Threeview punks virtual agency strike in Belgium
Posted on Friday, February 12, 2010
Yesterday, many of Belgium’s ad agencies started a one-week virtual strike to protest the way clients conduct pitches in their country. This comes as a result of many advertisers no longer following an industry charter that sets norms for the industry, including the acceptable number of agencies in a pitch (no more than 3).
As part of the virtual protest, agencies have closed their websites and display one paragraph from an open letter to clients on their sites. This mainly centers around the issue that too many agencies are being invited to pitches, which costs time, money and resources. When the reader clicks on the link to continue reading, he/she is directed onto the next agency’s page, where the letter continues.
The letter begins: “Dear visitor, As you can see, we have replaced our regular website with this letter. It’s going to stay up one week to express our discontent. Allow us to explain…”
At Threeview, we thought we would join in the fun in our own kind of way. We duplicated the virtual protest and changed the messaging.
Our message is that we enjoy pitching. We are confident of our ideas and our skills, and as a small agency we welcome the opportunity to showcase them – even if it does ruffle a few feathers at the larger agencies.
See for yourself: http://www.threeview.com/web/
Read more about the actual strike here:
http://adage.com/globalnews/article?article_id=142039
http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/12/44664.html
[...] Speaking of spec work, told you last week about a whole bunch of Belgian ad agencies who took part in a virtual strike against spec work. That’s the ongoing, and flourishing practice of “gimme some free shit” that many in the design profession despise with a passion usually saved for hating really bad stuff. Some in the design community, including yours truly, were impressed that a whole bunch of design and advertising companies had managed to get together and do something together. You know, in a cool “all in for the better good” kind of vibe. Looks like we were a little premature, as no sooner had the advertising folks shuttered their websites, than some upstart decided to kinda join the campaign, telling people that unlike the large agencies, they would certainly be interested in pitching on spec. And that the big agencies could suck it cause they were big and mean. Munich-based ad agency Three View, claiming that the “rules are different now“, hoisted a home page that was identical to the original virtual strike artwork, with their version proudly proclaiming that they had ‘punked’ the major agencies even “if it does ruffle a few feathers“. Kinda reminded me of the People’s Front of Judea skit from Monty Python’s classic flick The Life of Brian. If you’re a fan of Monty Python you’ll get the reference and find it as amusing as I did. If you’re not, this video (NSFW) might help. [Three View GMBH] [...]
[...] it means party time. This allows us to try new things and get the creative juices flowing. Not too long ago we actually made fun of agencies that didn’t want to participate in pitches a…. While sometimes excrutiatinly painful, a pitch is necessary to remind us that to succeed at [...]