Patrick Lalley reports that the Lewandowski-connected Ohio ad firm that Governor Noem paid $5M to come up with her wildly! successful! bad-plumber-for-VP ads may have lifted its video ideas from local ad firm Lawrence and Schiller:
You won’t find any reference to the governor as a welder or electrician or dentist in the winning proposal from Go West Media, however. No concepts – known as “the creative” in advertising and marketing circles – were included in the documents published on the state’s open records website.
It wasn’t Go West’s idea to begin with, based on documents and multiple interviews with sources close to the process.
The Noem-as-worker concept came from a different bidder, the Sioux Falls firm Lawrence & Schiller.
Documents obtained by Sioux Falls Live detail the plan, including sketches showing the welder scene that mirror the final product. How the concept from one proposal ended up in the product of a different bidder isn’t known.
…the Lawrence & Schiller proposal outlines two options for the campaign. One based on jobs and the other as a tour of South Dakota, both featuring Noem as the face of the ads.
The proposal reads: “The first version, titled Now Hiring: Jobs features the governor as a spokesperson, and also has some fun with her, inserting her into the workplace playing a number of roles, such as small business owner or welder. Each execution would offer a chance for workers to apply for jobs and potentially win a trip to South Dakota to visit the state for themselves” [Patrick Lalley, “Noem-As-Worker Concept Lifted from Sioux Falls Advertising Firm’s Proposal,” Sioux Falls Live, 2023.11.17].
So, wait: not only can Kristi Noem not come up with an original idea, but the out-of-state advertisers she hires to make Corey Lewandowski happy can’t, either?
But hey, on the good side, at least the Governor’s phenomenally! effective! marketing campaign proves that South Dakota really does have talent… good enough for out-of-staters to steal for their own profit!
This is actually quite bad if they didn’t use a South Dakota ad/media company to make these ads. Especially bad if they lifted a proposal from one. I mean, what the hell?
I don’t know why I didn’t notice this before but why does Gov. Noem look like a blonde under that welder’s mask? How much did they spend on hair and makeup?
The L & S proposal does not appear to specify any hair color or level of make up. It just lays out a concept that Kristi and Corey’s Ohio chums pretty clearly borrowed.
Better:
“…Each execution would offer a chance for workers to apply for [her] job and potentially win a trip to South Dakota to visit the state for themselves”
I can’t think of a Single Firm that has taken more $Money from the State of SD for its Political Patronage than L&S. That being said, there is No Politician in the History of SD that comes even close to Noem for the Corruption Award.
I will say that Lawrence and Schiller have always been in touch with South Dakota when designing their ad campaigns which have a touch of humor about them. I assume that Go West, which is not an ad agency but a political media firm, lifted ideas from Lawrence and Schiller as this firm was breaking new ground with this campaign and is not known for its’ creativity. Typical smarmy behavior from Governor Noem’s out of state, out of touch, “brain trust”.
Seriously..who will she not have offended in our state before she leaves office? So many noses have been plugged to dampen her stench, her husband included. With mindful contemplation of my choice of words, she is a whore in every sense of the word.
Everybody hates L&S. They prolly angered the wrong fellows in the Governor’s office. Let that be a lesson out there. You can be the golden boy one day, and the next thing you know, BOOM, you are in the spittoon.
Nobody likes golden boys.
The spittoon is where you’ll also find Kristi Noem’s conscience. Laverne & Shirley’s silence while being pirated has been handsomely purchased by ceaseless annual contracts with Republican Governors since Janklow’s first term. To L&S’s top dogs, this is only part of doing business with the state and many, many GOP campaign clients.
What I’ve had trouble reconciling is how can a governor with Kristi’s apparent appeal and GOP political base do so very much for herself while doing virtually nothing of value for the state? I’m not judging her as a Democrat, but as a lifetime student of state politics. Is it her laziness? Stupidity? Naivety? Gullibility? Pigheaded narcissism? Sociopathy? It’s hard to pin down, except that I’ve never seen a state political figure in South Dakota have so much going for her externally, but also exhibit so very little genuine personal capacity integrity to create a legacy of (any) achievements.
She relies on her special men to do the thinking and deciding while she awaits her scripts. The Blanche DuBois of Republican politics.
“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Indeed.
So, if you had to decide what her bronze statue would look like for Pierre’s Trail of Governors, what would it look like and where should it be placed?
No surprise that Barbie Noem always comes up short when ethics are in play. Naturally, if a response would even come from her milque-toast-forgot-whats-his-name, he’ll have the name of a scapegoat ready to present. Shakespeare must have had her and her gang in mind when penning…. “ oh, what a tangled web we weave….”