particularly when you consider that in Digitas and Ogilvy, American Express has two of the most cutting-edge shops—digitally speaking, that is—already on its roster. But what Crispin does, arguably better than anyone else, is come up with compelling, media-agnostic ideas, and neither Digitas, nor Ogilvy, has cornered the market on that.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

agree.

they're not perfect, but if i was a mass marketer i'd be checking out CPB too. based on their PR alone. you'd have to.

CPB have built a machine and it works. the BDAs haven't committed to change and they're suffering.