Are you tired of ad agencies that hesitate to glom onto any trending hashtag or exploit a celebrity’s death for retweets? Do you want an agency that puts being first ahead of silly things like “thinking” and “dignity”? Good news! Just such an agency exists, according to this fake ad which satirizes social media, real-time marketing, useless start-up companies, and bloggers.
Made by Toronto ad agency john st. and director Matthew Bissonnette, the ad promotes Reactvertising™, a service that ensures “you’re not just borrowing interest; you’re creating the illusion your brand is actually interesting.” Consider us #intrigued.
To be the first to react to any potentially viral trend, they hired thousands of low-skilled bloggers sleeping in shifts. One of them explains, “At first it was tricky. We’d spot something, come up with an idea, and send it out, but we learned pretty quickly it’s not about being funny or smart; it’s about being fast. So now we just write whatever pops into our heads.”
That is eerily accurate.
Hiring thousands of entry-level social media “gurus” is expensive, of course, but the ad agency’s #president is sure it’ll pay off, eventually. Like when they can increase sales on black leather jogging pants by predicting Kanye West will be the first man on Mars.
The ad trods the line of being just realistic enough that you could see a tacky startup company attempting the business model. The ad even incorporated real tweets like that insane DiGiorno domestic violence comment. And the timing is perfect, considering a startup just claimed to have started a meme which they may have had nothing to do with. We can picture that startup telling themselves it’s okay to take credit for someone else’s work, because now they’re “owning the conversation” and may score some of that sweet, sweet venture capital. Ugh. Can we just #BurnItAllDownAndStartOver already?