2006 Agency of the Year: Nobody

Max Kalehoff (a previous guest on Across the Sound) alerted me to his Online Spin column today, titled: 2006 Agency of the Year: Nobody. He also posted about it on his blog. He knew I'd bite...

He correctly observes Ad Age's incorrect classification of EepyBird and LonelyGirl as consumers. I'll address this in my upcoming book, Join the Conversation, and I'll offer up some alternatives, including Prosumer and Producer amongst other party favorites.

Finally, Max offers up 10 critical attributes and capabilities of what an agency of the year might look like:

1. Foremost, agency staffers must be passionate about acting in the interest of consumers as much as they are in the interest of paying clients.
2. The agency must drop tactical communications from its core positioning and instead embody the value of creating great experiences, with tactics following.
3. The agency must embrace a world where paid media placements lose overall traction, and instead master the new currency of word-of-mouth, where reputation and propensity to recommend are earned.
4. The firm must strive for everlasting client partnerships, not because of insatiable desire for ongoing revenues, but because it understands that programs which achieve deep, ongoing customer experiences and loyalty are incompatible with a start-peak-end model.
5. An agency of the year should be one that first evaluates the client’s internal processes and culture, to ensure those dimensions optimize opportunities for greatness, not hamper potential.
6. The agency must gain expertise in areas of innovation, product and customer service–versus solely on marketing communications.
7. The firm will value institutional customer-listening as a core competency far more than institutional speaking.
8. Enterprise creativity will stem not from a creative department, but collectively from a group of staffers with diverse disciplines, each with the ability to think creatively, abstractly and from different vantage points.
9. The agency may get out of the advertising business, for the most part, and perhaps outsource the more tactical aspects.
10. The agency increasingly will recognize and organize around you, the individual.

crayon isn't an agency per se, but for kicks I took the test and by my calculations we scored 10/10. Where do I pick up our award? :)