Gyro's new campaign for Glenfiddich portrays it as way cool.

A brand perceived as stolid, even stodgy, has hired an upstart agency for an infusion of what is hoped will be a hipper, more irreverent attitude.

Gyro Worldwide in Philadelphia has become the agency in the United States for the Glenfiddich brand of single-malt Scotch whisky, distilled and sold by the British company William Grant & Sons Ltd. The assignment for the rest of the world remains at McCann-Erickson Worldwide Advertising in New York, part of the McCann-Erickson World Group unit of the Interpublic Group of Companies.

A campaign that was created by McCann, calling Glenfiddich "the Friday Scotch," ran "for about three years and delivered some solid numbers," said Mark Teasdale, senior vice president and marketing director at the American unit of Grant, William Grant & Sons Inc. in Edison, N.J.

"It moved the needle for us, but a little slower than we liked," he said. "So, we decided to be a little more aggressive" and talked to several "small, independent shops" before choosing Gyro.

The assignment is indicative of a trend whereby several large marketers have awarded parts of their accounts to smaller agencies with creative reputations while maintaining ties with the behemoth shops on their rosters. Among those marketers are Anheuser-Busch, Kellogg, Philip Morris, Sony, Texaco and Unilever.

Gyro is known for provocative campaigns aimed at consumers in their 20's and 30's for such products as clothing, alcoholic beverages and cigarettes. Critics have complained that the agency courts controversy to gain attention for its work; an ad it created for a clothing retailer, Zipper Head, for example, showed Charles Manson with the headline "Everyone has the occasional urge to go wild and do something completely outrageous."

One current Gyro campaign is for the Red Kamel cigarette brand sold by the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, a unit of RJR Nabisco Holdings. The ads, in the "retro chic" vein, present such implausible images of World War II as an all-women rifle corps clad in khaki skirts and shorts.

"It comes down to a fresh perspective, a different attitude than what a more traditional ad agency would come up with," declared Steven Grasse, chief executive at Gyro.

Gyro came to mind for the Glenfiddich assignment, Mr. Grasse said, because Mr. Teasdale had dealt with the agency while working for another liquor marketer, the Paddington Corporation.

In looking at advertising in the Scotch category, Mr. Grasse said, "we've always laughed at its pretentiousness, which didn't appeal to the kinds of consumers we now see drinking Scotch, people in their late 20's and early 30's."

"They weren't drinking it to be pretentious," he added. "They were drinking it as if it were a more sophisticated microbrew."

So, Gyro developed ads for Glenfiddich, the nation's No. 2 single malt behind Glenlivet, that are meant to "be straightforward and tell it like it is," Mr. Grasse said, focusing on such elements as Glenfiddich's 111-year heritage and its family ownership.

In Gyro-speak, those elements are conveyed with headlines like "Made the same damn way since 1887," "One hundred eleven years of obstinacy equals integrity," "Some families hug. We make Scotch" and "For the year 2000, we are proud to announce not a single damn thing." To further communicate the intended no-nonsense attitude, the ads are in a minimalist style, showing only the Glenfiddich bottle and stag logo.

In adopting what Mr. Teasdale described as "a harder-edged attitude of obstinacy and stubbornness" for the Glenfiddich brand image, "we're fully aware," he said, "that it's a fairly new approach for a staid category like single-malt Scotch" as well as "a little bit of a double-edged sword in terms of maybe putting off some of our current customers."

"But getting new customers outweighed the risk," he added. "We feel confident it's the right way to go."

Grant will spend $6 million on the campaign, Mr. Teasdale said, in magazines with "a younger skew than we had with 'the Friday Scotch.' " So, such publications as Details, ESPN Magazine, George, Icon, Out, P.O.V. and Wired were added to the media plan, he said, while "a lot of the general business books" such as Business Week were subtracted.

New York Times  (link to site)

http://www.nytimes.com/

Categories:  QCM