When you were a kid, did you want to be in advertising?

These kids already get the business at a deep level, and they want to win a Jersey Award.

When you partner with a firm, their weaknesses become yours.  So reading an agency and its stress points is a client-side survival skill.

With that in mind, last month I connected the stories of three Boston-area interactive agencies, each of which diversified from selling services to products: BigBad Interactive, Magic Hour and Fable Vision.

To my surprise and delight, former and current employees contacted me to add to my outsider perspective.  The post also drew a string of comments focused on allegations  of malfeasance, greed, and betrayal at BigBad Interactive. These are the kinds of allegations that the Department of Labor and Attorneys General quoted in the post and were confirmed by news coverage.

On Jul 21, 2010, SeenTheEvil said:

Yeah, bigBad had a pattern of stealing from employee 401(k) plans (hence the DOR investigation) and a lack of ethics at the highest level. That the man who ran it into the ground is now in a position to do that to another company and blames everyone BUT himself demonstrates why BigBad, with so much talent, is but a memory.

You can read the string of comments here.

I’m still a fan of each of these organizations in their heyday.  Today, BigBad’s nameplate sits above my desk as a reminder of how fast digital smug-fests can turn — and how easily talent and generosity can be squandered.

Last week, buying lead management companies was all the rage.  Now Marin Software, a Paid Search (SEM) Marketing Platform, completed another financing round, bringing in $11 million.  (That’s $33 million for them to date.)

And SEM agency iCrossing has been purchased by Hearst Media for a reported $325 million. The deal could increase to more than $400 million depending on performance goals.

So, as we predicted back in December, digital marketing firms are hot investment and sales targets. The market is dyspeptic, so demand may not be taking form in IPO activity. However, that’s not stopping investors from grabbing on to digital as funds shift from traditional media businesses.

This is the story of three talented, scrappy agencies who did great client work, and who each tried to transition to selling products instead of services and engagements. It represents one way that agencies are remaking their business models.

Magic Hour
In the 1990s when I met them, Magic Hour Communications was a group of talented hunter-gatherers in Watertown, MA. Their 10-person shop made corporate films, software, and drop-dead-gorgeous brand websites. I first saw their work while judging the educational category for MITX (then MIMC), the Boston-area interactive awards.  And I got to know them while working on the State House’s website on Mass.gov, which beat out far larger projects for industry recognition.

Magic Hour’s CEO, Louis Gudema, started scoring lots of work for private school websites.  And he made the strategic choice to go deep in that industry, and eventually to productize a content management system for private school websites.  It took nearly ten years, but in 2009 they were acquired by Global Internet Managment, an educational marketing firm. The team is still at work, and they made the transition to having a product and residual income to sell.

BigBad Design
They were also award-winning, but at a higher level than Magic Hour. They had 50 staff, gained larger clients, and had an office on Fort Point Channel in downtown Boston. As I recall, their clients included Harvard, Lowjack, Camp Dresser McGee, Pratt & Whitney Helicopters, and lots of other colleges.

Like Magic Hour, they had also developed a technology for their education clients: an alumni portal. And last year they scored financing to develop the product. As their CEO, Ty Glasgow told the press, they hoped that a product offering would “de-commoditize the web” or at least their services.

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When Good Brands Behave Unethically
Back in February, I pointed out Kellogg’s false health claims on Rice Krispies and Froot Loops.  Specifically, during the worst flu scare in 50 years, Kellogg’s claimed Rice Krispies boosted immunity. They also claimed that Froot Loops were a good source of fiber.

This was something I saw in the grocery store, and as a marketer and parent, I found the ad so offensively false that it deserved any ridicule I could muster. So, a cell-phone photo later, I filed my blog post. Happily, both my readers commented and joined in. Thanks for that!

Clinically Shown to be 20% Better Than Nothing
Coverage on NPR’s Marketplace focused on additional bad advertising by Kellogg’s:  a claim that Frosted Mini-Wheats are clinically shown to improve kids’ attentiveness by 20 percent. The study compared kids who ate Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats to a control group who got a breakfast of only water.  Perhaps a fairer claim would be have been 20% better than nothing.

This is an intellectual sucker punch. And it is a lie to parents by a brand that claims to care about nutrition and families. It is also a sign that something’s gone wrong in Kellogg’s marketing machine.

Marketers and Parents Should Call This What it Is
Advertising law may have allowed this, but it doesn’t make it true or ethical. And the product managers and attorneys at Kellogg’s should have known and acted better, both as brand stewards and as thoughtful citizens.

The Federal Trade Commission investigated Kellogg’s, and gained their agreement to stop such claims, but without requiring the company to admit the claims were false.

Kellogg’s Rice Krispies and Fruit Loops Aspire to Pharma Aisle

Fruit or Froot?
Does Rice Krispies really help my child’s immunity more than, say, fresh fruit?  And though Froot Loops now provides fiber, isn’t it still loaded with crap that most adults wouldn’t intentionally feed to their kids?  What’s a better source of fiber: “Fruit” or “Froot”? Go ahead, pick any froot.

Its good that the FTC called them out, but Kellogg’s response has been focused on regulators, not on setting things right with families or promising to do better.

The brand should take responsibility for its misstep and use this experience as an opportunity to improve. And parents and marketers should expect nothing less.  Without an apology, the brand seems to be dodging, rather than leveling with, its audience.

If you’re a personal injury lawyer in New York City, how do you cut through the clutter of competition?

How about slightly self-conscious humor? Trolman Glaser & Lichtman did. It sounds like they’d do it again, too.

Apparently, funny can get a personal injury law firm coverage in the New York Times.

And funny can also help pay the bills. According to its advertising agency, the Levinson Trachtenberg Group, the commercials and the buzz around them have increased client leads by 25 percent.

I’m not sure if it’s the best lawyer advertising call-to-action copy I’ve ever seen, but it’s the funniest:

If you’ve been injured, call us.…but keep in mind, you need to really be injured.

Once, being present in the media channel was enough. I appreciate that this firm is trying to reach beyond the typical personal injury branding of “Zach the Hammer.”

While not brilliant, it’s unique – and in a cluttered marketplace, that counts for a lot.

Yabba-Dabba-Sue, says Tampa Bay Online, covering the lawsuit filed by Terry Bollea, better known as Hulk Hogan.  Watch the video below, and tell me if you’d want to be in the legal ring with this litigant.

Post’s Flintstones cereal ad used a character that not only looks like the Hulkster, but goes by the similar-sounding name “Hulk Boulder.”

The ABA journal quotes the lawsuit, which contends that  Hogan actually wrestled under that exact name early in his career, until wrestling promoter Vince McMahon Sr. suggested that he use an “Irish name.”

McDonald’s recently had a similar difficulty in using the 80’s music group DEVO’s appearance — see Are We Not Ligitants? We are Devo.  Given the choice, I’d rather tangle with the old New Wavers than with an aging wrestler, especially given the fact pattern in Hogan’s case.

Creative Director Jack Nicholson dresses down Account Manager Tom Cruise. “I write ads, or people die.”

A few weeks ago, I observed that part of a lawyers work involves dealing with misery: explosions, poisonings, fraud, catastrophic medical errors, and — toughest of all — kids whose lives will be framed by the careless act of another.

Those are the issues clients bring to us, and any lawyer who has done it for long enough gets to know the failings of systems that should protect us.

So I’m proud that my firm, Sokolove Law, is helping prevent some of those injuries before they ruin lives. We’re the first firm I know of to sponsor a viral video contest. It gets people to make video about the need to ban asbestos, which is still legal and causing cancer deaths that strike close to home. That’s right: the effort will prevent people from needing to become litigants. And I’m glad about that.

Just last week I was at a friend’s house for a party, and one of the guests recounted an asbestos threat from construction work in his office building in Boston. Everyone was told that if they found dust on their desks they should call special contractors on site who would show up with safety gear to take it away.

“Everyone knew it was asbestos,” he told me. You can imagine his family’s relief when he moved to a new office.

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This is  a story about Eric and Jack, who both blog about the law with an eye on topics that are enlightening, ennobling, or at least entertaining.

By now you’ve probably heard about Eric Turkewitz, who wrote an April 1st post in his NY Personal Injury Law Blog announcing he was the new Whitehouse blogger. He recruited other legal bloggers to echo the post, so they could punk unsuspecting political bloggers who type first and check facts later.

The stunt captured a wider set of dupes than expected. In fact, none other than the New York Times ran with the story. Suddenly, the little geeky joke was everywhere. Here’s Turkewitz’s explanation of the stunt.

Why the hell would I go to all this trouble for an April Fools’ stunt?

I’m glad you asked: Lawyers often deal with misery. Peoples’ lives can be forever changed in a fraction of a second in an accident. Divorce. Child custody. Bankruptcy. Arrests. There is no real end to the chain of human misery that clients bring to the doors of practicing attorneys.

Eric’s explanation matches my own for blogging. Personal injury law is how people and families attempt to recover when they “become statistics” though no fault of their own. I hear about explosions, poisonings, fraud, catastrophic medical errors, and — toughest of all — kids whose lives will be forever framed by the careless act of another. I understand the need for a joke, and I try to provide some of that here. In my opinion, lawyers with character rock. I’m fortunate to know more than a few of them.

Can’t a Lawyer Make a Joke?
After the joke, the recriminations began. After all, reminded Jack Marshall of the EthicsAlarms blog, lawyer advertising is  highly regulated. Counselor Turkewitz misrepresented himself, and the codes of legal conduct are not suspended on April Fools’ Day.  This both put Turkewitz’s professional livelihood and reputation at risk and made Mr. Marshall the target of vitriol for being a complete April Fools’ Grinch.

Continued