• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, February 9, 2014

If you've been sleeping under a rock this past week, you may not have heard of Secret, the new iPhone app that is talking Silicon Valley by storm with its ability to anonymously share secrets that are seen by your social media friends and those to whom you are otherwise connected. While Silicon Valley has been busy outing itself these past few days, there is another industry you are very familiar with that wallows in schadenfreude just as much as Silicon Valley does. It won't be long before Secret will be the place to go to find out about Madison Avenue's dirty laundry. And while you're airing all your little secrets, don't forget to send them to Mediapsssst. We will, of course, grant you anonymity.

So...why does it seem like every ad creative is never satisfied, always wanting additional creative outlets beyond creating words and pictures that sell stuff? Oh, wait. I'm an idiot. It's because they are, ahem, creative and are continuously looking for an outlet through which to share their creativity. Which is exactly why BBDO Associate Creative Director Diego Contreras, who befriended Kool Head Producer and Songwriter Jason Nitti, decided to make a video for one of Nitti's tracks, Leon. Of his motivation to create the video, Contreras said it was born out of “a weird TV spot for Converse about kids waking up in the middle of the night and sleepwalking to a basketball court to play ball. It was about loving something so much that you do it in your sleep. But like 98 percent of our work in advertising, it went into the horrifying black hole of dead ideas. So I brought it back out and used it as a starting point…which quickly evolved into a new story for the video.” Hmm. An ad inspiring other forms of creativity? Who knew?

If you ride New York's MTA and if you see something you think you should say something about, you may not feel the same way in the near future. Why? Because the agency that created the well-known tagline, "If you see something, say something" -- Korey Kay & Partners -- will no longer be handling the account. After a required agency review, Korey Kay & Partners, which has handled the account for the past 22 years, was bested by a team of agencies, Pulsar Advertising and Arcade Creative Group. While MTA CMO Mark Heavey has nothing but kind words for Korey Kay & Partners, he noted that commuters "are looking for information in new ways" which, really, is code for saying Korey Kay & Partners lacks in interactive capabilities as the agency aims to increase its focus on reaching Millennials.

Last week, you may have heard the unemployment rate now stands at 6.6%. What you might not have heard is that for the first time, advertising agency employment surpassed commercial printing employment -- yet another sign our business is going all digital. In addition, employment in the public relations sector increased 6.1% from 2012 to 2013 -- resulting, most likely, from an increased focus on content marketing.

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