Hot Shops for Cold Brands

Your has-been product is about to be put out to pasture. After years of mismanagement and resting on your laurels, you have bled this brand dry.

Let’s hire a hot-shop to fix it. But we don’t want to invest in a full-fledged campaign. Let’s ask them to do something wacky. Something they can hit it out of the park with just one at bat. Like what Wieden + Kennedy did for “Old Spice” with “The man you wish your man could smell like.” Yeah. That.

For every one of these wild success stories there are hundreds of failures. Sometimes even the failures work in a haphazard, unintentional way. Do you remember when Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Gates went to the mall to go shopping? If you do, it was probably for the wrong reasons.

Sometimes these Hail Marys are attempts to break with the past. Or get a lot of earned media by the incredulity of the idea. But this only gets you so far. If you’re going to hire an agency of last resort to save your bacon, make sure you really have the resources and financial wherewithal to be able to properly fund the idea and give it time to blossom.

The days of getting spec pitches for your loser brand are long gone. No hot shop worth its salt is going to beat down your door. If you’re looking for the next big thing, it’s probably not within your reach to hire the right now big thing. This is where you have to choose your Agency of Last Resort carefully. Find one that aspires to grow as big as you used to be—and make it your job to help them achieve their goals as you both succeed. Just remember, if you’ve heard of them, they may not be your best choice.

This is where agency search consultants might be able to help you find a shop with just the right number of recent refugees from the big agency merry-go-round who are looking to launch the next big thing on their own instead of for their old masters.