Adland_ Searching for the Meaning of Life on a Branded Planet - James P. Othmer [42]
I looked around, hoping to find a bucket to spit into.
If the World Economic Forum Asked the Subservient Chicken to Solve Earth’s Financial Problems, What Would It Do?
Fall 2007
The Subservient Chicken will respond to more than three hundred commands, but when I order it to “deal with sudden fame,” it stares at me, shuffling its synthetic chicken feet. When I type “Deal with big-agency, digitally clueless fools who repeatedly ask you to rip off your own idea for their clients,” it… well, it won’t let me type that many characters.
While I was sitting with Rick Webb in the tiny Xbox-equipped conference room, Ben Palmer, Barbarian’s president and co founder, stepped in to ask Webb a question. “First,” Webb said, “tell the story about how our clients changed after the chicken.”
“Well,” Palmer began, “we had started under the assumption that our clients had heard of the Internet and were smart. But after the chicken this was no longer the case.”
Webb added, “Our clients started out as ten guys around the country who got us. Then it all changed. It went from 100 percent of the clients getting us/it to only 20 percent who actually knew what to do with the Net.”
After the chicken, the Barbarian Group was written up in BusinessWeek, the Wall Street Journal, the trades. “We had grown organically for two years,” Webb continued, “working with [progressive, creatively driven agencies like] Crispin and Fallon and Wieden and Mother, but everything changed when the mainstream found us.”
“Our whole M.O. was to be really excited about everything,” said Palmer. “But because we actually were, we overdid it and gave too much.” Coming from any other ad-type executive, a statement like this would smack of insincerity, but when almost whispered by the slight, sleepy-eyed Palmer, whom one agency head who has worked with him described as “a lovable guy who looks like a stoner but who just blurts out these amazing, visionary things,” it’s almost believable.
“We weren’t set up to deal with ad people in big agencies that didn’t get the Internet,” Webb explained. “We had never worked with any of them, and most were using broadcast [TV and radio] producers to oversee interactive projects …”
Palmer finished Webb’s thought: “Which is fucked.”
“We hadn’t set out to, but we were starting to become like one of those agencies. We never got into business to get as much work as we can. My business plan was in five years we sell to Omnicom. We’ve long since abandoned it.”
“In part,” Palmer said, “because I’m ridiculously unemployable.”
Webb shook his head. “Dude, you were on the cover of Ad Age. You could get a job.”
“Oh, yeah. I could get a job. But I would totally quit. I want to make money in a way that is enjoyable. Work with cool people who are inspired. This is like a big sandbox where we can experiment with the future, with computers and brands, which are really exciting.”
Before he left, Palmer tugged at his T-shirt, then showed Webb something he’d made for the company’s Facebook page. Watching them, I found it hard to believe that these two had as much if not more influence on the future of advertising as any suit in a Madison Avenue corner office.
“Anyway,” Webb continued after Palmer left, “we had reached a point where we needed to do a lot of soul-searching. Were we kind of blindly turning into an agency, or a production shop? Plus, the digital realm was changing. We were one of the first, but now there’s like forty digital production companies. Then factor in outsourcing to India or Brazil, where they turn out some of the work for a quarter of the money. We were busy, but it had totally become a race to the bottom where we were just underbidding each other.”
So rather than sell out to a conglomerate or soldier on as a thriving, successful digital production company serving mostly agency clients looking for Chicken 2.0, Barbarian’s five partners spent more