THOUGHT (aka Centric's Blog)

Stop me if you’ve heard this already:

On July 31st, Agency.com launched a video on YouTube (you should be able to find it pretty easily). It was supposed to be a five-minute Meet The Creative Team short that was part of its pitch to become Subway’s agency of record. What we got instead was nine minutes of…well, see the video then come on back.

Well? What did you think? Was it funny? Was it memorable? Did you want to press Share and send this around to your friends? Or did you hit the industry blogs and let loose with the fury that comes from wasting nine minutes of your life? Or did you join in the chorus that says it was brilliant and that Agency.com has won the day, pointing out the way to success on Teh Intarweb?

Oscar Wilde pointed out that the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. And conventional marketing wisdom always says there’s no such thing as bad PR. I think both Oscar and the ol’ CW are both dead wrong in the case of Agency.com because they broke these three basic tenants of good online video:

1) Be brief.
2) Be memorable.
3) Be ready.

Be brief. Cracks about shrinking attention spans aside, people aren’t willing to sit through a long video that plays in a 380×270 window on a flickering monitor in a flourescent-lit office. The average video on YouTube runs under three minutes. Agency.com’s spot was three times too long.

Brevity is also the soul of wit. Keep trimming and paring and stuffing ideas into a smaller and smaller package until you’ve got something bursting with novelty and wonder. Which brings us to…

Be memorable. Think back on the video. What did you remember?

The failed attempts at being funny. The ridiculous fist pumps. And, oh, all that four-day stubble.

Do you remember anything about Subway? About Agency.com? Anything at all that’s going to pop into your head later in the day? (Well, maybe the words “Corner office, now!” or “We roll big.” The latter now has its own expensive t-shirt for those of you willing to shell out $30 for something to replace your “Vote for Pedro” ringneck.) You’ve got to make something that’s going to get an emotional reaction on a gut level. It’s easy to do that by appealing to emotions like anger and disgust, but unless you’re selling Garbage Pail Kids cards, those probably aren’t the notes you want to hit. Being memorable is tough; being memorable and funny is really tough.

Be ready. When you put yourself online, you open yourself to a world of communication from people all over the world. The problem is that a lot of them are more than willing to cut you to pieces. The web has given everyone a bullhorn to tell you exactly what they think of you, and that can get ugly. I’m still an optimist about the online world; I think good content will get good feedback, and bad content will get tarred and feathered. But I also know that there are people who love to do nothing but push buttons and scurry behind their monitors. This is the toughest part to embrace about going online, but if you’ve got a thick enough skin and approach your audience with honesty, you’ll get some rewarding conversation.

This is where Agency.com really flopped. On August 2, they launched whenwerollwerollbig.com in order to aggregate all the commentary and show the world what they set out to do. If they’d had all this set up and ready to roll from the moment they launched the video, and if they’d been upfront and honest about what the point of the video was, then I’d be lining up with the kudo-bestowers.

Problem is, there’s no conversation with Agency.com itself, just people talking past each other in the comment threads. The posts are all taken from other web sites, and all of them laud Agency.com for being brilliant and daring and oh-so-hip. And it doesn’t help that Agency.com bought the domain on August 2, the same day the site launched. In short, the blog is an afterthought, a clumsy attempt at damage control. (It’s also in reverse chronological order: remember, people, newest content goes first!)

I don’t think this spot is going to scare away anyone from using the power of social media for advertising, ham-fisted as it is. But it illustrates the fact that once you step into the Media Pool, you’d better be ready to swim like crazy. The currents are strong, the sharks are hungry, but it’s going to be the ride of your life.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Ruminations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.