Matt Van Hoven issues his own press release :)
November 3, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
Joe Ciarallo
212-389-2011
MEDIABISTRO WEB SERIES TURNS OUT 50 EPISODES, SOMEHOW NOT YET CANCELED
DESPITE TERRIBLE REVIEWS, ‘THE SHOW MUST GO’ SENTIMENT, CREATOR/HOST CONTINUES EFFORT
New York, November 4, 2009 — ‘The Week in Advertising’ [TWIA], a weekly Web program showcasing comical advertisements, today released its 50th episode, marking the 49th anniversary since the show ran out of humorous material. “Well, 50′s a nice round number, so we figured it was time for a press conference,” said show creator/host/AgencySpy.com Editor Matt Van Hoven during a press conference attended only by himself prior to writing this release.
“That show is still on?” asked TWIA producer, Weston Almond, who does the show’s pre- and post-production. Aided in production and writing by TVNewser Editor Kevin Allocca, the program draws on “popular culture,” “industry news,” and “inexpensive whiskey,” for laffs. Much of that inspiration comes from Allocca, a former 23/6 editor and sketch comic. “It’s intelligent, informed, and always delivers a high level of important discourse,” said Allocca, who at the time was speaking of CNN International’s “Amanpour.”
Industry professionals like Saatchi and Saatchi CEO Gerry Graf agree. “Don’t quote me in your f*cking story, Matt,” he didn’t really say. Catch ‘The Week in Advertising’ every Tuesday at 1 pm at http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy/week_in_advertising/.
ABOUT TWIA -
‘The Week in Advertising’ is a Web series highlighting the more entertaining aspects of the consumer-side of advertising. This less-than-seven-minute program also takes on confusing ads that the host is too limited in cerebral capacity to understand, and occasionally riffs on AMC’s ‘Mad Men’ in order to garner traffic. Though the risk of being canceled is high, morale on set is always low. Since that makes no sense, it’s time to end this press release, officially. OK, it’s over. Now. Now it’s over. Stop reading this.
Members of the media can receive more information about TWIA here: http://www.mediabistro.com/agencyspy/week_in_advertising
-
Matt Van Hoven
IM/Twitter: AgencySpy
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AgencySpy : Ford posts 1 billion profit from social media
November 2, 2009
Agency Spy is running an article stating that Ford’s better aimed marketing and advertising budget is what caused or helped cause the 1 billion dollar profit for the car maker.
This most likely is more than just social media, but I actually have to agree with Matt on some keypoints, their advertising is far more efficient due to the heavy use of Social Media, and even with a 25% allocation to social media, it’s questionable if they have the right firms in place to do it.
As most of the holding company owed advertising agencies have limited (if any skillset) in social media, search engine optimization, etc etc and generally outsource that to another firm while taking a 50% (or more cut).
Meaning that it’s quite possible that Ford is still over paying and paying a higher cost ROI than what is needed.
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Twitter #cdbags out of control
June 19, 2009
The new joint venture between Media Bistro’s Agency Spy and Tribble Ad Agency is hilarious in terms of traffic. Within 2 hours of going live, roughly 1,000 people visited the site located at http://www.aosep.com.
The site is just increasing more and more traffic well after work hours, and it starting to pick up momentum with all the advertising agency individuals that are just fed up with the Cannes and the aloof attitudes that come from the various agencies.
For once we as a collective can voice our concerns, for the whole world to see.
Enjoy… and don’t forget to tweet “cdbags” in your posts!
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Regardless we do welcome him to the ad agency reporting community and wish him the best.
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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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All Hell Breaks out at Media Bistro
May 1, 2009
Did hell’s gates open tonight. Matt @ Media Bistro allowed a ghost writer in to publish an article , that raised all sorts of hell 63 comments and rising as of 11:15pm on Friday night… The vast majority of them nasty. It really paints the industry in a new light…
In essence what was posted was a “fluff piece” singling out three agencies The Barbarian Group , Firstborn, and Goodby, Silverstein & Partners for their digital skillset.
The article itself wasn’t what blew our mind however, we see these “advertorials” everyday coming from Adage and Adweek. What blew our mind were the comments. We took a few of the best ones for you see.
Kids, kids - we’re not really making our industry look very good here. How about we keep the histrionics and name calling where they belong - in the Firstborn offices, 14 hours per day.
all the way down to the mean and nasty.
Dude, you’re a fucking tool.
and even better:
It’s obvious this “reporter” doesn’t know shit about agency interactive. They do however seem to read a lot of industry pubs to cobble this “overview” together.
What these ad agency guys don’t realize is that clearly it showed them at face value.. a bunch of stuck up ego loving snobs…
So what your agency was listed in the stupid article? Does it matter that much to you? Or does it imply that by you not being mentioned it pushes you even further down the irrelevancy ladder?
You guys sound like William Shatner when he found out he wasn’t allowed to play in the new Star Trek Movie.
Either big money is made by fluff pieces.. or your egos are so big that a hot air balloon would be too small to use as a hat….
If I were to bet, it would be the latter.
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Enfatico hires everyone!
November 17, 2008
Agency Spy is saying that Enfatico has hired everyone. 3 hires they are stating they signed… the problem is still unclear in terms of the WPP hiring freeze how these new hires are being allocated…
— David Shulman is Enfatico’s new chief digital officer, based in New York. He “will also work with the cross-disciplinary leadership team on brand, marketing strategy and global campaign execution. Shulman is the former president of the New York office of digital agency imc2, and former managing director of Digitas Detroit.”
— Josh Sklar is Global Creative Director, based in Austin, Texas. He “will lead creative development of all digital initiatives.”
— Jonathan Mo as digital creative lead based in Beijing. He “will lead digital campaign development throughout Asia-Pacific and tap into the budding innovation throughout the region.”
Story is always developing….
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Note to everyone : It’s ugly out there.. and it will continue to get worse until this recession is over with…
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AgencySpy / Matt Van Hoven is literally taking his pants off during the news report on Agency Spy Crying funny!!! … We had a good laugh.. we think you should as well…
We do like the format however… it’s funny… and it also does tell a story… with the best part that Matt wears a tie to work…
Enjoy!
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