It's a long time reader of Agency Spy's birthday. Seriously, girlfriend has been with us from the beginning and so, we wish her the happiest and illest thirtieth birthday possible via Grey's little dudes up there in the video. You guys remember them right?

Anyway, congrats to her on her new big, big time gig and we thank her for her support during these heady days of blogging and working and, and, and... She rocks.

Super Spy

Well Grey has always sucked at the digital aspects of this world we call "advertising" -- but they have a new ECD going forward...probably so they can continue to suck going forward.

The unlucky bastard thrust into the spotlight -- Don McKinney -- who joins from a completely unremarkable stint at Cole & Weber in Seattle where he was a partner.

Don lives off his past when he headed up Tequila interactive (another completely unremarkable agency), TBWA\Chiat\Day's digital arm, where he wrote, developed and rolled out globally the "Shift" campaign for Nissan.

McKinney is the second big hire Grey CCO Tor Myhren has made since joining Grey and helping to win the E*Trade account late last year. In April 22, Myhren announced the hire of South African creative director Noel Cottrell to head E*Trade's creative development as an ecd.

Grey Worldwide has won the Honk Kong Tourism board account. The agency snagged a three-year contract covering 18 global markets, which Adweek is estimating to be in the $50 million value range. WPP's MindShare will handle planning and buying on the business.

Sorry, but Grey landing this one causes a chuckle to tickle my throat. Hong Kong is cemented in many minds as a mover and shaker, idea, creativity and savvy business oriented republic in comparison to China or well, lots of places. So, how is it that death star agency Grey landed the account? Hmmm... Their last agency of record was DraftFCB, so maybe the board is blinded by the multiple worldwide offices? If that's the case, then in three years the tourism board will be signing up with McCann.

Guy Seese is joining Grey San Francisco as Executive Creative Director. Seese abdicated his title of Creative Director and Associate Partner at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco earlier this year. He told Creativity that:

"I've been freelancing for a while, in New York, some work with the Barbarian Group out here in San Francisco, and I kind of liked the idea of being the Lone Ranger. But what I missed was the opportunity to build a team, and the camaraderie that went with it. Jeff Goodby is a good friend, and he told me that I needed to start my own agency, and I got started on that through these side projects, but ultimately it's a really difficult thing to do. It's very difficult to find the right people you can trust with the right business acumen for the job."

Everyone bailing on Goodby. Feh Tarty and Pat McKay departed for W+K London recently. Mark Wenneker bailed for Mullen in March. Guy Seese said,

"I was really impressed with the people here at Grey SF. All the integrated pieces are already in place, we just need to throw some fuel on it and fire it up. Our goal here is to be nothing less than a creative powerhouse in the new media space."

Right. Um, was it the money, Guy? You've still got to partner with Betsy Sperry to lead the agency, so it had to be the cash. Sure, I get that. Cash talks. Possibly, Seese realized he was never going to shine beneath top dawgs, Goodby and Silverstein and left. Failed to get his own shop of the ground and then went straight for the cash.

Bravo to Grey for trying to revamp the deathstar. First, with Tor Myhren in New York and now this move. In his new role, Seese will lead Grey San Francisco's integrated creative department and oversee all the work -- from traditional advertising, to interactive, to web development. Prior to GSP, Seese spent five years as Executive Creative Director, Partner at Cole & Weber/United in Seattle working on Nike and Dell among others. Guy Seese is a Cannes, Clios, Kelly and One Show winner, too.

If you want to check out Seese's work, Grey has set up a website to cure your curiosity. Check it out here.

G2 Worldwide, which has its issues, has made an acquisition. Upon regulatory approval, G2 will acquire a majority stake in India's Chateux Hospitality Pvt. Ltd - a marketing and relationship management firm. Founded in 1998, Chateux Hospitality employs 148 people and is based in Gurgoan, with offices in Mumbai and Bangalore. Clients include American Express, GE, GlaxoSmithKline, AIG, Nestle, Eli Lilly, HP India, and Hero Honda.

This investment is part of the initiative to spur G2's growth and make them a global powerhouse. Last year, G2 acquired Refinery and China's Star Echo. Joe Celia, Global Chairman and CEO, G2, said:

"Continued growth will remain a priority for us this year as our capabilities broaden in the critical APAC region and beyond."

Hunh. You guys might want to get better at this whole "acquiring thing" if you're going to keep doing it, yeah? G2's acquisition of Refinery was a disaster. There were high level resignations. Unhappy employees. Maybe they should set home base straight before tying on yet another shop. You know what... I'm going to let the employees (past and present) speak for themselves. Comments on Agency Spy regarding G2:

I Love It said:

"Hmmm, I find this commentary very funny, no strike that extremely funny. This mass exodus from G2 has been going on for over a year so it is nothing new and I am sure it will continue to happen. On my Aol IM I keep a count of former G2 employees and it now reads at 29 that have left. After reading these posts, apparently it needs to be updated. Sorry Sara. You are now officially added to the for G2 pile.

Yes, I was one of the 29 and counting former G2 staffers. Nope I am not biter or one of the ones that couldn’t hack it. I was one that was tired of the back stabbing and the poor senior management styles. I will not go into how bad Mallory is/was and how bad Jan is at managing people with her wonderfully absurd language. At one point I stared keeping a journal of all the interesting words she would use to describe people. (i.e. creatures) Oh I am enjoying. Seems like the chickens are coming home to roost.

Let’s say you can be a friend to G2 today and the favorite child and the bane of their existence tomorrow. One thing to think about is this, if the problems at G2 was because of the 29+ that were fired or resigned then shouldn’t it be better at this point. The only consistent factor seems to be Jan and Mallory. I wonder what G2 would look like if they were released of their duties years ago…..If there was a true alternate reality….."

Love It Or Hate It said:

"And I will reinforce, the people who work at G2/Grey Interactive are a talented, smart group of individuals that are and will lead successful careers in advertising. There is no lack of talent in regards to current and past employees (past includes those who have and have NOT left on their own terms) There is lack of leadership. What is missing is leadership that wants to get rid of the negative attitude that has poisoned the agency. When in fact,the current (and recently outed) leadership team puts their own personal agenda and insecurities in front of producing good work and keeping good people.

Sad as it is, members of the managment team did it to themselves and deserve to fail."

White Chocolate said:

"I worked at G2 few years ago. I remember having the most crazy fantastic moments with possibly the most insane group of people there. Everybody had fun except the few who didn’t fit in and ultimately chose to leave. I was 100% sure that there was no other agencies with culture and ambience that can match up to G2’s. It was unbelievably great. Now the new era has begun w/ new exec level. ppl of G2 and Grey all are mixed up and stuck between the chaotic internal politics in the upper level. It’s sad to see a corp.culture so hard to find evaporate. the old crew is leaving the place one by one, and i must say I can’t blame them."

E*Trade has a had rough time of it having reported huge losses related to investments in risky mortgages in November. With the addition of a new CEO, Donald Layton, stock prices rose slightly the other day. CNN Money reported that:

"So far, 2008 is shaping up as a much better year for Etrade (ETFC) and its investors than 2007 was. The company has resumed adding customers after 70,000 users - many of them among Etrade's most lucrative accounts - fled late last year amid bankruptcy rumors. Since then, the company has brought in a deep-pocketed outside investor, bid adieu to longtime CEO Mitch Caplan and rolled out a plan to slash expenses while boosting marketing spending."

Part of their resurgence could be attributed to the Super Bowl spots by Grey featuring the trading baby. You may not have liked them, but tt should be noted that the week after the Super Bowl (February 3rd, 3008), the company posted a “32% increase in newly opened and funded brokerage accounts the week following the Super Bowl" [source]. Hell, advertising is powerful.

However, did you see the print ads for E*Tradethat ran in the last New York Times Play magazine that claims the company has added a 1000 new accounts a day with this caveat in small print - "new accounts claim based on internal E*Trade financial metrics for average daily gross new accounts between 1/1/07 and 12/31/07?"

Fortune also provided us with a bit of a clearer picture:

"E*Trade also added 16,000 net new retail accounts in January. While those gains pushed the company’s end-of-period account rolls up 0.3 percent from a month ago, they show that E*Trade was adding just over 500 net accounts daily during the month - just half of the thousand daily account openings the company pointed to in its popular Super Bowl ads."

Truth in advertising, yup. Advertising is full of shaky data, yup. Apply it where you want. Slap it on and see if it sticks. We're sure that the company has some sort of metric for making it a full 1000 accounts a day, but here's a few questions we want to pose to you readers:

Do you think that Grey knew that the company was fudging the numbers with shaky accounting? We say no. However, is it an agencies responsibility to check they are "truthfully" advertising their clients? Does it matter more or less that this is a financial company?

Just something to chew on this afternoon...

Just in case you haven't noticed, Grey is trying to refurbish the death star. The most recent addition to the new veneer is Jim Elms who is to be Executive Vice President, Director of Context Planning, a new position. Elms was the Director of Insight and Delivery with clients including Coke, General Electric and Cellular One. Jim has pulled stints at Peter Mayer Advertising/New Orleans; Wieden & Kennedy/Portland; Goodby Silverstein/San Francisco; Chiat Day/San Francisco; Y&R/San Francisco and FCB/Los Angeles.

Elms will work in collaboration with Creative, Strategic Planning, Content Development and Account Management leaders. Sounds like a total cluster fuck. No... Really. It totally does.

Grey New York's leadership team of Nick Childs, Director of Content Development; John Eckel, President of Alliance, Grey's branded entertainment company; Bill Power, Director of Account Management; Michael Houston, Director of Marketing -- all of whom were recruited since last May. As well as old timers, Nat Puccio and Suresh Nair, Co- Directors of Strategic Planning.

Oh! And the newly hired and very vocal Tor Myhren [video].
We'll have more news on Myhren's doings shortly. Stay tuned.