Watch Out for Agencies Acting Like Jilted Girlfriends

The client-agency relationship has never been a life long love affair. It's like a short, intense period of romance followed by a short, sometime rocky, sometimes sublime marriage that ultimately ends in divorce. There's nothing wrong with that, it's just the nature of the business. People come and go and they realize the relationship is stale and that they each want to see new people.

Usually, that break up takes place behind closed doors. And everyone plays the game of acting nicely since you may get back together at some point. You certainly don't want other potential partners to see you acting badly or saying nasty things at the breakup because that might possible scare them off.

So I was surprised to see, on my blog of all places, a bad breakup happening. What's most odd is that I have absolutely nothing to do with the divorce; I'm like Paul Weston in HBO's "In Treatment" watching from the leather chair.

A while back, I wrote about how local ski resort Jay Peak had a hiccup in their social media program. They're doing a lot of things right, but they missed something. Everyone involved jumped in, solved the problem, and moved on.

Everyone, that is, except the agency of record Almighty Boston. The last post in the discussion was from Christopher Smith who stated that one of Jay's social media initiatives "is not an approach that we would encourage, nor endorse." This from the people who "helped design/build Jay Peak's social media platform and strategy."

It sound to me like the agency just called the client "stupid" in public. Now, clients and agencies call each other all sorts of names, but everyone usually does this behind closed doors. It's not often you see public disagreements like this, for good reason. And that reason is that once things like this become public, it's difficult, if not impossible, to find common ground.

It didn't stop there. On October 19th, Almighty Boston resigned the Jay account. When agencies resign clients they usually site "creative differences" like when Shine Advertising resigned the Go Daddy account. We all understand what that means: the agency developed what they thought were killer ideas, but the client didn't like any of them.

Almighty Boston said this instead:
"We're not comfortable moving forward without them having a cohesive plan," said agency partner Christopher Smith.  "We wish them luck."  Hmm, creative difference might simply be a matter of taste, and who can really argue with that. Not having a plan speaks plainly to intelligence. See above.

I thought it would stop there, but it didn't. Steve Wright from Jay Peak joined me for a social media roundtable in Burlington with some other local social media people. He talked about how Jay used social media to get feedback. And guess what? Almighty Boston just couldn't give up another chance to get in another jab. Christopher Smith was back with this comment:

"There must be some mistake/misunderstanding. Jay Peak has never used crowdsourcing in this manner."

Did he just call his former client a liar?

It's sad to see this happening in public, forever (it's the Web, remember). I've always heard good things about both Almighty Boston and Jay Peak. They had a good five-year run together.  I'm not sure what this public spat does (and it seems to be mainly one-sided).

Maybe Almighty Boston feels it's fighting to protect its integrity. Instead, it seems to point out the dangers in leaving an Almighty Boston agency relationship. If I were a prospective client, I'd think twice about the potential of one of my partners going out to trash my brand publicly over internal disagreements. This might one of those new business angles I just don't get.

Call me naïve; I think you can have your integrity and still break up well. No one wants to hire the Jilted Girlfriend, except perhaps out of pity.

Why Agency Sites are NOT the Future of the Web

When Crispin Porters Web site went beta last week, the digital world was atwitter. What started as a rumble with Zeus Jones, shot forward with Modernista, awed us with Skittles suddenly went super prime time with http://beta.cpbgroup.com/. Finally, proof that all that we online marketers had talked about over the past year or so was starting to come true. The future of the Web had arrived via the hottest ad shop in the world.

Amidst all the gushing, by people who I think are some of the smartest people around, I couldn't help but thinking about how the gushers reminded me of Sally Field accepting her Oscar Award.  The very fact of Crispin following our flow instead of leading it made it sound like a collective gasp of "Alex, you like us. You really like us!"

The Crispin site is a good site for them. Just like the EVB site is good for those great digital marketers and the Barbarian Group's site is a sharp picture of who they are. Personally I love good agency sites, mostly because there are so few of them. But they're not the future of the Web. Not even close. Here's why:

1. Agencies use their sites to show that they get it - First it was cool flash sites, and now its user generated, social media connected sites. Why? Because agencies need to use the medium itself to prove to prospects that they have command of the latest digital trends. For this subset of service providers, the medium IS really the message. For most businesses that's not the case. They don't have to show that they're flashy or hooked into social media to prove anything. It might help in some cases, but they're not selling the medium itself.
2. People don't make purchase decisions on agency sites - While I've heard anecdotes I've never heard real stories of people who visited an agency site and hired them right there and then. Never. I can imagine some very small clients doing this but none of any significant business size. Has anyone else? People visit agency sites in a longer process. They've heard about the agency, they've seen some of its work; they're planning on visiting or asking them to respond to an RFP. They look at the agency site to confirm what they're thinking or to fill in some holes (and hopefully not create others). E-commerce sites (agency clients) need to sell something. Service businesses need to prove their competence and personality in areas that have nothing to do with the Web. Can you really take a look at a law firm's site design and technology and conclude they're very good lawyers? Probably not.
3. Size matters - Many businesses have far more information to organize than do agency sites. Especially when you get into deep e-commerce sites. I love sites like EVB's and the Barbarian Group's because of their simplicity. It's much harder to do this with multi-layered, multi-national companies. Or maybe its not that much harder. It's just harder to convince those clients to go simple. While aggregation might seem to be the wave of the future even for these corporate giants, how the heck are you going to find out about the group you're really trying to contact through the company's Web site if everything is aggregation? Maybe the evolution of the semantic Web will solve this, but social media aggregation probably will not.

I think the new Crispin Porter & Bogusky site is great. But I liked their old site a lot too, with its simple, visual layout, where the work was front and center. I loved how they put their handbook right where everyone could read it.

There are a lot of businesses for whom this makes a lot of sense. Brands whose sites look to entertain and that thrive on conversations and image more than commerce. Starbucks, for example, or BMW. For   those brands, they can look at CPB and learn and aspire.

But many brands still look to the Web as one of their leading sales channel instead.

The new site, like EVB's, isn't necessarily a harbinger of the greater Web world. It's just a bunch of super smart people showing clients that they get how the digital world changes, and that they can master those changes. Rather than taking the execution as the model of the future, business should look at the concept behind what these firms are trying to achieve. Proof of their abilities.

Agency Social Media Strategy: Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

Five digital trends to watch for 2009 Edelman Digital:
“Devouring media is out. Selective ignorance and friends as quality filters are in.”

Recent conversation with agency CEO:
“If another person says the word ‘Twitter’ I’m going to explode!”

Agencies are having a tough time with social media. It’s not all that different from the troubles they were having with the Web 10 years ago. We all realize the challenges with social media: it’s hard to manage, it’s hard to sell and it’s near impossible to make any money on the deal.

I have a simple suggestion for these struggle agencies: Forget social media. Don’t ask about it, don’t jump into it and don’t tell clients about it.

If you’re one of the agencies that do get it, you can skip the rest. But for the traditionals, read on.

Do what you do best: branding, advertising and media placements. This is what you’ve made a good living from over the past 50 years. Stick to your basics and just let this social stuff pass.

Forget all the blogs out there, too. There’s just one blog you need to read and that’s the Ad Contrarian. Just follow Bob. I think you’ll relate to him really well and he’ll put things into proper perspective for you.

With a little luck, everything will go back to normal in a few years. Maybe we’ll find a new advertising model where the 30-second spot still dominates. Top-down branding could make a comeback as the economic downturn opens the door for new totalitarian movements. Maybe, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

In the mean time, let the social media craziness go to the smaller guys, the independents and entrepreneurs, groups without lots of overhead and who aren’t really a threat to you anyway. That way no one will blame you if the social stuff goes awry. Of course, if something good does happen, just let the brand take credit.

And if your clients ask about, just tell them how much extra work it will mean for them, personally, and they probably won’t ask again. Just don’t tell them to watch companies who are making it work.

Sit back, close your ears, and keep your head down. After all, it took over 100 years to bring GM to its knees so you should have at least a couple of years left.

And the winner is…

Congratulations to R/GA as Adweek’s Digital Agency of the Year.  R/GA is a great example of a company tapping into the power of digital by building platforms instead of focusing on attention.

And congratulations, too, to Adweek’s  U.S. Agency of the Year, Crispin Porter Bogusky. CPB does amazing work and is as good at getting attention for its clients as it is at getting attention for itself. It truly walks the walk.

Now, of course, there’s backlash at giving Digital its own AOY. Funny, anointing a media agency of the year somehow doesn’t elicit that much controversy. That itself says a lot. Brian Morrissey and Spyro Kourtis ask the question “Do we need a Digital AOY?”

I think we shouldn’t ask “Do we need fewer awards?” We should say “We need MORE awards.” Personally, I think Adweek should be more like Major League Baseball.

We need a Most Valuable Agency Award. We need an Agency Cy Young Award. We need Gold Glove winners, by specialty (PR, Direct, Search, Event, you name it). We need Agency Rookie of the Year Award and Agency Comeback Player of the Year. We need Best Manager for Planners.

Why be stingy? The big elephants will always get their due, we shouldn’t worry about hurting their feelings. Spread the wealth around and give credit where credit is due.