In a bid to get hired into the ad agency world right out of college, NYIT student Brittney placed an ad in the New York Times telling Donny Deutsch she'll be graduating May 20, 2007. Hmm...just where does a college student get enough money to place an ad in the Times? And why does she look way too model-perfect? And why would she do it one year earlier than she needs to? Something smells here. Oh wait, it's an ad for NYIT. There we go.
No matter. In an effort to provide the poor child who is about to enter one of the most cut throat, cynical vacuous business in the world, Copyranter offers some advice writing, "What Brittney hasn't put together yet is that Douche, Inc. is a shithole of a sweat shop that is coming off another shit year. Brittney, have you seen the inside of Douche's agency? It's an ugly macho concrete tomb. The days of those cute IKEA TV spots are looooong gone." Hmm, indeed. Yes, this definitely sounds like something other than a college student looking for a job.
Strawberry Frog wants all brand managers to be very successful brand managers and has launched VerySuccessfulBrandManger.com to help. The site's got everything from fashion tips to travel tips (forget yachts, it's luxury submarines, baby) to health tips (sleeping with subordinates is a very good thing, indeed) to wealth tips (it's all about choosing the right third world country to buy) to lifestyle tips (forget office interns, get a golf intern to drive your golf cart) to advice from Sir Monty Montague (when choosing between a welthy princess and a supermodel, Montague offer sage advice, "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. Take the hand of the one who is worth more and save the second for the bush, if you understand what I mean.")
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Chicago Agency Hadrian's Wall has created an interesting campaign for its client Magnecote paper. Rather than simply advertise the product to its target, agency creatives and production people who can use the stuff to make magnetic posters, Hadrian's Wall took a different approach. They chose a public service cause, World Bicycle Relief, enlisted seven other agencies to create PSAs for WBR. Magnecote agreed to produce the campaign, WBT agreed to run it, the campaign had to use Magnecote paper and each campaign would be voted upon by the public. Now isn't that a whole lot more interesting that just placing a few boring ads in Creativity for a product as boring as magnetic paper?
Somebody, Jeremy Abbett according to Whois, went out and created a site that pits the large holding companies (Old Ones) against the independents (Young Guns). Lining up fpr the Old Ones are WPP, Dentsu, Omnicom, Publicis and Interpublic. Stepping on the field for the Young Ones are W+K, CP+B, Naked, Mother and Strawberry Frog. It's a game of strength as the Young Guns hurl media bombs (TV, Print, Net and WOM) at the business-suited Old Guns hoping to eradicate their asses from the world. While it's funny, it's also a pretty clear representation of what's going on in the ad agency world right now.
As it turns out, Jeremy Abbett is a partner at Truth Dare Double Dare, a design studio that probably hopes to eradicate the world of both Young Guns and Old Guns so it can take over all creation of the earth's marketing.
The Lowe leaked email saga continues with yet another leaked email George Parker has acquired and published over at AdScam. With his usual seen-it-all wit, Parker craps on the ridiculousness of the Lowe Suggestion Box. From important items like Splenda being added to the kitchens uber-health conscious agency folk to increasing the dinner allowance for those who work late to giving employees their birthdays off to offering chair massages to beer nights to bagel breakfasts to coffee tastings to added vending machines, it just makes one want to scream, " Quit your spoiled, whiny bitching and do your fucking job!" It's a job, not a five star hotel.
Wieden + Kennedy's 12, the program that gives people the chance to break into advertising, have created a promotional spot for Wordstock, a Portland area book festival. We like it.
LA-based interactive shop Zugara has always come up with some pretty decent online environments as it were and lately has been quite busy continuing in that direction. Recently, they've done some work for Reebok and the NFL. Their RBK NFL Draft site features insight and thoughts from NFL Pro Athletes on the draft itself, anticipation of being called to the podium and how their life changed once they were drafted. For Playstation, Zugara created the Syphon Filter site which allows people to take part in Playstation's Dark Mirror storyline by investigating the mysterious KenSymth corporation. After taking part in a mission, they'll be led to spoofish sites where further information can be found and investigated to unlock further missions and content on the site.
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"What the fuck was all that about? Why do people in management talk shit all the time? You're in the communications business, stop talking like a fucking Power Point presentation." Those are the words of George Parker after he was leaked an internal Lowe NY email from agency head Mark Wnek who babbled on endlessly trying to rally his troops after AdWeek awarded the agency a D+ in its latest report card issue. Parker is right. The business-blather laden email could have been boiled down to a simple, "We suck. Or at least AdWeek says we suck. We've hired some new people to help get our shit together. We need to win more accounts. Please don't quit and go to another agency." Oops...looks like the defections have already begun.
Hmm. The last two times Lee Clow and Alex Bogusky got together, the results was mindless puffery. This third video outing, an AdCritic interview video series, actually contains some meat. Of course there was a bit of puffery from Clow who talked about advertisers being cultural artists versus ad guys and how he decorated the city of LA during the 1984 Olympics for Nike but Bogusky brought it all back to Earth. Bogusky mentioned how he had initially modeled CP+B after Clow's agency attempting to mirror Clow's success but then said "it was a really bad idea." Bogusky correctly posits the future of the ad agency business shouldn't be the result of agencies banding together to create a new, similar model because that would simply put the industry back in the same bad place. The message is be different. Do your own thing. Acknowledge and learn from the successes of other but don't copy them.
Writing on his weblog, Advertising Ourselves to Death, Todd Copelzitz celebrates the cluelessness of agency execs and media companies when it comes to understanding digital media. Copelvitz takes a look at the Pathfinder debacle - the old on and the new - and the genral cluelessness of elder creatives struggling to understand this thing called new media.
Citing an article written by Aaron Baar called Teaching As Old(er) Creative New Tricks, Copelvitz calls out some gems such as 54 year old Carmichael Lynch Chairman Jack Supple's regular meetings with his web designers (rather than just jumping into the new tech himself) to stay current with new media. From the same article, it appears 54 year old Jeff Goodby at least grasps the concept of jumping in with b oth feet saying, "I used to think you could noodle something out on a pad and have someone else execute it on a computer. But now I believe you have to understand technology just to know what's possible."
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