Three Minute Happiness

James Cooper

The worst kept secret in digital - that Martin was leaving Republic to help set up Work Club finally got aired last week. And in today's Campaign there is a nice picture of all three of them. I liked Paddy in his tie and cardy better though. The article is interesting in many ways becuase it hits upon the very nature of what's happening in our tiny little - and let's face it - insignificant industry.

The outsource model works in the US because the agencies that are doing the outsourcing are big ad agencies that can afford to do that because they are still creaming money off clients by making TV ads that don't work - giving 100k to a few kids in Brooklyn or even Sweden, doesn't dent their bottom line - and there are loads of cool hotshops perfectly placed to take that work and profit from it. But will that work in this country?

Work Club want to get a fee for ideas and then a separate fee for production - which presumably they will have to be 100% transparent about. Traditionally it's the production that agencies have made money out off because most (and this is the key) clients don't want to pay for planning and ideas becuase they think their ATL agencies do that.

Clearly the tide is changing. Most of our clients are shrewd enough to see the value in paying for digital planning and specialist ideas but that's been a fairly recent change and there aren't that many clients like that - yet.

On the other stuff - 10am start 4pm departure - sounds great to me. The cynical part of the industry will say 'yeah, wait till the work comes in' but it's sunny today, Arsenal won last night, so why not be optimistic? It could work. Imagine if it did? You have to go for these things. It's called progress.

I have already blogged about whether Work Club will pick up business (sadly I can't link to anything older than 3 months - ed..?!) Of cousre they will. Andy, Paddy and Martin are some of the smartest cookies around, and nice people. Couple that with the fact that there is more digital business around than ever before and they are cooking on gas. Good luck to 'em. They won't need it.

One thing in the article made me laugh. I love the way they give us feint praise saying their ambitions are not to be the next Dare: 'If clients see us as the new Dare, glue or Agency Republic, we're doing something wrong.'

Yeah, cos we are the establishment now and just a bunch of has beens. :)