Whitty Worldwide is an elite team of highly trained
creative professionals who live or die on their ability to
surprise people, cut through the crap and do the impossible.
We deliver big, bold, game changing ideas without the overhead
and complicated, time wasting process you'll find in most agencies.
Whether you need a broad reach fame building campaign,
or a targeted message people find engaging and useful -
we are ready to take your brief.
Whitty Worldwide is an elite team of highly trained
creative professionals who live or die on their ability to
surprise people, cut through the crap and do the impossible.
We deliver big, bold, game changing ideas without the overhead
and complicated, time wasting process you'll find in most agencies.
Whether you need a broad reach fame building campaign,
or a targeted message people find engaging and useful -
we are ready to take your brief.
Bullshit Baffles Brains
On Independence Day in 1999, my two partners and I leapt into the dot-com tsunami and set-up shop in a filthy, dangerous and yet barely affordable part of San Francisco. We were out to demystify the over-complicated process of advertising and positioned our firm as a 'back-to-basics' creative agency.
Once we had worked out who was going to change the light bulbs, I set about getting to know our founding client. On the drive back from my first "all-hands" meeting in Silicon Valley I began to realize our bullshit-free proposition was going to be in for a rough ride.
Excite@Home was run by a bunch of messianic digital entrepreneurs who were fueled to the gills with venture capital and Kool-Aid. As far as these guys were concerned, the fundamentals of marketing were dead.
Everything had changed. Forever.
Oh well, things will settle down. They didn't. In fact, during the 12 dizzying months that we had the account, I never received a written brief.
"Excite@Home was hailed as the new media network for the 21st Century. It ended up as digital roadkill, its assets picked over by bondholders and AT&T."
Frank Rose, Wired
Footnote: In the annals of history there are moments that define entire eras. One such moment occurred when Excite@Home declined an opportunity to acquire Google for $750,000.
When the bubble burst and the plug was pulled the effect was instantaneous. There was no gentle glide path back to reality.
As luck would have it, we'd been indirectly recommended to a company that had been laboring for more than 30 years at building a marquee name in the mysterious world of semiconductors. Applied Materials were now hungry for recognition, and very keen to take advantage of the free fall in media prices.
I believe now that I learned the most important lesson of my career when we started working with Applied Materials. I suspect that the last 20 years have really largely been about relearning the lesson in a whole variety of circumstances in an increasingly complex environment.
"Memorably expressing the truth is the best marketing strategy."
Conveying the truth in a fresh and memorable way made Applied Materials famous for the role it plays in making the Information Age more accessible and affordable to everyone. And it reminded me that technology, no matter how mind-bogglingly impressive, is a means to an end, not an end in itself.
So today, if I hear someone say, "it's the dawn of a new paradigm, it's not like it was before," I run a mile.
Mark Whitty