Barely Concealed Narcissism

Last week, after a two hour wait in line to pick up my new iPhone (yes, I’m a geek), I went back in to Boston to attend the Ad Club’s Edge: Branded in Boston conference. By the time I got there I had missed Mayor Menino speak about Boston’s Innovation Conference. That was disappointing, but I still saw some excellent – and not so much excellent – panels.

Of particular note in the not-so-excellent column was the first session I caught featuring reps from a couple of Boston’s biggest ad shops, sitting on stage with their large financial clients (the companies are large…not the clients themselves). I had an overall positive experience that day, so I’m not going to harp on the negative too much here, but let’s briefly review why this panel was brutal:

Did anyone learn anything here? How can we trust anything either of these parties say? Clients gush over the agency, agencies gush over the clients.

Financial clients. Behind car accounts, these are the cornerstone of the traditional agency model. And if not for some amazing fumbling by a large British oil company right now, they’d still be the target of some serious public ire. But there they are, sitting, smiling, pretending like they could do no wrong, as long as their trusty agency partner sits by their sides.

We got to watch a bunch of TV spots. And who doesn’t love TV spots? Especially when discussing this town’s ability to innovate. To be fair, they did show a few iPad screenshots. iPads are hip and innovative, right?

Ok, so I’ve gone on a bit longer than I hoped. And please don’t get me wrong: while I don’t work for a big shop, I can’t say I never will again (some of them know what’s up). But these guys were pretty rough to sit through.

In stark contrast was the small agency panel featuring founders from PJA, Pod Design, Small Army, and Beam: this one falls under the excellent category. The four guys up on stage were smart and – most importantly – candid about their shops, their clients, and their industry. My only disappointment was where the panel was scheduled: right after a brutally out of place session on socially responsible architectural design and right before a coffee break that those who hadn’t left yet couldn’t wait to take.

The juxtaposition between this and the big agency panel was made even more evident by a couple quotes I thought were quite poignant. First, David Batista of Beam pointed out that “it’s easy to please clients…what’s hard is to make something that humans actually want to use.” Can’t say that when your client is sitting right next to you. Secondly, Jeff Freedman of Small Army pointed out that “the traditional model is dead, traditional media is not.” And he’s right.

But what both of those quotes really bring to light is the fact that small shops get it: this isn’t about just trying harder at what has been done for years. This is about doing what’s been done for years in a different way.

Dear WordPress,

Remember that time I spent days getting you just right? Remember how I tweaked every little pixel, molded your PHP, your CSS, your JavaScript? I gave you my heart. And you’ve completely thrown it on the floor and stomped on it.

Ok, I realize I may have stopped updating you for a bit. Maybe I should have paid more attention to you, and less attention to my new job, or my new fiancée. Maybe I should have traveled less. But that’s all behind us now. I am looking at the future.

Or am I? How can I consider a future with you, my dear blogging software, when you keep screwing me over here. First your iPhone app loses posts randomly, removes UI elements when it feels like it, and ultimately breaks. That was hard to take. I wrote out a nice long rant about it. But I hit delete. Why? Because I felt it wasn’t worth the anger. It was time to move past it.

But now – now I must speak up. You ask me to update you to 2.8. Easy! I click a button, I wait a few minutes. Just like that, you’re as good as new. But perhaps you’re TOO new! Where is the overly-muted black and white theme? Where is the skinnier-than-necessary Chalet Nineteen Sixty typeface (implemented via sIFR)? I spend all this time morphing you in to what I want in a blog, and you go off and do your own thing.

Of course, there’s nothing I can do but go back to the beginning now. Pick up the pieces. I won’t be switching to MoveableType or Tumblr or the like. They may be better. But I will never know. I’ve commited myself to this relationship. My only request is that, this time – please – get your shit straight and behave.

Because I love you. I do. But only when you do what I say.

Lovingly yours,

Gabi.

Agency Spy’s got a great post about Martin Sorrell and his WPP group taking 250 of his top brass to Athens for a strategy session. The retreat featured “jugglers to get people’s creative juices flowing. The Nintendo Wii is manned by ad execs and others are listening to an executive from Britain’s Guardian newspaper give a presentation entitled ‘Oh My God, the Internet Ate My Business!’”

Agency Spy does a superb job of laying into this ridiculously unnecessary, too-much-but-too-little-too-late move, so I’ll leave the ranting to them.

But come on. Really? Forget about being about ten years behind the curve in the ad business…what a poor business move in general. AIG much?