Ad Agencies Fashion Their Own Horn, and Toot It

I am just catching up on some of my holiday reading and came across this interesting article in the New York Times.

Whilst this might be a good idea short term, this site earns money through a readership of over 120k views and AdSense, I question if it strays from where an agency should be focused.  I agree that by developing their own brands they can learn real-life lessons, but I am still left cold by it.  I will admit that mrs-o.org is now firmly on my blogroll.

From the article:

The advertising agency behind the blog, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, does not work for Mrs. Obama or for the fashion designers the site features. In fact, mrs-o.org is not for a client at all. It is an entirely new business created by the Zag division of Bartle Bogle, which the agency started to invent new brands.

Mrs. O and Zag are part of a business model transformation in the advertising industry. Agencies are parlaying their expertise in marketing the brands of other companies into creating and marketing their own.

“Advertising is a massively old model based on the 1950s. As media has proliferated, it’s become a lot harder for us to earn enough money off our ideas,” said Ben Jenkins, the strategic director of Zag. “Zag is about creating the properties ourselves from scratch and having 100 percent of it.”

It's great to see likemind getting a mention in The New York Times this weekend.  I love that we down here in Perth are part of something much larger than our city, or country.  This really rang true for me:  

These workers need new ways to connect, said Ethan Watters, who studied young urban professionals in his book, “Urban Tribes.” They live far from their families, he said, and work in highly fluid industries where co-workers change continuously. Unlike professionals from an earlier generation, they marry later and have weak ties to organized religious or community groups.

The full article can be found here.

Likemind October 2008

Another wonderful Likemind morning was held on Friday at Tiger Tiger in the city.  If you would like to attend the next coffee morning you will find all the details at the Likemind site.  All are welcome.

So, what do you do again?

Literary essayist George Steiner once put it this way: Had a buggy whip manufacturer in 1910 rethought things and concluded that rather than being in the buggy whip business he was instead in the business of creating “transportation starting devices,” he just might have been able to survive.

I found this quote via the wonderful Lynette on her tumbr: Interesting Snippets.  For me it really resonated.  I guess it's what we folk try to do on a day-to-day basis.

Don't fall into the buggy-whip mentality:  USA Today

Being friendly with Don Draper

I have been so impressed with Mad Men's use of Twitter that I am going to write about the good and bad experiences I have had with companies and promotions via this medium.  Stay tuned. 

The sun right now in Perth

Is inspiring my next post about clients and agencies and the rotation of staff (from the client side) that happens on big accounts... any thoughts please email me at carolynannhall [at] gmail.com.

Likemind August 2008

As you can see, we had a great turnout for our August Likemind meeting. I think September's will be bigger and better. All welcome. For more information, see my post below.