In some sort of Mean Girls meets Teen Witch Meets Twenty-Something Ad Hotties, we have Chiat High. Yes, it's exactly what it sounds like; a bunch of primadonnas, a jock, a wimp, a collection of geeks and a love story with a happy ending. Yea, it's the high school cafeteria known as Chiat.
And you know what? This is the best representation of ad agency life we've seen in a long time. The primadonna's (account managers) prance with self-importance, the jocks (creatives) think they're better than everyone else, the tools (media) actually have heart but are afraid to express it and the nerds (traffic) get run over...over and over again.
Oh yes, some think this is yet another step down for a once great ad agency but we think someone's finally got agency life right.
And at Chiat, the lowly media planner scores with the hot AE. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that at all.
Perhaps because they were sick and tired of being confused with a worldwide sandwich conglomerate, Philadelphia-based Gyro Worldwide is changing their name to...Quaker City Mercantile? Wait, what? Gyro/QCM is an ad agency right? So now they're shedding their sub shop image for...some kind of cereal-focused trading exchange?
People! We're in the marketing business, right? We're supposed to make it easy for people to know what brands are, what they stand for and what they do. Right? Right?
But maybe that's old school thinking because Gyro/QCM doesn't really want to be clearly defined as a traditional ad agency, rather, "a company that aims to produce much more than advertising." And that will do so by "drawing on Philadelphia's heritage...to recapture Philadelphia's mighty industrial past and weave a new version of this greatness into its future."
Wait, what? Now we're "weaving greatness?" WTF does that mean?
We give up.
Heh. This is clever. For the New Directors Showcase at Cannes, Saatchi & Saatchi released a video in which some ordinary guy barks marching orders at the Buckingham Palace Guard -- and, amazingly, they obey, even when he asks them to do little leaps, jump on each other's backs, dance to reggae and "RIDE 'IM LIKE SEABISCUIT!"
At this point the stunned crowd gets the sense that this is a stunt, and there is much cheering and carrying-on.
Let's hope this wasn't an intern's stolen idea. In any event, if the New Director's Showcase is something you dig, hurry up and enter here.
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Ripping a sheet outta the playbooks of CP+B, Pourquoi tu cours, Rocketboom (which sold inventory, not creative power), and possibly this guy, 24DP is is using eBay to auction off its award-winning director services.
Bids have exceeded $2225.00, which makes this a success in our book, and there are still 5 days and 4 hours left on the clock. Make the Logo Bigger also encourages labor-whoring skeptics to "view it from the POV that it's a one-time deal to get them on the radar of more agencies and anyone needing viral/spot/video help."
And of course the shipping's free.
Keep track of what happens -- without having to keep visiting eBay -- by following 24DP on Twitter.
Last night at the Effies, Crispin Porter + Bogusky was recognized for "Whopper Freakout," the incendiary stunt work it did for Burger King in '07.
"Burger King won the Grand Effie convincingly due to their boldness and creativity across multiple media platforms, delivering real cultural relevance and above all, outstanding business results," gushed Chairman Carl Johnson of the Effie Worldwide Board of Directors/Co-Founder, Anomaly.
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Asa Bailey and Cream Recruitment tag-teamed to poach a bit of business -- and maybe some creatives, too -- from their new London neighbour: Saatchi & Saatchi.
The pair pretended to "hack" the Saatchi site (its actual site is located at saatchi.co.uk: SaatchiandSaatchi.co.uk sports subversive scribbles and a video that lends unattractive insight on the big agency's goings-on: how it crushes the dreams of earnest creatives, etc. The video's end promotes Cream Recruitment, but the lower left-hand corner features also subtle pluggery for Asa Bailey Viral Advertising.
Cold, man, cold. Though to be fair, any agency that thought this was socially acceptable behaviour was just begging to have their interns snatched.
Agency websites: the ultimate canvases.
We were pretty impressed by Modernista's attempt to embrace the stripped-down future of client relations, but BooneOakley's new website made us grin wryly and raise a glass.
Yeah, that's a YouTube video. The buttons in the video are clickable, and a timeline across the X axis lets you leap to whatever section you want to see first: "Featured work," "About Us" and "Billy" -- the story of a mild-mannered marketing director, who dies.
The work is joyful, the animation crappy and the humour shameless. We were like, here's an agency that's not concerned abut being the future; it's the present, and it's not afraid of embracing all its possibilities.
It's also not afraid to put a bullet in somebody's head shortly after he's been axed.
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Today, Mullen is celebrating its relocation to Boston. The agency has left behind it's posh mansion in the suburbs and opted to do the high (low) rise thing in the city. I've seen the agency's offices in the mansion. Very sweet. I can't wait to see the new digs in Boston and I'll be making a trip to do so in the next week or two.
You can check out all the move goodness on the agency's new website. Agency client New England Aquarium is sending over a penguin to greet the employees and Boston's Mayor Menino was on hand to cut the ribbon.
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- Chicago's O'Hare airport has a new website! (Some people think this sort of thing is important. Who are we to judge? Oh wait, that's our job)
- Yawn. Men dress up as women in Danica Patrick's new Boost Mobile Unwronged commercial.
- Soft drink\ company, The Feel Good Drinks Company, commissioned Loose Moose to turn a stop-frame animation created for them by one of their consumers into a national TV
campaign.
- smashLAB's Eric Karjaluoto thinks design has become commoditized but he has a solution
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We've heard of Plaid Skirt Marketing before but we've never really thought much about the agency or its name. Much like Wexley School for Girls, it's a bit, well, not very typical as in, oh, Wieden + Kennedy or Crispin, Porter + Bogusy or just plain old Arnold.
The agency plays on what it calls the "duality of a plaid skirt." At this point we're thinking, "Oh no. They're not going to go there are they?" Well, they sort of do describing the plaid skirt thusly, "It's a seductive temptress. It's strict uniformity. It's an iconic fashion staple. It's even punk self-expression."
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