thankyou.com

Dear Agency.com: Having flamed, shamed and debated your video--on this blog, your blog and others--for several days now, it has come clear to me that a sincere thank you is in order. My feelings on the video stand. But fair is fair. At first I believed that you did this new medium and the marketing community no favors. That is not true. While I can only speak for one little marketer in a big ol' blogosphere, you did much for me--and I think the entire community.

Your video brought me new colleagues and closer to existing ones. Some vehemently agreed with me, some argued that experimentation is good, if tough. But all joined the conversation, contributed new perspectives and gave me their time. I look forward to many more conversations with friends old and new (but hopefully not on viral videos).

Your video confirms that getting closer to the customer means it's about them, not us. If there's one thing this noisy medium is teaching us, it's that listening is the single most important thing we can do to succeed (as mouthy marketers that's ironic, eh?). It also proved that with 50+ million blogs and growing strong, this blogosphere still does a bang-up job of policing itself. Proud of that.

More than anything, your video showed me how many well-intentioned marketers are among us. It's easy to believe the majority of marketers are sneaky, self-aggrandizing and self-centered. That makes for hot headlines and good gossip. But that's not true. There exist many, many fine marketers who have empowering ideas, good motives. I hope mainstream media gets wind of it.

So whether you win the Subway pitch or boo-boo of the year, the marketing community did rally to score a BIG win and became closer in the process--that merits sincere praise and genuine thanks. While you may not feel it now, it will make the pain worth the gain.

Thank you,

- ck

p.s.: Please respond to the multitude of comments on your blog. Many people are taking the time to speak to you--speak back to us (at the time of publishing your feedback has not been updated since August 2nd).

**UPDATE: Agency.com has since updated their blog. They even published this letter...but failed to publish my original post on it (oy!). I've advised them to read YOU guys' great comments to the original post. You gave them your time--they would benefit tremendously from giving you theirs. Do hope they listen.

Comments

[RakDaddy]

Good luck with getting that response; I like how they trimmed out all the criticism from my post and turned it into yet another, "See? Everyone loves us!" bit on their site.

[RakDaddy]

Wait, I stand corrected! They *did* respond...but only after they'd scraped your post.

[CK]

I have commented to them and reminded them that fair is fair. The fact that they only posted my comments on what we gained...without showing the context...urghhh.

Then, they finally made their blog reverse chronological and yet, the comments are still in chronological order. Oy!

And they TOTALLY scraped your post to make it look like you hail to them. Such bureaucratic BS. But hey, they've been consistent.

I also told them to take the time to read all you guys' comments. They'd learn a LOT.

Regardless: we know what they did wrong. And we know what we gained as a result of their wrongdoings. At day's end, that's what matters.

[vaspers the grate]

A lesson in blogocombat: never try to "win" the "friendly feelings" of inept idiots like Agency dot com.

We must stand on issues and not back down.

[vaspers the grate]

Another deception of Agency dot com is how they post the Marcus Brown Pd video, that is making fun of them, and they pretend it is on their side.

Marcus posted that in response to my attack video called "unviral video". He also posted comments on my blog, and a remark on my YouTube comment field about how people should indeed watch my video and skip the Agency dot com Subway video.

Agency dot com is composed of liars, deceivers, and unrepentant mediocre losers.

It's a waste of time to try to stroke the egos of idiots. Not sure why you even tried to do so.