The Enduring Mythology of the “Name” Advertising Agency
Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM. That’s the story. IBM was such an industry standard, and so widely perceived as being the best in the business, that no one could impugn you for making a decision based on that name alone.
Well, we all know that was a load of horse crap. Plenty of people got fired for buying IBM; IBM just had them quietly killed to preserve their word-of-mouth. But the temptation to buy something large, well-regarded, and safe is still with us. It’s how most of us buy (or bought, and will again) houses, cars, investment funds.
Oh, and by the way, advertising agencies.
That’s the funny part of this business. Agencies stake their name on their early campaigns that create edgy, breakthrough, back-of-a-napkin, two-guys-in-their-wetsuits campaigns that change a category and instantly make a name for themselves. Then those agencies get noticed, and get more business than the two guys in their wetsuits can handle. They get big. They hire people. They hire people to manage those people. And every level they add puts them further and further away from the ideas that made them great in the first place.
Here’s the ugly truth: big agencies get out of the idea business. They get into the selling-the-idea business. They stop feeling the idea and start thinking it to death. That’s why with every idea, you get a ream of paper explaining why the idea is not only good, it is also right. And they create an entire bureaucratic structure of planners, account service, creative and media to sell the idea to you, so you can sell it to your boss. Because nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.
Everyone who works at Super-Genius has worked at a big agency. We’ve made the sausage. We know what goes into one. And we were once seduced by the big names, too. We get it.
But we wanted to talk ideas without asking the admin assistant to schedule a pre-brief meeting in the staff room. We wanted to pick up the phone and talk to you. We wanted to be closer to the work and farther away from the smoke and mirrors we use to sell you the work.
Who knows? We might hire a bunch of people and sell out to Omnicom tomorrow.
But today? You’ve got two guys in wetsuits. Anything is possible.
Filed under: ad agency, advertising, brands, supergenius llc, Brontosaurus, content, creative, strategy, super genius, super genius llc
BLACK MATCH 
Just out of curiosity, and to complete the picture, did you also get fired from those big agencies before deciding to leave the “sausage mill?”
You say “fired” as if it’s a bad thing. It is my personal opinion that if you don’t get fired from a big agency once in your career, you’re not taking enough chances. And, in my experience, the decision to leave comes long before the leaving.
But to answer the question, one of us was enthusiastically fired from account service because he wanted to be a creative. He then became a creative. He hopes to be fired again someday and become an astronaut or a pastry chef.
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