Subject: Technicalities Resent-From: staff.newyork@agency.com Date: Mon, 03 Jul 2000 11:28:12 -0400 From: "Mitch Golden" To: nystaff@agency.com Technicalities July 3, 2000 *) No News, No Newsletter, Okay? The social pressure to produce these missives keeps increasing. Friday, standing in the mens room, I hear Eric Porres's voice echo out from one of the stalls: "What's up with Technicalities?" Nothing is sacred anymore. Even the urinal is not a Technicality-free space. *) Our Latest Branding Exercise I guess it's true: change is coming fast and furious to the vaunted "new Woodbridge". Recently I received an invitation to their summer beachfest outing. (Great material for a movie, I think. Working title: "Sun, Sand, and Solaris") What was intriguing about the invite was that it was the second memo I saw from that office that departed from the usual, anonymous style of such communications. It was arty in a way, and it appeared over a stylized signature - a jaunty "Mike". "Mike" of course is Mike Benyo. I've decided that this signature represents the Woodbridge office's attempt to brand itself. I believe the process went something like this: the Woodbridge creatives, brainstorming in their big empty room in the back of the office, began by making their list of adjectives describing their workplace. "Gray", "Quiet", "Dim", "Static"... For some reason, they weren't quite able to find the sort of graphics to give the sexy, energetic image that the office wanted. In despiration, someone comes up with a fallback position: they use the technique of branding the company with the personality of its chief executive. Think of Dave Thomas of Wendy's restaurant, or Frank Perdue and his chickens, Billy Martin and the Yankees, or Bill Gates and Microsoft. So Mike Benyo becomes the poster boy of the AGENCY.COM/Woodbridge. With the right photographer, the advertising photos will make him look like Fabio. Don't trust any code without the trademark signature: Mike - your guarantee of quality. *) My New Job I have gone into the hospitality business. The latest person to check into the Tech Department is Richard Tsai, our newest Senior Technical Consultant. He is on Tiger Style, and is sitting on 13 by the kitchen. Of course that makes it sound simple - when he first reported in I escorted him over to his spot to find there was no phone, no computer... you get the picture. Tracing the internet is nothing compared to untangling the web of finger pointing figuring out why there is nothing at the newcomer's desk. Trek from the team to the People Org to Desktop Support. Nothing at the newcomer's desk - one of life's great mysteries. I am a concierge, but I need to become a zen master. What is the sound of one hand clapping? *) Briefly Noted Remedy is still offline. Tell me why I'm not surprised. We're supposed to mail our issues into request@agency.com. The autoresponse e-mail is great: it says that the request will be filled in 48 hours, _unless_ you're in New York or Woodbridge. Is someone trying to tell us something? *) The PM Department's New Motto People feel pretty comfortable around Ritesh, or maybe they're just more easygoing in the PM department. When Ritesh (acting VP of the project managers) went out for drinks with a bunch of us, he was running late. Meghan Coleman got exasperated with the slow pace of her boss's departure from the office. Phoning him at his desk for the third time, she reminded the man who'll spend this week pondering her salary increase that she wanted to leave: "Tick, tock, mother f----r!" *) The Product Of A Misspent Youth? Massive Doses Of Amphetamines? Someone needs to explain Ritesh's stamina. The aforementioned night out included drinks at Pravda til 11 before most of us took off. Then Ritesh went out for a few hours more with other friends of his. Not content to call it quits after 9 martinis, Ritesh came back to the office until 3:30 AM and wrote up a spreadsheet on the review process. The next morning, he was in the office before I was at 9AM. We already knew Ritesh was a twisted psychopath, and a party animal, but what are we to make of this? *) Techies Pulling Their Weight Much to our chagrin, Peter Gluck was asked by Team RICE to project manage the Boyds Bears B2B project. A few weeks ago he wrote a creative brief for PWC. Not to be outdone, Eugenia Antipas is over in London being CD, IA, PM, and Site Manager for a project for Reuters. What is with the Strategy department? Don't they love us any more? --------------------------------------------------------------------- Name: mikesig.gif mikesig.gif Type: GIF Image (image/gif) Encoding: base64