Advertising, ad campaigns, ad agencies, and the people that make it happen

George,

Thought you would want to know that your comment has been up for 1 hour. I was having dinner when it came in. Btw I don't work in PR....

Eric

George,

Appreciate the support (very funny blog! and want to read that book you keep promising us).

imho tech ad people come in 3 flavors: hunters, farmers, and carpetbaggers.

The hunters seek out the challenges and do cutting edge work. Great clients demand hunters, and take the risk of running that work. Apple hired a bunch of them, as did IBM. Over the past few yrs even HP lured a few in (Francois & Plus+ campaign come to mind).

Unfortunately, the BDA exec's can't afford all-hunters-all-the-time, so they bring in the farmers. Eventually, farmers take over running the account as margins wind downwards and exec bonuses go upwards. Then you see dinosaurs, hyperbole, charts, and multi-cultural coffee klatches in all the ads.

Mostly, though, it does cycle back when the brand droops and the BDA hires another pack of hunters to save the account, and - voila - back on top creatively.

But it's the carpetbaggers that make the business look bad and make us say out loud, "that's the Apple ad from a few years ago". For me, it's the underpaid, hyper-ambitious farmers of whom we should be wary. They pass themselves off as hunters, becoming carpetbaggers that feed off the left-overs they carried in their bags. They make themselves easy to identify - they're the ones issuing ridiculous press statements about how they have broken the first integrated-blah-blah-blah that will run in 3,459 markets all at the same time.

btw, Eric, I didn't think you were in PR. But, in the blogosphere I sense it's easy for people to get confused.

That seems to be very much the case. HP's uk spot from a while ago (frames), was very well thought out and truly innovative. It caught a lot of attention.

I just hope that its not going to get downhill. While IBM's ads arent exactly groundbreaking, they are consistently engaging and light hearted; which I like a lot.

I hate bought in Blogs though. Its a sign of a poor PR department and creatives unable to do their job properly. No agency should ever have to "scam" their market to make sales.