• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, August 21, 2018

Well, take that, BBDO, Leo Burnett and FCB. 

According to Jason Peterson, chief creative officer at Havas North America, you’re all “shitty agencies.” 

Yeah, he actually said that in a “quarterly update” video that he made with the agency’s NA CEO Paul Marobella designed to keep the troops informed about goings on at the agency. 

It wasn’t much of an update, although Peterson did opine that Adland is still stuck in a 1960s mindset with the art director-copywriter model at its core. 

He said Havas has shifted from being “creative” to “creators,” by which he meant the agency can both create ideas and produce reams of content for its clients. 

Jason, I gotta tell ya, lots of other agencies have glommed on to that notion as well. Not to mention more than a few clients who are also doing it increasingly in-house. 

And those “shitty” agencies he referred to? They’re not actually the competition. No, that would be “all those kids out there with iPhones” along with the millions of content markers on YouTube. 

So it’s all the amateurs out there you’re competing with, not the pros? Well the video was pretty cheesy from a production standpoint. Three little turd emojis popped onto the screen as he referred to BBDO, Burnett and FCB as “shitty.” In fact, it looked like he was wearing one of them. 

I’m not making this up. You can check out the video here, as reported by Adage.com. 

Marobella talked about agency priorities like improving its reputation and relationships. 

And trying to make more money. You know, the kind of dough that agencies like FCB, BBDO and Burnett make.