You Sleep When You Die

Whether you have kids of your own or not, you probably already know it’s that time of the year again: Back to School!! This also means our summer internship program here at the agency has come to an end.

I have to say that once again, our interns never fail to impress me. Our internship program is unlike any other program out there today. We had more than 300 applicants compete for less than 25 spots in this year’s program. So needless to say, our interns represent the best of the best.

I posted a blog last week in support of our client, Lane Bryant, and their fight against content censorship and discrimination against curvy women. While we strongly believe that this is fight that needed to be fought in the public eye, we had no idea just how big this thing would be.

Over the course of the past week, almost 2.5 million people have viewed the new spot, making it the most viewed spot on YouTube and the biggest viral video of the week, according to Ad Age. The story has been picked up by television shows and networks around the world, including The Today Show, The Early Show, CNN, The Tonight Show, The O’Reilly Factor and Saturday Night Live. It has been featured on hundreds if not thousands of blogs, not to mention one Tweet every 30 seconds at one point. That’s crazy!! Or is it?

Would it piss you off if someone else decided to define what the universal standard of beauty should be? What about if it was a powerful TV network (or two TV networks) forcing that decision on you? It pissed the hell out of us, especially because it involves one of our partners, Lane Bryant.

Many industry experts were surprised about the recent announcement that VW and Crispin are parting ways. After all, VW’s market share actually improved in recent months and although sales were still down, the decline wasn’t as steep as the automotive industry as a whole. In addition, the four-year partnership resulted in some memorable and much talked about advertising.

Crispin certainly helped elevate VW to a new level of ‘coolness.’ Unfortunately, to be cool is often to be niche. And when your job is to market a brand that is dependent on the mainstream masses, coolness alone just isn’t going to cut it. And that’s precisely where Crispin missed it with VW.

Almost every agency out there says it has the best interests of its clients at heart. Well, actions speak louder than words. And based on their actions, it’s clear that most agencies don’t have the best interests of their clients at heart; in fact, far from it. Many agencies are more concerned with creating work that makes the agency itself look good than creating work that actually advances its client’s business.