Hasta La Creative!

Random Culture is pointing to interactive agencies with reels. The following reel is from Reflex Group.

Interactive or no, I like an agency willing to share on YouTube. Who wants to ask to see a reel anymore? Googling for it is the natural state of things today.

Bob Greenberg, CEO of R/GA told Adweek why his agency is opening an office in San Francisco.

“We opened in San Francisco not based on business but based on talent,” he said. “Talent is the biggest issue facing agencies today. It’s the biggest open creative and technology talent pool other than New York.”

“It’s not so much the agencies but the Yahoo!s and Googles,” he said. “All the technology companies have many potential hires for us.”

R/GA is looking at office space in San Francisco that could house as many as 80 employees. By the end of 2008, the shop expects to employ roughly 25-30 workers in San Francisco.

One of them will be Mauro Cavalletti, who is returning to R/GA as executive creative director after three years at Organic and most recently AKQA, where he was group creative director.

Louise Story of The New York Times takes the robe off Naked, the communications planning agency with offices in London and New York.

Here’s a bit about how the firm is structured and the role they play in clients’ lives:

Unlike many ad agencies, Naked does not create ads or purchase the space for them from media companies. Executives at Naked say that they are “media neutral,” meaning that they are indifferent to where the advertising dollars of their clients are spent; this, they say, distinguishes them from agencies that might tend to steer clients toward television, for example.

“We do not have any predisposition to recommend any channel,” said Paul Woolmington, a founding partner of Naked New York. “That is something that cannot be underestimated.”

Naked usually does not replace a company’s lineup of creative agencies and media buyers. Instead, Naked works like a consulting firm, advising how to use the regular agencies.

In other words, Naked disrupts the apple cart. I’m sure the “partner” agencies just love that.

Story’s story also gets to the shop’s attitude, if one can call it that. She says Naked’s planners regularly tell clients “that their ad campaigns have been failing miserably.” And Paul Woolmington, a founding partner of Naked New York, uses words like “transformation” and “movement” to describe Naked’s work. At Naked, staff are “brilliant misfits” who want to “liberate marketing,” he said.

The firm has even published a limited-edition book with a list of its principles, called “naked truths.” I’d like to read that book. This firm clearly has balls.

Austin-based agency T3, The Think Tank, was recently featured in USA Today for its communal approach to raising kids. “It takes an agency to raise a child,” the employees say.

Here’s an interesting note from Adweek:

Hyundai Motor America last week assigned former national lead agency The Richards Group a “mini-campaign” for next fall through its Eastern regional dealers association, said Joel Ewanick, vp, marketing.

“I saw something we liked,” said Ewanick, who declined to disclose spending on the campaign. “It suits our strategic and tactical needs at the moment.”

A couple of facts for you:

– The Hyundai account was at Richards before it moved to Goodby.
– Ewanick worked at Richards as a Brand Planning Director before he was hired by Hyundai. He also worked at Porsche when Goodby was their agency.

C’mon guys. Get this crap worked out. You’re killing the resale value of my Santa Fe if you can’t move the brand forward.

– True to form, Bob Garfield reviews a fairly good Sprint commercial and then rips the shit out of it for what he deems dizzying camera work. Bob, you almost Puked? Seriously. You need to see a doctor or…

Just today I received a comment on my blog from the very people who were behind the amazing Artificial Dummies I posted a while ago. They’re the great minds of TODO, and the heads up was from their very own Andrea.

TODO is, in their own words, an interaction and media design agency. Stablished in Italy, this group has a whole lot going for them. Kickass interactive works, a kickass website, a kickass video collection and even better, an amazing level of creativity.

At the risk of being a bit repetitive, the video I left you above is an explanation of the almighty Artificial Dummies. Beautiful music and a subtle explanation on the little creatures.

Still I urge you to check out their websites. Their work is really a pleasure to watch and imagine.

Thanks a lot Andrea on the heads up! Much success!.

Links:
TODO.
TODO at vimeo.

Paul Johnson, writing for Ad Age’s Small Agency Diary makes a good point about interactive capabilities at traditional shops.

There are a lot of ad agencies talking a mean game and touting their capabilities in pitches. To paraphrase the head of a web-development firm (after I plied him with a few cocktails), 90% of the small agencies out there chasing interactive business have one guy on staff who knows anything, and if they’re lucky maybe a Flash developer. According to my buddy, they’re subcontracting all their development work to him, and he’s growing at 50%. And the word from my friends on the client side is that every agency knocking on their doors can show you at least one respectable interactive program. Just don’t scratch too deep.

Isn’t that the history of our business revealed anew?

We always have the capabilities to answer any client problem, whether we do or not. For, no one’s going miss out on that incremental income. We’ll figure it out back at the shop, we say to each other in the taxi to the airport.

Get a load of the repositioning memo:

Not so long ago in our industry, the holy grail was an ad that “broke through the clutter,” was “attention getting,” “memorable,” “persuasive” (ads usually measure by a copy test of an ad unit).

The We Are Gigantic site’s contact section says “We’ve moved” and a telephone number leads a company called Tremendous, which, following We Are Gigantic, is pretty funny.