• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, March 23, 2014

So anytime we see a press release that touts the fact that an agency just won an award for "most attractive employer," we wonder if ad agencies really are still giving out awards for having the hottest looking employees. We then realize the press release is from France and it's touting the fact that Publicis Groupe garnered that win in the 5th annual Randstad Awards. And it's not about how attractive people who work in the agency are. It's all about what a cool (i.e., attractive) place Publicis is to work. Okay. Now that we have that all cleared up.

While chit chat evokes a not so great gelling between Publicis and Kaplan Thaler following the merger, it would appear that wonderful things have always been said about Linda Kaplan Thaler. In a Direct Marketing News article, Kaplan shares eight reasons why it pays to pay it forward. Number one on the list is being nice and training everyone who works for you to be nice. You think nice guys finish last? Not so. U.S. Bank CEO Richard Davis, who had narrowed down his agency search to a few agencies including Kaplan Thaler and was told how nice the agency was to a security guard, thought: "If they're this nice to the security guard, I can only imagine how they're going to treat my people." That sentiment clinched the decision to choose Kaplan as the bank's agency.

Well here's a fun time waster. Bright Red\TBWA is out with Designer Dirty Talk, a double entendre-laden site created by a couple of the agency's designers. Anyone can submit their own dirty talk, but the site also generates random dirty talk like "Let me undo that for you," "I'm looking for a big batch who will let me liquify in her bounding box" and "Fill me while I add a stroke." And so it goes. Anything for an excuse to work sexual innuendo into a piece of creative.

You may never have heard of Boise-based ad man Bill Drake, who since 1978 has run Drake Cooper Advertising. There's probably all kinds of people who you've never heard of who have been toiling in advertising for longer than you've been alive. And just because you've never heard of them doesn't mean they haven't been rockin' things for decades. But everyone's awesomeness comes to an end at some point, and that time has come for Drake who just retired after four decades running the shop. Of the changes he has seen over the years, Drake said: "Consumers years ago were a little naive, and whatever the advertising said they believed. And then as time has gone on, not only are consumers more savvy, they're aware. And they now give you permission to market to them. That's a very different environment than the way it used to be, and therefore the way we approach our craft is very different. Now there's a higher entertainment value. There's a more engaging mindset to it than what it used to be."

advertisement

advertisement