I was reading through the archives at Marketing Vox News when I tripped over a posting from October 19, 2004 that caught my attention. Aquent a creative services firm launched a spoof of its own advertising campaign which consisted of a series of video ad interviews with brilliant 
creatives. Aquent described the spoof as:
"Mocking common agency management foibles and CMO hubris, the ad shows
hapless creatives as their campaign gets picked apart and made into a
stereotypical print ad nightmare".
I clicked on the link and was taken to the Aquent page with the video ads and a prominent button labeled PLAY VIDEO for an interview titled Arresting Approval Pain. I clicked on the button assuming it was the spoof and an interview with Lana Rigsby of Rigsby design started to play. The interview was nicely produced and Lana was an interesting person to watch and listen to. The first part of the interview did not look like a spoof. About a third of the way through Lana starts talking about her client Dell and their approval process. She made the following statement:
… "the time it takes Dell to develop and roll out a new product is a small percentage of the time it takes to develop and roll out the communications around that product".
Her point being that the communications approval process was delaying product launches and literally impacting the bottom line at Dell. I’m thinking as I listen to her that this must be the spoof. In 25 years of agency/client experience I have never heard of a situation where the time to develop and rollout a new product was a small percentage of the time it takes to develop and roll out the communications. Especially for a company run as well as Dell Computer.
The rest of the interview was dedicated to Lana’s vision of what it takes to make great creative. I replayed the video again to make sure I heard everything correctly. I did, and I was thinking these Aquent boys are wicked with such a subtle spoof. Except it wasn’t a spoof. This was a real interview. The actual spoof was buried in the menu. I then replayed Lana’s interview one more time to make sure I heard it right. I did. And it raised three points with me;
1. If this is true what the hell’s up at Dell?
2. If it is true why is the agency making a self-promotional video out of a client’s vulnerability?
3. If it is true then this is the kind of vulnerability a smart competitor could really exploit.
I have an e-mail into Dell Computer. I’ll let you know if they respond.
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