Colle+McVoy men have a special gift for you
It's about time for the spate of agency holiday Web sites. Colle+McVoy in Minneapolis has an unusual entry that melds e-commerce, charity and humiliation. Agency Ham is a 2010 calendar that features the shop's male staffers shirtless, pantsless or at least in some faux-provocative poses like chopping wood. The calendar goes for a hefty $29.95 and will be on sale for the next 10 days. Proceeds go to the United Way and Community Health. —Posted by Brian Morrissey |
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Published on December 2, 2009 | Permalink
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W+K posting 'Wiedenisms' on new Web site
Wieden + Kennedy has touched up its Web site. It isn't likely to turn heads in the vein of Modernista! or BooneOakley, but it does pay tribute to the agency's founder with some "Wiedenisms." These little bon mots from Dan Wieden include well-known lines like "Fail harder" but also fortune-cookie material like, "Advertising is a weapon; be careful where you point it," and my personal favorite, "Patience and progress are fucking hard." Another touch from Wieden you don't see on many agency sites: It has ads. And not just ones the agency created—paid ads placed by local Portland businesses. —Posted by Brian Morrissey Previously on AdFreak: |
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Published on December 1, 2009 | Permalink
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Watch everything the Dachis Group folks do
The current vogue on ad-industry Web sites is transparency. Rather than post simply case studies of your work, you show off what people are saying about it and the agency. This is the approach Crispin Porter + Bogusky takes with its recently relaunched site. Now, the Dachis Group is taking it to a new level. The "social business design" firm, started by Razorfish co-founder Jeff Dachis, has built the Collaboratory, which is a feed of employee activities, keeping track of when they update Twitter and their blogs and even when they send e-mails. Sadly, the transparency stops at letting visitors read the e-mails. Still, it makes for fun viewing. Take this recent update: "Jeff Dachis sent an e-mail to someone at whitehouse.gov." —Posted by Brian Morrissey Previously on AdFreak: |
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Published on October 7, 2009 | Permalink
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Campbell-Ewald goes all Modernista! online
It seems like ages ago, but it was only 18 months ago that Modernista! debuted its "un-site," which just framed agency information from places around the Web like Wikipedia and Facebook. The site was clever, and smart enough that Agency.com paid homage to it with its controversial Skittles site. And now, another homage: Campbell-Ewald has revamped its site to offer a similar experience. It frames Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr to show off the agency. It's really not a bad approach to an agency site, despite the fact that Modernista! got there first. After all, the agency world is still filled with dreadful Flash-heavy sites that are seemingly designed to frustrate visitors into leaving. —Posted by Brian Morrissey See also: |
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Published on September 10, 2009 | Permalink
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CP+B site becomes 'giant digital fishing net'
Crispin Porter + Bogusky is the latest agency to revamp its Web site with an eye toward aggregating content and letting others around the Web tell its story. The site, now in beta, collects videos, Tweets, news headlines and blog entries that mention the agency or its work—"the good, the bad, the mildly unnerving," as a large-afro-ed Alex Bogusky says in the video above (which, given all his gesturing about the navigation, makes more sense to view over on the site itself). The effort is less experimental in form than either the Modernista! site or BooneOakley's YouTube channel, but does cede control of the message largely to outside parties, which connotes authenticity these days—particularly with all the Crispin haters out there. It's nice to see @BogusBogusky make an appearance, too. |
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Published on June 30, 2009 | Permalink
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The agency site reborn as YouTube channelIt was inevitable. BooneOakley, an independent shop in Charlotte, N.C., has scrapped its Web site in favor of a YouTube channel. Visitors to BooneOakley.com are redirected to YouTube, where they are greeted by a three-minute clip showing the story of "Billy," a marketing director who hired an agency owned by a holding company, got fired and then got killed by his pissed-off wife. The site has links to work and partner bios, and it uses the YouTube ability to embed links inside videos. It's an interesting approach to build a Web presence directly on a platform rather than a stand-alone destination, but you have to wonder about choosing only video as a way for BooneOakley to tell its story. The news section, for instance, is a video clip about the Obamas using the agency's initials in naming their dog. And while YouTube's "hotspotting" is a clever way to move around to different videos, the navigation is far from straightforward. I kept having to click back to the Billy intro video to get to other parts of the site. |
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Published on June 1, 2009 | Permalink
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Is the Flash-powered agency site obsolete?
There's something interesting going on with agency Web sites. Ironically, many of the shops that pioneered immersive Flash sites for clients are turning their backs on the high-tech immersive approach when it comes to their own sites. The Barbarian Group, EVB and Juxt Interactive are going this feeds-over-Flash route. Big Spaceship, creator/builder of HBO "Voyeur," is the latest shop to use a simple WordPress blog to show off not just its portfolio but feeds from its blog, Twitter and Flickr accounts (including lots of photos from something called Moustache Day 2008). The idea is to show the company's thinking in real time rather than treat the agency site as a static art piece. The bonuses: a WordPress site is cheap and easy to update regularly. Meanwhile, traditional shops are still generally going immersive. McKinney, Leo Burnett and BBH are examples of what some call Flashturbation. It all comes down to the purpose of the site, whether it's to impress potential clients, new hires or just be there in case someone gets lost coming to the office. —Posted by Brian Morrissey |
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Published on April 13, 2009 | Permalink
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Is the Axe Effect site a pointless 'wankfest'?
And now it's Axe's turn. It, too, is dipping into the Modernista! school of Web marketing with an "Axe Effect" site. Technically, it's not an un-site, but it follows the same theme set by Modernista! and subsequently imitated by Skittles: Let others define your brand. The Axe Effect links out to Wikipedia, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Facebook, Drugstore.com and few Axe microsites in an attempt at a new take on the brand microsite. (Axe eschews the wild world of Twitter, which caused Skittles some mild consternation after pranksters thrilled in posting about how they were placing the candies in various orifices.) Will Axe's site work? Count Wieden + Kennedy global director of digital strategies Renny Gleesen in the not-very-impressed camp. "The only folks I don't see deriving ANY benefit out of this 2.0 wankfest are normal people," he writes in a blog post with the refreshingly direct title "Brands go web 2.0. Give me a F---ing break." What's your opinion of the latest attempt to weave the social Web into the brand site? —Posted by Brian Morrissey |
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Published on April 2, 2009 | Permalink
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Fallon tries to improve on Modernista!'s site
Fallon wants to get its mojo back as an innovative shop steeped in the latest and greatest interactive. After all, it's been eight years since BMW Films debuted. The Minneapolis agency was inspired by Modernista!'s fresh take on the agency Web site when it decided to recast its own site, according to Chris Wiggins, creative director at Fallon. "There was something there," he said. "I thought there were a lot of ways that it could be improved." The Fallon twist: It created a "lifestreaming" tool it calls Skimmer to aggregate Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and other social tools. It's an Adobe AIR desktop application that visitors can download and try out. (The site's actually been up and down all morning, making it hard to download. Goes to show how the digital stuff is tough to execute.) Fallon's 175 employees are using Skimmer and showing the world their innermost thoughts, photos, videos and pokes in this new "We are Fallon" section. Give it a whirl, and see if Fallon has raised the bar for rethinking the agency site. |
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Published on March 24, 2009 | Permalink
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Agency.com redeemed by its Skittles work?
Skittles took over Twitter yesterday. Discussion of Agency.com's extreme social makeover of Skittles.com swamped the service, with people posting profane messages to get on the brand's site and various social-media gurus, ninjas and black belts offering chin-stroking analysis of the effort. Is the site the breakthrough humankind has waited for? The stock market sadly didn't think so. Whether the stunt has any legs remains to be seen. In any case, when was the last time a consumer packaged-goods Web site got so much buzz? At some point, you have to hand it to the folks at Agency.com for having the guts to sell this idea through to Mars. The question, though, is whether this finally exorcises the ghosts of the infamous Subway pitch video, or if it just adds another black mark to Agency.com because it took an idea from Modernista! Vote below. Photo: Special on Flickr. —Posted by Brian Morrissey |
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Published on March 3, 2009 | Permalink
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Agency.com pulls a Modernista! for Skittles
In the offline ad world, creatives are always quick to cry "rip-off." Pretty much everything strikes me as derivative of the Bible and Beowulf, but protecting the originality of "the idea" is hard-wired into ad culture. Does that translate into online? Agency.com has built a new site for Skittles that is pretty much a carbon copy of Modernista!'s much-lauded "un-site," which of course some claim is a rip-off of an earlier Zeus Jones site. The Skittles site is an interesting case study for a consumer goods company. Let's face it: Why would anyone go to a packaged-goods Web site? But nowadays, in social media, people are talking about all sorts of stuff. Agency.com gets that with a "chatter" link that pulls up the results of a "skittles" search on Twitter. It could be on to something. Does it really matter if Modernista or Zeus Jones got there first? —Posted by Brian Morrissey |
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Published on February 27, 2009 | Permalink
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Downturn not kind to Modernista!'s anti-site
Of all the new agency Web sites out there, Modernista!'s probably created the most buzz when it was introduced last March. It acts as an anti-site, using the greater Internet to point visitors to info about the shop. Of course, nowadays, not all the info out there is pleasant. This week, an eagle-eyed AdFreak reader visited the site and clicked on the news. This generates search results about Modernista! from Google News. The first headline: "Modernista lays off two dozen." Ouch. There's a school of thought that says situations like this just show how companies need to maintain some control of their image. But there's another that says it's just keeping it real. Layoffs are just part of the territory nowadays, and probably not even something a company should be particularly ashamed of. |
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Published on February 13, 2009 | Permalink
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McKinney wants to sit down and have a talk
McKinney has redone its Web site with an interesting "conversational" twist. Seeing as search has become the way people navigate online—Google's top search term is "google," after all—McKinney is using a search box to power a Q&A motif. It sits front and center on the page, inviting visitors to ask a question. It does a pretty good job of returning answers, or at least it's better than the Cliffbot over at Cliff Freeman. I asked it how many employees McKinney has and got the answer 160. Asking about the shop's clients brings up a whole slew of them. The artificial intelligence fell down when I asked for some recent ad campaigns. Nothing's perfect. |
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Published on February 11, 2009 | Permalink
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Cliff Freeman the IM bot is ready for a chat
Cliff Freeman & Partners might not be the agency that springs to mind when you think of cutting edge. Still, the shop wants to get in on the trend of having conversations with customers. Its new Web site takes this perhaps a step too far. It turns its eponymous founder into an IM bot that supposedly "learns" as it converses more. Maybe. I confess a slightly irrational antipathy for bots, which remind me of 2002. It's hard not to feel like a moron carrying on a conversation with them. Anyway, give it a whirl. Maybe you'll have more luck. On top of that, agency employees will chat away with the public through an AOL Instant Messenger integration. I didn't have any luck reaching a human. —Posted by Brian Morrissey |
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Published on January 29, 2009 | Permalink
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New York's G train finally gets some respect
Long scorned by city residents for its curious inability to serve Manhattan, New York's G subway line has finally arrived in the very heart of Gotham. Gotham the ad agency, that is. The ad shop, via its relaunched Web site, and the transit line have combined their g-forces to propel the latter beyond the outer boroughs and into Grand Central Terminal, where Gotham is located (but where the Brooklyn-Queens local does not ordinarily stop). Will the city's Metropolitan Transit Authority take the subtle hint and redirect the G train to make stops on Manhattan island? Can it happen before a 25 percent fare hike or the completion of the Second Avenue Subway? No comment available at press time. |
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Published on December 16, 2008 | Permalink
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New Razorfish site awash in sound effects
—Posted by Brian Morrissey |
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Published on October 21, 2008 | Permalink
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Agency's site design hijacked in Argentina
Any day now, the folks at Resource Interactive will launch a new Web-site redesign, which is great news if you're a shady South American firm looking for something to steal. As they were prepping for the launch, Resource got wind of UVCMS, an "innovative Web design" shop in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The latter's site design (above) is a blatant, low-tech ripoff of Resource's longstanding navigation (below). Here's a gallery of other comparison shots. While both Resource and I are waiting for a response from UVCMS, the issue will undoubtedly be short-lived. Even if Resource weren't launching a new design, they probably couldn't be bothered to wage a legal dispute with a small group of Argentine plagiarists who haven't updated their site in a year. Still, it raises a thorny question: "Where's the line between inspiration and plagiarism?" In some cases, it can be impossible to say for sure. In this case, it's pretty clear. —Posted by David Griner
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Published on October 14, 2008 | Permalink
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What is Zeus Jones doing with its new site?
Modernista! took the cake for reinventing the agency Web site, normally a drab and frustrating affair, by creating a meta-site. It was even cited as evidence of the shop's awesomeness in a recent fawning profile. Some, however, claimed Modernista! ripped the idea off from Minneapolis shop Zeus Jones. (Lance Jensen, avid AdFreak commenter, said that isn't true.) Well, Zeus Jones is back with a new site of its own. It takes a feed approach, aggregating employee feeds from Twitter, FriendFeed, del.icio.us, Vimeo, SlideShare and other social services. The site is comprised nearly entirely of widgets, in keeping with the Zeus Jones take of "marketing as a service." Users can even copy the widgets to their own sites, and use them to pull in the Web activities of their friends. The side panel features a scrolling feed from the shop's blog, From the Head of Zeus Jones. Check it out and let us know what you think. —Posted by Brian Morrissey |
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Published on August 27, 2008 | Permalink
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Put this agency's Web site out of its misery
Those gun nuts at The Republik just sent an e-mail blast to 2,500 contacts inviting them to destroy the agency's old Web site using a .44 Magnum, shotgun or sniper rifle. Well, the shop's in North Carolina, so what could we really expect? Guns, chewing tobacco, moonshine ... I was going to say it sounds unhealthy, but it actually sounds fun, and it's no worse than much of the new fall lineup on Fox. The shop is building buzz for a new user-customizable state-of-the-art Web site that will be revealed once the old one is blown away. With an unusual Web site and unexpected creative approach, The Republik is cool—kind of like Modernista! with guns. If I were a Republik client, I'd make damn sure to pay my bills on time. And would it kill you to tip the traffic manager? Actually, yes, it could. —Posted by David Gianatasio |
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Published on August 26, 2008 | Permalink
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