Hasta La Creative!

“He looked like Jesus.” This is the quote Fast Company uses to begin its new cover paean to Crispin Porter + Bogusky. You can imagine the hockey-haired fellow in question: Alex Bogusky, described as a dead ringer for the Son of God. The source of the quote is an art director depicted as “a blushing 27-year-old hipster in gray New Balance sneakers and a zip-up hoodie.” Who is this smitten fawn? Poor thing. The article by writer Danielle Sacks is ostensibly about Crispin’s Herculean task to make Microsoft cool again after getting the snot beaten out of it by Apple’s cool products and ads. Whenever Fast Company covers advertising agencies, the results are uneven. Let us take a moment to reflect on the JWT story two ago (also written by Sacks) with Ty Montague and Rosemarie Ryan sledgehammering walls. This time around, Bogusky gets full-on adulation from Sacks. He’s a “mechanic of cool” and “for nearly a decade, the unhip have flocked to Bogusky in the hope that a little of his mystique might rub off.” Bogusky has one line that will really have the Crispin-hating hordes in a lather: “Life conspires to beat the rebel out of you.” But the most interesting part of a pretty standard puff piece is probably Chuck Porter laying into MDC, saying it shouldn’t be a publicly traded company and “is not designed at this point to deliver ongoing quarter-on-quarter growth.” And Chuck is MDC’s “chief strategist.” Ouch. Oh, and by the way, Crispin’s Microsoft work is due to break in July. UPDATE: The story has now been posted online.

—Posted by Brian Morrissey