Behold: the premiere episode of The Worldwide Scoop, the original online series produced by my agency, Atomic Tango…

I’ve always wondered why more ad agencies don’t produce entertainment content.* Creating an online video show, magazine, or some other creative media requires the same talent as producing an ad: writers, artists, directors, actors, models, etc. It also provides a stimulating, liberating break from creating work for clients, who don’t always fully exploit an agency’s creative capacity. Plus, there’s always downtime when clients go on hiatus or burn out their budget early. During that downtime, all that high-priced agency talent has a few options: they can sit around, take long lunches, shop on Amazon, watch YouTube or indulge in some other time-suck, or they can team up on some fun endeavor that builds camaraderie and shows what they’re capable of doing with no client strings attached.

While advertising certainly has its perks — which is why I chose this industry and continue to work in it — sometimes you just want to create something not bound by brand guidelines or the need to actually market anything. Creative projects also give your employees in non-creative positions a chance to flaunt their talent. At one interactive agency, I worked with a programmer who played bass for a punk band, and an art director who was a killer cartoonist. Unfortunately, they had no opportunities to strut their stuff at work.

We had downtime and a CEO/owner with deep pockets, so I suggested to him that we create original creative media to showcase our creative prowess beyond developing websites. He vetoed that idea, saying content production wasn’t our “core competency”… Then the dot-com crash hit. And since there was no more demand for our “core competency,” the remains of the agency were sold to the highest bidder, and that amazing assemblage of talent was laid-off and dispersed.

I then made three vows:
1. To run my own agency someday. Enough with “leaders” who had the ambition and vision of lemurs!
2. To never use the term “core competency” (which I rank with “best practices” and “mission critical” as among the most annoying and potentially destructive examples of business jargon).
3. To use any talent in my immediate circle to do something creative and non-marketing related.

With The Worldwide Scoop I have fulfilled that third vow. (And I can be so grumpy when I catch myself perpetrating a self-deception.)

Where are we going with Scoop? Right now the goal is to build the audience and give everyone involved as much exposure as possible. It also gives me the opportunity to experiment with online-video marketing techniques, and it demonstrates to current and potential clients Atomic Tango’s ability to create online shows and other branded content. Want to put on a show involving your brand? No problem. We’ll even throw in a few amoebas.

*Side note on the term “content” (aka, the “C-word”): I curse the villainous cretin who first used the word “content” to describe creative media. “Content” is what is used to stuff a pillow. I don’t know any musicians, novelists, filmmakers, journalists, artists or other creative professionals who describe their work as “content.” I do use “content” to describe the features of a website, but only as a general term to cover the words, layout, architecture, design, artwork, etc. When referring to specific features, I call them exactly what they are: “photos,” “texts,” “games.” For this article, I use “content” because, unfortunately, that’s the term everyone in this business understands. I’m hoping someone will coin a single term that encompasses all creative work. Which do you prefer: “media,” “creative,” “productions”….?