Interview with Matt Van Hoven AKA: Agency Spy
May 20, 2009
Matt Van Hoven is one of the most polarizing figures in the advertising agency blogging world. He freely admits that he never worked at an ad agency, yet he sometimes breaks some of the most polarizing agency dirt and wins the industry has ever seen.
It seems that every layoff, every lost account, every “lost pension” plan that develops in the industry you can find it first at Agency Spy with the author generally being Matt.
So here’s the interview :)
Question: How the hell do you get all these leads?
agencyspy: From a healthy mix of anonymous tips, which I chase down to having drinks with people that know to generally being a really skeptical person. The community helps me out a lot, it’s just my job to dig into what they give me.
Question: You run the popular twitter feed @adagencylayoffs Do you find twitter to be a reliable source of information, or more of just an initial contact that requires extensive followups?
agencyspy: Well first off, the layoff feed is half the equation. Lately I’ve focused a lot more time on @agencyspy because I was getting replies saying things like, “@adagencylayoffs is the most depressing feed I follow” etc. And that’s no fun. But nowadays Twitter is both an info provider and a relationship builder for AgencySpy. People DM me tips just as much as they e-mail or use the anonymous tips box, which is cool – it allows me to get more info right off the bat. I could write a book about the value of Twitter in general, so this is just the surface.
Question: What are your thoughts on Adage and Adweek?
agencyspy: oh boy, where do I begin. I think that they both do really well at what they do, which is just so different than AgencySpy. So as far as being traditional publications go, they have some challenges ahead of them. Both have had staff cuts, both still have print editions and just a ton of work to do and few people to do it. That said, moving forward they’ll have to adapt – and quickly. But they beat us to the punch sometimes and that always ticks me off…and makes me work harder.
Question : We get our weekly giggle at the “the week in advertising” videos… is that your favorite part of the job?
agencyspy: In some ways, yes. It gets me away from the desk and lets me use the left brain for a bit the secret to the show is that we kinda make things up as we go (as if you couldn’t tell) I just pick some ads I liked that week and kinda make up the script as I go. I heard somewhere the first rule of TV is to stay on script, so being that we’re all about doing things our own way, Pip, Weston and I just make up little quips as we go. Our 12 viewers seem to like it.
Question: Do you think the holding company model is flawed, or it’s successful during a recession?
agencyspy: Completely screwed up. I was talking to a very savvy source of mine about this very subject and we both agree that unless your business is tied directly to the client’s, you can’t hope to win these days. Holding companies have a whole other set of concerns, ie stock holders, that independent agencies just don’t have. The focus must always be the client’s business, the work. To me that just seems like the logical answer, but I know very little about how the HC model really works and I’m sure people much smarter than me will take issue with that remark. But when all else fails, I say get back to fundamentals – inside a holding company agency it’s just harder to do that.
Question: After reporting on the industry did it change your thoughts on Advertising? Do you find advertising enjoyable or far more shady?
agencyspy: Well I tend to look at advertising from a consumer’s perspective, so I tend to have a different perspective than a lot of my readers – which is good, it fosters discussion whether I say something stupid or salient. That said, I am an advertising addict – my roommates get pissed that they pay for DVR because I don’t let them fast forward through ads. So no matter how screwed up things get I will always love it – the challenge of advertising is much greater than that of TV and movies IMO, because you have 15 or 30 or 60 seconds to entertain, convince, please etc and that’s it. Well, depending on how much ad space your buyer purchased. Anyway, the agencies that don’t have as much internal drama tend to do better work and to me that’s a good thing – it allays my skepticism about the industry – at least until the next scandal pops up.
And of course the obligatory photo :)
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