Google Street Scenes: Hittin' the Bricks

I've taken a new tack in letting agencies know I wouldn't mind talking to them about any opportunities they might have open for a guy like me. (Lord knows the traditional methods aren't working.)

I find their buildings on Google Street Views and post my mascot, Major Mike Adams, outside their places of business. Then I send them a note, usually though Twitter, letting them know I am stalking them virtually. I'm sure it creeps them out at first, but then hopefully they see the picture and say to themselves, "Well, never seen that before. This guy is thinking outside the box. I'll bet he'd fit quite well into our unique culture. He seems to be a platform agnostic thinker with an eye for strategy and creativity. And he's also kind of a dick for blogging about us this way."

Below are two "leading" Orlando agencies, or so their sites would have you believe - though I have my doubts about one of them, whose Twitter account hasn't been updated since October. You can't really talk about how adept you are in the "social media space" when you don't use it yourselves.

In the second photo, we seem to have caught a local resident on the way home from a sleepover at a friend's house, pillow under his arm. I also wonder how old that "For Lease" sign is and whether or not the agency still occupies this building. Might explain the dormant Twitter account.

Stars Falling Hard

I came across the personal blogs of some of the principals of a formerly hot shop here in Orlando. You know the type: landed one or two big clients long ago and then staked it all on those relationships, going balls-to-the-wall building a cool office with trendy art and furniture throughout; got write-ups in the paper and the local magazines mostly about how cool their space was. Now they're also-rans, big clients long gone and a website "under construction."

I went to their website looking for a job but I left in disgust. That website was your basic "look at our awards, look at our work, see how cool we still are." Then they placed links on the side to their main bigshots' personal blogs. One guy was a designer with lots of links to design stuff. Another was more personal with links to his Facebook, Flickr, etc. And one guy had turned his blog into a series of copy and paste articles on things like bridal showers and health care, sprinkling each with links to small-time clients that had ZERO to do with the articles. Just random out-of-place sentences like "For the best flower selection in Toronto, you need Flowers a Go-Go." Followed by, "And reducing your salt intake will help lower your blood pressure." (Flowers-a-Go-Go not the real name. I'd link you to it, but it's just too sad and I don't want to throw more dirt on this guy's half-buried head.)

The point, I guess, is that here's an agency telling clients they do it all - and well. They're interactive geniuses, they're social media savvy, they will bring you stellar conversions and excellent ROI - and one of their principals is practicing borderline Blackhat SEO linked right to the agency website.

If the strategy sounds shady or the magic pill sounds too good to be true... you know the rest. Sadly, most people in this business are completely full of shit - and few are the ones who will tell you straight out, "This is a wild frontier out here now. What's hot today might be dead tomorrow. We'll strike out in many directions and some of them, frankly, are going to yield dust. (MySpace) We might strike gold, but we're going to do a lot of panning before we do. We're going to play it above the board. Hang with us and be patient. You won't be an overnight viral sensation, because your business is not Ray-Ban or Nike. We're going to try it all, even the damned Yellow Pages, and we might all be surprised by what we learn."

Original image is here.

The Convenience Store of Logos

I have long been of the opinion that many in our industry milk the hell out of their projects. We like to "ideate" and conceptualize. We like to sketch and brainstorm and talk. We like to strategize and pontificate. Then we actually pick up our tools and either write or design, and many of us do this with a thoroughness that is not only unnecessary, but ridiculous. A recent colleague, a client-side team leader who came from a big agency background, was a master of making mountains out of molehills. One of our tasks was to create a new logo for his organization. This took no less than 18 months. There were votes, meetings, double-elimination logo tournaments, logo jousting, and finally, a 3-way logo death-match, in which the employees (about 600) got to vote in a secret ballot on the winner. Their votes in, the guy mentioned above went against their wishes and fixed the vote. He told them that his favorite logo was the one they picked. It wasn't. Needless to say, I've never worked with a bigger (or fatter) douche in my life. And you know who you are, big CMO down in Miami who sucks ass. (He didn't like me either.)

Anyway, all that to introduce you once again to Dana Severson, who brought us all some laughs at the expense of bad real estate ads. Dana, along with some partners, has a new idea. He's going to create one logo a day for 365 days. That's more logos than some designers will make in a lifetime. And he's booking clients over at idesignyourlogo.com. The first logo was done for $2. The next one cost $4. They go up $2 per day until February 28th of next year, when a logo will cost $730, which is still a supreme bargain if you've shopped around for logos.

I'm no designer, but I play a design critic here on my blog, and I'm seeing Dana is currently going through his "Fading Reflection" phase. That's what the people want these days, I guess.

Dana also writes a column for Fast Company.

It's a good idea, and it gets the guy's work out there. Best of all, he does it quickly and at a decent price. And it takes a certain amount of what-the-hell balls to just build up your portfolio right out in the open for all the world to see, day after day for a solid year. Sure beats the designers who keep a "Please check back later! This section of our site is currently undergoing redesign" message on their Portfolio pages.

I'm guessing redos and edits on these one-day logos will cost extra. Or at least I hope so.

Hittin' The Bricks

In lieu of the extra long and bitter post crafted a month and a half ago when I found my job being advertised on Career Builder, (Bilingual? Gimme a break!) I will say only that I'm out there again, ready to do that thing I do, though I'm still trying to figure out exactly what that is.

Meanwhile, take my card.

Old Art Director: Special Holiday Edition

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Previously:

Old AD #3
Old AD #2
Old AD - Pilot

Old Art Director

Clickimus Maximus

Let's Run That By A Few More People

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You're Not an Artist. You're a Tool

David Burn over at AdPulp remarked in a tweet yesterday that the best line from this week's episode of Mad Men was, "You're not an artist, Peggy. You solve problems."

It was a great line, but I'm feeling even more cynical than that today. So, here's to all the short-sighted, buck-passing, back-stabbing, micro-managing, self-inflated clowns we deal with daily.

grande

Lest you think I harbor fantasies that this business is anything more than selling, here's a 3-year old post.

Oops, Did I Just Say That?

Like the accidental "reply all" only meant for one recipient, sometimes we accidentally say what's really on our minds.

Click it and print it and post it in your hellish little cubicle

Jack Smith - Adsmith

The thing I like about Jack is that he always stands by what he believes.

It's a one-off, I'm pretty sure.

Clicking induces size enhancement.

Horizons Broadened: Work Takes Back Seat

I'm so pissed off today at the clueless clowns who dictate my workload that I don't mind perusing YouTube and finding fun stuff right now. The people telling me what to do have zero clue what they want. All they know is what they don't want. And since I've given them five versions of the driest copy on earth (based on their specific, line-by-line direction) and they've rejected it all, I'm taking a break right now. Masters of the do-over, they even tell me to do over the stuff they told me to do over twice already. I've got email trails to prove their ineptitude and inability to make up their minds, (and hourly change their minds) but it's a job, right? Their indecision and lack of direction (and refusal to accept their agency's direction) means I have a job for a little while longer. Most clients suck. There's no two ways about it.

So, yesterday AdFreak put me on their Five to Follow list. Since that time I've been followed by countless better ad people. One of those was a guy from Wild Mouse, an agency in Toronto. He tweeted this today:

Started 5 day fast today. Famished already. Gave up cigs. Gave up booze. Give up food? I give. Talk to me and you will die.

That got my attention, as I've often thought that's something I want to try; just a system-shocking, all-out break from routine and the start of a healthier me. I'll check in on John in five days. If he isn't dead or hasn't killed someone, I might try his crazy plan. My problem is I want to try it from an air-conditioned oceanfront hut.

So I checked out Wild Mouse's stuff. It's pretty fun. Nice example below. Here's a client who said, "You're the pros. Knock yourselves out." Breaking the mold of the stodgy financial retirement template with a memorable and fun spot.



More from Wild Mouse here.

Yeah, I'm jealous.

Google Street Views Are Too Real Now

You ever click on a website, find the address and then just get curious as to what that location of the world looks like? I do that all the time, then I sometimes go exploring the neighborhood on Street View.

I was at an agency's website and saw the usual images of a bunch of hipsters in a cool brick building, being all cool and coolish in their hipster coolness, wearing their emo glasses and sporting their beards, being cool just down the street from the Vespa shop. A "walk" down the road led me to this beautful spot.

I think I preferred plain old-fashioned satellite view, where something was still left to the imagination.

Stalking The Wild Plaid

I went on a daring mission this morning, chasing the elusive Plaid in downtown Orlando. I unfortunately shut down the camera before they figured out who I was, so the ensuing confusion and hilarity was not documented. The button I toss to them at the end was one of their own, from their recent West Coast tour.

You Know That Recession They Talk About?

It's real. A bunch of people got their walking papers this morning here in CubeWorld^TM. Artists, writers, production managers, web designers and account execs—gone. It sucks to watch them pack their stuff and say their goodbyes. Most of them were gone by the time I got in today, but a few can still be heard over the cube walls, packing boxes and doing their best to make light of the circumstance.

I'm told their benefits expire at midnight tonight. What a bite. On the bright side, they were treated to a last meal. Here's this morning's message from our department blog.

I think we should all band together and start an agency. With the talent that walked out of here today, you could build a pretty good shop. I get first dibs on the position of agency blogger. Oh, and I know how to start an agency.

They Do Advertising in South Dakota?

The Dakotas don't get much respect. For that matter, most of the Midwest, Upper Midwest, South and North don't get much respect. (Friend of the blog Alan Wolk has a great piece on the ad world's neglect of a huge segment of the country over at Ad Age.)

Some coastal dwellers (probably of the NYC and LA variety) long ago deemed the interior of the nation "flyover country." But until you've lived there, you don't know what you're talking about. The cost of living is waaaay cheaper and they get the same channels on their cable boxes that you get. The sushi is a little suspect, but that's offset by the ability to leave your front door unlocked.

So I was checking out my tanking ranking at Technorati to see who links here when I found that rare thing: an agency blog that doesn't suck. (There are a few over in the sidebar that fit that description.) It's from agency Henkin-Schultz of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

And since we're now living in the future, I can look up the agency's address and zoom in to their building in a creepy, stalker way. Looks like a cool building. Whaddayaknow? The cool ad agency building trend is happening in South Dakota. Something tells me their work would stand up to any created in Manhattan or Malibu.

I've Lived This Day a Thousand Times It Won't Go Away

Or as the sign outside of Stan's office says:

"I don't know the key to success,
but the key to failure is trying to please everyone."

- Bill Cosby

That Elusive Agency Job

The one with the corner suite, casual dress, car allowance, fat salary, fatter bonuses, paid vacation travel, cool accounts, cool clients who let you do cool shit, trips to exotic locales for expensive film shoots, trips to far-away awards shows, in-office bar, free sushi for lunch every day, funky cool furniture and so much business that you have to turn down good work? You know, that dream job? It doesn't exist. (Except maybe in Denmark.)


But here in Orlando at the AAF affiliated Orlando Advertising Federation (of which I am not a member), there are no jobs in advertising at all. When this site finally comes back up, it will display the same lousy jobs it has had up there for many weeks. OAF.com (yes, that's the URL for the local club) was partnered with Create Magazine for their job listings, but when Create got purchased by Graphics.com, which uses Media Bistro for their job listings, things went to hell fast and I guess OAF took things in-house. Now we have this.

You Didn't Think of This

And they did. Which makes them pretty damn smart.

Plaid Nation is back in gear, this time on a West Coast tour. The tour planners have conveniently skirted Florida on the last two tours. They'll probably do Europe next year.Darryl & Co: If you're hiring, I can take some night courses and become a Social Media Guru. I've been known to pose as a Thought Leader in the Interactive Space. But when I go on the road, I'd like to blog a cross-country Amtrak nightmare.

The Happiest Place in the World?

That would be Denmark, according to some surveys. Denmark has also been considered the second most peaceful place in the world, behind Iceland. But as they say in Denmark, "Who the hell wants to live in fucking Iceland?"

Pretty pastoral and peaceful place.

And wouldn't you be peaceful and happy if you got the whole summer off? Here in the States, we've always heard rumors of those liberal European and Scandinavian countries where the people go "on holiday" for months on end, then return to their cushy jobs where they work six-hour days, three of which are spent at lunch where they drink many adult beverages. They retire at the age of 50 and enjoy free meals at all restaurants and free rail and air travel just by flashing their "retired" cards. Health care is free and everyone lives to be 100 just by eating yogurt and fish. No one is poor and the bus drivers sing jolly songs as they cheerily drop you right at your front door.

OK, maybe some of that isn't true, but a visit to the Advance blog (an agency in København - that's Copenhagen for us ugly Americans) has a post titled Closing Down for the Summer. Another post on the blog reveals some very peaceful and happy people on a seaside film shoot. Advance has one of the few agency blogs that doesn't try too hard and yet isn't ashamed of being an agency blog. More on that in another post - this is about Denmark, Land of the Free and Home of the Whole Damned Summer Off.

Here is an inside peek at Advance, where they have perfected the Cool Agency Interior Design Style of placing things at unconventional angles, opaque divider walls, weird chairs that few people sit in, natural wood floors, exposed ductwork, track lighting, a "library" and people who look blurry walking past windows letting in sunlight.

A Creative could get Creative in a space like this

I may have found a Heaven on Earth to replace my other dream ex-pat destination, Australia.

We Hold These Truths To Be Self-Evident

Happy 4th, Americans. The rest of you, keep working.

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