Executive Summary

In early 1944 Arnold Communications had finally completed the

acquisition phase of its growth, bringing together 12 independent
companies in the advertising, marketing, and design sectors, as well as
initializing divisions in interaction and public relations (Exhibit 1A). At
the time, the organization was highly segmented and disconnected.
The inconsistent work being produced reflected this fact. Something
needed to be done to in order raise the standard of output, but of
equal importance was building a sense of community amongst
employees. Arnold hoped to become a regional (then national) leader
and knew that high employee morale would be necessary to do so.
Two major opportunities for success presented themselves in
autumn 1994 and later in December 1994. The first was the Hood
account, the winning of which electrified the newly established team.
The philosophy that won this account eventually evolved to become
Brand Essence, Arnolds proprietary process (Exhibit 4). Brand
Essence consisted of the following stages:
1)
2)
3)
4)
5)
5)

Analyzing the brands key challenge

Conducting Brand Essence consumer research
Conducting Brand Essence interviews and focus groups
Defining the Brand Essence statement
Developing the Brand Essence video & Key Statement
Total Creative Concepting

The acquisition of Hood was followed in December 1994 by an

opportunity to pitch to Volkswagen. Arnold used Brand Essence to
stunning success, beating out 12 other advertising agencies to win the
100 million dollar account. Unfortunately, these back-to-back victories
disguised a few important conditions under which the Brand Essence
process best operated. The first was that the brand in question needed
to have strong rational/functional associations distinct from strong
emotional/symbolic associations (Exhibits 3 & 5). Secondly, the idea
behind the Brand Essence video either had to be inexpensive to
demonstrate, or the brands budget had to be rather sizable. In the
case of Hood, nostalgia was a huge big part of the Brand Essence. The
ordinariness of nostalgic moments kept production expenses low. In the
case of Volkswagen, Arnold had a 100 million dollar annual budget. In
contrast, the Hartford had a 10 million dollar budget, but the Brand
Essence video featured scenes depicting everything from major life
milestones to natural disasters. Arnold had two options when it came
to clients such as the Hartford, who didnt meet this second condition.
They could take measures to ward of Demo love or they could
implement a slightly altered Brand Essence strategy.

Alternatives
The first choice would be to do nothing except emphasize more
heavily and earlier in the process that the campaign the clients would
be receiving would not be a shorted version of the Brand Essence
video, which was only intended to demonstrate an understanding of
the clients brand and not to be an advertisement.
The second choice, to develop a slightly altered version of the
Brand Essence process, would keep the core of the original Brand
Essence, but would place an emphasis on mating the expectations of
the client (established in the pitching stage) with the work delivered for
the final campaign. This would most notably involve restraining
contributions to the Brand Essence video to strictly include
uncopyrighted content, content for which permissions could be
obtained, and content which Arnold believed itself to be able to
replicate within the budget of the client.
Recommendation
The recommendation is that Arnold develops a cost-conscious
version of its original Brand Essence process. This allows the agency to
provide clients with a realistic expectation of the final product theyll
receive, which essentially is the purpose of a pitch. Even accompanied
by a warning, it is somewhat deceiving to present ideas to a client that
are known to be impossible either due to budget constraints or
unlikeliness of obtaining content permissions.
In either case, certain aspects of the original Brand Essence
process should be more strictly defined. Though Kathy Kiely was of the
opinion that each creative director [should have] the freedom to
manage the process in the way he or she felt most comfortable, her
method of steering the process lead to an emotional distancing of the
creative associates assigned to work on the project as well as a lack of
understanding of the target audience, demonstrated by the
ineffectiveness of many of the ads produced for the Hartfords
campaign. Collaboration to develop the concept must be a requirement
of the process, to ensure that every member of the team is motivated
to produce their best work. The emotional distance of the creative
associates was exacerbated by the fact that none of them had worked
with Kiely to develop the Brand Essence video. The creative who had
assisted her with the pitch had not been available to participate in the
campaign itself. It must also be a requirement that creative work see a
project through the entire Brand Essence process. Lastly, the director
recruited to produce the Hartford ads was more interested in building

her body of work than delivering what the client expected, and Arnold
was apprehensive to step on her toes. A clearer understanding
between the agency and the director about what the final product will
look like is necessary.
Introduction of these three requirements into the Brand Essence
framework would better both accounts following the original Brand
Essence process and the cost-conscious version of the Brand Essence
process.