"I am always intrigued with just how poor a job most of our agencies do at branding and advertising ourselves. You gotta consider from the client's POV that if agencies are so damn good at simple messages that differentiate products and services, how come nobody knows half of us agencies, and fewer can differentiate what we each stand for?" -AKI SYSTEMS 2600
Here's different and, if you ask me, interesting. KesselsKramer in Amsterdam has created a variety of homepages (with additional pages/links/content) for its Web site. From Plastic Surgery ("trust your face to KesselsKramer) to Vending Machines to Pools (shown-"building communications wet dreams since 1996"), each one has its own theme and is tied to the others, and to the agency, only by the contact info. But who will call? Bird watchers and hot air balloon riders? Or, as they'd hope, the savvy marketing managers with a sense of humor and willingness and budget to take risks?
Going back to Aki's question, I'd never heard of the agency, so they've got my awareness and attention and communicated the following: "We know 99% of company sites are boring. We know 98% of ad agency sites are boring. We are not." So I guess if I were Maurice Saatchi, I would say, KK is unboring. Or is that one word, un-ownable?
Thanks to Polkadot Holes
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Found: A Different Agency Website
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3 comments:
Not quite related, but came across this on Reuters also from Amsterdam, a fake online agency website which was getting calls from prospective clients:
Fake agency offers ads on hookers' thighs
Wed Jul 5, 2006 5:17 PM ET
AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch design student bored with conventional advertisements has set up a fake online agency offering advertising space for beer, cars and TV stations on prostitutes' thighs and cleavage.
On his website www.instoresnow.nl, Raoul Balai also proposed painting brand names on zoo animals and floating huge billboards off popular beaches to get vacationers' attention.
"I was getting sick and tired of advertising everywhere," Balai told reporters. "But I don't want to preach, and I thought satire would work better."
Far from taking his ideas as a joke, an Amsterdam zoo had its lawyer threaten Balai with a defamation suit after his website depicted fish from the zoo bearing the brand name of a frozen fish company.
Prospective customers phoning his fake agency are kept on hold and bombarded with sales pitches until they give up.
Whenever we get ready to brief a team on starting a new agency website, I always try to remind the team of one thing: we care about the site far more than any of our audience will ever do, by a factor of about 1000, at least. Agencies spend time trying to be so precious with their sites -- and it's always hard to balance doing a good thorough job of answering the specific questions prospective clients will bring to the site, with the desire to show that the agency is highly creative. Highly creative sites tend to age quickly and have a highly ephemeral feel. And of course, the effort spent on the site could be spent on actually doing great work for clients or even prospects... we recently took a crack with our new site and while we like the site a lot, you always feel like you left something on the table with whatever balance you strike.
I really enjoyed looking at your site, I found it very helpful indeed, keep up the good work.
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