A tweet may not be the truth...

I thought a comment I left on AdFeak merited it's own post here. AdFreak was writing about a planner who'd been fired and publicly pilloried by StrawberryFrog, in part because he posted "casual, flippant tweets" while he was on leave from the agency due to allegedly imaginary family emergencies:

While I can't comment on this situation, I can say there have been times I have consciously kept my tweets and blog posts upbeat, even though my life was anything but. Our digital selves are not necessarily accurate, blow-by-blow accounts of our days. They're more like highlights that have been edited for a diverse audience of people who may not want or need to know about the rougher patches of our lives.

Sometimes tweets are a bit like kisses. They may not be the truth, but they are what we wish were true.

StrawberryFrog is in London (and just about everywhere else)

Over the past few days, I've started to suspect that I'm being stalked by StrawberryFrog. I look on the Cannes shortlist and there it is. I turn on CNN and there it is. I wonder what's up in London and, now, there it is:

Last year, SF moved headquarters to New York and is moving its European operations to London...

It's no secret that StrawberryFrog has been successful by being smart and ahead of the game. They've been one of the most talked about shops since their inception in 1999. Goodson says, "I think it's fair to say that in today's ever changing market you need to stay entirely agile while remaining focused on delivering innovation, strategic and creative excellence." And that's exactly what StrawberryFrog seems to be doing. I see this as just another smart move on their list of good calls.

We're lucky to have StrawberryFrog founder and CEO Scott Goodson judging the 2008 Denver 50. Norm, Citizen Pictures and I are filming the call for entries now. Look for the video in about four weeks.

Saving the lives of girls

StrawberryFrog is preparing to launch Mahindra to the United States. During his time in India, StrawberryFrog founder Scott Goodson became involved with a charity dedicated to saving the lives of girls there:

In many parts of India, the arrival of a baby girl calls for mourning rather than celebration. Abandoning them at birth or marrying them off as children is a common practice. Looked upon as huge economic burdens, it is hardly surprising that many Indian families don't see the point in investing in their education...

Successful education of the girl child has been repeatedly acknowledged as an effective mechanism to break this inter generational cycle of poverty, myths, social norms and social evils. Research conducted in developing countries has shown that a literate female population is linked to reduction in population growth rates. On the other hand illiteracy, breeds ignorance and fear and only increases her vulnerability to be exposed to lifelong abuse and exploitation.

Visit the Nanhi Kali website. Consider making a donation. And at the very least join the Facebook group to show your support.

Agency segmentation: A slideshow

A couple of years ago, I realized my favorite agencies don't market themselves as brand agencies or online agencies or promotional agencies. BBH, Anomaly, Strawberryfrog and others are just out there doing, you know, stuff.

But I'd never advise a client to position itself as an all-purpose stuff doer. So I started mulling over new ways to position agencies. And an online discussion primarily driven by Adam Crowe, Zeus Jones and AgencySpy resonated with me.

As a way of sharing the discussion with coworkers, I created this PowerPoint presentation. (I know, I know. Scary stuff, writers messing with presentation software. It's literally my first time using PowerPoint.)

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Pigs, pitching and the Denver 50

I'm not the first person to blog this quote. Or the second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth:

The whole creative process is stupid. It's like washing a pig. It's messy, it has no rules, no clear beginning, middle, or end; it's kind of a pain in the ass, and when you're done, you're not sure if the pig is clean or even why you were washing a pig in the first place.

That goes double for pitching, which Marc Brownstein recently laid into at Small Agency Diary:

I'm not advocating abstinence from dating. It's just that the courting process has gone too far. It's often a waste of an agencies' time to pitch among 12 other shops. Narrow it down, clients! Apply some discipline to the process.

Pure's Gregg Bergan had a good column in The Denver Business Journal not too long ago. He opined that a trip through an agency's portfolio and a long lunch was a better predictor of relationship success than a creative shootout:

Schedule a time to visit each agency. Ask to meet with your entire prospective team and no others. Don't agree to a meeting until all of them can make it. Ask to see a portfolio that represents the work of the actual people who would be on your account. If the agency portfolio includes work of others, you don't want to see it.

OK. But the pitch process survives not only because clients like seeing a bunch of work for free. Creative departments, despite the strain, often love a shootout. It's competitive. Energetic. And win or lose, it gives writers and art directors a whole lot of chances to produce stuff for their books.

When we created the idea for The Denver 50, we all agreed that past award shows thrived on snappy headlines and big egos. And we wanted the New Denver Ad Club's first show to let go of those things and embrace the thinking of agencies like Bartle Bogle Hegarty, Anomaly and StrawberryFrog.

Letting go of the pitch process would take the same sort of willpower.