March 24th just swung by and while it may not seem like a significant date, it marks the second anniversary of the death of one of America’s greatest Ad men, Hal Riney.
While I didn’t know Mr. Riney very well, having met him a few times and never exchanging more than a dozen words or so, I do know quite a few people who knew the man well. And I have been a study of Mr. Riney and Hal Riney and Partners, now Publicis Hal RIney.
I have enjoyed the many stories, both professional and personal about the man and the conjecture that he may actually have started an agency just so he could do voiceovers. Well, as an ad guy who also does v.o., I kind of like that one.
I have a friend who worked with him on the Reagan re-election campaign and I have spoken with others who worked on Bartles and James, Saturn and Henry Weinhard.
But oddly enough, nobody seems to step forward to say that they worked on First Union.
Somehow in the great lexicon of lifetime accomplishments, this little nugget doesn’t show up. I like to mention it simply because it shows how human even an advertising “God” can be. And it also shows just how good somebody can be at spinning off what might actually be the worst advertising campaign in history.
What’s even more incredible is that Industrial Light and Magic, George Lucas’ wunderkinds handled production. And this wasn’t some campaign way back when. It was barely 12 years ago, yet nobody remembers it.
It was in 1998 that this campaign was created, with spots costing between 1 and 1 ½ million dollars each. A tidy sum of money even by today’s bloated ad accounting standards. And that was just to make the spots. Who knows how many more millions were plunked down to buy the tv time?
The client was First Union. The scene opens with a backdrop of a gritty, grey cityscape, a Giant monolith rises. A voice chimes in a foreboding, very unlike Rineyesqe tone. It ends with “or if you prefer, the mountain will come to you.”
It’s interesting that this spot is up on most of the video sites. The comments from its viewers are grand and heap praise. So, now for the punchline. It would have been sad enough if the only outcome was that the campaign was completely ineffective; that poor First Union lost 20 or 30 million dollars in creative and ad spend, but no my friends, it gets much worse.
By the time the client pulled the plug on these ads, First Union stock had taken a nose dive to the tune of almost 40 Billion dollars. A cool campaign that failed to look at the core values of First Union’s clients. An ad campaign that scared the bejeebers out of their existing clients, chasing them away. An ad campaign that did the exact oppostie of what it was meant to do. Yep, that’s right. An ad campaign conceived by Publicis Hal RIney in 1998 and produced by Industrial Magic and Light, cost their client 40 BILLION DOLLARS.
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