• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, May 13, 2014

Well, here's an interesting tidbit of information you can put to use when you create your next online campaign. While promoting its products on Facebook and Twitter, online clothier Betabrand.com discovered something very interesting; close-up shots of male crotches came up victorious, by a sizable margin. Crotch shots serve up 64% more engagement, a 30% increase in clickthrough and a 20% increase in conversion rate. That's right up there with cleavage -- which reportedly (honest, someone said it at a conference) increases Facebook ad response by 61%. Now take this information to your clients and with the straightest of faces, present it alongside the giant image of a hermaphrodite in your next Facebook ad.

So you think you can dance? I mean create content in a brand newsroom? David Burn doesn't think so. Writing a piece on AdPulp that was reproduced in Business Insider, Burn says that while journalists are flocking to agencies to help them create content for brands, agencies are ill-suited to successfully launch brand newsrooms. Making his argument, Burn writes: "Generally speaking, the people who work in advertising want things to be as cushy as possible. Not just free M&Ms during brainstorms. Ad people create wealth for gigantic companies and some may feel entitled to a ride or two on the client’s yacht. Or the agency’s yacht, as the case may be. Investigative journalists on the other hand are happiest when turning over all the apple carts in the room and claiming that their new apple sauce is appealing. Ad people like their apples shiny and fresh from the tree. But journalists are too busy fixing the world to be bothered by matters like apple presentation and provenance."

Agencies, did you know that 82% of your new business pitches contain repurposed content from prior pitches? Did you know that your business teams, on average, maintain over 5 years of archived content and more than 200,000 documents? How about the fact that 6.5 hours per week per person are wasted searching for content? And that 77% of you just throw that stuff up on random file servers and shared devices around the agency? These findings comes courtesy of Docurated -- which of course is a document management company that wants to help you get your shit together, but let's not fault them for that. Let's focus on the fact that 1). You plagiarize one pitch for another, 2). You are a bunch of unorganized hoarders and 3). You waste hours and hours of precious time that could otherwise be spent shopping online, watching stupid YouTube videos, posting selfies to Instagram, checking Tinder or, yes, doing actual work for your clients.

Well, this is pretty hilarious. Not even a week after the disastrous crumbling of what would have been Publicis Omnicom Group, Omnicom CEO John Wren has been given an International Advertising Association award for "outstanding services" at the organization's World Congress in Beijing. Outstanding services indeed. Wasting $55 million and nine months of two holding companies’ time. Congratulations, Mr. Wren.

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