Bozos de Zappos

If you're an agency person, I highly recommend reading "Is 30 Minutes Too Much To Ask?" by Mike Wolfsohn, ECD at Ignited.

The piece is about Ignited's experience pitching Zappos (the darling of the Twitter crowd.)

As Mike says, "Like more than 80 other shops around the country, we were lured by the Zappos cattle call."

Without stealing Mike's thunder, here are some highlights from the piece:

• Ignited created its proposal in the form of a 25-page blog.
• Ignited used analytics that allowed them to know exactly how much time Zappos spent with each page.
• Zappos looked at only 5 of the 25 pages.
• Zappos spent an average of 14 seconds with each of the 5 pages it bothered viewing.
• Zappos never even looked at the page that introduced the team, something they had specifically asked for.

Mike is clearly too much of a gentleman to call Zappos jerks, but I'm not.

I'll bet it took Ignited at least 100 hours and many thousands of dollars to put their pitch together. And these Zappos bozos spent 70 seconds with it.

It's enough to turn a lesser man into a skeptical, cynical, contrarian bastard.

Thanks to John Truscott for this.

And Another Thing...
I know this means nothing to you, but it's important to me. There is no way The Panda, Pablo Sandoval, should not be playing in the All-Star game.

Batting Avg: .333
Home Runs: 15
RBI's: 55

Extremely Good At Something Specific

An interesting piece appeared in Adweek last week entitled, "In The Shadow of the Founders."

The thrust of the piece is that it is often difficult for agencies to survive the exit of a charismatic founder.

The piece spotlights the troubles that have dogged agencies like Riney, Fallon, and Cliff Freeman as the founders have either left or taken reduced roles.

Of course, it is true that the exit of a charismatic founder often creates big problems for an agency. The thrust of the piece, however, misses the core of the issue.

The piece suggests that among the key prescriptions for a successful transition from charismatic founder to second generation, is that the new leadership has to share the values, principles, and culture of the founder.

This has almost nothing to do with it.

The reason charismatic agency leaders become successful is that they are usually extremely good at something specific. They have a talent.

They may be extremely good creative people, or extremely good strategists or sales people, or extremely motivated, or extremely confidence-inspiring.

To an outsider -- and even to themselves -- their success may seem to be related to values, principles, and culture. In fact, these usually emerge as a by-product of the success, not a cause.

That's why, when global agencies buy entrepreneurial agencies, and the founders leave, they almost always screw it up. They bring in a "manager" chock full of "values, principles, and culture" instead of someone who is extremely good at something specific.

Friday Follies

Best price ad of the week. Here.

3 Lousy Things About Getting Old

1. Your skin becomes a garden of biological oddities.
2. Pretending you're interested is harder than ever.
3. Even people you like are annoying.

And Speaking Of Growing Old Gracelessly...

88-year-old legendary adman Julian Koenig can't let go of his feud with his former partner and legendary egomaniac George Lois. Listen to Koenig's Complaint as narrated by his daughter here (go to "Act One")

Special thanks to Kelly Erickson for this.

2 Great Popular New Ways To Impress Idiots

1. Assertions without data
2. Strategy by anecdote