BREAKING: Denny’s CMO Clarifies That 3-Year-Old Mascot Is Not, In Fact, a Piece of Crap

Since ours is an era of decreasing attention spans and diminished capacity for nuance, we are not particularly surprised to learn that multiple news outlets have recently run stories about how Denny’s not-new “mascot” kind of resembles a literal piece of crap.

This particular blog is all about the ad industry, so we are used to trafficking in stories that wouldn’t be of interest to the general public. But Mashable, Fox News, CBS, USA Today and quite a few more classic news organizations have, over the past two days, reported on the fact that one guy on Twitter compared the Sausage icon to a “turd.”

Mashable seems to have gotten it all started when someone happened upon said tweet, and then everybody else piled on. It’s kind of amusing to compare the headlines as writers try to offer their own twists on this very basic viral take in order to get the clicks and the advertising dollars. It’s like they’re producing copy or something.

A couple of problems with the story, though: the mascot isn’t new, and it isn’t a turd.

From Denny’s chief marketing officer John Dillon:

“Denny’s launched the ‘Grand Slams’ web series in 2014, and ‘Sausage’ has been an important part of the family since then, along with his counterparts ‘Egg,’ ‘Pancake’ and ‘Bacon.’ That said, Sausage has been looking for an opportunity to out-shadow his breakfast counterparts for a while, so it was only a matter of time before he tried to jump into the spotlight. While this unflattering comparison was never in his plan, he won’t let it stop him from enjoying his 15 minutes of fame.

We do not have any plans to change how Sausage looks because…well, he looks exactly how a breakfast sausage should look. And of course, we’d hate to give Sausage a complex because we—and his Grand Slams family—love him just the way he is!”

For context—because why in the hell are we posting on this in the first place—Denny’s collaborated with Robot Chicken production company Stoopid Buddy Studios and its creative agency of record EP & Co. (formerly known as Erwin Penland) to develop the Grand Slam characters more than three years ago.

Chief creative officer Con Williamson later told Adweek that it was all about embodying the brand’s snarky online persona. And it paid off with millions of views on YouTube. “It’s almost like we’re playing with our food,” Williamson said at the time. “We don’t have to put the product in there, because they are the product.”

We would mention the very serious events happening throughout the world right now, but suffice to say they are many. And our current digital advertising model has reduced organizations like the TODAY Show and even The Associated Press to reaching out for comment on whether or not this old mascot is supposed to look like poop. How meta, given the headline on this post.

To use another stock phrase rendered completely meaningless by The Internet: what a time to be alive.

McCann Japan’s AI Creative Director Suggests ‘School Motif’ and ‘Objectification’ for Girl Group’s Music Video

Remember AI-CD ??

McCann Japan introduced the artificial intelligence creative director last year and subsequently pitted it against real human Mitsuru Kuramoto in a competition to create an ad for Mondelez Japan brand Clorets Mint Tab (Kuramoto won).

For its latest experiment, McCann Japan turned to AI-CD ? to create a music video for Kawaii pop girl group Magical Punchline. To shake things up even more, the music video will be created before the actual music track even exists.

AI-CD ? was programmed to create “the optimal visual expression” for the group’s new song, based on what The Drum describes as “a structural analysis of music-centered commercials added to its database.”

As it turns out, artificially intelligent creative director developed an approach that might make you a little uncomfortable. AI-CD ? recommended creating “a stimulating video that conveys hunting instinct through a tone of ennui” by “using a school motif” and “objectification.”

Uhh…

The approach is made all the more disturbing by the young age of members of the group, which was launched last year by Japanese idol Rena Sato with the concept of “a ‘girls fantasy’ mixing elements of Harry Potter and Dragon Quest into her own fantasy world.”

According to The Drum, McCann Millenials is now working on shooting a music video based on the instructions, again without any sort of backing track to go on. Can we maybe get an alternative strategy, AI-CD ??

Magical Punchline’s music label, Pony Canyon, is going plans release the completed music video, sans music, ahead of the song itself and McCann Millenials is documenting the process with a behind-the-scenes video.

We’re more than a little perplexed by this whole exercise, to say the least.

But before you pin too much of the blame on AI-CD ?, keep in mind it created the instructions based on “music-centered commercials” made by humans. So it’s hard to say how much the misogynist approach owes to past work by actual people and how much can be attributed to the peculiarities of the AI-CD ?’s analysis. At the very least, it shows the limitations and drawbacks of artificially intelligent strategy devoid of any sort of human social filter. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect is that AI-CD ? is designed to create what it has determined people want.

We imagine the end product (much like this whole premise, really) resembling something out of Black Mirror.

Who Tweeted It: Jordan Zimmerman, Gary Vee, or This ‘Madison Avenue Donald Trump’ Parody Account?

Twitter is the worst. We would give that title to LinkedIn, but apparently some people enjoy perusing the content marketing, aka fancy spam.

It’s still a pretty decent place to follow breaking/developing news if you know how to cultivate your feed (which takes way too much time and effort). And then some rare people who are not us succeed in the making of the jokes. But most of what you’ll see during any given Twitter session is a disorienting mix of self-promotion and political screeds. And there are nowhere near six degrees of separation between the #content you want and the neo-Nazi cheering section.

We mention this because, after a while, certain accounts and their tweets really start to blur together. Especially if they come from marketing thought leaders.

Let’s take two of our faves, Jordan Zimmerman and Gary Vaynerchuk. These two guys have a good bit in common: they both run successful agencies, they are both fond of athletic contests, and they both sell themselves as brands above and beyond their main businesses and/or hustles. The key angle in both cases is RAW AUTHENTIC TAKES and words of inspiration shared with hundreds of thousands of followers every day.

They say what they think and they mean what they say and they will never, ever apologize. Kinda like our president!

On that note, here are a bunch of recent, randomly organized messages from the two current kings of agency thought leadership along with others from a parody account called MadAveTrump that applies The Donald’s famously all-over-the-place personality to the ad industry.

Now, without cheating, let’s see how many you can guess. Who tweeted the following: Gary V, Jordan Z, or Madison Avenue POTUS?

1. Life isn’t fair. So what?

2. 1000-1 … no problem

3. When THE BOSS is ON VACATION you still have to deal with my TWEETS because I DO NOT STOP EVER and NEITHER WILL YOU!!

4. Do whatever it takes.

5. You’ll never get where you’re going if you don’t know where you’re going.

6. Shook things up to get more New Yorkers running the show. And who doesn’t like New Yorkers?

7. It’s time to pitch to win. No more pitching to lose like our last chief!

<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”0; URL=https://mobile.twitter.com/i/nojs_router?path=%2Fgaryvee%2Fstatus%2F904868587063693312?>8. Once you accept … everything is your fault. life becomes a lot more fun and you achieve a lot more

9. Program your brain to shut out the negative noise. I don’t listen to naysayers, and neither should you….

10. I stood in front of our chairman, the former CEO, and said it was the best eclipse ever. My exec assistant laughed. It was hilarious.

11. Do that! … whatever that was that just passed through your mind! Go ..

12. Got terrific RFPs in today. NYC HQ packed tonight. LABOR DAY is for hustlers.

13. Heartache & discontent come along in life most often because it’s easier to be the one life happens to than the one who makes life happpen….

14. Our TX office wanted less top-heavy mgmt structure. Now they’re not so sure. But you will always need your CEO!

15. You’re Gonna Die- so do something about it

Were those as confusing for you as they were for us? In all honesty, while writing this dumb post we challenged each other to figure out who sent which tweet and often got it wrong!

Here are the answers:

1. Jordan

2. Gary

3. Trump

4. Jordan

5. Jordan

6. Trump

7. Trump

8. Gary

9. Jordan

10. Trump

11. Gary

12. Trump

13. Jordan

14. Trump

15. Gary

OK, maybe the Trump ones were a little more obvious than the others. And maybe the idea for this post came when that account (created by some brave, anonymous commenter) started trying to get our attention.

But we still had at least 20 minutes of fun at work while poring through these messages, and we didn’t even go back very far!! The exercise made us think we all get the world we deserve, collectively speaking. Like in the socialist way that all three of these guys would hate.

Oh also, the replies to these tweets are sometimes the best part if you want to feel especially useless. Your turn, Tom Goodwin.

Longtime Commenter Bill Crandall Takes Flack for LinkedIn Post Comparing Hurricanes Harvey and Sandy

So, you know Bill Crandall, right? Hell, we all know Bill.

He’s not just the CMO and founding partner of Stedman Crandall Business Development, he’s also a regular in the comment threads on a whole bunch of sites including this one and AdAge and some others we can’t think of at the moment. And he really never gave a shit whether the comments were anonymous, because he always used his real name and picture.

Those are some balls. As his Twitter bio puts it, he is “a man among girls.”

But his real favorite platform is LinkedIn, and yesterday he got some pushback from his connections for a post that compared Hurricane Harvey—which is still ravaging Texas and Louisiana—to the 2012 weather incident known as “Super Storm Sandy.”

Here’s a screenshot of the since-deleted post.

Soooooo, you can maybe see why people got a little pissed about this one.

First, it’s just not accurate to say that New York, Connecticut and New Jersey were all under water. Lots of areas did indeed get thoroughly screwed, including certain neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Manhattan and Staten Island for the NYC folks. Thousands of people were left without power, many homes were damaged, and public transportation didn’t fully recover for weeks.

It was bad, but it was nowhere close to what’s been happening in Texas over the past few days. Oh, and that is an image from the movie The Day After Tomorrow. There was no damage done to Jake Gyllenhall or the Statue of Liberty in 2012.

But the comments were all pretty negative, with people calling Bill insensitive and such. So he deleted the post and followed it up today with an explanation of sorts. Not an apology.

Now, this is really a different argument. Ted Cruz did indeed claim that the Sandy relief bill was loaded with “pork,” and even Chris Christie now strongly argues that he was wrong because Cruz is an asshole among assholes who does everything in the interest of shamelessly promoting himself and gets away with it because it’s not possible to primary him from the right in Texas.

And yes, anyone like John Cornyn who votes against bills to help other states recover from big storms and then begs for federal assistance when it happens at home is a typical piece of shit politician. This is not a strictly partisan thing, as Long Island Republican Rep Peter King proved by calling Cruz out. The only people defending Ted in that case were his former comms dude and fellow residents of “Kekistan.”

But again, this isn’t really the argument Bill was making in the first post, which was why people got all pissy about it. So far the only engagement on his follow-up comes from some guy who retweets Donald Trump Jr.

We haven’t reached out to Bill directly because we feel like he summed up his thoughts pretty clearly in the post today.

AI Creative Directors, Meet Alexa the Receptionist

In March of 2016, McCann Erickson Japan welcomed an AI creative director entitled AI-CD ?. In June, the agency pitted the AI CD against Homo sapien creative director Mitsuru Kuramoto to see who could develop the better ad and then asked Japanese audiences to weigh in.

But creative director isn’t the only agency position artificial intelligence is gunning for. They want your receptionist jobs, too.

The innovation team at agency VCCP decided to conduct a little AI experiment, employing Amazon Echo’s Alexa as a receptionist. After a developer and copywriter to develop Alexa to handle answering simple questions and integrated with the agency’s system and employee database,  VCCP decide to make things more interesting by programming Alexa with three different personalities based on the OCEAN personality model of five basic traits.

So how did this quirky version of Alexa do?

Out of 407 interactions, the AI system misunderstood 38 requests, answered 104 questions, successfully welcomed 34 visitors (and also cracked a few jokes, flirted with coworkers and whispered the wifi password upon request). Unsurprisingly, people preferred Bubbly Alexa to Neurotic Alexa. VCCP learned the difficulties in communicating brand tone through such a system and that human receptionists are irreplaceable (for now).

According to VCCP innovation director Adrian Gans, Alexa “is limited by her voice, by the need to trigger her skills with an invocation, by the linear nature of her conversations and by her tendency to get distracted by background noise. And she really is not intelligent. Every interaction had to be carefully scripted.”

So by our calculations, the robot takeover should be at least 24 hours away.

Fox Sports Pulled ‘Children of the Corn’ Themed College Football Ad at Request of Nebraska University

As it turns out, the athletic department at Nebraska University was less than thrilled to have its football team compared with a Stephen King novel about a wrathful child cult.

Last week, W+K New York launched a series of 14 school-specific spots promoting Fox Sports’ college football coverage. These depictions included “Wolverine” for the University of Michigan,” “Flag” for University of Maryland” and “Blizzard” for Penn State University.

For Nebraska University, W+K New York chose to reference the aforementioned Stephen King novel, which was subsequently adapted into a 1984 horror film. The spot opens on a seemingly endless corn field, as the voice over states, “When you’re lost in a cornfield, everything looks the same for miles…and miles…and miles” as a football player plows through rows of corn. “Until finally, you come upon a circle of empty ground,” the voiceover continues as Nebraska University players form a circle and ominous music plays, “and for a second you feel relief, until you realize this is where the sacrifices are made.”

The implication did not sit well with the university’s athletic department, which requested Fox Sports no longer run the ad.

“It’s not really the direction we want the brand to go in,” senior associate athletic director for marketing and communications David Witty told Big Red Today.

He added that the school would be glad to collaborate on future promotional efforts. According to the publication, Nebraska University’s athletic department provided the uniforms for the spot without knowledge of the ad’s content.

A graduate of the university informed us students of the school, and Nebraska natives, are particularly sensitive to such negative depictions. Fox Sports planned to run each of the 14 ads in a regional broadcast strategy but decided to pull the ad following Nebraska University’s request. The network declined to comment on the decision.

‘Busy Is a 4-Letter Word’ in The Richards Group’s Odd Brand Social Experiment for Canada Dry

Back in January, mcgarrybowen launched a new campaign for Canada Dry ginger ale, designed to “help consumers achieve ideal relaxation, using the calming qualities and real ginger taste of Canada Dry Ginger Ale,” according to director of marketing and content Chanda Ridley.

Now The Richards Group has released a digital spot entitled “Busy is a 4-Letter Word” which applies the brand’s arbiter of relaxation approach to a social experiment which stretches it well past its breaking point.

“Busy is a 4-Letter Word” opens on the message “Some of us loving being busy,” followed by interviews with a group of chronically busy individuals. They describe being busy as “achieving,” “winning,” “successful,” and “winning.” But their friends and loved ones don’t see things the same way and have different definitions for the word.

The busy-loving individuals are confronted with these alternate definitions from the important people in their lives and things get predictably emotional. But while tackling the issue of business and relaxation felt fine for the brand in a pair of lighthearted broadcast ads, it feels incredibly unnatural here, particularly when the spot tells viewers “Stop being busy. Start enjoying the things that matter most.”

Because we’re pretty sure the answer to that isn’t ginger ale. While the message is perhaps well-intentioned, it all just goes to show that the branded social experiment can only go so far before it feels inauthentic and, well, kind of bizarre. We won’t even get into the irony of overworked agency folks working on a campaign about being busy.

The campaign also includes a social media element, influencer outreach, and further digital components, as well as a quiz that tells you what type of “busy” you are on the campaign landing page.

Ad Nerd/Abstract Painter Chuck Hipsher Has Lots of Thoughts to Share on Creativity

Remember Chuck Hipsher? The former creative director at FCB, Campbell Ewald, TBWA etc. has written a couple of posts for this blog including one arguing that ads are not, in fact, art.

He would know. The “ad nerd” is an abstract painter who joined the agency world after winning an AdAge contest and scoring a subsequent gig at JWT New York. He went on to work on various campaigns, specializing in car brands, and he’s currently creative director on Michelin at TBWA’s shopper marketing division The Integer Group.

Beyond his ad agency work, Hipsher continues to paint in his signature “gestural abstraction” style, portfolio here.

The CD recently sent us a link to a video he made illustrating his approach to the creative process that some readers might enjoy on a rainy Friday (at least in New York).

As noted, this little movie was inspired by designer Bruce Mau’sIncomplete Manifesto for Growth,” which has achieved something approaching legendary status since its publication in 1998.

And the music is by Beach House, no strangers to the world of ad agency shenanigans.

MRY Shows Off Its Awesome La Croix Collection, Manages to Survive Another New York Summer

So, Publicis Groupe’s digital agency MRY has been somewhat quiet in recent months after a lot of goings on in 2016. We had maybe even started to wonder how they might be doing when, upon scrolling through the old Instant Gram yesterday, we came a cross a sponsored video post from MRY itself! For us? Really??

The agency spent a good bit of the summer talking up its interns on social, but this one is a little different, and MRY previewed the short with a dramatic GIF a few days ago.

The video went live last week, and it’s kind of a little agency profile centered on everyone’s shared love of the Why Is This So Trendy All of A Sudden seltzer brand La Croix.

And of course they made a Westeros reference too.

See, this looks fun. We were into the burp and the shotgunning La Croix scene…

So what has been going on with MRY? To get all Negative Nancy on you, last year’s losses of Visa and T-Mobile hit the agency pretty hard, and quite a few leaders left, including CEO, Millennial whisperer and actual nice guy Matt Britton (who became chief executive of martech company CrowdTap early this year).

Last summer, MRY put its office on the market and later moved into the West Side headquarters of Zenith Optimedia.

Jason Whiting, former global managing director of Huge, replaced Britton but stepped down in March after just a year; he appears to have relocated to North Carolina to serve as president of PR firm Pace Communications. We were never able to reach MRY regarding his departure, and the agency has not yet named a new CEO.

Anyway, this promo post was pretty well targeted to us, and the fact that Publicis spent money on it implies that they want to put MRY back out there as a/the solution to your clients’ digital marketing challenges.

Also, La Croix really is just flavored sparkling water. No big deal.

Martin Sorrell Understands Snapchat Way Better Than You Dumb Kids

The moment we realized Snapchat is totally fucked occurred during vacation this summer, when we saw a couple wearing the Snap glasses while kayaking. It was kind of like wearing a hat that reads “TOURIST” in all caps.

Were they recording the whole experience? Were they putting dancing hot dog filters on it? Were they sending short videos of us idiots to their friends for the lulz?

Now that Snap’s stock is tanking and brands are using Instagram stories twice as often, one would think Evan regrets not taking that $3 billion offer from the Zuck.

But the company does have at least one defender: Sir Martin Sorrell.

Today, he told CNBC that WPP plans to double its investment in Snap for the year, making him one of very few executives currently bullish on the company’s prospects. He did clarify that WPP spends more than 10 times as much on Facebook buys, colorfully calling Snap “a flea on the elephant’s backside.”

But he still thinks the company can be “competitive as the third force” beyond, presumably, Facebook and YouTube.

On that note, earlier today the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Google will be following Facebook/Instagram’s lead in creating a Snap copycat called “Stamp.” The “stories” on this platform will consist of “several swipeable slides encompassing text, photos and video,” according to WSJ’s sources. And it will draw from Google’s all-powerful search machine, so it won’t be so difficult to follow people or find the sweet content. Holy crap, that is annoying.

Like any businessman, Sorrell sometimes seems to contradict himself, and less than a month ago he told CNBC that Facebook was “very successfully countering Snap” via Instagram stories. But this investment will definitely work out for WPP.

Image via

This Junior Copywriter Is Trying to Create a List of Contact Info for Every Creative in the Country

Do you want an agency gig? Of course you do. Why else would you be reading this blog??

As we all know, people go to great lengths to land a paying job—hopefully with benefits—in this industry. There was the Lego application, the cover letter in cookie form, and, of course, the guy who posed as a donut delivery man. (Never did hear back from him…)

Young copywriter Billy Lucas has bigger plans. Since May, he been working on “A Creative’s Guide to the Galaxy,” or the kind of thing one does with a good amount of free time.

In short, it is an ambitious attempt to list pretty much every notable creative in the country by city and agency, including links to each individual’s portfolio and email address. And Lucas acknowledges that it could make things a little weird.

“If you want to land that dream creative job, you’ll probably have to write some awkward introduction emails to creative directors,” he told us. “Compliment their work, leave a link to your portfolio, cross your fingers, and keep refreshing that inbox.”

It’s true. We can’t imagine how many such emails prominent CDs get every week. Lucas continued, “The Creative’s Guide to the Galaxy is a place where young creatives can go to click around and see who is making the kind of work they want to make, where they work, and a link to email them. All that’s left for you to do is nail down that email subject heading and some clever body copy.”

This may sound a little extreme, but Lucas made sure to give each of the dozens and dozens of people on this list an “opt-out” button in the form of a disclaimer encouraging people to email him if they want their names removed.

“As the website expands into more cities, the hope is it becomes a tool and a resource for everyone in the industry,” he said. “The more feedback it gets, the more useful it can be for all of us.”

In conclusion: “If this website only helps just one person land their dream job, well then, hopefully it’s me.”

The site remains a work in progress, but it does include quite a few listings for New York and Los Angeles.

And we are happy to report that Billy did, indeed, score a gig as a junior copywriter at Phenomenon in L.A. No word on whether this Guide was the deciding factor.

Reddit Users Agree: Weird McDonald’s VR Post Is Totally an Ad

In another case of Reddit serving as the definitive underbelly of the internet, a post that was briefly trending has sparked a big debate about whether it is or is not an ad.

Less than a day ago, user vaskemaskine set the ball rolling with a simple post in the gaming subreddit: “Made my delivery driver’s night by showing him VR for the first time.”


Many readers noted the strategic placement of the McDonald’s delivery in the image and concluded: this must be an ad.

As one person put it, “Wine. Big Mac. Invite delivery guy in. Take photo of him while he can’t see. Post to interweb. Weird.”

Because this is Reddit and half of the users are deeply under the influence, there were lots of conspiratorial comments about bots and placements and upvotes and a little bit of pride over the group’s ability to see through what was SO OBVIOUSLY an ad, duh.

Holy crap, these guys really, really get into it.

For her part, though, the user behind the post did a pretty good job of defending himself as something other than a soulless McDonald’s flack who posts paid ads without properly labeling them:

[He was from] Uber Eats, so I guess he had time before picking up another order. He saw my friend playing when I opened the door and said he’d never tried VR before so I invited him to try it out quickly. I never get tired of seeing people’s jaws hit the floor when they first put the headset on!

We feel somewhat confident that this is not part of some big Omnicom plan to have McDonald’s infiltrate the unsafe space where you spend hours discussing games and girls, but now that we look at all these responses we are starting to doubt ourselves.

Is this what Reddit does to people? More importantly, would this even make sense for a brand like McDonald’s??

Blind Items: This Magazine Really Didn’t Tie the Room Together

As we near the end of another long, somehow both slow and exhausting week in the world of advertising, it’s time for another entry in the Blind Items series.

Today we have two dudes whose alleged behavior does not always endear them to coworkers.

  • One creative leader at an agency you know is a very visual guy. He is, in fact, a little obsessive about the way things look, and we might even give him an armchair diagnosis of OCD. Why? The agency in question recently received a certain honorable designation from a certain publication, and there was much rejoicing (yay), but this person was a little less excited than other staffers. In addition to being in charge of all the campaigns his employer produces for clients, he is also the self-designated “Head of Vibe” for its largest office. And he didn’t like the vibe of this magazine, because the color scheme on its cover clashed with his chosen tastes in interior decor. So he refused to let anyone display the issue in the office. The agency’s PR team was understandably irritated, but it’s all good, because he was busy prepping some SICK Instagram posts and watching the likes roll in, bro.
  • A second guy with “chief” in his title at another big agency has made some enemies in the worst possible places. The agency holding company’s diversity director recently accused him of making unspecified, racially insensitive comments, and a subsequent internal investigation revealed that several other employees also took issue with homophobic jokes he’s made in the past. Apparently, this person has been so insulated by his executive roles and his 30-plus years in the industry that he still doesn’t realize the year is 2017. According to our source, these claims were serious enough to warrant an external legal counsel, and a quick investigation led the agency to hire an outside firm for representation in the matter. This will almost certainly not end well, but the agency would understandably rather settle than have its dirty laundry aired in public.

George Tannenbaum Has Really Had It With Gary Vee’s ‘Stupid Self-Centered BS’

The personal politics of advertising are such a great source for the LOLz.

Case in point: Vee comma Gary.

Dude knows how to divide a room like nobody else, and our favorite curmudgeonly copywriter slash comment critic is quite done with all of that, thank you very fucking much.

Here’s George Tannenbaum:

That was pretty harsh.

Tannenbaum (who currently works as ECD/copy chief on Ogilvy’s IBM account) later clarified in the responses to his post that he does not “follow” Gary on LinkedIn—rather, he simply finds himself inundated with Vaynerchuk’s takes because, whenever someone you’re connected to on LI “likes” or comments on something, it will show up in your feed whether you want it to or not.

So quite a few people know both George and Gary, either directly or hopefully.

The comments on the thread run the gamut from “Way to trash someone and use the f bomb on a professional site” and “George, a little more decorum, please” to “I thought his persona was created by Christopher Guest” and this gem: “most people I see sharing his posts, be it on LI or FB, are the people least likely to achieve anything.”

Another instant classic:

It almost reminds us of a vintage comment section on this here web log.

We do have to wonder which Vaynerchuk post set George off in the first place. Maybe it was this one in which Gary asked his audience whether he should just up and buy a football team.

We have no idea how cool it will be. But we also know that VaynerMedia is not it, because Gary has acquired some other businesses lately like female-focused publisher PureWow.

For context, though: Robert Wood Johnson IV bought the Jets 17 years ago for $635 million, and team’s estimated value today is nearly double that.

When we asked George for further comment, he gave us this cryptic quote from “The Captive Mind,” Czeslaw Milosz’s book about living under Communism in the early ’50s. The author attributes it to “an ancient Jew from Galacia.”

“When someone is honestly 55% right, that’s very good and there’s no use wrangling. And if someone is 60% right, it’s wonderful, it’s great luck, and let him thank God. But what’s to be said about 75% right? Wise people say this is suspicious. Well, and what about 100% right? Whoever says he’s 100% right is a fanatic, a thug, and the worst kind of rascal.”

Final tip: LinkedIn does appear to have a “block” option that prevents one person from seeing another person’s “shared content.”

Study Finds That Creatives Are, Like, the Happiest Employees on Earth

Oh hey, it’s another Summer Friday!

Last week we posted on a super scientific study by our bros over at CareerCast which found that web developers are the next ad industry superstars, creative directors be damned.

It was enough to get us kind of depressed, especially when the general response from readers was some variation on “fucking duh.”

Now, however, we have somehow managed to locate a NEW study from staffing company Robert Half and Happiness Works indicating that people who work in the creative business are happier than those in any other discipline!

This despite all that job insecurity, existential dread and deep regrets over your college major.

Uh, nope. We did not know that.

Here’s a variation on that key line: those who do creative work “reported the highest levels of on-the-job satisfaction and interest in their work, compared to employees in the accounting and finance, administrative, legal, and technology fields.”

Yes, even tech.

In case you doubt the validity of this study, it surveyed more than 12,000 Americans and Canadians who work in creative and marketing jobs, so there! Staffing firm The Creative Group also conducted a separate survey in which 400 American ad/marketing executives were asked to do a bit of the old free association by describing their companies in one word.

Here’s a helpful word cloud…

Diverse? Really?? Have these 400 men and women read any trade publications recently, or does that mean diversity in terms of, like, life experience?

The top “positive” words provided by agency execs included:

  • Entrepreneurial
  • Futuristic
  • Hardworking
  • Intense
  • Nimble
  • Playful
  • Risky
  • Vocal

Does the last one concern speaking up to bosses? After running this blog for the last three years, we have some serious doubts about that.

Marketing leaders (not clear what the difference is here, really, so we presume it’s agency vs. client-side) even characterized their work environments as “caring” and “dependable” and “inclusive.”

On the flip side, here are some of the negative terms volunteered by these lucky folks: aggressive; complacent; hectic; reserved; struggling.

See, that sounds more like it. In summary, people like to lie when participating in surveys, so you have to grade them on a big curve. Kind of like Instagram feeds!

This Production Company Made an Incognito Hip-Hop Video Over 2 Years of Commercial Shoots

Before today, we had never really asked ourselves what the hell production crews do during the downtime on a commercial shoot. That might be because we assumed the answer would be “get drunk” and/or “write emails.”

But then a reader alerted us to a project in which Portland-based Droptree Productions used the time spent on two years’ worth of commercial shoots to make … a hip-hop video.

Normally we would not promote a five-minute clip of white guys rapping, but this one is clearly made for all the ad dorks out there. See if you can pick out some of the spots they worked on.

The track is a bit long for our tweetdeck attention spans, but they had to get all those sick shots in, bro!

You might not be into the Beastie-style rhymes and production on this tune, but the lyrics are all about the biz with lines like “Pro tip two: when dealing with your client, learn to push back without seeming defiant!” Kind of awkward, but it works.

Oh, and check out the throwback site with the comic sans.

Disclaimer: we haven’t really kept up with crossover hip-hop since 2008 beyond Run the Jewels, and everybody’s grandma listens to them now. Approaching 40 is fun.

Blind Items: No Booze for You!

Happy Summer Friday to all in the agency world.

Today we return to the old reliable “blind items” in which we share unofficial news that’s simply too good to pass up.

  • First, a certain New York agency led by a very visible executive has lost some accounts and let a few people go in recent months … but this week its employees are most upset about a big change to the annual company party. Instead of the usual branded bash, 2017’s event will consist of a modest gathering in a nearby park at which employees are required to bring their own food and supplies. Perhaps most importantly, there will be no alcohol provided. Ain’t no party like a sober party, but the agency’s CEO says things are great, nothing to see here…
  • Speaking of reputations, another U.S. network offering PR, creative and marketing services faces a challenge called Glassdoor. According to our sources, the company has gone so far as to “offer prize incentives for employees to leave positive reviews” on the anonymous job site. The nature of those incentives are not clear at the moment, but given the fact that current employees describe the atmosphere there as “political,” “combative” and “downright ugly,” it might be a smart investment.
  • In more serious news, it’s 2017 and gender relations are still a big problem in certain parts of the agency world. One creative leader recently left his job after a somewhat lengthy tenure, and several current and former female employees who worked under him have since reached out to tell us why. According to six different women, he got fired due to “multiple sexual harassment claims” and accusations regarding an inappropriate relationship with one or more younger women on his team. A source was offended by the idea that he may have left the job on his own terms, but declined to comment on the record.
  • Another creative leader at a big-name agency has allegedly been suspended after “showing up high at awards shows” and behaving erratically at other company events. According to our sources, this executive—who has been the subject of at least one legal case filed by a now-former female employee—responded to another woman’s recent questions about a potential promotion by reciting details from her online dating profiles like your friend’s creepy uncle.

Suck It, Creatives: ‘Web Developer’ Is the Hottest Gig in Advertising

Are you considering a career in the always-exciting field of creative advertising?

Do you want to score a gig that will pay well enough to help you afford that fifth story East Village studio walkup but still have a title that won’t inspire snark among your underemployed but secretly jealous mid-20s peers???

According to the fine folks at CareerCast and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the options are not endless … but they might as well be. Examples of high-growth positions include market research analyst, data scientist and social media manager or Snapchat Filter Aficionado.

We have highlighted the most relevant numbers in this chart for y’all.

Not quite a grim outlook, but 2% doesn’t even cover cost of living increases, does it? What will a guy like this younger, trimmer version of the Most Interesting Man in the World do??

Also, where does a copywriter (no “junior”?) make an average of $45K…

The press release is packed with amusing lines like this one: “While art and copy are important aspects of advertising, the industry would not be able to function without research, planning, and strategy.”

Don’t we know it.

Another gem: “Social Media Manager is another hot advertising job, responsible for helping corporations and advertisers reach the right audience through platforms like Facebook and Twitter, smartphones and tablets.” Tablets!!

“Clear communication is vital for all jobs in the industry, because part of an advertising professional’s work is gaining an understanding of the client’s vision, and being able to present it in an actionable and effective manner,” said CareerCast online content editor Kyle Kensing, who gets all the best quotes.

The top-ranked job on the list in terms of pay is—of course—account executive, because we forgot about all those C-level people. Now let us enter this brave new data-driven world together.

[Amazing image via]

Ready to Get Rich? Sell Your Mid-Sized Agency to Accenture for $63 Million

Who wants to sell the agency they’ve worked so hard to build over more than a decade to … an international consultancy?!

Plenty of people. Durrr.

Take, for example, indie Australian agency The Monkeys, which got bought by Accenture Interactive back in May. Today, Australia’s Financial Review revealed how much Accenture paid for this 11-year-old company: $63 million.

The very fact that the total is now public knowledge is very unusual—and Accenture reps’ decision not to answer FR’s questions makes one think that maybe another, somewhat self-interested party leaked the info.

Anyway, seven principals at The Monkeys and its design firm Maud just made a shitload of money. The $63 million total is even more impressive given that the agency, which employed approximately 130 people when the deal was announced, made $2.4 million in after-tax profits last year on $21.6 million in revenue.

FR also reveals that PwC was interested in buying The Monkeys before Accenture outbid them. Yet Sir Martin told Campaign last week that all these deals are “a bit odd” because consultancies and creative agencies are not culturally compatible.

Then there are the inevitable client conflicts and executive departures. This deal, like pretty much every other such acquisition, also reportedly includes “golden handcuffs” benefits packages that discourage executives from leaving after being acquired … because other agencies can’t compete with the bonus system. (The same recently happened to Heat in San Francisco after its acquisition by Deloitte, though some top-level employees decided to leave anyway after the new parent company began asserting greater control over the operation.)

We’ll see how well it works for The Monkeys. In the meantime, at least a few people are pretty happy with the deal.

Klick Health Depicts Stomach Pain as ‘The Wrestler’ for Novartis

Klick Health launched a new spot for pharmaceutical company Novartis, one of last week’s top spenders on broadcast placement for new creative, which finds a somewhat bizarre personification for gastrointestinal issues.

That said, the anthropomorphized take on stomach issues might not be seen as so inaccurate by chronic sufferers. Klick Health imagines the pangs of stomach discomfort as a tiny, but overly annoying professional wrester, straight out of 1987 or so. The spot opens on a man reading in bed, when “The Wrestler,” appears, announcing, “It’s terror on the tummy time!”

From there, he just keeps showing up, in the break room and at a backyard barbecue. Apparently he brings along, “persistent diarrhea, stomach pain and bloating” for good measure.

TheWrestler_30 from Klick New York on Vimeo.

The spot concludes without informing viewers of what, exactly, they’re watching an ad for.   Instead, it directs them to WhatAmIWrestlingWith.com to “learn more” about a “diagnosis that may not have been considered.” There, they can take a short quiz to see if they may have carcinoid syndrome. Self-diagnosis via Internet is, of course, notoriously unreliable and even the site mentions that “Most people who seem to have symptoms similar to those of carcinoid syndrome do not have the disease,” making the whole exercise (and the reasoning behind the accompanying ad) feel a tad dubious.

The integrated campaign also includes a series of live-action banner videos, and the broadcast element includes addressable TV.

Credits:
CLIENT: NOVARTIS PHARMACEUTICALS CORP.
Executive Director: Vanessa Thirion-Cullity
Director: Jessica Hayes

AGENCY: KLICK HEALTH
Chief Creative Officer, New York: Elliot Langerman
Art: Anthony DiCarolis, Mark Schruntek, Lee Seidenberg, Sam Quiles
Copy: Mark Schruntek, Lee Seidenberg, Anthony DiCarolis
Senior Producer: Brian Schierman
VP, Brand Strategy: Alexis Penty
Group Account Director: Eric Presman
Sr. Project Manager: Klayton Kyle
Senior Strategist: Rachel Affoo
SVP, Strategy & Analytics: Cam Bedford
VP Group Account Director: Joan Bercovitz
VP, Program Director: Leslie Doyle

PRODUCTION: SEED MEDIA ARTS
Director: Tim Abshire
Exec. Producer: Roy Skillikorn
EP/Line Producer: Kipp Christiansen
DP: Joe Zizzo
Shot on Location in Thousand Oaks, CA and on stage in Culver City, CA

EDITORIAL: CUTTING ROOM, NY
Editor: Chuck Willis
Assistant Editor: Greg Ryan
Executive Producer: Anna Petitti

VISUAL EFFECTS: SMOKE & MIRRORS, NY
Executive Producer: Steve Intrabartola
Senior Producer: Tara Maloney
Head of Flame: Dino Tsaousis
Flame Artist: Kevin Quinlan
Flame Artist: Jenna DeAngelis

AUDIO POST: SONIC UNION, NY
Audio Post Mixer: Paul Weiss
Producers: Justine Cortale + Pat Sullivan

MUSIC:
Extreme Music stock library

TELECINE: NICE SHOES, NY
Colorist: Sal Maltifano
Producer: Matt Hubert