Pecking order? We don’t need no stinking pecking order (or badges, for that matter)

Preface: I wrote this post about a week ago, assuming it would be the penultimate statement about the ongoing discussion of a “pecking order” in the Twin Cities agency world. Well, I got trumped, and fiercely so. Here is a comment AB received from a reader of the original article calling for a debate: “I can’t stand all you self involved egotistical advertising freaks. Your industry is dying and your days are numbered. Glad I got out.” Of course, AB gleefully approved the comment, certainly with a fair amount of amusement but also because of the intensity of the sentiment. Perhaps he should have waited a few days for the concluding post below. Or maybe he put an exclamation point on the idea that pecking orders and egos are simply rubbish, and that doing good work — even excellent work — is what matters.

It wasn’t exhaustive. Nor scientific. Not even definitive. However, the dialogue about the new agency pecking order in the Twin Cities had its lively moments. OMG, there was even self-promotion (so Un-Minnesotan).

What’s he Babylon-ing about, you ask?

A few weeks ago Agency Babylon decided to stir the pot in response to an Advertising Age article that presumed to define the landscape among this region’s advertising and marketing agencies. To say that AB thinks AG got it wrong is to put it mildly.

It seemed logical, then, to throw the topic open to discussion amongst ourselves — people right here engaged in and defining our marketplace day by day.Through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, e-mail, phone and coffee chats, there was a respectable amount of pondering, sharing and declaring.

These observations/conclusions are distilled from the input:

• Advertising and marketing is no longer monolithic, nor is it dominated by a few big agencies or hot shops. To be sure both big and hot agencies are a reality, but they no longer have the region-defining clout they once did. A two-edged sword given all the upside Fallon once generated for the region.
• There are countless smart, creative, risk-taking and expectations-defying individuals and shops in town. And while many don’t score major industry awards, this cauldron of talent is moving the business forward client by client, idea by idea.
• The smart use of technology to shape and deliver messages might have become as important as the creative itself.
• Sometimes the innovation comes from…gasp…clients or in collaboration with them.
• Women were curiously absent in the Advertising Age article, a subsequent agency landscape piece in the Star Tribune and a few other proclamations about the region’s AQ (agency quotient). That belies the significant contributions women have made for years in this arena. Contributions in thinking, creating, leading, technology and business–but that is likely to be another pot-stirring topic for the future. [Guest blogger opportunity: any takers?]

In effect, the consensus seems to be that not only is there no “new pecking order,” but the very notion of such a hierarchy is old-economy thinking. And for those compelled to think that way, well let them eat our dust.

Advertising Age's Jeremy Mullman

Addendum: In the original version of the post “We don’t need no stinking pecking order” (below) Agency Babylon inaccurately stated that Advertising Age reporter Jeremy Mullman wrote an article about the Twin Cities agency scene without traveling to the area as part of his research. The fact that AB relied on hearsay from a trustworthy but misinformed local source is no excuse. In a series of communiques on Twitter, Mullman reports that he did indeed travel to Minneapolis-St. Paul for interviews.

That’s the only factual error AB is red-faced about (so far). The rest is opinion and interpretation of the upshot of that Advertising Age article and the subsequent bantering about it here. Mullman says that the intent of the article was never to establish a pecking order, and only to shed a light on the evolving agency landscape using our market as a kind of microcosm. Here are his three tweets on the topic:

• Enjoyed the post, but our reporting was not done remotely from Chicago. I flew to Minny and met with 10 agencies in person.
• Also, “new order” story focused on was intended to display Minny as a microcosm of what will ultimately happen across entire industry, imo.
• We weren’t trying to “rank” by chops. Only pointing out that big creative shops shrinking and new, less-media-centric models are ascending.

Blogs, as we all know, are not subject to the same rigor as commercial media. But even a blog will lose credibility — and readers — when it gets sloppy with facts and offers no repentance. Agency Babylon has done wrong and herewith withdraws its inaccurate statement and offers apologies to Jeremy Mullman, as well as thanks for being a good sport.