Hey… richardatdell… don’t be such a fucktard!
Seems like some blogwanker at Dell is pissed at Agency spy and Tribble 'cos they spilled the beans about Casey Jones, the well know railroad engineer, being on probation after going balls out for the WPP/Enfatico fuck up. Apparently, some douchenozzle by the name of Richard Binhammer, is paid by Dell to write an extremely boring blog by the name of richardatdell. I don't know how much they're paying him, but his last post was eighteen fucking days ago on July 28th. Sounds like he works at the same speed as Enfatico! So, this guy is obviously not going to be the next Richard Scoble. Whta beats me is, why is this wanker going after Agency Spy and Tribble, when I've been pouring shit all over the Enfatico fuck up AND I have way more readers than both their sites… Maybe they're scared 'cos they know I am fucking fearless, and trying to take me on would be like throwing gasoline on a fire. C'mon you fucking wimps… Try me!
Enfatico… Listen up!!!
Well, George, I would imagine they’re not going after you because you have credibility. Not sure we can say the same for Agency Spy. After all, even you’ve trashed that blog and its dubious professional staff.
Well I got into a slight “pissing match” with him here on Tribble:
http://www.tribbleagency.com/?p=1683
(see the comments)
….
But something I got this from him (again on that thread):
“Lets set some information straight. The date we signed an agreement is not the same as the date that Enfatico began work.”
So of course I asked him:
“If you want me to change the date.. then by all means tell me the date …. if I am wrong.. then PLEASE correct me… if the contract states that ‘work will begin’ in January 2009… then PLEASE correct me….”
But he failed to respond…. enjoy….
Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone bitch about not being shit on. I love it.
You’ve managed to lodge a whiny complaint while citing your reader stats and general superiority, not because someone’s picking on you but because they’re NOT picking on you.
Gnarly old fucker, indeed.
Child friendly version:
Hey… richardatdell… don’t be so silly!
Seems like some uninspiring blogger at Dell is a tad miffed at Agency spy and Tribble ‘cos they spilled the beans about Casey Jones, the well know railroad engineer, being on probation after going all ahead for the WPP/Enfatico disconcerting situation. Apparently, some poor soul by the name of Richard Binhammer, is paid by Dell to write a mildly uninspiring blog by the name of richardatdell. I don’t know how much they’re paying him, but his last post was eighteen long days ago on July 28th. Sounds like he works at the same speed as Enfatico! So, this guy is obviously not going to be the next Richard Scoble. What beats me is, why is this dubious individual going after Agency Spy and Tribble, when I’ve been quite forthright all over the Enfatico controversy AND I have way more readers than both their sites… Maybe they’re scared ‘cos they know I am pretty outspoken, and trying to take me on would be unadvisable. C’mon you upstarts… Try me!
Enfatico… Listen up!!!
LOL! This is brilliant. More child friendly versions please!
Fuck the child friendly versions!
This is a blog for serious thinking adults who give a fuck!
Way to go George.
hilarious from every angle.
I love on Richards blog how one of his posts is all about ‘The Blog Council’s Disclosure Best Practices Toolkit’. God, he can really take a forum that is supposed to be interesting and informal and corporate it all up with fucking doublespeak. Who is his audience there?
It looks like he read your blog first and decided the ‘gaping void’ would hip his site up. Didn’t work.
Interesting George. You sound an awful lot like an old man whining from his porch that the new kids are too loud and weren’t around for how good it was ‘back in the day.’ In all honesty how long would you be able to start producing content if you were first tasked with consolidating over 800 agencies worldwide, hiring a over a thousand employees and establishing offices worldwide? If were doing Q and A here answer that first.
A youngster,
You didn’t ask me, but here’s my answer anyway. I would completely ignore all outside criticism and go about my business. While the blogosphere puts us all under new and glaring lights, we ultimately are judged by the quality of the work. Focus on the work versus attempting to spar with others. The work will be all you need to make your statement.
ahhh, the naiveté of “a youngster”…
the answer is quite simple: you hire freelancers to start the ball rolling with work continued from the old campaigns and briefs. you then start to fill in the seats of the talent across all disciplines that you need and start steering the ship in that direction… all with the blessings of Dell and WPP, the moneybags.
you start to strategize and concept towards news messaging, etc. and before you know, new work and my isn’t the client happy? and aren’t your ranks swelling as more assignments come in?
and isn’t Mother sad as they’re not getting the holiday work?
should be no more than 4 -6 months. same as any new big win at any agency. you think a $400M account doesn’t have a lot of loose ends to tie up and new relationships to be made? think again.
YOU sound like you’ve taken one to many “have a great career in advertising” courses… remember, some of those “800 agencies worldwide” are an office with a receptionist and an art school grad doing tombstones for the local trades, so not much consolidation there. couple that with the absolute lack of real Dell work in the past few years and you see it’s not an impossible task.
which is why we’re all ragging on them. they’ve taken a straight-ahead problem and turned it into the 12 labors of Heracles. add this fuel to that fire: an outside agency is handling the holiday work! and Dell Australia reportedly wants out of the whole fiasco.
no one mentioned “the golden days of yore” you simpleton, stay on point. this business hasn’t changed since before you were a Hershey bar in your daddies back pocket.
the lower depths,
There is one key issue that prohibited Enfatico from doing what you suggested: the agency (if we can even call it that) didn’t fill its roles correctly, imho. That is, they didn’t establish the leaders and work their way down. Or even start at the bottom and work their way up. They just started pulling in bodies whenever the bodies materialized. Imagine considering taking a position with a company when you had no idea who would eventually run things—in any department. Boone only showed up recently. They just hired a director of talent. Hell, how long did it take to come up with the fucking name? Remember too, Boone showed up shortly after the place was named and the ads declaring the vision were released. How messed up is that? Someone needed to establish a vision from the start, corny as it might sound. You have to create some semblance of a foundation. This place is being constructed like playing Jenga in reverse—if such a game is even possible.
Youngster, what are the folks sitting around in front of their Macs doing? Shit, they could be doing the catalog-y inserts in my paper that have zero concept behind them, that takes NO prep. And if you tell me that they are hired to work on the next big concept, well, it’s a direct channel. It doesn’t need that big of a concept. Just tell me the specs and how cheap it is and make it pretty. And make Dell service better. Actually, THAT should be their number one message out of the gates. Are you reading this richardatdell?
Even if the majority of those 800 agencies is exactly as you’ve described what WPP is doing is still a gigantic task. There still needs to be a framework in place worldwide from which to hire the freelancers.
Regardless a ’straight-ahead problem’ by no means makes it an ‘easy-problem.’
I would also argue that the business has (or at least should) change with the advent of the internet (which was well after I was anything in my fathers pants). If you think that traditional media is going to be just fine doing exactly as they have done for the past 40 years I think you’ve misunderstood new media.
Now I’m not evangelizing here but while Ogilvy’s ideals still hold strong when forming your message the delivery vehicle is no longer horse-drawn and delivered with the milk in the morning.
EXACTLY my point, d.a.d…. they handled the entire thing as if they have eons instead of years… we should have been looking at he first stirrings of new direction by now.
it’s being handled like day camp for ad hippies, like, you know? it’ll all come together, like the universe, man… no one put it on a timetable… can you dig it?
i’ve said it before, worth repeating i guess: the moneybags have finite depth, the clients patience has finite stretching limits… it’s a slo-mo trainwreck, and now we’re hearing from Boone that ads will start appearing but by whom? Mother?
you’re dead-on about establishing a sight-line to objectives first, then getting the man-power to fulfill those first steps while setting up the next definable goals and bob’s yer uncle! you’ve got a working agency in no time…
youngster: media is not the message. message is the message and the delivery route is exactly the same for any media channel: get a clue as to what the customers might react to, add in any new talking points, craft said message to work in the appropriate media channel, be it print, TV, web, youtube, and voila! advertising.
all this talk of new media being radically different from and needing a different approach is crap. that’s agency double-speak for “we need to charge you more for something that actually costs less”.
the media is a side product to any advertising. it is not the final product. we need to stop treating it as such and get on with what we do: advertising.
it’s really simple. we make ideas. we hire the right people to put these ideas in the right locations (traditional, viral, whatever), we leave the office and go grab dinner and drinks with friends and family, come back the next day and do it again.
all the noise and clatter about “the web is special” id just that. to your point, we’ve had it for 20 years. we know what to do with it, well, some of us do. the rest are busy chasing buzzwords and trying to look like the smartest guys in the room.
the same thing happened with radio, TV, etc. there’s tremendous excitement for the first few years and then back to business: advertising.
and that’s the sticking point with enflammable: they can’t get that right, they’re too talking about the problem when they should have rolled up their sleeves and gotten their hands dirty immediately.
false starts can be forgiven, none starts? just more kindling to the fire.
I don’t care who is backing it… a company starting out with a handshake and no TAX ID number doesn’t have the infrastructure to handle a $4.5 billion dollar account…. and it will take them 1/2 a decade or longer to build it…. and that’s based on it being a normal company… not one with an expire date because their sole client threw up a review.
Meaning that many potential employees will feel no future there.
What do I know.. I’m just some random blogger.
the lower depths,
In the end, it probably goes to what George continually communicates: The Poisoned Dwarf is a douchenozzle. He sold this grand scheme, and it should have been on him to deliver the goods. One has to wonder if he ever drew up a schedule for building the enterprise. Technically, one could argue his signature fingerprints are all over the corpse. That is, he “built” WPP by simply purchasing to his heart’s content, and the result is an ugly, disjointed Frankenstein. Now he’s using the exact same tactics to build a single agency. Too bad it only shows the flaws behind the thinking. When you buy whole agencies, you at least have the temporary benefit of also buying the leadership and internal structures. When you’re building from scratch, you need to be able to piece together the leadership and internal structures. Sorry this is getting winding and confusing, but the net is this: Sir Martin Sorrell isn’t qualified to deliver what he sold.
Lower Depths, fucking genius A+ posts, particularly the one from 4:22.
Everyone is dead on… Except fucktard “yougster” Read my next post and keep the comments comming. Just ‘cos it’s Friday night, don’t get fucked up yet.
Cheers/George
Lower Depths, what do you mean by the “absolute lack of real Dell work?” Is that also a tirade against Mother’s commercials?
Care to give some examples of what real work should look like? Maybe from your own portfolio?
Youngster and Dickatdell clearly have no idea the facts surrounding what they’re posting (800 agencies, LOL), let alone any insight from having done the global thing before.
Many of us who do know, from day ONE of this announcement, recommended, suggested and cajoled the idiot in charge to leverage WPP’s learning on global consolidations and deploy a posse of experts to get it up and going - but they didn’t. (Go back and read the posts - they’re spot on)
Instead they let a Grey-haired wanker attempt to imitate his old boss. Big Mistake. That’s why there are lots of suits, few flip flops, and no ads.
Edw3rd,
Did you know casey worked for Berenson indirectly while @ grey? speaks volumes for why this is fucked up. no recoginition of what it takes to build an agency.
Edw3rd,
“…leverage WPP’s learning on global consolidations…”
friend, are you enjoying the crack you’re smoking? you jackass, i’ve worked for wpp agencies. there is no global anything. if there were such learnings, would they not be used for, say, jwt or ogilvy?
honest to christ, some of you need to get a real paying job in the industry.
also, i never made a comment about 800 agencies.
I don’t really give a fuck about enfatico, but I have to disagree with LD about all media being the same, and the internet being around for 20 years, “we know what to do with it”. Bollocks. I’ve been doing this for nearly 15 years, I worked at a dot com startup, and have been at digital agencies doing advertising since 2000, and I don’t know what the fuck we’re supposed to do with it yet, so I doubt you do.
Sorry, rant over.
sean, thank you… surely if YOU don’t know what to do with it, the rest of us are doomed… DOOMED, i tell you!
it’s a media channel, pure and simple. the reason you might not know what to do with it is because you’re trying to make it something it’s not. TiVo probably annoys the hell out of you doesn’t it?
you ever wonder why no one puts counters on their sites any more? it’s because most sites aren’t visited enough to warrant one. the return figures are always VERY disappointing. and that is directly because people can’t wrap their heads around the audience control part of it and neither can their clients.
build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door was true when there were only so many doors to knock on and so few people building mousetraps.
and as for slomo (fitting name, so i’ll speak slowly):
no one said anything bad about Mother.
i have a great deal of respect for their work.
some of my friends work at Mother.
the lack of real Dell work was meant to indicate that the campaigns that have run after Dell Dude were even worse than Dell Dude and not of any real merit.
as for my work, what does that have to do with anything posted above? learn to read and follow the thread, then things will go better… promise.
Dickatdell, I’m guessing you’re new to this blog… your silly comment, to which I referred, was in re Martin having his fingerprints all over the corpse; I seriously doubt he has laid hands on anything Dell since touching Boone’s forehead. But even that doesn’t make him “unqualified”. His role is all about maximizing profit from the Top 50 Global Accounts. Period. (sorry, if that’s news to anyone - the other 11k accounts just keep offices and staff available, paying the local light bill and taxes). But is this any different than P&G, Accenture, or any other F500? Yes, a Odious Jerk he may be - but he’s smart, clever and very well informed. He is more VC than ad guy, which is why few in the business understand him. My pov is/was Sorrell made a Monster, avoidable mistake in the early leadership and it shows.
fwiw, I’ve worked at/with 8 wpp networks, including the leadership during a major global agency consolidation. I’m a client TODAY with one network which is learning about global collaboration. There are many in the network who know how to do this. I’m not referring to the keep-the-lights on people in your local office. The experts I’m referring to are the bloke’s generally ignored by your local MD and without company cars who seem to never be in the office and rarely sleep.
Indaknow - I didn’t know, but I guessed as I do know surrounding players! I think this guy wanted to prove it wasn’t all about Meyer to extend his package. Oops.
Too bad neither TB nor KS have a Twitter account where we can all track their thoughts and feelings… LOL … the one Enfatico account hasn’t actually activated.
Edw3rd,
I would truly be curious to learn more about these global consolidation experts you reference. As you imply, these blokes certainly don’t receive a great deal of press and notoriety. And if they do indeed exist, it makes zero sense that they were not fully integrated into the Enfatico scenario. I’m clearly viewing the world from a different perspective than you, as I spend more time on the advertising side versus the client side. And I’m also responding from the perspective of understanding the incredible effort involved with simply bringing in a mass amount of bodies to fill the cubicles. How do these consolidation experts help when there is technically nothing to consolidate? This isn’t the case of merging agencies. Regardless of the actual reasons and whether or not Sorrell is directly involved in anything, there appear to be major balls being dropped at all levels, local and global. The truth is, my other comments were more sarcastic than not, as it’s unlikely Sorrell has directly touched anything on Enfatico. I wouldn’t be surprised if he too is wondering what’s taking so long. Sorrell was very visible when this enterprise was announced, making all sorts of statements about its breakthrough potential, blah, blah, blah. Obviously, that’s part of his role as a figurehead, to play the press. But his words in the beginning versus the actions being executed in this affair don’t make him look smart, clever or very well informed. Cheers.
Group CEO’s cut deals, delegate dilemma’s, and move-on. If CEO delegates well, he’s the hero. If choses poorly, the person chosen is the idiot. Not hard to figure out…
I’m compelled to pull out and share a favourite story, which reminds us that the more things change, they more they stay the same:
April 17, 1980
A few weeks ago, I asked you to send me the names of anybody on your staff who might qualify to become a Creative Director.
Twenty of you sent me a total of 49 names.
One of you sent me six names - his entire creative staff, I suspect; charitable fellow.
Eleven of you told me that you have nobody who could qualify to become a Creative Director. You have problems. Something wrong with your hiring methods?
Ten of you have not answered. Bastards.
D.O.
Good point, Edw3rd. But I can’t help but feel you’re ultimately supporting my stance that Sorrell is a douchenozzle. Are his delegation skills in the Enfatico scenario an aberration or symptomatic of his overall capabilities? I have no doubt the man is inherently intelligent. One does not assume such a position without being extraordinarily savvy. It’s not like Anheuser-Busch or Ford Motor Company, where the top jobs are awarded to kin. The blogosphere is already recognizing the man’s shortcomings—literally and figuratively. It’s only a matter of time before things become evident to the people who count (e.g., shareholders). Cheers.
lower depths, glad I was slow enough for you to catch my drift because you can run off with no understanding of the facts.
Next time don’t make sweeping comments about Dell work without qualifying it. I have friends in the Mother network and I am more than prepared to defend their work for Dell.
As for the rest of your recent comment, it’s a hoot.
Internet is “a media channel, pure and simple”.
Bollocks, you might as well convert your television commercial to a video banner ad because to you, the internet seems to be just another media channel to gain exposure.
OMG. Since when can any media channel let customers interact with it and the brand like the Internet with tracking of data at the same time?
As for your question why “why no one puts counters on their sites any more”? It is not as you say, “because most sites aren’t visited enough to warrant one. the return figures are always VERY disappointing.”
You don’t know shit about Internet advertising. If not you would have known that there’s a war between portal owners and media auditing agencies over the vast discrepancies in the collection of portal traffic.
comScore and Ac Nielson state clearly that portals tend to overstate portal traffic by up to 300%. That’s why people prefer to rely on CTR and other metrics for measuring effectiveness.
Try to do some homework before commenting further on Web advertising. It’s a lot more complicated than what the traditional ad people think.
slo, please don’t be more of an asshole than you need to be…
overstating the fact (again) that NO ONE said anything against Mother, please remove their penis from your mouth now. there’s no point in bringing it up AGAIN. we get it you love them, you want to be them, and when you grow up you want to live in their world fine.
i qualified my comments well enough.
as for the rest of your diatribe: please refer to Price Waterhouse Coopers 2007 annual report for a factual comparison of traditional v. rich media spend a return.
the facts are that while rich media is enjoying a decent upswing in spend and return, it is still a way distant third to traditional media spend and return. and 2008 looks to be worse with most reputable indicators downsizing growth patterns from (on average) 3 -7% growth down to 1 -3% growth, while oddly enough, national traditional is up by a small but fair margin.
look, you love what you do, fine. but in the end you might come to realize that putting all your eggs in one media channel might not be the best process.
everyone did the that with radio and TV and now the web. when each emerged as the new media, print was now officially dead, who wants to read a story when they can be TOLD or SHOWN a story?, etc. ditto all new media channels. those that learned to play all corners survived. those that didn’t died.
look back to the recent past with the dot.com implosion. thousands out of work, agencies driven to extinction, billions lost. why?
because they thought this was the future, nothing could top this. well guess again. the market spoke, the consumers reacted, or didn’t, and businesses failed.
as for the lame remark about web banners, how many have you put up in your career? more than you want to lay claim to, i’ll wager. they are and always were and will be a useless attempt to drive to sales. and as for counters? we all know that most wire heads program a mouse roll-over as a hit. ditto the closing of a window. there is still no quantifiable method of researching the effectiveness of a websites relation to sales unless a client, let’s say Lexus just for shits and giggles, makes their site a sales site. then we can actually see who bought because of a web presence, or Armani, or Doqueve boats.
till then the vendors reign supreme, like Amazon, Zappos and Overstock.
i would agree that if a new campaign would be SOLELY web driven and lived longer than 2 weeks and achieved notable result, you might have a point, but as we all know, any new offering is lead out by print and TV and supported by a web presence. web and new media rarely if ever lead off anything major.
please feel free to prove otherwise with work for significant clients, Nike? Apple? Gucci? Ford? Boeing?
LD…
Fuck, remind me never to get in a pissing match with you.
Cheers/George
I ease up after some 20 year old…
he was a bit of a putz though, you must admit…
lower depth,
Nice bait and switch but I won’t bite. Don’t worry, I’ll keep things slow and simple for you so you can catch up to speed since you didn’t qualify your comments about Dell’s work until I corrected you.
I won’t bother pissing further with you until you start reading the recent research by comScore and AC Nielson, which are the established market leaders in tracking online data, as I asked you to do.
Your research in your last post was irrelevant to the original point that you made on portals reporting low unfavourable traffic, which was not about comparing traditional to online media return.
My point is that research has shown that portal traffic has been posted overfavourably i.e. exaggerated.
Do try to catch up on your reading before making any more sweeping statements.
People who really know digital stuff are like Sean who are actually modest about what they do know. We really don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow in this screwy cyberspace and we won’t bother passing judgements on it as if we are gurus. What we do today may be obsolete tomorrow. So why not just enjoy the ride like everybody else?
End of rant.
Who is Richard Scoble? Any relation to Robert, the Scobleizer guy?