The Uncommon boss questions when the DDB brand truly died and if agency brands should exist at “any cost” anyway.
‘They say you die twice. Once when you stop breathing and again when someone says your name for the last time.’
The spaff on LinkedIn this week is all around the final death of the DDB brand, but the real question is probably when it really died. As a founder I wondered whether it’s essential to ask whether you would want a brand to exist at any cost. Sometimes it’s better to recognize the scarcity and be grateful for the gift of its part in your life.
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Restaurants are an interesting example. Would you really want St John without Fergus? When was the last time you went to The Ivy? And is that because Jeremy King and Chris Corbin’s energy has long since left it? Magnus had had enough and shut the doors on Faviken. That’s the badass way to go. Done. Out. You stand a far better chance of being a reference point if you don’t leave the fate of your dream in the hands of the less ambitious, or worse still, the claws of those simply seeking the dollar.
That said, some places continue to be great after the event, and some go on to even eclipse the original impact. Most of the time, though, this is the result of a crew doing their thing in a way that works for them, rather than truly channeling the ghostly DNA of a name on the door. At its best, our success at Grey LDN had very little to do with Valenstein and Fatt or the fact they literally named the agency after the color of their office walls. Companies are ultimately just buildings full of people and what those people do in their waking hours defines the truth of that company.
The evidence of a company is the work it produces. Would you still want The Deftones around if they sounded like Nickelback? This is most agencies. You will choose to be great or crap, whether you keep those initials or not; your energy and creativity are what will define you. There is no well-dressed, bespectacled ghost checking the originality of your writing.
Really, what I’m asking is that we inquire as to whether the brand being alive is a life worth living, and one that would really push the game forward or be a sad, heavy reminder of a moment passed around the neck of an industry already adept at beating itself up. Make no mistake Omnicom doesn’t get better by killing DDB, but maybe the answers we are looking for in our industry aren’t theirs to give. Look elsewhere for hope.
As Miles Davis said, “Anyone can play. The note is only 20%. The attitude of the motherfucker that plays it is 80%.”
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