Ad Vets Pereira and O'Dell Take a Non-Different Approach

-post written by Fred Aun.

Tired of trying to be different?

Marketing and branding experts the world over are spending endless hours trying to help their clients differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Well, ad industry veterans P.J. Pereira and Andrew O’Dell, in announcing the formation of a new agency called Pereira & O’Dell, not only eschewed witty creativity in naming the agency but also said “fugetaboutit” when it came to the Holy Grail quest for differentiation.

“Pereira & O’Dell is being built more on excitement than differentiation,” said co-founder Pereira in a statement announcing the new agency. “A lot of great agencies focus so much on being different from each other, on specializations and new business models, that they spend more energy on becoming efficient technique-wise rather than inspiring.”

So what we have here is something rather different: An agency that’s being different by saying it’s not trying to be different.

“We’re not obsessed with becoming the next revolution; we just want to do things as they should be done today, mixing new and old techniques without any assumptions or prejudice,” added Pereira.

The new company, based in San Francisco, also announced that LEGO Systems and PONY are among its first clients. It is starting out with a team of 15 full-timers and some per-project specialists.

Pereira & O’Dell has secured $30 million from ABC International “to support growth initiatives.”

For the past three years, Pereira, 34, and O’Dell, 38, worked at AKQA. Pereira was executive creative director and O’Dell was president.