by Richard Whitman on Sep 30, 6:42 PM
Despite the fact that Ad Contrarian's Bob Hoffman recently gave Millennial-obsessed marketers and agency folks a good ass whooping earlier this week, some are still spewing the same ill-informed crap about how Millennials are marketers' Holy Grail. One such pro-Millennial mouthpiece is Spark Senior VP Scott Hess who, in relationship to the Highwire Brand Studio project his agency -- on behalf of client Taco Bell -- is working on with Miami U students, said: "We need new energy and fresh perspectives. We need people who have grown up as digital natives." Oh, good God! How about people with disposable income …
by Richard Whitman on Sep 29, 6:17 PM
As if you needed yet another data point to shock you out of your Carlton Terrace-addled mindset that you are God to your client, check out new research from Avidan Strategies that finds 62% of CMOs categorize their agencies as suppliers and not true marketing partners. Sharing further sadness, Dan writes: "73% of those polled point to their agencies' incapacity to come up with genuine consumer insights, while 58% feel that agencies don't make recommendations that are 'media neutral,' even though it could be good for brands." Instead, they are still too focused on "television as the solution to every …
by Richard Whitman on Sep 28, 8:11 PM
You've gotta love an agency that has the chutzpah to call itself Wingnut. After all, in some circles, the term "wingnut" is not very complimentary. In fact, it's downright disrespectful and mean. Alas, that didn't stop the 10-year-old shop from naming itself Wingnut. And it hasn't stopped them from doing fine, thank you very much. Agency President Jim Cousins said: "We're really hitting our stride. Corporate-owned agencies only need one big client to make their year, but independent agencies like ours need diverse client portfolios to survive." The agency had almost tripled its revenue in the past four years, and …
by Richard Whitman on Sep 25, 5:33 PM
Well, this is rich. We all know that ad agency Web sites can, shall we say, be a bit pretentious and overly self-important, right? Anyone remember Boston-based Modernista? Visiting that site was like popping some pills and hanging with Alice in Wonderland Jefferson Airplane-style. But Modernista's site is just a quaint memory compared to the Web site of San Francisco-based West, an agency founded by former Apple exec Allison Johnson with help from Twitter and Square's Jack Dorsey. The site consists simply of images overlaid with the word "West" in various languages.
by Richard Whitman on Sep 24, 5:22 PM
Will this be the latest trendlet in ad agency office design? After all, the whole SuperDesk thing has already been done. Why not desks that disappear so agency employees don't turn into workaholics? That seems to be the aim over at Amsterdam design studio Heldergroen, which has affixed wires to the desks in its office that lift the desks to the ceiling promptly at 6 p.m. Screw it if you're on client deadline, apparently, is the mantra of the office makeover. Supposedly, employees are encouraged to engage in yoga and dance once the desks are out of the way.
by Richard Whitman on Sep 23, 6:02 PM
Well, this is sad. Eileen McKenna, a senior account manager at McCann New York, died Sunday at home in Greenwich at the age of 61. Cancer was the cause. McKenna's big claim to fame was that she was the first child to be the "Breck Girl" in the brand's long-running campaign. For her participation, she was awarded the honor of "Breck Girl of the Year." Her entire life has been advertising. She started out as a child actor in 1959 in a Xerox ad and others and then transitioned into ad agency work when she was older. Sharing thoughts in …
by Richard Whitman on Sep 22, 7:39 PM
So up in Toronto it's perfectly fine to beat the crap out of your fellow advertising and media types. Yeah, back for its fifth year, Agency Wars V pits two teams of boxers against one another. The event, which takes place November 26 at 7 P.M. at the Arcadian Court, is a charity fundraiser in support of Ronald McDonald House Toronto and the National Advertising Benevolent Society. On September 5th, 65 people began a two-week boxing camp that ended September 19. On September 23 and 24, competitors will be announced. And this isn't just your average "for fun" advertising event.
by Richard Whitman on Sep 21, 8:51 PM
Oh, but wait, says know-it-all Sir Martin Sorrell. "It's a temporary phenomenon. Our view is after a year or two it will change. I question whether clients will be able to apply technology successfully." What's Sir Martin talking about? The recent shift of programmatic ad buying from agency trading desks to client-side, in-house media buying operations. Well, of course he would say that. After all, clients are dumb and agencies are smart. How could a client even dream of effectively managing its own programmatic buying when there are so many smart ad agencies out there so much better equipped to …
by Richard Whitman on Sep 18, 7:39 PM
Attention marketers. And by marketers, I mean clients. You know, you guys who think your agency is just a vendor you can toy with at your leisure as if they were a vending machine spitting out predetermined and prepackaged items that you can simply toss aside if it turns out you're not actually hungry. Yeah, you marketers. Nationwide CMO Matt Jauchius has a message for you. And it's simple. Stop treating your agency like a vendor. "I think the word vendor is poison," he told "Ad Age." "I think the word vendor creates an us-versus-them and it creates a wall."
by Richard Whitman on Sep 17, 4:55 PM
Oy vey. Vendetta Studios, a full-service advertising and production company, announced that they will be launching as the first company to specialize in Vine video advertising for brands and companies around the world. Which is weird because, well, the agency launched in 2004 -- but whatever. Maybe relaunch would have been a better term? And didn't Vine launch, like, two years ago? Anyway, with more than 100 million people watching Vine videos across the Web each month and 1 billion Loops every day, the agency thinks it's a ripe playground to jump into.