Chiat/Day/Mojo sweeps Beldings again, picking up a dozen of 57 awards last week.

Chiat/Day/Mojo sweeps Beldings again, picking up a dozen of 57 awards last week

The rich get richer...

The latest case occurred last week when Chiat/Day/Mojo, the Venice-based ad agency, won the Sweepstakes Award at the annual Belding Awards competition conducted by the Advertising Club of Los Angeles.

To understand what this means to an ad agency in Los Angeles you have to understand that the Beldings are the most prestigious advertising competition on the West Coast.

L.A. ad agencies love to win even one Belding Bowl because it enhances their reputation for good work, makes them feel good, and helps them attract quality writers and artists -- all of which can help them win new business.

Chiat/Day/Mojo won a dozen of the 57 Beldings presented at last week's annual awards show, including the Sweepstakes Award, which is the show's top honor -- the equivalent of "Best Picture" at the Oscars. No other agency won more than three.

Considering Chiat/Day's history at the Beldings, this must be cause for alarm among competitors. This was the 24th year the Beldings have been awarded, and Chiat/Day has won the Sweepstakes Award in eight of those 24 years. No other agency has won nearly as often. One year, Chiat/Day won a third of all the Belding bowls, including the Sweepstakes Award.

It's no wonder then, that some people think Chiat/Day/Mojo needs another award like Donald Trump needs to name something else after himself. The agency that Jay Chiat and Guy Day founded in 1968 has enough plaques and bowls to fill a warehouse. On top of that, it's the biggest agency in L.A. and on the West Coast, with more than $1 billion in annual billings.

Last week's win was something like a return to the past for the L.A. ad industry, and it must drive Chiat/Day's competitors crazy. The other agencies had a breather for a couple of years in 1987 and 1988 when Chiat/Day didn't win the Sweepstakes. That was like Babe Ruth going two games without a home run, and the rest of the ad industry started to gossip that maybe Chiat/Day's reign as king of the creative hill was over.

What may be most remarkable about Chiat/Day dominating the Beldings last week is that it defies conventional ad industry wisdom. The most daring and imaginative advertising is supposed to be produced by feisty little shops. Big agencies like Chiat/Day are supposed to create advertising as dull as the corporations they work for. That's why the press has repeatedly quoted Jay Chiat's remark that he wants to see how big his agency can grow without getting bad. "I think I only said it once," Chiat says of the remark, which is reprinted virtually every time someone writes about his agency.

Another bit of conventional wisdom says no agency is supposed to be able to maintain its creative fire for more than a few years.

Well, Chiat/Day has won Sweepstakes Awards in three consecutive decades. It won its first in 1969 -- only the third year the Beldings were presented. It won twice in the 1970s and five more times in the 1980s, including its most recent win. (The award, although presented this year, is for 1989 advertising)

Its dominance of the Beldings through the years has established its reputation for creative advertising but has also generated lots of envy. The agency's detractors say it enters contests so often it's bound to win a lot. They agree that the agency's ads are imaginative, but they question whether the ads work. They say Chiat/Day/Mojo has lost enough top clients -- among them Apple Computer, Nike shoes and Pizza Hut -- to constitute a decent-sized agency.

Bob Wolf, who runs Chiat/Day's L.A. operation, says the criticism about losing past clients is justified. But he says the agency has instituted changes to prevent anything more than the normal ebb and flow of business.

Chiat/Day won the Sweepstakes Award for its Eveready battery commercial featuring the unstoppable bunny. But it also won some Beldings for its work for Nissan autos -- a huge account that some said would drain the imagination from the agency.

Winning the Sweepstakes is likely to generate lots of publicity for Chiat/Day, even though there are those who think Chiat/Day/Mojo needs more publicity like Donald Trump needs to name something else after himself. The Belding wins might even produce national publicity because the rest of the world pays more attention to L.A. advertising than it once did. Even The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal now write about L.A. advertising.

Trying to identify the most creative agency in town is impossible because ad people are more opinionated than newspaper editorial writers, and nobody ever agrees with all the Belding judging.

But the Beldings are supposed to decide who did the most creative work in town, and the winner is entitled to bragging rights for a year. Until next year, those rights go to Chiat/Day again.

People

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Accounts

Making it official: Fox Broadcasting Co. last week named The Shalek Agency of Santa Monica to handle the media planning and buying for all Fox programs. Shalek had been doing the planning and buying for 10 months on a trial basis.