Gordon's Republic

Gordon Macmillan

A lot of people have had a good laugh at the name of the agency that WPP Group set up to handle its global Dell account, but some joker has taken it a step further with a spoof website Enfartico, which is amusingly close to the original.

WPP is reported to have gone through a string of names before settling on Enfatico (a musical reference in Latin languages) to handle the account, which is worth $4.5bn in billings over three years. It should have tried harder (well that's my opinion). I'm not the only one.

The name to me sounds like something it got from the bargain bin and to be fair the Enfatico website does say it's a "billion-dollar agency based on a 99-cent idea". I think they should have rummaged for a bit longer.

When the agency first launched, somebody working there posted on the Brand Republic forums to say that people at the agency also thought it sucked. Sadly, this person realised, clearly after waking up in the middle of the night as a light bulb materialised over their head, that posting such comments in an industry forum was possibly career suicide. (I'm guessing here.)

The spoof Enfartico site looks like almost a direct copy of the original, although its one client is down as "Dull".

The problem for Enfatico is its shockingly easy to take the piss out of the few words that it does carry on its site. So rather than this on the Enfatico homepage:

"Building a new global agency required a delicate touch. There were loud noises. Broken rules. Crushed silos. Blown-up preconceptions. In the end, we built something that's never existed before -- a hyper-responsive, truly integrated marketing agency designed from the ground up to create value for our clients. Welcome to Enfatico. We're creativity with vision, strategy with heart, analytics with superpowers. We're a collection of wildly diverse talents reinventing the client-agency model in a zero-legacy environment. In the pursuit of faster and better, we've yet to find a convention we didn't enjoy demolishing."

You get this:

"Building a new global agency required a strong stomach. There were loud noises. Broken wind. Crushed chairs. Blown-up burritos. In the end, we built something that's never existed before -- a hyper-bored, truly unimaginative marketing agency designed from the ground up to create crap for our clients. Welcome to Enfartico. We're creativity with smell, strategy with taste, analytics with super-duper-powers. We're a collection of wildly diverse crazies reinventing the client-agency model in a zero-decorum environment. In the pursuit of cheap and tasty, we've yet to find a taco stand we didn't enjoy eating at."

Rather than a description of its proprietary analytics, Enfatylitics (is it just me or does this sound like a disease, you know in a "No doc say it ain't so, not Enfatyliticis"), like this:

"A billion-dollar agency based on a 99-cent idea. To better allocate scarce marketing dollars, weve developed EnfatyliticsTM - our proprietary cross-channel analytics engine. Think of it as X-ray vision to see inside customer behaviors and the forces driving performance. Enfatylitics combines technology and insight to enable strategic, media and creative decisions in real time as the market changes. It also enables predictive modeling that helps drive smart decisions about where and how to invest."

You get this: "An agency based on a 99-cent idea. To horde marketing dollars being pulled from traditional media, we've developed Enfartylitics - our proprietary cross-channel analytics engine. Think of it as the ultimate in BS reporting technology. Enfartylitics combines Google Analytics, a 30-day trial of WebTrends and a couple of non-paid interns to create reports that answer none of the questions our clients would find useful. It's main goal is to help us look smart and convince our clients that we can handle their online marketing budgets."

You get the picture.

I thought this had been created by spoof ad agency/blog the Tribble Agency, based in Austin Texas. Who promise "to consume companies ad budgets and deliver next to nothing by way of online ROI". But although they created another spoof, on this one.

Nice one whoever did.

This story is really getting around, after posting I just saw its got coverage in the New York Post, which goes with the big bold headline WPP'S ENFATICO IS EMPHATICALLY TRASHED. Ouch.

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