got somethingtosay?

Dear members of SoDA, 

I’m just back from a trip to Moscow, where I was invited to speak
at a conference entirely hosted and presented by Grape, a recent
addition to our global membership.

The partners and team at Grape were incredibly warm and attentive
hosts. They put together an impressive conference for a high-end list
of invite-only clients and prospects that any of us would be proud
to assemble.

But one of the brightest moments was created by You:  The video
introduction to open the conference was a compilation of messages
from other SoDA members around the world  — Brooklyn, Los Angeles,
Sao Paulo, Paris and Bogotá.

It showed Grape’s audience that the conversation they were taking part
in was connected, informed; that the group they were investing their day
with was one who was a part of a much larger conversation outside of
their own market; and that the service they will come to expect from
Grape, is on par with leading shops around the world.

You created that value through the simple act of showing up (or, in this
case, by appearing on camera). Some did a group thing, some learned
a bit of Russian.

It also showed me, one of the founding members of this organization,
why we exist. It was a demonstration of our purpose that I got to just
witness, having done nothing for it myself. It was awesome.

We have a lot of collective knowledge and experience. The pace of
innovation is accelerating. And the more we teach each other, the more
we’ll learn (and produce and sell) ourselves.

Thank you for submitting those videos.  Grape has posted it on YouTube,
and I think it’s good for everyone to see:

  Jay Wolff
president | odopod
vice chair | SoDA board of directors

www.twitter.com/jodopod

This year’s SxSW was better — more energetic, optimistic and, to me, more compelling — than recent years.

But, one thing made it completely different:  Twitter.

Last year, the audience in every panel and keynote presentation poured their conference coverage into open, glowing laptops that lined every row. Keystrokes were a drum core: tikki tikki tap. tikki tap. The hotel lobby and coffee shop was no different than at any Starbucks — laptops open on every table.

But this year, I walked into the café in the corner of the Austin Hilton and saw something very unusual: one lone laptop. Huh?!

The place was packed, every seat was occupied. And those who shared a table were, of course, not talking; they were busy — staring into the screen of an iPhone or other smart device with a very active keyboard. Thumbs, not hands, belted out coverage of this year’s conference. Phones, not laptops were deployed. That was the first moment I noticed that everything had really changed. Laptops were missing among the digerati.

We ALL had a laptop with us, of course. Some of us travel with two. But even my much adored and easy-to-schlep MacBook AIR was left in my bag while I roamed. More experienced Twitterati left theirs back in the room. With any  Twitter-enabled iPhone/smart phone, we had the conference covered.

Last year, everyone was a publisher, journalist or blogger. This year we were all magnetos, pointing in the direction of anything cool.  We shared our discoveries or unique impressions and announced any grand conclusions on the fly to ever-mounting, self-organizing Twitter groups. With their comments and retweets which followed, that was enough — it all got out there.  I saw and heard and found and learned all I could possibly handle. No laptop required.

Of course, there was more work to do once you got back to your room. Longer dialogs and real blogging required some time with a full keyboard. The full 15” screen was a welcome daily reunion. I’m not giving my computer away anytime soon. But on the floor of the conference center (or nightclub) I could track trends, absorb insights, look up links if I had to, and txt my bar-hopping plans to other attendees with whom I was hoping to meet up.

I overheard that the CTO of the conference organization itself said the peak device load at the conference hit 6700+ at one point. This was before the show was over (and, I should reiterate, was only hearsay — so I’d love to see something official).  But that stat would imply that 3-times the normal number of devices were actively in use at this conference.

That means that while noticeably fewer full machines were open posting comments, links and blogs at SxSW this year, a great many more people with devices were active, engaged and contributing to the conversation going on about and around the conference.

I think this all made SxSW 2009 better, more compelling, active and exciting. While the attendees at SxSW could be dismissed as the one-percenters in this context, the early-early adopters, I am certain that a similar wave of change will roll out across other venues and situations as well. And while Starbucks won’t have any more seating or actual capacity open up because of this, they are likely to see more open tables*.

(*Obligatory article-ending tongue-in-cheek uptick here, sorry.) 

Hope this was helpful or interesting.  Would love to hear from you.  

Jay Wolff

Or why everything this guy says really irks me:

http://adage.com/digitalnext/post?article_id=131841

Mr. Merrick,

Michael Lebowitz took a huge risk of losing agency business by choosing to make his complaints about Cannes so public. But he took that risk for all digital agencies, including yours. You imply Big Spaceship wanted more credit than BBDO. Not true. They only want what they were promised. Your approach weakens our industry in many ways.

First, BBDO's contract with BSS included clear delineation of credit, since both knew the HBO campaign was the kind that might warrant recognition. Though not all agencies pre-determine such issues around credit and awards in print, although we believe they should. But we should all care that our vendor agreements are respected.

Lebowitz also took that risk for the talent in this industry, at your shop and mine, who choose to work for companies where the craft is being invented on the fly, where creative and technical risks are not entirely known, and where we are often left hoping those risks are in line with the reward. We should all care that our work is recognized, particularly if such recognition was made part of the promise.

This is not about awards. It's about honesty and integrity. It's about the health of the relationships between traditional and digital agencies. And this is a chance to change our industry for the better.

With awards in mind, studios tend to make extra investments in their execution, trading more work and longer hours for that additional currency. Agencies often use the awards platform as a carrot to lower our price. It's all part of the bargain and such recognition is often openly pursued in lieu of a studio's marketing budget.

So, changing any agreement after the fact, in this case while standing on the awards platform, is not fair or honest. It's not good for any of us. And we as a group should NOT put up with it.

Your approach, Mr. Merrick, is so detrimental to the entire industry:

• You tell the agencies that it's okay to fuck us. It's not.
• You tell our clients that digital shops are all alike, that we're only in business to slave to general agencies. Not even close.  
• You tell our staff they shouldn't seek recognition for their good work, when in fact, they should stand up and fight for such clear recognition any time it's promised.

You fear a worsening of "our collective predicament." We seek to step out of that predicament altogether!

By shining a light on blatant wrongs of the biggest culprits and collectively upholding that stance, we – even as small agencies – can move the line; we change the practice; all boats rise.

So, Lakonic can be the "American Axle & Manufacturing" of our industry. Fine. Congratulations. You still deserve for your contract terms to be respected, your bills – in cash and kind – to be paid, and your staff to get what's been promised to them.

Caving to the strongman of the industry, because that's the way they've treated others for years, doesn't help. Blurring the lines between those who are happy in the production business and the specialists, like Big Spaceship, who extend our craft confuses clients and slows business for all of us. And your most ironic assault, calling other studios "whiners" in public forums (for the second time now) so that more business falls your way is shamefully more selfish than the claims you lay against your own peers. In that way, you show they are not peers at all. 

We'd prefer that you'd join us, on a platform that requires transparency and integrity of all of our partners – digital vendors and traditional agencies alike, so that again, all boats rise.

Background

When the award shows in Cannes were over, a fervent conversation had just begun.  The following post was written in response to the debacle to show our support of Michael Lebowitz' position and to suggest ways we all -- especially SoDA -- could be actively engaged in a solution. 

Who's Award Is It, Anyway? 

Credit often seems unfairly distributed during the major award shows, most recently at Cannes. One of our SoDA members, Big Spaceship, felt largely unrecognized for their contributions to the award-winning HBO “Voyeur” campaign. BBDO’s creative leadership took a simplistic position: “We are the agency; they are the production company. What’s the big deal?”

To their credit, BBDO organized a lot of staff and engaged a team of talented vendors to implement a clever idea; it was executed beautifully across a broad range of media. For that they won a bunch of awards. And why not?

Well, they should not have been so dismissive, because times are a-changin'. 

There is certainly pent up frustration over this issue. When Big Spaceship founder, Michael Lebowitz, spoke out publicly about the incident, we heard a roar of responses. His words hit home with all types: smaller shops that partner with big advertising and then go unnamed as well as the unseen specialists in all corners of our industry whose work turns so many campaigns into award-winners. Since there are so many people in this business still telling "war stories" of award-shows-past, there is clearly a problem. 

On one hand, it comes down to common courtesy: a matter of taking good care of “your team” so they are there the next time you need them. It’s also a matter of valuing the rare level of intuition and inventiveness necessary to extend any campaign idea onto the new and ever-evolving interactive stage. 

On the other hand, you should simply know who you're hiring. So me digital shops are production companies, set up to slave to agencies for most or all of their new business. But others, like Big Spaceship, are definitely not. 

Lebowitz wrote, “To qualify us as a production company is to sell short the tremendous amount of insight required to take a traditional piece of media and put it out into the world in a natively digital way." 

Michael is right. For now, it takes specialties and skills only available outside the general agencies to make the leap to digital. And as the ad world becomes more integrated, more networked and more complicated, collaboration will be all the more necessary and all the more critical. 

Let's fix it

SoDA was established to provide a single voice for the broad spectrum of shops within the digital industry. We’re here as a collective of CEOs willing to contribute our time and effort to clear up or lend assistance to issues that are “uniquely digital.”

Our membership includes all types of digital agencies: from independent, direct-to-brand operations to studios that were set up specifically to provide digital services under the general agencies. 

Is the conflict over award credits uniquely digital? Not on it’s own. But it has been recurring so often around digital projects that it has become a real barrier between traditional and digital groups.

If BBDO has an out, it’s that the award shows are broken. These shows face an increasingly difficult job of identifying and categorizing what is “digital” in the ad business. Digital work is innately pervasive, so a single category, like “Radio” or “Outdoor,” is not going to solve the problem. And a lot of linear, otherwise traditional media is paraded as “digital” just because it appeared online, which is a denigration of what is truly unique and valuable about our work.

On top of the awards conundrum, there are so many non-digital agencies pretending to “be digital” that the landscape is becoming emotionally charged. This is not only misleading, but wasteful. We look forward to the day when traditional agencies take their gains, not from pretending to “do it all,” but from leveraging their cleverness and wisdom in finding, hiring and being able to integrate the work of their digital partners. These are relationships that should not be hidden, but flaunted. 

We can help in two ways

First, the members of SoDA will work with organizers of any major awards program to address the increasingly challenging problems they must cope with in categorizing and recognizing top digital work. The group unanimously agreed at our most recent all-member meeting in Vegas that this is a difficult problem, but is an issue that festers and is too divisive to remain as it is. We have 18 truly digital agencies and their past experience to bring to bear in helping to craft a solution.

Second, we are meeting with the AAAA and other major industry groups to discuss ways we can work together toward the overall betterment of the industry. Our members have organized into committees to address industry ethics and best practices, among other things; much of this work will naturally address the relationship between digital and traditional agencies.

It is part of our commitment to share or publish the results of our work with anyone in our business that might benefit from it. We see conversations with the ad industry groups as a mutually beneficial step toward reconciling or eliminating the current tension. So far, they’ve been very supportive.

This article is intended to speak openly about the problem, so we can move effectively toward a solution. We hope it helps. 

Jay Wolff
president | odopod 

vice chair | SoDA board of directors

We get a lot of questions about SoDA. It's a group of would-be competitors, all digital agencies, that meet regularly to advance issues in our industry that are unique to digital. C-level execs from each agency contribute time to digital education, to relations with the traditional agency groups, and toward connecting other digital agencies that are willing to share best practices across a broad geography.  We want to know what works well for each agency and what might make a contribution to the entire industry.  Right now we are 17 companies, but we are currently reaching out with a round of invitations for new members.  Let us know if you are interested by emailing: paul.lewis@SoDAspeaks.com.  

If you're still here, you have more questions about SoDA. In an interview with Adobe's Layers Magazine, I addressed the most common questions, which covers all of the following: 

• How often and when will SoDA meet?
• Who benefits?
• What are common issues digital agencies face?
• What are some of the specific examples of the issues SoDA will be covering?
• What are some of the areas where the industry needs standards? 
• How will the information gathered at these meetings be shared? 
• How do these issues affect graphic design professionals? 
• How did Adobe become involved and what will be the extent of their involvement? 

See the original article (May/June 2008 issues):  http://www.layersmagazine.com/questions-adobe-soda.html 

More questions?  Sure:  jay@odopod.com