We've been joking about it for years and now it's finally happened - a reality show about the advertising business. In case you missed it, last night AMC's The Pitch showed a sneak preview of the show set to begin it's first full season on April 30th.

It's only a few days after the Super Bowl and despite the fact that most brands released their highly anticipated commercials days before on Youtube, I'm only now getting around to seeing any of them. It still drives me nuts that aside from the few that sneak through, we in Canada really don't get to see many of these ads during the game. According to mashable.com, there were 54 in total that aired:

So it seems that Catvertising is the newest scheme in advertising - or certainly the newest form of self promotion for advertising agencies. Recently john st., developed a new self promotion video that seems to have caught on - and it should. It's funny, it takes the piss out of the advertising agency world and has a go at the sometimes hard to understand habits of youtube viewers all around the world. 

I found out about his death on my iPhone. I created this message on my MacBook Pro. RIP.

I recently stumbled across this article written by an old client of mine, Scott McWilliam. He's as passionate as they come and clearly has some pretty strong opinions and ideas on the client/agency relationship. For the most part, I tend to agree with his rant here about some guidelines on how to be a great agency account person. So, I thought I'd share, as written. Enjoy:

If you don’t have any common sense, foresight, or pay attention to detail, please quit!

Searching for new insight on how to make your agency stronger? Stop looking for the next creative genius and drill into the frontline. Look deep through the veins that set the idea table, flush the pipes to the well of flawless execution, and clean the window of your client’s hopes and dreams. If I’ve lost you, I’m talking about the account team. For it is these closet heroes making and breaking long term partnerships. So stop looking for the next Ogilvy to get your agency on the cover of Marketing Magazine and pull together the best account team you can afford.

I am not writing to praise or beat up on account people. I’m writing to spark an account team revolution. I want to see an account executive stand alone on the cover of a magazine. I want to someday attend a Canadian Account Team Awards Gala. I want all Creative Directors to stop praising clients at award shows for letting them do great work and instead praise the account team for building the relationship and trust that really allowed the work to happen. And lastly, I want all CEO’s and the like to seek out the best of the best account people, pay them 20% more, and put them on my business.

Igniting this revolution won’t be easy. Here is a client’s perspective on what account execs can do to get this movement started: 1. If you suck at detail and have no foresight; quit. Seriously, seek other work. You will only fumble through with charm and clean-up skills for so long. Save both your boss and client on blood pressure pills and quit.

2. Know more than the client expects. Nothing is more refreshing than account teams that elevate strategic thinking with new insight. If needed, invest a touch of your own time to understand the client’s business. The client’s role of getting you up to speed only goes so far.

3. Consider the goal of having the entire agency excited about the client’s business your primary mission in life. Good work flourishes when energy and respect is high.

4. Lose sleep over your clients’ business. If you don’t really care, the client will know. Respect everyone’s intelligence and don’t fake it.

5. Call before they call you. Sounds simple, but only best of the best do it well.

6. Anticipate details that can’t be anticipated. Execution oversights quickly become blunders. These mistakes reflect you, your agency, and your client. From a client perspective this may be the primary driver of relationship potholes.

7. Don’t allow things to fester. Pick up the phone, be open, get to know personalities, know when to push, and never go to bed angry. And it wouldn't hurt to know your client has a cat named Frisky.

8. Demand clarity from all parties. Third and fourth rounds can often be avoided if everyone is clear at round one. Account folk need to make unclear clients clear, often times to the client themselves.

9. Don’t be afraid of your creative team. Don’t waste everyone’s time presenting ideas that are not on strategy just because the art director thinks it’s his or her shot at a Cannes.

10. Eliminate financial surprises. Nothing is more frustrating than a pop-up invoice for $50,000. If there is directional uncertainty going into a project, lay the ground work early for possible occurrences. Similarly, don’t say you can do something without the client knowing what it will cost.

11. If you have more than one client, make each one feel like you don’t. Don’t lie; just over service them so much they wonder when you work on other business. Boasting about your client list does nothing but raise uncertainty around the time you have to dedicate.

12. Push for performance measures and agency reviews. If you are afraid of this, you may want to get some resumes out.

13. And lastly, don’t sweat the small stuff, lose sleep over it.

I am confident that if account execs abroad unite in this movement of accountability, consistency, and efficiency, we will all live happily ever after. It just may put the term “agency search” into extinction.

I recently came across an article in Marketing Magazine that provided advice on marketing and the business of marketing from recent inductees into the Marketing Hall of Legends. It was all great advice and proved very beneficial. It also got me thinking: what would I say if someone asked me for advice on working in the business? This is what I would say...

It's been a while since I've posted, in large part due to my extra-curricular activities as Co-Chair of the Marketing Awards. Yep, myself and Christina Brown of Cloudraker in Montreal have been handed the sought after task of picking a jury, developing a process, overseeing the judging and creating some direction for the show. The show happens in June but this past week, we finally went through 2 days of judging the work that Canada's finest have poured their heart and soul into over the past year. Well not all the work. By the time we got together, the jury had already poured through hundreds of entries on-line deciding which pieces should be voted "in" or "out", and scored in the next round. What this really meant was that by the time we arrived, over half of the work entered was gone. That's the way it works - it's a tough crowd.

When you think about categories in award shows, have you ever thought; what does “non-traditional advertising” even mean any more? Good question right? As a jury and co-chairs, we spent close to an hour debating this exact question in our few days of judging.

In the beginning figuring out what non-traditional advertising was, was easy. It wasn’t print, TV, out-of-home, radio or anything else considered normal in our business. It was anything that didn’t fit into those categories. In today’s awards shows, more and more people are trying to figure out where to enter their work and what category to put it in. A lot of shows can’t even accommodate the kind of work and truthfully the Marketing Awards isn’t any different.

Christina and I had worked through the categories months before trying to figure out the best way to introduce new ones to reflect the way we’re all working while at the same time, navigating the need to keep both this show and the Digital Marketing Awards separate. Truth is, at some point I believe these shows will come together – the lines between the two are quite blurred. Overall it went pretty good with newer categories such as “social media” and “excellence in brand creativity” or “branded content” going off without a hitch.

But for some reason, “non-traditional” gave us all a headache. If you think about it, non-traditional is actually quite traditional! So, we worked it out. We did manage to find the right places to put all the work. We even moved a few pieces around that we felt should be awarded, but needed to be in a different place.

Even that I found somewhat interesting. We as creative people still need a box. We are led by parameters and in many ways consider something great by the context in which it is presented. At least at awards shows we do. It was something that surprised me a little during our few days.

Other surprises where how much it helped us to have already decided what work was in or out before we got together. It really made the first day together feel good. We weren’t rushed, there was a lot less pressure and as a result we even awarded a few medals on day one!

I was also surprised at the importance of a good co-chair to hand off too, when you feel a moment of weakness and the mental strain of the process. Judging can be a little stressful, but co-chairing was a whole other bag of tricks. Christina and I found ourselves navigating debates that were going on too long, questions that no longer mattered, questions about something that was done before, constant desires to discuss something that we’ve moved on from and yes, even confusion about categories and why something was there. Actually after a few rounds, we did manage to find our stride and I think we handled it pretty well. But when it was all said and done, I was relieved and happy with the results that the process and direction resulted in and surprisingly tired.

I slept on the plane ride home, but I found myself tired in another way. I was tired of advertising. I was tired of looking at it, evaluating it, debating it and splitting it up into a million little pieces unlike any consumer ever would. I was tired of counting votes for gold, silver or bronze or in or out.

I finally settled into my seat, passively watching the screen in front of me. You guessed it – an ad. I wondered how the jury would have voted for it, what category it would have gone in and why, even then, staring at an ad my own agency had done – why did I hate it so much?  Why did I hate advertising so much?

Actually I don’t. I love it – when it’s good. At the end of two days I realized that everything, every one of our jurors was passionate about was work that was good. The bad stuff didn’t matter. And that’s the one thing that I know will always be true not matter what the categories or the tools are. The work still needs to be good.

Tonight, I received an email from one of our jurors stating: “It definitely is a brave new world for sure. So much in flux but an exciting time in our business.” I couldn’t agree more. The work we saw and the conversations we had demonstrated that.

Now, a few days since we judged - I love advertising again. It's time for Christina and I to focus on bringing the show to life and making sure you're all as excited about what's going on in our business as we are. Stay tuned...