Getting your hands in the dirt

Beautiful work from Roland Tiangco, especially this really nice poster which I have unfortunately spoiled by showing the outcome of the piece, rather than the beginning – for a full breakdown of the poster, check it out over here).

What’s interesting here is how the viewer is being carefully and curiously led to be a participator in creating the very simple, clear message with the medium. I think what I loved most about this piece is how it made me reflect and take a step back and look at the advertising agency model at large. Obviously this large statement has much more to do than the very narrow, shallow world of advertising – but being in the “ad” world…let me a take a selfish perspective and speak to the 0.001 percent of the population who might actually care about this.

We’ve all heard and maybe even coined the phrase “you can’t just talk the talk, you gotta walk the walk”, or maybe we’ve heard another such as “it’s time to roll up the sleeves and get your hands dirty”. The strange thing is that you hear these mantra’s all over the hallways of advertising agencies all over the globe, but how many places can honestly claim that they hold true to these values.

One of the diseases of the ad industry is the concept of spinning around in circles. We’ve all been there, those 4 hour meetings with 20 people at the table where we talk about what happened in last meeting. Everyone feeling the need to justify their employment by inputing their 2 pennies on the table, the read in between the line statements and whispers of side conversations going on in parallel between smaller groups. What usually happens in these meetings is that you walk away accomplishing absolutely nothing…a big fat donut. People being pulled into meetings when they have actual work to do and timelines to meet, thus missing deadlines and milestones where the solution is only to dump more bodies on the problem – lets brief in another creative team, or add another strategist, when in reality it will take just as long to brief a new team then to spend an hour doing it yourself. We have become a group of politicians, which have found any way possible to pass the hands-on, get in the gutter work to someone else.

There was an interesting article on Creativity which announced the departure of Erik Vervroegen, the former TBWA/Paris creative leader who recently left to join Goodby, Silverstein & Partners as a creative director. This was a guy who ran the whole shop and was extremely respected by TBWA and he decided to leave to be a CD at Goodby? Don’t get me wrong, Goodby is one of the top 3 agencies in the world in my opinion, but here’s a guy who could have been the global ECD, CCO for any agency and he leaves for a much humbler position (albeit a great shop). The real gem in the article was a direct quote from Erik about his new move:

“I’ve been offered prestigious jobs such as worldwide creative director, etc., but I don’t want to turn into a politician, stuck in meetings, first class lounges or fancy hotels. I want to stay close to my boys and be on the battlefield with them. I will always be a sergeant, not a general.”

Respect. Here’s a guy who cut his teeth on the ground, front lines at war as a foot soldier and climbed his way through the ranks. If you were going to war, would you follow the sergeant who’s reputation speaks for himself? Or would you follow the general, who never paid his dues, never went to war, never knew how it smelt or felt to be in the front lines with your troops? He may know how to talk and politic about war, but is this the guy you’d follow into a warzone?

We’re currently trying to climb our way out of the gutter of a beaten down industry – we’ve gotten our asses kicked. Now is the time to really roll up the sleeves and stick our hands in the dirt and walk the walk. Less meetings with fewer people. Do more with less. Quality not quantity…let’s find the people who are not afraid to thrown down and get in the gutter with everyone else.

On one last note -here is probably the best idea I have seen to minimize those 4 hour long meetings. Over here for the secrets to efficient meetings.

The Future of Advertising WTF – presented by David Armano

Here’s a very long, but eye opening presentation by social media and twitter celeb David Armano. Take what you want out of it, but he essentially gives a very solid breakdown of the state of our industry. Touching on the traditional agency model, production process, social media, brand engagement, services and of course twitter – for anyone who wants to get the cliff notes read on what the hell is happening today…this is for you, all the buzz terms explained in detail with some good case studies to back it up.

More Armano over here

The first world wide website where nothing happens

I guess it proves a point, but a little addy for my taste, although I do work at an ad agency, even though we don’t call ourselves an ad agency…it’s all a bit complicated. What do you guys think?

have a break over here