who is zeus jones?

Before asking that question, it makes sense to point out the obvious. Zeus Jones is not a person. Zeus Jones is an agency in Minneapolis that is frontlined by former Fallon President Rob White and Director of Strategic Planning Adrian Ho as well as a bevy of decorated interactive creatives who have enough awards to sink a mid-sized watercraft.

Zeus Jones is also one of the hottest and most enigmatic shops around…there is a buzz about them, but also a little confusion about them. After all, they don’t even have account people.

But who are they? And what makes them so interesting? I wanted to find out and Rob White wanted to answer. Or at least he felt like he had to answer so I didn’t rip his agency on my blog…even though I am not that kind of guy.

Whatever the reason he agreed to answer some questions, it’s a quick way to find out just who Zeus Jones is:

Rob, thank you for taking the time today. Let’s start with an obvious question, what made you and Adrian break away from Fallon and start your own place?

We believed the world of marketing was in flux, creating an environment for the next wave of start-ups to challenge conventions, experiment with new business models, and generally mix things up. We wanted to be part of that excitement. It would have been very hard, if not impossible, to do the kinds of things we’re now doing from within an existing agency structure.

You wanted to do it differently…so what makes Zeus Jones unique?

It’s always hard to say what makes any company unique. Somewher out there might be another company set up similarly. That said, I don’t know of any. We have a philosophy of business that urges the use of marketing funds to DO things for people rather than SAY things to people. We call that “marketing as a service”. A few other companies may also talk about that idea, but we have focused every aspect of our business, culture and operations on it.

There’s more to their idea of Marketing as a Service right here:

When did you know that the time was right to strike out on your own?

When we were spending the bulk of our days in meetings that made no sense, or justifying activities that also made no sense.

Why stay in Minneapolis?

We love the winters [Ed note: this was typed with classic British understatement].

What is your vision of Zeus Jones as it grows over the next few years?

We hope to remember why we started in the first place and not fall into the growth for growth’s sake trap. We’d like to make our mark on the business world by showing how marketing can be redefined (or more broadly defined).

Planning is a key function at Zeus Jones, what is the role of the planner at your agency?

Planners at Zeus Jones are part of the alchemy that results in ideas for actions that can build our clients’ business. Planners help define the business problem and context, and drive the strategic framework for our solutions. Often this will include articulating a vision for a company or brand. The big difference between the role here vs an agency is that we look at how marketing (ie actions) can solve a business problem rather than at how communications can solve a marketing problem.

Do you have any advice for young planners trying to break into the business?

Yes. Don’t limit your strategic thinking to communications. Marketing is about driving demand for a business, which means understanding how to build that demand (a great role for planners). There are all sorts of ways to learn these skills. Client-side opportunities are one. Consultancies are another. Traditional agencies should not be the default option for budding planners any more.

Zeus Jones doesn’t have any account people. Why?

Because the job of account people is primarily to manage relationships. We have set up our business to solve business problems on a project by project basis. If we’re successful that will build healthy relationships as a by-product. What this means is that the people responsible for the strategies and ideas have a direct, unimpeded relationship with the clients. Our clients like that. It may not always be the most efficient way to run the business but we like it.

What is the ideal client for Zeus Jones?

An open-minded person inside a progressive company where boundaries between departments are blurred in order to serve the customer better.

If this just wasn’t enough of the good stuff and you want to learn more about Zeus Jones, click here to check out their totally sweet website.

slow posting will speed up

Apologies for the lack of posts lately…it may continue through the week actually. There are some personal/family issues that sort of unexpectedly reared their ugly little head over the past few days that must be dealt with. Luckily, the blog is a nice way to relax so I won’t be ignoring it, but it may be a little while before I am back in top form.

Please bear with me for the short term.

alan wolk, social media & being un-anonymous

Now that we all know that Tangerine Toad is really Creative Director Alan Wolk, most recently of FCBi, and the dust has settled a little bit on that revelation, it’s time to see if it was really worth it for him to do the big identity reveal and to ask other questions that I’m just curious to know the answer of.

Some people say that this post is late to the game, I just say that it’s considered. I’m sort of like the lone Apache that followed behind the main group of warriors to kill those who came out of hiding too early…not that the analogy is totally relevant or even useful (not to mention funny) in this context.

Let’s just move on to the interview with Tangerine Toad creator Alan Wolk, shall we?

Alan, now that your identity has been revealed, has the response been what you expected?

It’s actually been a lot better than I expected. To begin with, a number of friends actually emailed to say they’d been reading me for a while and how funny is it that it turned out to be me.

“De-anonymizing” has also allowed me to converse with people in the field as me, not some “anonymous blogger.” That’s been a real plus and made me realize that I really did establish something pretty special with The Toad Stool and that people want to hear from me. (Well, some people, anyway.)

Blogs are supposed to be a “conversation.” Do you find that industry blogs are engaged in meaningful conversation?

There’s such a wide range of blogs that touch on the marketing and advertising industries these days. Some are very serious, some very light-hearted. There are blogs that analyze the ins and outs of user experience, blogs that review ads and blogs where you can gripe if you feel screwed over by your last agency.

But there are a core group of blogs, the ones I find myself gravitating to the most, where people have serious conversations about the changes going on in our industry. It’s been very edifying for me to find people willing to have these conversations and to really give some thought to solutions. I’ve made a lot of new friends through the blogosphere.

It also comes as a great relief to the people I work with, no doubt, as I can now have these discussions online with like-minded people (such as yourself) rather than coercing unwilling victims into discussing the possible future benefits of 3-D virtual worlds or whether Starbucks is proof that design has become more important than advertising.

If “your brand is not my friend” how can brands be successful in the social media space

Brands need to bring utility to people. A brand that isn’t a Prom King Brand can still play in social media if they realize that people are not going to seek them out, even if they like and use the brand. Non Prom King Brands need to provide utility and value to consumers. That can be as simple as going onto sites their customers already use and sponsoring some sort of useful tool or providing a valuable coupon—something that acknowledges that they are a brand selling me something, not a friend hanging out with me and that as such, they need to do something for me, not the other way around. That’s a huge paradigm shift for most brands—telling customers what they want to hear versus telling them what the brand wants to say. But it’s the golden rule of social media.

To take another of your phrases, if “social media is only social when you’re alone” what does that mean for a marketer?

TV is a group activity, print isn’t. We still read the internet more than we watch it, though that’s changing. But social media, because it’s aimed at me, rather than us, is something I’ll need to do solo.

For marketers, that means that you need to figure out when I’m alone (work? late nights?) and what appeals to each individual- not the whole family. It also means that while Charlene Li is correct that “social media will soon be like air,” the family is not going to be eating dinner in front of their Facebook accounts any time soon. So we’ve got to target social media engagements to individuals as opposed to groups.

What Web 2.0 elements are here to stay and what were just flashes in the pan?

Well Twitter’s going to be a flash in the pan if they don’t get their act together soon in regards to their ever-crashing infrastructure. But if they do, I suspect that Twitter and its offspring are here to stay. I’ve been describing Twitter as being like an all day cocktail party that you can wander in and out of at will. It’s a useful median between one-on-one tools like IM and group tools like message boards. It also allows for both business networking and personal connection. People are still figuring out the boundaries and of course there’s always the issue of how to cashify it.

Second Life is often derided as being a flash in the pan. And way too many companies did jump onto that like lemmings. There was a cool factor among agency types too, in knowing what it was, even if your only exposure was a demo at a briefing. But ultimately it was the wrong move for most brands. That said, I think the technology behind Second Life can be useful and that the idea of virtual worlds is still valid. It just needs a less fantasy-based framework.

Then there are things like BrightKite, a location based social networking service. Many people I know (myself included) jumped at the chance to join and then when we got there it was “okay, now what?” But many people had the same initial reaction to Twitter, and look how that’s grown.

What’s important to remember is that a lot of these technologies grow organically and their primary use is defined by the people who use them, not the people who create them. Remember- YouTube was supposed to be a place to put up videos of your dog for your parents to see.

Okay, let’s talk about how social media fits within an agency offering. Should digital be a seamless part of a traditional agency’s offering like TV, print and radio or does it need to be separate?

Keeping digital separate is pretty foolish. It was done by necessity as the talent pool—and budgets—for digital projects didn’t match up to offline ones. And during Web 1.0 there wasn’t a whole lot of creativity to be found in digital.

But that’s changed dramatically and the distinction is becoming less and less valid. The value of traditional media offerings is dropping too: people consume less traditional media and when they do, they’re more skeptical of the ads they see there. As I wrote in “The Real Digital Revolution” TV and print ads are just there to remind us to go online and check out if the product is really any good. People are not using ads as their primary source of product information anymore. What’s more, sixty years of Bernbachian advertising has left us somewhat immune to its charms.

Can agencies make an ‘ad agency margin’ off of digital or was it sold too cheaply for too long?

It’s definitely been sold too cheaply. But as the industry matures, I suspect prices will go up. If for no other reason than clients will start demanding better production value. Handheld, unlit videos are great for a tiny YouTube window, but as we move to full-screen video, we’ll want better production value and better looking film and someone will need to pay for that.

We’ll also need to pay the people who make the ads (especially that Alan Wolk guy) and if profit margins are low, agencies won’t be able to attract the right people. And finally, the rise of social media will make Web 1.0 formulas like PPC (pay-per-click) less prevalent.

Are agencies structured correctly to respond to the quickly-moving digital world? Could they be structured better?

Most agencies are stuck in structures that were put in place about 60 or 70 years ago to produce print and (later) TV advertising for large national brands.

That structure is totally obsolete these days and is why so many agencies have trouble adapting to the new digital world. We keep trying to force fit these outmoded roles and job titles to the projects we’re tasked with and what happens is we wind up with both a lot of overlap and a lot of gaps.

The traditional art director/copywriter team was a wonderful way to create a print ad and quite a revolution from the old days when the copywriter came up with the ad and slipped it under the art director’s door.

But we need a new revolution. Today’s digital marketing programs require a whole new set of participants. Everything from user experience to technology to content creation. It’s a more involved process than before and requires more input and testing. (Not the specious “do you like it” testing that’s inflicted on TV commercials, but the realistic “do people get they’re supposed to click here” type testing that improves websites.)

That said, we need to remember that the less people that own a creative project, the better and that anything created by committee will unfortunately reflect that sensibility. So while other disciplines need to be brought in, there still needs to be a core group of people who concept the project and own the vision. What that core group’s titles and day-to-day responsibilities are is something we still need to work out. But as with most things social-media related, I suspect that the users (e.g. the agency teams themselves) will wind up defining the process and the way things are structured.

So, what’s next for Alan Wolk? What’s next for Tangerine Toad?

Alan Wolk is going to find himself a gig where he can put his social media and traditional advertising skills to work. As someone who gets both worlds, I’m in a unique position to provide agencies and clients with a bridge between the two: the ability to engage consumers and provide them with something entertaining yet conceptual along with the ability to innately understand the digital arena and why certain formats work and how to use them. I’ve been calling it a “creative strategist” role – almost a cross between a traditional creative director and a digital strategist.

The Toad Stool blog will still continue to be an important factor in my life and in getting the word out. I’ve actually found it’s easier to come up with post ideas now that I’m me (as opposed to Toad) and that I can focus on ideas I feel strongly about, like the growing class divide in America and its effect on marketing and media.

subaru’s lemon & the power of advertising

I was walking around town yesterday when, while patiently waiting at an intersection, a Subaru Tribeca passed directly in front of me. Leave aside for a second that the Tribeca is one of the least attractive cars being sold in America today:

The Tribeca was covered with graffiti, presumably applied by the owner, that said “Subaru’s [sic] suck,” had a big picture of a lemon and included, on the other side of the car, additional anti-Subaru slogans that I couldn’t read but am sure were of the same level of discourse.

That’s not quite what “it’s what makes a Subaru a Subaru” is supposed to invoke.

At a certain point there are always going to be people who make purchases that they may end up regretting…and all the advertising in the world is going to struggle to convince people who have regrets and those that trust the opinion of the consumers with regrets that the brand in question is a good brand.

No amount of messaging tweaking or innovative media placement or outreach will really help, though those things may make it harder for people to be convinced that the brand is bad if the advertising is strong.

Take Apple, for example, which sold me a lemon of a MacBook (it has been serviced by Apple twice in three months and just crashed again this weekend, erasing my hard drive and, in a fit of pique, my external hard drive that I had connected when it crashed). Even as I write of this frustration, Mac users are happily considering me an anomaly.

Now imagine if the computer in question were a Dell.

Or I was talking about cars like I was before…and the brand was Toyota instead of Subaru.

My brother used to work summers at a Dodge dealership near our house and the running joke when that the clutch could actually fall out of a Toyota and consumers would think that it was just regular maintenance but if a Dodge needed an oil change consumers were bitching about what a crappy car Dodge was.

And that is the power of advertising.

amalgamated shills for mike’s hard lemonade

People keep asking me what I plan to do for Memorial Day Weekend. First of all, I didn’t even know it was Memorial Day Weekend until people started asking me what I was going to do for (it has been so cold that I still don’t believe it’s almost June). Secondly, by the time that I realized that it was Memorial Day Weekend, I had not time to plan something. Third, I am going to pretend that doing nothing was my plan all along and that I will enjoy kicking back without an agenda.

I also plan to do a lot of drinking, especially if it warms up and I can sit outside.

I love having a drink while sitting outside, though I don’t really know why.

For an afternoon outside I would usually grab a beer, ideally an Anchor Steam, but after the new campaign for Mike’s Hard Lemonade by Amalgamated I will…well, I will still go for a beer, but I am less likely to make fun of a buddy if he were to choose a Mike’s:

This Tommy Boy-ish spot definitely made me chuckle and, though the video wasn’t entirely unexpected, the end line really pulls it all together…and I appreciate when that sort of things happens in ads.

The casting was also good – the guy’s faintly discernable lisp is a tour de force in modern slapstick comedy (yes, I am trying to become one of those people who get quoted on posters for bad movies saying that the movie is really good) – and I like the strategy of making Mike’s seem a little bit more manly.

Because, as we all know, women will buy something targeted at a man but men just don’t buy things targeted at women…especially fruity drinks in a bottle.

what not to eat during lunch with a client

I had an issue yesterday during a lunch with a client.

Lunch was served and, like a rookie, I went after what looked the tastiest (it’s not entirely my fault, I was starving!) instead of thinking about what would be the safest…as a result I grabbed some french fries and some ketchup instead of the safer decision to go for the chips and just a short time later both french fry and ketchup were on my pants.

FTL.

I do whatever I can to finagle my way into lunch meetings (as long as they’re not too long) because I love deli food, especially if it’s free. I also hate to make my own lunch, so free lunch helps.

(Quick disclosure, I don’t like food that has been out for a while so I am not one of those vultures who descends on conference rooms and eats all the food after a meeting is over. I knew people who did that, who would scour different floors for food, and it’s just gross, especially once it gets later in the afternoon.)

Free lunch does not help when it is all over your pants though.

Going with the whole lunch thing, Dear Jane Sample, one of my favorite bloggers, has a handy guide to surviving the lunch meeting…just don’t show it to Miss Manners.

snapple axes the snapple lady

It’s official, the Snapple lady is officially the ex-Snapple lady. Which could get really awkward if someone like Coke signs her up to talk about how much better Vitamin Water tastes…

I really like the Snapple lady and the commercials featuring her:

Snapple seems convinced that walking away from who they are is going to stem the slide they have experienced through a mix of mismanagement, competition and walking away from who they are.

Snapple was a great brand, a brand that people loved. They loved the brand because of the virtues embodied by Wendy. The brand was approachable, authentic and humorous. Now it’s just a weird mish-mash of crap.

But hey, at least it’s a weird mish-mash of crap that will look good on a Brand Manager’s resume as they shuttle through brands, sticking around long enough only to change things and then move on.

Yes, I am cynical about Brand Managers.

Wendy Kauffman, the Snapple lady, said that she was offered a derisory contract, “I just couldn’t accept the contract because it was so one-sided and worth nothing.” The contract would have paid her for appearances without a promise that any would materialize, she said…and knowing Snapple, no promise that any would materialize means that none would materialize.

Why walk away from a heritage that people like? I just don’t get it.

interview from hell at o’keeffe & co

Virginia based agency O’Keefe & Co was mildly interesting last week when they invited Buzz Aldrin to their eleventh anniversary celebration, but they got really interesting when a reader e-mailed me to tell me about her interview from hell there.

I love hearing about people’s experiences interviewing at agencies because, while there is a standard for how they go, there are huge extremes out there.

Anything, it seems, can happen.

In the case of the reader in question, she was contacted by a recruiter to work at O’Keefe and was told that it was a fun, creative shop with great people and that, with her qualifications the interview would be more of a chemistry check than anything else.

So she was confident, and felt good walking down the old cobblestone street and into O’Keefe’s offices in a narrow, traditional rowhouse.

Then all hell broke loose.

The interview began with an intern which, if it was not bad enough that the intern was interviewing her, the intern opened by…denigrating her (excellent) college, saying that he hadn’t even bothered to apply there. After fifteen minutes of the intern talking about how great the college he did go to was – as if that mattered to her because she was, you know, actually employed – the intern asked a bunch of inane questions before leaving.

A disastrous start.

The HR woman was supposed to speak with our dear reader next, but hadn’t bothered to come into the office. So our dear reader just sat around for an hour…which might have been a good thing so she could get her composure.

The next interviewer looked at her resume, saw that she had said that she had lived abroad and said “right, so I don’t mean that you got off a plane and touched down in [the foreign country], did you actually stay there for an extended amount of time?” Yes, she said, over five years. It’s written on the resume. “Oh, he said, well do you even know who Donald Rumsfeld is?” She replied that she did and began looking for an emergency exit.

Then they made her take two writing tests…despite relatively senior credentials and the assurance that it was a chemistry check.

She passed the writing tests, which was nice.

Then she got blown off my Mr O’Keefe even though she flew from New York on this day specifically so he could spend some time with her.

The she got another quiz by a “fat douchebag” who, after reviewing her answers, chided her for not getting them all right. At this point, she was ready to massacre everyone there (and would have taken out Buzz Aldrin if he were there) when the guy said that they didn’t think of themselves as a creative shop, but one that was all about results.

I guess that is what happens when you are a PR firm for government lobbyists, you care only about getting vanilla-bland apparatchiks to do what you want them to…creativity isn’t a consideration.

They finally let her go.

She really let them have it by not sending a thank you note…which wasn’t revenge enough until now, when she e-mailed this blog about her bad experience there and let everyone see that they are all douchebags.

Small consolation, but hopefully worth it.

nate smids sells ad space on his prosthetic leg

There are people out there who are willing to do just about anything…like that woman who tattooed her forehead with a website URL for $10,000. Painful, disgusting, and shameless are all appropriate reactions both to the woman’s actions and to the company that thought it would get a PR boost and some branding out of it.

Only sleazy companies would be interested in something like that.

Unless it is for a better cause than just cheap PR…and there may be just that case. As Adfreak notes, an Alberta, Canada man is offering to brand his prosthetic leg with the cash he generates from that going to pay for a better prosthetic leg.

It’s not a bad reason, I guess. Adfreak agrees, saying that it’s hard to pick on a guy with one leg and that it would be great to use sticker logos like NASCAR while he participates in fun runs and the like.

I still can’t really get behind it though…it just seems so crass to brand yourself, even if a prosthetic leg isn’t technically yourself.

random facts about the writer

Unlike Alan Wolk/Tangerine Toad, I don’t plan on revealing my identity in the near future…though I will release some facts about the man behind the curtain, if only to try to convince certain readers that I do not, anymore, live in Minneapolis.

Some random facts about the writer of the Daily (Ad) Biz:

1. I used to live in a very trendy warehouse apartment in downtown Minneapolis but now I live in New York

2. I am a writer by trade, but got a C in English in my freshman year of high school

3. I hate hotel rooms, even at nice hotels, because I am a bit of a germaphobe…though I don’t go as far as to bring a sleeping bag or anything like that. I just use a lot of Purell and stay away from the bed covers

4. Anchor Steam is my favorite beer and Amarone is my favorite type of wine and yes I drink too much of both

5. It is true that I started as an account guy…it is also true that I sucked at it

6. Even my parents don’t know that I write this blog

7. My crush on The Pretty AE is officially over which is altogether too bad not just from an interest at work perspective but also because it was fun to blog about

8. A junior AE has spent the day looking out my window at the rain as if he hadn’t seen rain before…it is as weird as it sounds and I feel a little bit uncomfortable that he keeps doing it

9. My favorite ad agency interior is Chiat/Day in Los Angeles though I am convinced that I would never get anything done there, if only because I would pester Lee Clow into surfing with me every morning and then stand by the coffee bar yelling “coffee is for closers” all afternoon

10. All of my friends are getting married and my parents are starting to suggest that I find a nice girl to settle down with…me, I’m just glad that all the weddings coming up are open bar