Brian Morrissey of Adfreak is reporting on a new idea emerging from Ogilvy.
Chris Wall, co-chief creative officer at Ogilvy, intends to launch an agency offshoot called Ogilvy Transient. Wall described Transient at the shop’s Verge conference yesterday, and it doesn’t refer to an underbathed creative. It’ll be a roaming, experimental agency unit that aims to produce “brand journalism” for clients, with creative types thinking like editors. (I think this means low pay.) Ogilvy Transient’s “band of storytellers” (regular agency slobs, plus sexy outsiders, like a “house novelist” and “independent filmmaker”) will roam the land desperately seeking inspiration and the Big Idea. “We will go where the story is and create on the fly,” Wall declared.
Commentators at Adfreak are making fun of the idea, but I think it’s right on. Great ideas don’t exist in a vacuum.
I agree that it is a bold move! I only hope it pays off so other stubborn companies will see that being creative does not require you to sit at a desk 5 days a week.
Yes, people are still cracking up over yet another label maker. Creative people are creative people. And they thrive when their bosses leave them the fuck alone and stop insisting everything sound like a fast-talking david mamet scene shot by Joe Pytka.