Crayon. A new marketing company trying to sound cool.
Crayon is a new marketing company from Joseph Jaffe. There so many silly thoughts in Crayon’s manifesto that I am dumbfounded. Crayon wants to be the “new” marketing company. Here are some of those thoughts plus a few of my comments.
- “We are a different kind of company that mashes-up a combination of consulting, agency and advisory services. We’ll also do windows and serve tea if required.”
Do they really have to say “mash-up” to prove the point? Lame.
- “If you can’t handle the friction, passion and intensity, we’ll gladly refer you to another company.”
Hmmm. Excuse me, but this sounds like something a lacrosse player would say.
- “That doesn’t mean we won’t sell ourselves (hard) to you…we want you to be sure about us and the conventional pitch process isn’t designed to do that.’
Ok, like I have never heard an agency say this.
- “Pitch part 2. You’ll never have anyone in the room who won’t be working on your business.”
Ditto!
- “Ideas and creativity are the lifeblood of the business.”
Ditto X 3.
- “Talent (together with vision, culture and creativity) is ultimately what differentiates us from the shop next door.”
Really?
I’ll stop. Bottom line. Who needs this pretentious crap from a company (a smart group of guys) that is trying to break out? Sounds like agency hack-talk to me.
Crayon will get business. I wish them luck. But my friends, TV still works and now that Joseph isn’t just selling his book, what will he really do? He has already pissed off the folks at Second Life.
As as far as Second Life goes…. MosaicSF has a decent interview.
October 26th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Thanks for your encouragement and warm wishes…as well as for taking the time to read through our press page and manifesto.
Our manifesto is not supposed to be an ad or sell sheet…it’s more internal-facing but we wanted to share it in the interest of transparency (I guess that’s just another attempt to be cool and therefore lame)
I guess the difference between rhetoric/hot air and honesty/authenticity is that we really mean it and really intend to deliver against. Yes, I know best laid plans…but give us a chance.
There are way too many jaded, skeptical and beaten up agency guys/gals in the business.
Don’t give up home Peter…we won’t disappoint you, lame manifesto and all.
October 26th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Geeze. Am I an asshole? I might be. I just had one of our oldest clients; most successful 360 degree programs, tell me that they are putting the biz up for review. So, yeah, I am in a bad mood. Sometime this business just sucks.
Look, I think that Joseph plus are absolutely in the right space. But, and I do believe this, they are using language that too many old shops use daily and Crayon will provide the right alternative to that same old shit.
October 27th, 2006 at 5:55 am
I saw this mentioned in Adfreak or Adnauseum or whatever people read. Its all fun right?
But if you have an internal mainfesto to rile up the troops don’t put it on your site. It will be read by all.
By the way does anyone actually use Second Life and why would they beyond marketers trying to look cool to a group that can figure out that they aren’t really cool by being marketers on Second Life.
October 31st, 2006 at 2:14 pm
There is absolutely nothing more painful than watching an agency attempt to create its “voice” or figure out its USP. For example, everyone claims to leverage proprietary tools like “our Brand-Centic 5-Step Optimizer(tm)” or “our Big Idea Distillation Process(R)”. For cripe’s sake, why can’t we all just acknowledge that the agency with the biggest brains wins? It’s smart people, not a process, that make agencies great.
My apologies for the rant - I’ve been dragged into yet another re-branding assignment for my agency. And it hurts.
Sorry about your client putting the biz up for review, Peter. Speaking of big brains, I’ve met most of the Ralston crew and know you guys should have no problem retaining the business.
Good luck.
September 10th, 2007 at 10:57 am
[…] Last week three senior staff at Joseph Jaffe’s fledgling company Crayon announced they were leaving. (Steve Coulson, CC Chapman, Gerry Cohen). By my math that’s a third of the company… Jaffe posted a somewhat - let’s say “authorized” version of events on the Crayon blog, along with the usual jargonized piffle that characterizes his prose style. Evidently AdAge’s Jonah Bloom (having entirely ignored Crayon’s launch fiasco last year, as most of us did - if we even noticed) saw this and wrote this article. […]
November 18th, 2007 at 7:13 am
[…] November 18, 2007 Recently, Crayon escapees CC Chapman and Steve Coulson rolled out their new company “The Advance Guard”. Refreshingly, they didn’t have an embarrassing launch on Second Life, and even better they didn’t use Joseph Jaffe for their copywriting. […]