We had our little meeting in the corner office, compared notes, exchanged blank stares and agreed that Agency.com really took a nose dive with their YouTube.com stunt. I'm not sure what's more suprising about this - the fact that Agency.com committed such a blunder or that our creative team, account team and sales team actually agreed on something.

I'm also not sure what I'm more disappointed about: 1)the reinforcement this video gives that agencies are full of slimey sales guys or 2) the fact that they backed their way into a "viral" campaign.

Adrant does a great job of summarizing how I feel about the first point. This video epitomizes everything that drive people crazy about agencies. I'm not trying to pretend like we don't do some of those things, we do. And sometimes we're probably more obnoxious than the crew on this video. I mean, we're the ones who created a ridiculous love song for our clients on Valentines Day. We're all for self-depricating humor.

I guess the thing that does't connect for me is how the rollout and follow up to this video seemed so forced and unnatural. The blog wasn't released until after the video got some attention and Agency.com felt the need to begin defending themselves. That's not viral. All smart agency teams know that good advertising and marketing come from good plans. There clearly was no plan here. They were excited about the opportunity to create a video. They were stoked about the idea to release it on YouTube. That's where the plan stopped. They put all of their energy into creating the video and not thinking about what would happen next or how to follow it up, etc. It's an innovative idea - I'll give them that. It's executed poorly. And that's why I'm disappointed. They had an opportunity to demonstrate how good viral marketing can work and totally missed. Sure, they can call it viral. I call it a fluke. Humorous, but a fluke.

Next time, when they meet in their corner office, they should do a little more thinking before they begin rolling the cameras.

One sunny, New York afternoon Agency.com received a phone call. Subway is looking for a new agency-of-record and they've asked Agency.com to pitch the business. They're likely thinking - 'Wow! What an opportunity. A huge account with deep pockets. Let's not only show them how strategic we are, but let's show 'em how brilliantly creative we are.' Corner office. Now!

They created a video diary, a la The Real World, of their creative process and released it on YouTube. Instead of doing a traditional new business pitch (with strategy documents and spec creative out the wazoo) they decided that documenting their approach to new business and releasing it on the web was more creative. And showed their thought process in a more compelling way.

What do you think? Brilliant marketing approach or embarrassing experiment? Our thoughts and insight coming tomorrow. After, of course, a meeting in the corner office. Now!