Imagine an "agency as family" meeting at your shop. Now imagine it taking place at the dinner table with your family. It might go something like this as envisioned by Please Feed the Animals' Erik Proulx:
"I've called this Proulx family meeting with some unfortunate news. As you know, we've just lost our main source of revenue - my job - so we had to make some tough decisions. Ben, as the eldest child you can stay but with 33% fewer meals. Clara, I'm sorry to say, your position as a child in this household has been deemed redundant. Since you were the last in, we thought it fair that Ben keep his position as Proulx spawn. However, because you have been here for 3 years, you qualify for a severance package, which includes placement assistance into a foster family. Feel free to use me as a reference. Really, I mean that. And thank you for all your cuteness and unconditional love. Best of luck."
Ah, the brutality of working in the ad industry.
So Advertising Age is all over agencies today for their use (or lack thereof) of Twitter. A destined to be classic quote from a Euro RSCG spokesperson reads, "We're developing our Twitter strategy and in the meantime want to hold onto the name. It's a Catch-22: You don't want your Twitter handle stolen, but you also don't want to start using it before you're really ready."
On the one hand, all well and good. No one wants to make a fool of themselves. On the other hand, this is not rocket science. Certainly it's easier for a random individual to join Twitter and use it any way they see fit while that's not entirely the case for a brand, an agency or an agency representing a brand.
While the wonderful world of social media is, as everyone insists, supposed to be one gigantic, happy conversation, brands (at least their corporate representation), because they are more than one person, do have to have an agreed upon approach to using the medium. But that doesn't mean they have to over engineering or have every last detail of that "strategy" in place before they dip their toe.
Why? Because you can't develop a "strategy" unless you know the medium and you can't know the medium unless you use it. Yes, it is a bit of a Catch-22 but the Catch-22, itself, is a Catch-22.
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Honest.This is just your average, run-of-the-mill potato chip commercial. You know. The one where a guy puts on a strange head contraption and begins to fantasize about women unclasping their bra, jumping up and down on a bed, dancing in a thong, playing with stuffed animals, sticking her tongue out at you and...getting an x-ray while wearing lingerie.
Yea, that kind of commercial. Nothing special here. Move right along people.
