• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, March 2, 2014

It's not often that the world of sex and advertising bump up against each other so bluntly. Oh wait -- who am I kidding? Advertising is basically the bastard son on the porn industry. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that an agency derived its name from a vibrating sexual aid. The agency, Vibegg, was formed by former McCann Hong Kong Creative Director Cho Au Yeung. Of the name and its connotation, Au Yeung said, “We try to tell people who we are in our logo. This logo is a sign to reflect our aim to let clients feel like experiencing an orgasm while working with us.” And then he goes all Hollywood wannabe like every other ad agency in the world, saying: “We are not making advertising, instead, we are creating entertainment for audiences.” Oh, how cliche. Maybe he ought to stick the agency's logo up his butt for more inspiration than that. A visit to their Web site, however, is totally worth it.

Well this is interesting. Sort of. Perhaps working in this business for so long has numbed me to the notion that ad agencies are a bastion of efficiency, but there are some who still see it that way. One such entity is trade show display company APG Exhibits, which attributes its recent stellar growth to the insane pace under which most ad agencies operate. APG President Matt Baron explains: “Our whole approach to customer service at APG Exhibits has blossomed out of the pressure cooker that is working with large-scale agencies. We have been refining our internal practices for greater speed and efficiency for over a decade, which has translated perfectly to our burgeoning exhibit company.”

Goafest, the Cannes Lions of India, is trying to right itself this year after a spate of scam ads won medals. DDB Mudra COO Pratap Bose is heading the festival this year, and thinks he has a solution to the the issue of scam ads, He says: "This time, to avoid plagiarism and tainted ads, we are giving a 10-day gap from the first round of selection to the final round. During this time, the shortlisted campaigns would be in public domain, so if anyone has any issues, they can write to the Ad Club jury. The judging process will be far more strict this year. We are getting specialists to judge each category, unlike earlier, when it was largely creative people who judged most categories." We wish you well, Pratap.

Pretty soon, all the cool advertising job-seeking ideas will have been made commonplace. Which is sad, because some of these ideas were pretty cool. We've had creatives land jobs using Google and Twitter and now we have art director Manuel Caminero, formerly with DraftFCB New York and Cutwater, using dating app Tinder to land a job in Sydney. He aims to build positive reviews for his portfolio by asking his matches for opinions and feedback on his portfolio .