Kudos to Coffee

Maybe it's the optimist in me (mind you, he's a tiny fellow) but it appears the advertising pendulum has begun swinging in the opposite direction.

Towards sanity.
Towards common sense.
Towards persuasion.
And away from bullshit.

Just last week, John Wren, head of mighty Omnicom, hinted that clients are steering more of their budgets back into traditional media.

Prior to that, Martin Sorrell suggested scaling back or even skipping the now bloated and inordinately expensive Cannes festival.

And we are witnessing the final and very public takedown of one William Grizack, the Planning/Strategist/Charlatan/Grifter/Flim Flam Man (BTW, all those words are somewhat interchangeable) who embezzled money from unwitting ad agencies (are thee any other kind?) and sent dozens of our colleagues to the unemployment lines.

The fall of Señor Grizack is directly proportionate to the rise of Mr. Patrick Coffee, the hard charging editor/journalist who uncovered this seedy little story at AgencySpy.

Here too, things are changing.

AgencySpy, at one time banned from certain organizations with a weak stomach and an even weaker understanding of how the Internet is available through various mobile devices, was fondly regarded as an industry gossip rag.

It was here we could anonymously vent, rage against the Death Star holding companies and throw carefully-crafted shade on shitty Nike knock-off spots or newly-appointed douchey creative directors sporting ear gauges, tatted sleeves or silk ascots.

But now, with the glorious takedown of the Grizmeister and his paradigm shape shifting formulas and his revolutionary brand ebonics, AgencySpy is becoming something else -- credible.

And we ought to give a hearty hat tip to Patrick Coffee for doing so.

Of course now that the Griz has exchanged his $150 plaid shirts for a set of prison-issued orange overalls, the question is, where will Mr. Coffee proceed to turn his prying eye?

I have a host of suggestions: obscene pay inequality, sweatshop working conditions, dysfunctional mismanagement, drug and alcohol abuse, raging incompetence and the disappearance of any work/life balance.

Plus, now that I'm 44, it's hard to believe but I'm beginning to see the first signs of ageism.
Shocking!

The sad truth is I never rose that high on the corporate ladder. With today's bloated title inflation, my one-time status as a Group Creative Director is truly the equivalent of being the Senior Mailroom Clerk. So I never really knew about all the agency dirt. But I do know the people who do know the people who know where all the bodies are buried.

I'd be tempted to give up those names if Patrick Coffee would simply revert back to the old, easier to read layout of AgencySpy.

Is that too much to ask?