The Tribal DDB Page

From Innovationclass

Revision as of 20:05, 10 March 2008

If you have clicked on this link, you have just discovered that Tribal DDBhas its own page. Here, the Tribal DDB group will post anything and everything that relates to the agency as well as our personal ideas for our agency of the future. Enjoy learning about our favorite agency and all it has to offer.

Tribal DDB is:

1. 2006 Top interactive agency of the year
2. 38 offices in 24 countries with a staff of over 1,200 (total domination)
3. $150 in revenue
4. mobile marketing campgains (innovation)
5. Sky tv Clickthrough commercials in the United Kingdom

• info came from January 16th, 2006 ADWEEK issue

6. The 1st Digital Shop to win Global Agency of the Year

Awards:

1. AdAge Global Agency of the Year, 2008[1]

2. Brand Image Go-To Agency, Forrester Research, 2007

3. IPA Most Awarded Digital Agency, 2006

4. Sales Pitch of the Year, Businessweek, 2006

5. WSJ Best Campaigns of 2006

6. Adweek Interactive Advertising Agency of the year, 2006

7. AdAge Marketing Website of the Year honor for www.Pepsi.com, 2006

8. AdAge Digital Campaign of the Year, 2006

9. Adweek Viral Campaign of the Year

Cannes :

10. 2006: 28 Finalists, 4 Gold Lions (Across Media, Direct & Cyber, Titanium Runner-Up

11. 2007: 1 Gold Lion, 1 Bronze Lion

Tribal DDB as an Organizational Example

At first, you may question our choice of Tribal DDB as a role model agency. It’s large, global and a powerful arm of the corporate giant Omnicom. However, despite all these seemingly negative connotations, if you look into the culture of Tribal DDB Worldwide, you’ll find that for such a large organization it’s very personalized, aside from being wildly successful at what it does.

Be a Truly Connective Network
What makes Tribal DDB an especially interesting case study for us is the fact that despite having a wide-reaching global presence, the overall agency seems to be tightly networked. Different locations keep in close contact with one another, they work collectively on projects and they make an effort to share great work and practices with each other to promote learning within the company. Employees are encouraged to be in communication with people in other locations and they are, also, given the freedom to move about between offices. This practice encourages talented people to stay in the network, as well as encourages the spreading of great ideas and formation of a “connective tissue” throughout the network. It’s no wonder then that Tribal DDB was named AdAge’s 2008 Global Agency Network of the Year.

Reading about how Tribal DDB is so connective gave me ideas about how our agency could draw from this idea of networking. We could build relationships with normal agencies operating out in the business world. Such relationships could foster a sort of exchange program where we could invite talented individuals, from creatives to account planners to management, to come to CU and moonlight as a professor for a semester or two. This would encourage a network of ideas at CU by learning from the best in the field from a multitude of agencies. Similarly, we could offer programs to students in similar fields at other universities, almost like a study abroad, but within the same country (or maybe not!). Whether it’s visiting professionals or other talented students, bringing more talent to our agency could only benefit everyone who is involved.

Promote Innovation and Exploration
Another reason I chose Tribal DDB is because they promote innovation and freedom of expression within their agencies by recently formalizing a program for employees to allow time for exploration of emerging technologies, much like already established programs at other companies, like Google. Letting their staff explore what they want on company time both increases retention and happiness of employees, as well as builds employees’ knowledge and creativity. It seems to be a win-win for the company and the employees. Taking off from that, our agency could, also, allow time for exploration. Currently, the SJMC has a very structured minor or certificate requirement for students in the advertising program. Maybe they could rethink this and offer a more wide-open minor requirement that would allow students whose majors were an integrated part of agency operations the ability to fulfill this requirement with a certain number of randomly chosen courses. Students would then be able to explore a number of areas without having to get in too deep, but over the course of a semester they would likely learn enough to influence their creativity and thought processes.

Be Good at Things Outside of Your Specialty
Tribal DDB is, also, outstanding because despite the fact that they are a digital agency, they have found success in other non-digital fields of advertising such as direct marketing, sales promotion and media. A remarkable example of this was in the summer of 2005 “in which the agency turned London into a virtual game board using taxis, GPS and hot spots” for a Monopoly Live promotion.

Adaptation and Brand Insight
Tribal DDB has become highly regarded by the clients it works with, not only for its talents, but also for its adaptive capabilities and its insight to the brand. Not only are they great on the web, and in other related areas, Tribal has a great understanding of branding and the important role that plays in the creation of ideas. John Vail, the Director of Interactive Marketing for Pepsi-Cola North America has said, “I think of [Tribal] as a full-service agency. They have executed for us when needed, they’ve done multimedia work, they’ve shot video. They’ve definitely pushed us. We tested early on with widgets, rich media and consumer-generated opportunities probably before they were in vogue.”

Tribal DDB
AdAge Global Agency Network of the Year 2008

Quick Notes:

- Tribal DDBis part of the Omnicom Group
- Tribal DDB was started to be the media agency for DDB Worldwide and over time it has grown into an entity in its own right.
- Digital includes online, digital outdoor, video games, mobile phones, etc.

Wow is right. This link provides an overview of Tribal DDB's accomplishments in 2007 as summarized by Tribal DDB Worldwide CEO Matt Freeman. If this doesn't impress you I'm not sure what will. 2007 included 9 new offices, 31 new business wins, 72 major awards, 1 full-service account win (i.e. not just digital services), tons of great work and more. Additionally, if you click the "work" link at the top you can see some of their client work for 2007 from their offices around the globe. The work includes Nike, VW, MTV and others. The "wins" link highlight some of the major new business wins and actual awards received in 2007.
Overview of 2007 at Tribal

This next site is Tribal DDB New York's Blog. Just looking through the articles on the first page you can see the community within the agency (then imagine me working there...). The blog is not dedicated to we do X, Y and Z and here are examples A, B and C. Instead, browse around and you'll start to learn a little about the different people who work there - like the fact that they like jello shots.

The website for Tribal DDB Amsterdam has some funny stuff to look at, but you better be fluent in Dutch to read anything.

Here's the DDB Sydney Blog 2008. There's a YouTube video right up top with Matt Freeman and Jonah Bloom, the Executive Editor of Advertising Age, about Tribal DDB's win for Global Agency Network of the Year. Note that Tribal DDB is the first digital agency to receive this award.

This site is an Interactive Showcase from Tribal DDB Chicago. You'll find work for JCPenny's, LensCrafters, Lowe's, McDonald's, Nine West, State Farm and Tropicana - an impressive amount of the work is current or very recent (compared to many agencies who put up stuff they did forever ago).


I think we should really take the idea of studying abroad and interning with Tribal DDB somewhere. I think it is a great opportunity for students to be apart of the international aspect of advertising which CU does not focus on. Also, who the hell does not want to experience a different country and have the experience to work in a different place. Creativity must come from the environment and I think having an international internship program would be the base of the creativity advertising needs for the future.