Mr. Stefanski has about 15 years of experience on both the agency and client side. Before DirecTV, he served as assistant VP-global brand and marketing at insurer MetLife, and had spent time at big New York shops, including BBDO and JWT.

“When I left the agency world I always had a feeling I’d be back someday, and maybe didn’t expect it to be quite so soon,” Mr. Stefanski told Ad Age. “But I’d been talking with [CEO Brian Martin] and [Chief Creative Officer] Eric Silver over the last few months and the more we talked, the opportunity to be part of Amalgamated at this time in its history was just too exciting to pass up.

“Having been on the client side will help give me good perspective on how to build our clients’ business, and I really look forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting in there,” he added.

Amalgamated’s roster includes Ben & Jerry’s, Coca Cola’s Honest Tea and CarMax. Mr. Stefanski’s connection to the shop is Mr. Martin, who joined last summer as CEO. The two met a decade ago while working at JWT, New York.

“I’ve had the pleasure of working with Michael on both sides of the table,” Mr. Martin said in a statement. “At JWT, he was one of the emerging stars within the agency, and, several years later at MetLife, he was a smart and effective brand leader within a large corporate culture. He’s a strong leader, an intelligent brand thinker, and a creative sparkplug. He will fit right in here.”

Separately, the shop’s former president and management partner, Fiona McBride, has departed to go work at Womenkind.

-Advertising Age, May 11, 2012

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There was no shortage of speculation about why so many folks seemed to be striking out on their own at the same time. One theory was that they wanted to escape a holding company’s formulaic processes. Or, others mused, they wanted to start a shop so they could eventually spin it off and sell it to a holding company.

Everyone leaves for different reasons, but I think, in the end, there’s a commonality of ingredients that would be about 1/3 supreme confidence, 1/3 total fear and 1/3 clinical restlessness. In short, you move because you must. Because it’s time. When the mass exodus was happening, all the soundbites departing creatives supplied to explain their new ventures had the reassuring term “fun” built into them. It’s an amazing experience to be sure, but I bet, for those who made the leap, the “fun” descriptor might now be accompanied by some sort of asterisk. If you’re a creative contemplating this odyssey, be prepared for a crash course on some decidedly noncreative things.

I remember about three months into Amalgamated, Gerry Graf, who started BFG9000, anxiously called and asked how a specific contract might work. My response was, “I love you, but I’m fairly certain I’m not the person to offer counsel on this particular matter.” I can say with a great deal of certainty, contracts are not yet our forte.

Did you know some Xerox machines are better to own and some are better to lease? You do now. Small-business owners might want to consider two health plans. One for the younger employees and one for those over 40. If you lease space in a building in Manhattan and they decide to put up a Courtyard Marriott in your vicinity, you won’t be getting a break on your lease payments, no matter how defiantly the syncopated jackhammers cry out.

You very quickly receive lessons in all the things you thought you knew and all the things you never thought you’d need to know: Rent. Furniture. Travel. Corporate promotion. New Biz. Outside services. Consulting. Maintenance. Business insurance. Health insurance. 401(k). Travel. Dues. Subscriptions. Office supplies. Telephone. Payroll expense. Payroll taxes. Lots and lots of taxes.

I will say this, though. There was unexpected assistance from former big-agency employees who also left to start their own shop. A fraternity, if you will.

The Dave Drogas and Carl Johnsons of the world were very generous with their time and pointers. I suspect once you’ve been through the drill (and made it) there is a satisfyingly benevolent feeling in helping others navigate some of the obstacles.

Advertising is an admittedly tricky business. Whatever stage you are in, whether newly launched or 10 years in with a dozen hot clients, it’s of paramount importance that you and your partners are in constant alignment. It’s probably less about the “defining” statement you have no doubt crafted to search consultants and would-be clients and more about knowing your strengths and striving each day to remember why you got into this business in the first place.

The trick is then parlaying your existing mantra into an agency where you can’t wait to walk in the door every morning and, of course, having the patience to stick with the proverbial plan.

So has it been worth it? I think we’d all say yes. In my case I have a roster of clients and a body of work I am extremely proud of, as well as employees I consistently love being around and laughing with. To be sure, there is still much to learn. But I now know, if you own an agency, that process never really ends.

-Advertising Age, May 01, 2012

Honest Tea wants you to recycle your Facebook status — supposedly, to raise awareness of recycling everyday products.

Organic tea and drink company Honest Tea has launched The Great Recycle — a call-to-action to recycle bottles. The campaign’s goal is to turn recycling into a new fad on social networks and in the real world.

Online, Honest Tea is hoping to encourage Facebook’s 901 million users to recycle by reusing their status updates. The company is working to inspire the masses to recycle the same amount of bottles it produces each year by 2020.

The Facebook campaign has its own official website. Users can scroll through statuses until they find a great one. The old status will posts to Facebook with an alert that says: “I’m recycling this old Facebook status message as a sign of my commitment to recycle more this year.”

Facebook users are rewarded with Recyclebank points that can be redeemed for rewards. The Facebook Recycler app currently has 87,000 Likes.

Honest Tea is starting off small before their 2020 goal date. The company is kicking off the campaign officially in NYC on April 30. The goal of the event is to recycle the same number of bottles as sold in NYC each day. The company is collecting the bottles in a 30-foot-tall bin that will be situated in Times Square.

-Mashable, April 25, 2012

When Coca-Cola’s first invested in Honest Tea in 2008, it had distribution in about 15,000 outlets, but since the completion of the beverage giant’s purchase of the brand, it’s shot up to more than 100,000. Its portfolio has diversified, too. It has 40 different varieties in glass, plastic and kids’ pouches. New flavors include Passion Fruit Green Tea, the brand’s first stevia-sweetened zero-calorie beverage, and Raspberry Fields, an exclusive beverage for Whole Foods. Honey Green Tea is the company’s best-seller.

Honest Tea controls just 0.5% of the ready-to-drink tea market, but it’s among the fastest-growing brands, with volume up 31% in 2011, according to Beverage Digest.

Amid the growth, the company brought on a new top marketer, Peter Kaye. After a stint as a consultant, and earlier in his career working in marketing roles at Time Inc. and spirits giant Diageo, Mr. Kaye took on the post of Honest Tea’s VP of marketing and communications in early 2011.

It was his decision to hire the brand’s first lead creative agency, New York-based Amalgamated, early this year. Honest Tea previously did most of its advertising internally or with the help of agencies on a project basis.

Mr. Kaye informally held talks with a number of shops late last year, and ultimately decided on Amalgamated — whose head of strategy, Doug Cameron, he’s known for years — for what he says was the right mix of chemistry and work history.

Said Mr. Kaye: “It really clicked with me that we were really ready at a brand development stage to bring on a partner. … What they’ve done with Ben & Jerry’s over the years really resonated with me. The combination of their capabilities on the strategy side, and their cultural branding approach” made Amalgamated an attractive shop, he said.

“We built this brand with a lot of grassroots marketing, events, demos and one-to-one marketing, literally handing out cups over the years,” noted Mr. Kaye. “The idea with working with Amalgamated is to complement what we’ve been doing and try and really step on the gas and significantly increase our brand awareness nationally.”

Their first project together was the The Great Recycle Facebook status application which launched this week.

Eric Silver, chief creative officer and part owner at Amalgamated, said a brand campaign will launch across digital, TV and outdoor this summer.

Honest Tea will also complete a package redesign over the next 18 months. “The message is a more integrated expression of the brand to reach more people,” said Mr. Kaye.

-Advertising Age, April 25, 2012

The company alone generates about 20 million glass bottles and 60 million plastic bottles annually. Over all, Americans used 38.6 billion glass beverage containers, and 71.9 billion plastic beverage bottles in 2010, according to the Container Recycling Institute, an antiwaste organization based in Culver City, Calif., that tracks data on the topic.

The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that only about 33 percent of glass bottles, and as few as 27 percent of plastic bottles, are recycled.

“We wanted to do something in a big, visible way,” said Seth Goldman, co-founder and chief executive of Honest Tea, a low-calorie beverage brand that Coca-Cola bought last year.

“Recycling rates are still low, so we were looking for something aggressive but still fun and engaging to deliver the message,” Mr. Goldman said.

The company’s first “Great Recycle” event will take place on April 30, in Times Square, with a 30-foot-tall recycle bin, then move to other cities. The immediate goal is to recycle 45,000 beverage cans or bottles — the number of products that Honest Tea sells daily in the city. From there, Honest Tea plans to expand its recycling aggressively.

The event is part of a campaign that will use online, social media and some outdoor advertising. Mr. Goldman said Honest Tea chose New York because it was the company’s largest market, and to support Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s drive to double recycling in the city by 2017. Only about 15 percent of the city’s total waste is being recycled. The New York Department of Sanitation says 182 tons of glass bottles and jars go into the trash every day.

The Honest Tea campaign is an outgrowth of recycling efforts that the company started at its home base, in Bethesda, Md. The company has placed more than 30 recycling bins on city streets, and has also provided bins to music festivals.

While municipalities and parks still face mounds of jettisoned drink containers, large beverage companies have been promoting recycling. In recent years, Coke has provided some 150,000 bins to events and public areas, and set up beverage container recycling centers. It also has supported curbside residential recycling.

As consumers have drifted away from soda to less sugary beverages, tea sales have boomed. Last year, they were $6.5 billion, up 5.2 percent over 2010, according to a report by market research company Packaged Facts.

The Honest Tea event is being advertised on city billboards, and at businesses and colleges in the city’s five boroughs. Over a 10-hour period, recyclers will be able to climb onto a stage to toss bottles or cans into the huge bin. Honest Tea employees, including Mr. Goldman, will pedal a bicycle-powered conveyor belt to carry bottles and cans to be dropped in the bin.

Participants will be able to claim a rewards point for each recycled container, and add points with a recycling pledge made on stage. Using points, they can claim items including cold bottles of Honest Tea, T-shirts, tickets to concerts and Broadway shows, yoga mats and skateboards.

For those not in Times Square that day, the company is spreading the recycling word with a new Web site, Thegreatrecycle.com, where users can recycle an old Facebook status message in return for points in a program devised with Amalgamated Advertising, an independent agency in New York.

“We wanted to reach out to brand-friendly influencers and friends to make people more aware of recycling,” said Paul Aaron, the agency’s director of interactive.

Online participants earn points for each post that is recycled. Points can be redeemed at Recyclebank.com for discounts and items from more than 3,000 businesses, including restaurants and stores.

Honest Tea did not disclose how much it is spending on the campaign, but Mr. Goldman said the costs of getting a permit for Times Square, the bin and other expenses “were not inconsiderable.” Last year, Honest Tea spent slightly less than $1.1 million on advertising, according to figures from Kantar Media.

As part of its campaign, Honest Tea also produced a 60-second teaser video that, wordlessly, tracks one bottle’s path to being recycled. It was produced with Wandering Hat, a Washington-based video production company, and can be found on Honesttea.com and at Thegreatrecycle.com.

In addition, the company has set up a Twitter tag called #GreatRecycle, which will be emblazoned on the side of the bin and on fliers (made of recycled paper) to be distributed in the city. To build interest, Honest Tea also is using Facebook ads.

The collected bottles will be refashioned, according to Honest Tea, by the nonprofit GrowNYC as urban gardening supplies, including shovels and watering cans, as part of its program for public schools.

Honest Tea will be collecting one of its best-selling products, Honest Kids drink pouches, but the pouches cannot be easily repurposed because of their design. Honest Tea works with TerraCycle, a company that creates recycling systems for previously nonrecyclable or hand-to-recycle waste, to remake drink pouches into pencil cases and other items. The program has saved nearly a million pouches from landfills, Honest Tea says.

“Our focus is to make a high impact this month, which is called ‘Earth Month,’ ” Mr. Goldman said. “We want people to be aware and make a commitment.”

-The New York Times, April 22, 2012

If you experience deja vu while exploring Facebook over the next few days, it’s not (only) because you’re going crazy. There’s a very good reason why some posts you may have seen before will soon start reappearing.

In support of Earth Month, Honest Tea teamed up with New York-based agency Amalgamated to come up with a clever way to promote recycling through social media. The initiative resulted in a Facebook app called The Great Recycle, which recycles users’ most popular posts (and offers a small reward) once they make a pledge to recycle more.

The Great Recycle app uses the Facebook API to analyze users’ timelines and cull old posts that received lots of likes and comments. After you choose a favorite old post to recycle, the app reposts it to your timeline with a branded message promoting recycling. As a reward for their pledge, users also receive 10 points in credit at Recyclebank, an organization that rewards individuals for recycling with prizes redeemable from sponsors like Kashi and Dunkin’ Donuts.

The Great Recycle is part of a larger series of initiatives Honest Tea is undertaking to support recycling nationwide.

-Co.Create, April 23, 2012

“Default” and “Wor” are the 2 singles, but the whole album is worth a listen and IN ORDER, since tracks continue into following song. Old school! -JM