Rehab: An Advertising Love Story

One of the early fruits of the process came from, of all places, Hildie Neuman's client, Kimberly-Clark. In May 2005, Neuman introduced KC's new president of North American Family Care, Mark Scott, to her new bosses. Montague related his philosophy of advertising as postmodern storytelling--how good campaigns shatter a narrative into a million pieces, then scatter the fragments across TV, print, the Web, the street, anywhere. "I must say, the lightbulb went off for me," says Scott. "I said, 'I'd like one of those, please!' " For Scott, that meant restructuring his marketing department and directing all of his agencies to work with JWT. "There was a little bit of angst," he concedes. "But if we want to be great, part of that is taking some risk and trying new things." And Neuman? She's JWT at last: "If you think you can survive by standing still, you're crazy," she says. "Standing still is going backward."

"For me," grins Ryan, "Hildie is my biggest victory."

A year ago, Toby Barlow was astonished to find himself sitting alongside former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins. The 40-year-old JWT executive creative director had always admired Collins's work ("literary jujitsu," he calls it), and he had Montague to thank, indirectly at least, for connecting him with the man himself.

Since he arrived, Montague, a college dropout who spent his earlier years fixing Italian sports cars, preached about the importance of creating art for art's sake. Not only does "pure" art breed other forms of creative thinking, he said, but in a cluttered landscape of indifferent consumers, it has become essential to see advertising itself as a form of entertainment. Barlow, a five-year JWT employee who works on Kleenex and HSBC, ran with the idea. And now, with Collins one seat away, Montague's wisdom began to reveal itself. Barlow persuaded Collins to let him set some of his poems to animation, with the writer himself reading the work. A few weeks later, at a dinner, Barlow mentioned the project to someone from the Sundance Channel, who was interested in using the short films to fill the 10-minute gaps in Sundance's programming. Back at JWT, a producer connected Barlow with eight animators willing to do the project on the cheap, given the subject and the potential for national exposure. The whole thing began to feel like fate.

Last September, Barlow surprised Montague and Ryan with 11 artsy shorts that drew on visuals ranging from Japanese art to smoke rings. "A lot of times, agencies shut you down," says Barlow, amped up by the memory. "They're like, 'We just want you to work on the prescribed problem.' But it's really only by going out and being as creative as you can be, and showing that to the people you work with, that inspiration and cross-pollination start happening."

That's just what happened with Barlow's side art project. Montague and Ryan were thrilled by the shorts and screened them at the agency's monthly "town hall" meeting. Around the same time, JWT began brainstorming for a new business pitch: JetBlue.

Montague and Ryan had to win the JetBlue account. When Ryan had come on board, she began turning around the agency's horrific string of lost pitches (J. Walter Thompson had never made it past round one in 2003) by getting her team to the final rounds for hot accounts such as Old Navy, Staples, and Verizon Wireless. Nevertheless, she and Montague still hadn't landed a juicy win. JetBlue represented only $25 million in billings, but the low-fare airline fit perfectly with everything JWT needed to become: a culture-rich underdog that tapped creativity and irreverence for its competitive edge. But as the only old-school Madison Avenue agency in the mix--competing against some of the most creative boutiques, including Taxi and Amalgamated--its chances were slim.

JWT wanted to amplify the voices of JetBlue's fanatical customers, but straight testimonials felt too derivative. Robert Rasmussen and Andrew Ault, two JWT creative directors, were grappling with how to transform the concept into something unique when they suddenly remembered Barlow's animated spots. "We thought, 'That's kind of nice,' " says Ault. "You take this little story and you give it to an animator and they turn it into something marvelous." For the pitch, the team scoured Craigslist and Epinions for real customer feedback (they even used found footage of JetBlue CEO David Neeleman), then cast JWT staffers to record the spots. Finally, they matched up each story with a different animator, just as Collins's poems had been.