Happy 5th birthday to Subservient Chicken
Time flies on the Web. Five years ago today, Burger King's Subservient Chicken first graced us with his presence. Not only was the chicken a seminal moment for interactive creativity, it also marked the beginning of the ongoing slugfest between ad agencies and digital shops for credit. You might recall the story: Crispin Porter + Bogusky dreamed up Subservient Chicken but the Barbarian Group actually made it—and played a big role in coming up with the idea. Many spats followed over where credit should lie. It was the same story for many digital projects that followed, whether it's HBO's "Voyeur" or OfficeMax's "Elf Yourself." Rick Webb, a founder of the Barbarian Group, commemorates the S.C. anniversary with an exhaustive blog post (13 footnotes!) recounting how the chicken was born. It's a messy tale, without a sketch on a napkin. "If you ask me, the mystery is more about why everyone wishes it was a single person in an ah-ha moment," he writes. "We get that a lot still. People want it to be dramatic. As if doing things methodically until you get a great idea is disappointing. As if coming up with a good idea should be easy." —Posted by Brian Morrissey |
|
Published on April 7, 2009 | Permalink
| Comments (7)
|
Barbarian fighting the good fight on Twitter
It's not hard to find bad news about the media industry, whether it's the plummeting ad revenues for newspapers, the layoffs at magazines or the full-blown ad recession. It can be a real bummer. But what bleeds leads, as they say. A self-described bunch of "concerned PR professionals" have set up a Twitter account called TheMediaIsDying to chronicle media-industry layoffs so that fellow flacks know who to take off their spam—I mean contact—lists. It has attracted more than 10,000 followers. The Barbarian Group's Rick Webb, a firm believer in awesomeness of the Internet, has had enough and, with colleague Noah Brier, begun a rival feed: MediaIsThriving. The feed aggregates evidence of media doing quite well, thank you very much, such as the growth in cable-TV jobs, French movies doing nicely and the Financial Times growing readership after hiking subscription rates. UPDATE: Add another optimistic media-focused Twitter feed to the mix: TheMediaIsHirin. —Posted by Brian Morrissey |
|
Published on January 29, 2009 | Permalink
| Comments (3)
|
