Advertising Age just came out with their annual list of the 10 best ad agencies in America. I must admit that I have a great deal of trouble with the word “best”, even in the rare occasion someone may be applying the word to me or something I’ve done.
While I’m not sure what “best” means, I do know that none of the current 10 shops can say they haven’t put out some lousy stuff. It happens to everyone. But what does best mean? Does that mean they won a bunch of awards? Does it mean that the agency was able to buy up 10 other agencies this past year? Does it mean that they lucked out and didn’t wind up losing too many billings from clients putting them into review? Does it mean their billings for the year went through the roof?
Perhaps because I tend to work too much in a vacuum these days, there were a couple of agency names I had never heard of. And you can’t say it’s because they’re tiny shops, because this year’s winners featured agencies with as many as 10,000 employees. (The article came out a few weeks ago, so it could be up to 11,000) The smallest agency on the list has 120 employees, although I suspect that number will be going up pretty soon too.
Maybe, I’ve been out of the loop and a 120 employee agency is considered small, what about some of the agencies I’ve contracted to do creative with that have 25 people or less. In some case, they have 3 or 4 people. There must be a new category for these agencies. Maybe like in the dog world, where ultra-small dogs are now called “teacup”. Are these agencies with less than 100 people “teacup” agencies or should we have a different term for them, like “muy pequino” or “micro agency” or “mini-me”? Never mind, that last one was taken in Austin Powers.
Hmmm, micro-agency. I thought for the heck, I’d Google “Micro agency” and apparently at least one ad agency called StrawberryFrog is using it. Darn and I thought I made the term up. But with offices in Mumbai, Amsterdam, Sao Paulo and New York, StrawberryFrog seems far from what I would call micro.
Now Johnny Diaz, who works out of a 12 X 10 office without a parking space, that’s micro.
Oh boy, it seems like I just digressed 2 or 3 good paragraphs worth, which may even be a record for me. Now what was I saying? Oh yeah, what the hell does “best” mean anyway?
Considering that I always like sticking to the brief and looking at things from the client’s viewpoint, I think that best would be the kind of agency that manages to break new ground, come up with the unexpected and help propel their clients agenda and (hopefully, but not always), their bottom line.
Maybe it’s also because the projects I get to deal with often have budgets that are lower than the Mocha Frappuccino bill alone that some of the big boys ring up, I tend not to get too impressed even when something really cool comes along that creative billed out at a couple of million. For criminy sakes, I have some friends who have made incredible feature length films for less dough than that.
As an ADDY Awards coordinator and occasional entrant, I was always amazed at how the judges almost always invariably went for the high priced stuff. The usual suspects tend to win the regional and national gold and silver awards. Quite frankly, I wish the folks who did the spots for “Head On – Apply Directly to the Forehead” had entered a few awards shows. Want to talk about best? They took a crummy “as seen on tv” product and catapulted it to the top of an insipidly crowded and difficult product category. They did it on a relative shoestring too. That to me is “best”
Best, is the agency who figured out how to get a $100,000 budget to play a million bucks. Best is the kid who entered a competition for Chevy and got to have his “Happy Grad “commercial air during this year’s Superbowl game. Although technically, he wouldn’t have gotten to do that if it wasn’t for Goodby, who held the contest that he won. I’m wondering though how they’ll justify doing another commercial for a million dollars after they’ve aired one that cost $15,000. That’s advertising for you.
I like the show “So You Think You Can Dance”. One thing I particularly like about them as opposed to the “American Idol”, is that SYTYCD bills itself not as presenting America’s “BEST” dancer, but uses the word “Favorite”. Although I suppose we could get into a bit of a pissing match regarding favorite, as in “who’s favorite and why”. Since, ultimately the dancer with the most votes wins, and the voters represent America and anybody can vote, then it would seem it is indeed a popular vote. Popular = favorite.
But heck, you can’t even say that about the President of the United States. I saw something recently that showed a person could be elected President with less than 35% of the popular vote. George W. Bush didn’t have the popular vote. He wasn’t the favorite, but instead some people speaking for us figured he was the “best” choice. There’s that darn “Best” screwing things up again.
In all fairness, Advertising Age did list some smaller shops in a “Standouts to Watch” category, but that seems a lot like going to the prom with your cousin. (I’m not sure what I even mean by that, so you’ll have to come up with your own interpretation.)
And I’m not against the process they used, despite my having no idea what the criteria for “Best” ad agency is or was. Heck, they’re the authority. I’m a nobody. I just wish they’d call it “Advertising Age’s Favorite 10 Agencies, as opposed to “best”.
My hat’s off to all the hard working advertising agency people who will never make it to the “Best Ten” list, probably won’t make it to the “Standouts to Watch List” and perhaps missed the prom and/ or the Superbowl because they were working on a client presentation. Just keep selling stuff.
And if you need a hand, I’m here and I’d like to be your favorite.
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