Hill Holliday

This is a case study of the Hill Holliday agency
By: Kaitlin Riddle, Steven Flick and Kelsey Kampschror

History

History
Hill Holliday was founded in 1968 by Jack Conners, Jay Hill, Steve Cosmopulis and Alan Holliday. Their headquarters is located in Boston, Massachusetts with other offices located in New York, Miami, Greenville, and San Francisco. They have won many awards including Advertising Age’s Agency of the Year in 1986, followed by The Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival of Advertising in 1986, Four Clio Awards at the 30th Annual Clio Awards in 1989, the MITX Award in “Best use of Mobile” category and many more awards. Currently Hill Holliday’s major billings include Toys “R” Us, Dunkin’ Donuts, Chili’s, Anheuser Busch, and Liberty Mutual. As of 2004 Hill Holliday employed 680 persons. Hill Holliday continues to impress potential clients and advertising critics with their creative and unique campaigns.

Best Known Agency Work
Hill Holliday tends to represent clients whose products are aimed for the general American public. Some of their best known clients, Toys “R” Us, Dunkin’ Donuts, Chili’s, Anheuser Busch, and Liberty Mutual all have target markets that can in some way be described as an all-American group. Toys “R” Us has a primary target market of young, middle income families with two or more children. Dunkin’ Donuts has a new campaign that aims for a target of fast-paced-on-the-go businessmen and women with families ages 25-40. Anheuser Busch, unlike their other clients is aimed more toward the typical middle income American male between the ages of 21-40. By focusing their services toward one target market, Hill Holliday has had an influence in marketing products toward Middle America.

Financial Information

Conglomerate Ownership
The company is owned by the conglomerate Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc. (IPG). IPG is an enormous publicly traded parent company that also owns other advertising agencies such as: The Martin Agency, DraftFCB, TM Advertising, Mullen and many other marketing, branding, media buying, and communications companies. Hill Holliday is one of their full-service domestic agency brands. Having a connection to a strong parent company can greatly affect how an agency works and functions in that role. According to IPG’s 2006 annual report, “The role of the holding company is to provide resources and support to ensure that our agencies can best meet our clients’ needs.” IPG develops financial objectives, strategies, inter-agency programs, “financial management and operational controls, guides personnel policy, conducts investor relations and initiates, manages and approves mergers and acquisitions. In addition, we provide limited centralized functional services that offer our companies operational efficiencies, including accounting and finance, marketing information retrieval and analysis, legal services, real estate expertise, travel services, recruitment aid, employee benefits and executive compensation management.” Hill Holliday, as a part of this conglomerate must abide by IPG’s standards, rules and regulations, but they also receive the benefit of having a vast array of resources. For example, BzzAgent, Inc is a company that specializes in word-of-mouth, or viral, advertising. In an agreement with IPG BzzAgent has agreed to provide their services at discounted rates to agencies within IPG’s holdings, such as Hill Holliday

Public or Private Ownership
IPG, as the parent company of Hill Holliday, reported $6.19 billion in revenue for the 2006 fiscal year, the most recent annual report available. This amount of revenue is astonishing considering IPG was trying to come back from a slump that had resulted due to the loss of major clients. The majority of revenue comes from the United States with 55.6%, followed by Europe (not including the United Kingdom) at 16.8% and then the UK with 9.1%. Asia Pacific and Latin America represent the other 13.2% in 2006. The company negotiates contracts on an individual client-by-client basis, but typically, charge based on fees that are determined by hourly rates, overhead and mark-up. Commissions are still utilized as well, but not as often.

Financial Performance
Advertising Age included Hill Holliday in its list of “the leading agencies in 2006 by US revenues.” According to company Chairman and CEO, Michael I. Roth, “strength of our U.S. independents was a key contributor to our results in 2006. Led by Cambell-Ewald, Campbell Mithun, Carmichael Lynch, Deutsch, Hill Hol[l]iday, The Martin Agency and Mullen, we have a uniquely powerful group of agencies, each offering great creativity and an integrated suite of services under one roof.” One of Hill Holliday’s clients is Verizon, which is one of IPG’s top five clients based on revenue. The 2006 annual report states the top ten clients “accounted for approximately 25% of revenue in 2006.” IPG appears to be trying to resuscitate itself from a three year long slump, reporting operating losses in 2003, 2004 and 2005 causing losses for common stockholders. In 2006, the company did operate with a profit though, but stockholders are still incurring losses.

Agency Characteristics

Agency Strengths
Hill Holliday understands the current market and how to use the technology resources that are available. They encompass Hispanic marketing and advertising, as well as the ability to create interactive, peer-to-peer, and viral marketing campaigns. The website included interactive blogs which was unique and impressive. To a technology guru it may not seem like much, but to a client, with older executives, it shows that Hill Holliday is technologically smart. In addition, the blog shows that the company understands the consumer mindset and the current popular trends, which can reassure a company that by choosing Hill Holliday as their agency they will succeed.

Agency Weaknesses
Hill Holliday has made a point to be very clear with their central messages in their recent projects, however they have been lacking with their clarity of their creative content with the exception of Liberty Mutual. An example of this is the “Lefty Loosy” Dunkin Donuts commercial. The commercial uses an irritating singing voice that constantly repeats “lefty loosy…righty tighty.” Although the message of “Dunkin Donut’s coffee is great tasting and keeps you going” is eventually stated, the viewers lose attention before the message can be clearly established. Their Cleveland Clinic commercials do the same. An irritating voice over and horrible content leads to the consumer turning off the television before the message can be retained. If Hill Holliday wants to keep their target audience engaged, they need to make sure that their “unique” voice or message does not irritate the viewer.

Agency Differentiation from Competition
According to Ty Thornhill, a VP at Hill Holliday’s southern arm, Erwin-Penland, Hill Holliday stands out because they are channel agnostic. Channel agnostic refers to the agency coming together as a whole before the pitch and not making assumptions about which division is best suited for the client. After insights have been found, Hill Holliday brings in people from every department from PR to brand development to decide on the right channels for the message. In addition, he stated that everyone takes on the project as if they own it themselves, “there is a true entrepreneurial spirit in our agency.”

Agency Website

Creativity of Website
The website is very simple but modern, featuring a large grey box with a smaller lime green box that holds links for information about the company, their client work, and contact information. An innovative way that Hill Holliday has found to use their website is their Hill Holliday blog. The Hill Holliday blog is written by employees and it discusses current marketing headlines and issues, their current and upcoming projects, and their opinions on general advertising. The blog gives potential clients and other audience members an insight into the company and all the while giving the public a chance to directly interact with employees. The blog is an interactive medium that Hill Holliday has successfully mastered and is one of the most unique and differentiating parts of their website.

Agency Services highlighted
· Interactive
· Direct
· Advertising
· Strategy
· Design
· Media
· Peer-to-peer
· Hispanic

Agency Approach

Hill Holliday is a team-based agency. As stated previously they will often come together from different departments to come up with a solution. When it comes to communication and relationships, they believe a campaign cannot be successful without effective communication between the agency and the client. They see themselves as the mechanic to the client’s problem, but unlike a person’s automobile mechanic, they want the client involved all the way through the process.


Brief List of Sources

http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/us/lnacademic/search/companyDossiersubmitForm.do
http://www.lexisnexis.com.proxy.library.vcu.edu/us/lnacademic/search/companyDossiersubmitForm.do
http://library.corporate-ir.net/library/87/878/87867/items/247880/2006ar.pdf

http://www.wetfeet.com/Content/Companies/h/hill%25holliday.aspx

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/home/index.jsp?epi-content=NEWS_VIEW_POPUP_TYPE&newsId=20080213005572&ndmHsc=v2*A1200747600000*B1203412460000*DgroupByDate*J2*L1*N1000837*ZRockport&newsLang=en&beanID=202776713&viewID=news_view_popup
http://www.hhcc.com/