Screen: AMC

Petals On The Wind

1800 Flowers.com wants a new ad campaign. And you just know the guy on the tricycle scooter's going to have an assload of ideas.

Tara Ariano

September 27th, 2013

Mavericky Origin Story

It's actually a real maverick story that's pretty cool, for once: Andrew Orci, of COr, tells us that his parents founded COr's parent agency, Orci, in the mid-'80s specifically as a Hispanic advertising agency, which was a pioneering move at the time.

Insufferable Executive

Nine times out of ten, this title goes to ONE/x's Tom Westrum, the asshole you see riding his tricycle scooter up top. But then there's Jason Wulfsohn, another ONE/x partner. In his unplaceable accent, Jason informs us that he made a deliberate choice to go into advertising: "There's other things that I could do. I work as a filmmaker, as a screenwriter, I direct plays." Sounds like you're just a regular rich dilettante with lots of hobbies (you know who else had a lot of creative interests? "Clark Rockefeller"), but sure, you do you.

The Fear?

ONE/x partner Ben Tiernan, who started the firm with Jason in 2008, notes that being an entrepreneur isn't the safe choice for his family, which from what we see consists of two young daughters, and that he's "just a few rungs away" from freelancing. "If we win and we don't get any money out of it, we're going to be extremely fucking annoyed," says Jason. Wait, did Jason just accidentally reveal that the "account" isn't real and might just be a fake prize on a reality show???

What The Client Says It Wants

1800 Flowers.com now owns, in addition to its floral business, food brands (popcorn, cookies, chocolates), and these brands have gifts -- like a cookie card -- that customers can send at a price point as low as $5, shipping included. They want "an idea, a campaign, a program" (which?) that's "social by design," to educate the consumer about these brands through "the mobile world."

Cringily Unearned Moment Of Self-Congratulation

God, every single thing Jason does is cringey. His main strategy for developing a concept for the pitch seems to involve him visiting as many boutique florists in the greater Los Angeles area as he can, to quiz customers there about their gift-buying habits and have his photographer take photos of people interacting with the cut flowers. It is as he's reviewing some of these photos that he pauses to coo over a shot of a guy smiling at some flowers he may buy that someone makes the observation, "He almost looks like a flower." He looks cute in an endearing way, but he...doesn't look like a flower? Also you seem to have forgotten about the $5 cookie card.

The...Uh, Pitch

Before the pitch, representatives of both agencies wait to be called into the conference room. In case we forgot he's a prick since the last time we saw him, Jason has to humblebrag about being overdressed (because he's in a suit), and then ask one of the guys from COr, who looks perfectly fine in jeans and a black buttondown, "The shirt is your concession to the formality of the occasion? Otherwise it's shorts and sandals?" Okay, does this motherfucker not know that you wait to talk shit about people in the car ride home? But seriously, what a dick.

COr goes first, with Client Services Director Robert Santiago promising an "integrated social media campaign that will generate buzz, create excitement, build discussion and community" around the brand. I can't wait to find out how! "Connecting, like smiles, is a universal emotion," says his colleague, Rick Colby, apparently forgetting that neither "connecting" nor "smiles" are emotions. Anyway, their thinking about "smiles" led them to the reality of sending a gift through a service like this, which is that you're giving something without actually being there. That's how they arrived at their slogan: "Make your presents felt." They then show a thirty-second video spot, with people thinking about each other and one lady getting handed a big bouquet of flowers from the person who bought them (so...he's present to make his presents felt). Rick says that the slogan, which associates 1800 Flowers.com with the idea of a go-to gift merchant, "brings people in and creates excitement." How does it do that? Rick also claims that it creates awareness for the different brands. Oh, word, the "different brands" we still haven't seen in any of the work you're presenting?

What client Jim McCann says he likes about the idea is that it encourages the customer to act on his or her thoughtfulness, which I guess is true, in an extremely general sense. Then he asks about the "platform" -- how COr is going to get the message to its intended audience. Robert says a bunch of words that amount to "We'll tweet it out on the Twitter feed you already have?" He then claims that "millennials live their lives online" and currently just send each other e-cards (er, pretty sure young people shop for each other online) and that they need to get the e-card sender to send an actual gift, with 1800 Flowers.com. Jim's like, great, so how will you get them to do that? Then it seems like he's saying that COr will create a line of virtual gifts under the 1800 Flowers.com brand, and that once users get accustomed to associating the product and brand, then they'll start converting those users so they spend money? "But this is the first we've chatted about it," says Jim. Robert has no response to that, so Rick spins that the idea was based on "How do we get people in the door?" Robert jumps back in, all, "Banner ads targeting millennials!" Banner ads are not "a program." They're barely "an idea." Even if you put hashtags on them.

Then ONE/x is up, and fucking Jason gets his turn, in his suit. "I approach pitching like the films that I make," he tells us. DID YOU FORGET HE MAKES FILMS? HE DOES! "Smart startegy, lots of research, and a highly complex communication plan." Sounds like your films are a lot of fun to watch. "We thought we'd start with a story," Jason says in the pitch. "I'm not from the United States." YEAH, WE KNOW. YOU'RE INTERESTING. "I grew up elsewhere." OOH, WHERE??? DON'T LEAVE US HANGING!!! "But I've been living here for almost twenty years. And throughout that time, I've been consistently struck by the degree to which Americans embrace the idear of giving. So what's the opportunity here? The opportunity, as we see it, is how do you turn a nation of givers into a nation of social gifters?" More of an observation than a story, first of all, and second, "social gifter" is not a thing. Then, for no reason other than self-conscious staginess, Jason sits so that Ben can take over with his bullshit, but he's barely gotten into it before HIS PHONE RINGS.

Moving on from that boner, Ben says that they've "found a behaviour," and given it a hashtag, because "hashtags are the bumper stickers of 2013" (nope): #JustBecause. This, by the way, is an idea that COr had earlier in the process and threw it out on the grounds that it was too vague and not something that the client could "own" -- but both agencies' thinking was the same on this front: the idea should be to get the consumer buying gifts between actual occasions like birthdays or whatever. Jason jumps back in to buzzword about the opportunity to create a "shareable social video" (so: a video?) that depicts people giving gifts just because: "to deepen the emotional connections of people in our lives." "With a $5 cookie card," he does not add. What follows is less a video than a montage of faux-Instagram-looking stock photos with a bouncy little faux-Lumineers-sounding song, some dumb narration from Jason, and one reference to "just because cookies" followed by a shot of a girl licking a beater, so is the gift just because someone made cookies and took photos I mean I assume that's what's happening because nothing here suggests I can BUY a cookie just because? Chris McCann, the other 1800 Flowers.com guy, says that the idea is intriguing, but that he doesn't see it educating the consumer about the company's brands, so I'm glad someone inside the show said the precise thing I was thinking, for once. Ben bullshits that the "entire campaign" is about the multiple brands. Tom jumps in to say that the video has "the character of social media already," which is MAYBE the most meaningless phrase I've ever heard anyone utter on this show. Talk turns to "how do we get" the idea trending, without actually answering the question beyond "People start to pick up on it," and start to associate "just because" with gifting the very things 1800 Flowers.com sells, and then "social gifting" becomes synonymous with the 1800 Flowers.com brand. How? I don't know. "THAT's when you put in the sponsored hashtag." Wait, what? Up to this point, this has all been premised on a grassroots movement that will arise organically, and THEN the brand jumps on and owns it? I've figured out how this campaign is going to work! Through MAGICAL THINKING.

The Winner

It's fucking ONE/x, supposedly on the basis of how much Jim ad Chris loved "just because." At this, everyone at COr turns to look at Rick, the guy who ditched the idea when it came up on their side. The other thing ONE/x supposedly has going for it is an understanding of "the tools" they want to focus on for "this specific assignment." Translation: Hector Orci looks old and out-of-touch, and maybe if his son Andrew were here pitching rather than getting treated for cancer (seriously), things might have gone another way.