anonymous fun at agency spy

There is a little brouhaha going on over at Agency Spy because of a post about Minneapolis shop Colle + McVoy (a shop whose work was cited in the post and attributed to Adrants running with first, that I actually had the scoop on, but my pride is only marginally wounded by that).

As with all brouhahas, especially those about Minneapolis agencies, I love to weigh in (even if, because work is getting in the way, I am really late to the game).

But how to weigh in? The commenter driving most of the, er, discussion has a strong opinion that is sort of hard to refute. He thinks that Colle + McVoy need better senior leadership and have peaked creatively. Perhaps…it just might take a while to tell if he is right or not.

(To quote The Big Lebowski, “that’s, like, your opinion…man”)

But then, as I made my way through the comments section, I came upon a post by everyone in Minneapolis’ favorite copywriter defending his good name. It turns out that someone had thought that the negative commenter was none other than he of the e-mail, Colin Corcoran.

And Colin went to the site to say that it wasn’t.

He would have been better off saying nothing…since I started writing this post I have had multiple people email or IM me (on my personal accounts, they don’t know that I am the man behind the curtain and so aren’t trying to pile on publicly) to laugh about how the best part is that he posted a comment, etc and so on.

He really isn’t liked in Minneapolis, if you couldn’t tell.

And that is why I feel for him on this one. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea in terms of personality and he did have a very public humiliation (which makes it easier to pile on, like hyenas on a wounded deer), but why drag him into this? Especially as he’s just a freelance copywriter…it’s not like he’s Bob Barrie or Bruce Bildsten (also mentioned in the comments section), guys who have been to the top and have the work to back up their claims for their position in the industry.

They can shrug off an anonymous content, but who knows if Colin (or someone at a junior level like he is) can?

We all know that it must be tough enough for him even without the comments that will sit, forever, on SEO-machine blogs that will place high when, say, a prospective employer searched for his name. It’s time to let it rest. It’s time to leave him alone.

So we can turn our energy to finding out who the real Tool Hater is…