note: This first appeared on my Tumblr last week. Usually they auto-import. Not sure why this one did not.

With the publishing of Brian’s article, it is probably a good time to announce to you all that I am lucky enough and thrilled to be part of Foursquare’s recent series B round as an angel investor.

I’ve been friends with the Foursquare gang (and Harry especially) for a long time, and I am super excited and proud of what those guys accomplish as they near their 2 millionth user. I’m geekily proud to say my user number is somewhere in the mid 2 digits, and generally dismissive of those who willfully fail to see Foursquare’s potential. The most common refrain seems to be “I don’t like it for me,” or “no one will ever use this,” which bely an extraordinary lack of curiosity on the critics part: I don’t particularly love football, for example, but I am endlessly fascinated with how popular it is, and am constantly curious as to why. Thirty million Elvis fans and whatnot. Two million people signing up for anything in such a short time is a fairly impressive feat, and when you look at the growth rate, it’s doubly impressive. Whether you use it or not, someone is, and if you consider yourself at all a connoisseur of digital trends, it’d probably be worthwhile to find out why.

ANYHOO, my angel investment should probably be disclosed as I comment on Brian Morrissey’s rather excellent recent article on agency’s endeavors in trying to work with Foursquare. This disclosure perhaps taints my experience (though it’s only a couple weeks old), but I can say that Foursquare has been very responsive to our agency’s inquiries, both on behalf of clients, and for our own hobbyist pursuits.

I can also say, however, that I’ve seen eye-to-eye with Dens et al about the merits and potential of the API for a long time, and we’ve generally been exploring marketing solutions that use the API rather than trying to get Foursquare to give one of our clients a badge. We get what they are offering, what they are going for, and we try to align that with our clients’ needs.

I do think, though, this article points to a larger trend I have been yammering away about for a couple of years now. Indeed, I did a fairly comprehensive presentation about this not so long ago at The Economist, and I think it’s a good time to revisit it.

Basically, history and circumstances have driven us to a place where engagement and unique, custom offerings are all the rage. And yet, the media agencies still control the dollars. SO: who thinks up and executes some awesome new marketing implementation on the Foursquare API? The media agency is bereft of any smart creatives and technologists who can think up and develop these, yet they are the ones trying to “do the deals” with Foursquare. It is undoubtedly many of these that Brian was referring to when he said “One agency representing a major package-goods client said the company put the onus on the brand and agency to find the best way to use the service.” Well why not? An agency thinking up ideas? Quelle horreur! I’d ask that agency if they have delved into the API message boards, but i have a sneaking suspicion that agency would not know what that question meant.

Creative agencies get this and are brimming with ideas, but generally don’t control the purse strings. Budgets are set at a higher level. Media plans need to be filled, yadda yadda.

Foursquare’s an awesome place to work for just about everyone but… a marketing creative. You’re a crack art director. Do you want to work at Crispin, or at Foursquare thinking up alternatives to badges? You could do that and a million other things at a sweet agency. And try getting developers at a major new hip startup to take time off of working on the product, or scalability, or the real meaty issues that drew them to the company to begin with in order to work on a snickers campaign implementation.

In short, none of the traditional agency models or other parties in the mix is the right entity to think up, negotiate and execute custom & premium ad deals with publishers. And these are the deals that everyone wants.

I believe there is a real opening here that can point the way for the creative agency in a world of earned media and premium marketing opportunities. And, as I’ve been saying for years at various conferences, I believe the chickens are coming home to roost from the great media-creative schism of yesteryear. Earned media will kill it off. Media’s gotta come back in-house. It’s not a question of if anymore, but when.

Finally, I think it’s still up in the air which side of the equation – the publisher or the agency – will be on the hook to “think this stuff up.” It is a lazy (and most probably a media) agency that expects the publisher to do it for them. But that process may well prevail. Media agencies are powerful, and clearly they’d prefer the publishers to think this shit up for them since, well, they jettisoned their creatives 30 years ago. And perhaps then, over time, d_igital creative agencies will become the vendors not to the brands but to the publishers_, and help them provide these ideas. Indeed, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that our client base now includes so many publishers (The Economist, Viacom, Digg, CNN, etc). And I’ve certainly had no shortage of conversations with publishers confirming the merits of this line of thinking.

It certainly seems plausible, and increasingly so as the years go by. The economics aren’t quite aligning yet – publishers are definitely in desperate need of these services and are willing to pay, but they aren’t willing to pay “brand” rates yet. Furthermore, a sales-commission model seems to be preferred: you give us ideas, and if we win you win. This might work, it might not. But hey – the entire economics of advertising are washing out right now anyhow. No reason to think this particular paradigm won’t be the one that rises to the top.

Conversely, rather than the publishers becoming the clients, It’s also plausible that a slight modification on the “agency of the future” model that R/GA pushes could work – provided media is folded back in, and technology isn’t off-shored, and they can keep the best developers and stay abreast of the technology trends (rather than having those developers go work at, well, Foursquare). That could work, yes. And yet, it’s interesting. R/GA has an amazing video about how the agency world got to where it is now, and how they are a new model for it. It’s very compelling. would posit however that it leaves out a critical, and increasingly important component: the publisher.

This isn’t the old days. We don’t make one thing for multiple publishers anymore. Every publisher has their own API, their own best practices to engage with the customer. While we’ve traditionally had a advertiser-publisher firewall in the US, it is not so far-fetched to see this crumbling. It’s been gone in some countries (think Japan/Dentsu) for ages, and Google has been chipping away at it in the US for a long while.

In any case, Brian’s article is a breath of fresh air for me, and illustrates where we’ve been going with all this work for publishers, I think. If I may be so bold, I’d recommend a quick review of my old talk at _The Economist _for a good historical overview of how we got here and where things are going – I’ve-posted it here.

Just finished reading REWORK by 37 Signals.

I recommend this portion of ‘Business’, plenty of wisdom combined with lovely pictures from Mike Rhode.

Read an excerpt here.

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It is with a mixture of proudness, sadness, and well-wishing that we would like to announce that Robert Hodgin, one of the founding partners of The Barbarian Group will be stepping down as a managing partner, and leaving the full-time employ of TBG at the end of this month. The Barbarian Group doesn’t expect Robert’s departure to have any impact on its business, for reasons we’ll describe in a moment, but Robert definitely leaves his mark on the company and will be missed.

Robert has been with us since the first meeting of the founding partners in Benjamin’s loft in late 2001. He was one of the first generation of groundbreaking Flash artists, and was instrumental in establishing TBG’s creative and executional chops, nurturing the first group of creatively and technically savvy flash artists that helped TBG rise to prominence in 2002 and 2003.

Through the years, Robert has transitioned from Flash to other technologies, most notably becoming an early adopter and proponent of Processing. He also moved out to San Francisco, and helped us set up shop on the west coast. Of late, Robert has been participating in the development of new technical frameworks within TBG, most notably with Cinder, our in-progress C++ visual development framework, on which Robert will still continue to work. Robert has also pursued his technical art relentlessly, blogging his experiments both on our blog and on his highly acclaimed personal blog, Flight404.com.

Robert’s work continues to be groundbreaking, innovative, and unlike anything anyone else is doing (except, of course, for those who have been, shall we say, heavily influenced by Robert). It is also the work of an artist, and not the work that people often wish to engage a full professional services company for. Our new arrangement with Robert allows him to pursue projects that he couldn’t previously pursue, while still giving TBG access to Robert’s unique skills when the situation calls for it. We’re excited, Robert’s excited, and there are probably a million potential clients of Robert’s that can afford to hire him now that are very excited as well.

So please join us in wishing Robert good luck in his future endeavors. He’ll be blogging soon about the transition and we’ll post that here as well. Then we encourage you to follow his future work at www.flight404.com. Farewell, sir!

So I had dinner with my friend Liane last night, and I realized that we never actually blogged on the site here about the amazing project we spent a good chunk of last year doing for Liane Mullin and her partner Desiree Gruber. And in talking about the project last night, and all that they’ve been accomplishing since launch, I was totally impressed, and realized that I SHOULD TOTALLY TELL YOU ABOUT IT.

So, in early 2008, we met with Desiree and Liane, who were, at the time (and still are) working at a company called Full Picture Entertainment. Full Picture is best known as the creators and producers of the hit show Project Runway. Full Picture is also a PR and marketing company, and their clients include Heidi Klum, the host of Project Runway. We also had the joy of meeting Jane Cha, the showrunner of Project Runway and another Full Picture team member. They had a vision for a new fashion and beauty site and community, as viewed through the prism of models. The top model’s inside secrets into fashion and beauty, as well as a compendium of their likes and dislikes. It would also include information about all the top models. Famous models would participate on the site.

When we met Liane and Desiree, they hadn’t gotten funding for their new startup yet, so off they went. They quickly met the people at Polaris, and they entered into a partnership. We re-bid for the work, introduced ourselves to Polaris, and got the gig. And by mid 2008, off we went.

We finished up and launched the site in time for spring fashion week in March of 2009.

Since then, the site’s been growing and the Modelinia team has expanded.They’ve built full content team, found themselves a CTO and a marketing exec. It was a joy to watch all of this, of course. As an entrepreneur, it was highly-rewarding to watch the modelinia team grow from 2 to where it is today. And it’s been fun, over the last 4 months, watching them improve the site, and the content, and learn what works and what doesn’t. Watching them acquire sponsors and grow their traffic, and improve their content. It’s been a fascinating look into online entrepreneurialism, and we’ve enjoyed it immensely.

Liane and Desiree have become great friends of ours, and we’re proud to have helped them fulfill their vision, building the initial build of the site, branding the company, designing the site, and offering a ton of flash and tech development.

They’ve brought it in house now, of course – many of our startup clients use us as a virtual team until they can get a dedicated team in place. It allows them to get going on development even before they’ve found a CTO. It’s never a perfect transition, but it allows for progress even in the face of daunting HR challeges. We think it worked pretty well here.

In any case, if fashion, beauty or beautiful models are your thing, check out Modelinia, or follow them on Twitter or any of the other social networks.

And thank you, Liane and Desiree, for letting us meet so many beautiful models. I think Toby’s stakeholder interview of Iman may be one of the best things we’ve ever done.

Hi
So once a month on the second Tuesday at 9am, (this month it’s TOMORROW July 14!!, 2009), come to Katz’s Deli on 205 E Houston St @ Ludlow, and have breakfast with us!
Bring a business date or a coworker you need to catch up with.
Nobody really shows up for breakfast there, and its big and empty and rad, so it will be a good time.

Pass along to interesting people. You don’t have to rsvp or anything, just show up!

Thanks!

Benjamin & Noah

http://cometoourbigbusinessbreakfast2ndtuesdays9amatkatzs.com/

Man I wish someone had told me this before I started in business, but Fred Wilson perfectly sums up the best approach to dealing with revisions to legal documents. I have to do a TON of these, and I find every time it gets the least bit difficult or contentious is when we’re going back and forth with redlines and not actually talking. 95% of the time, talking rapidly clears up every issue. It kind of amazes me so many people to try to go through this without talking.

My habit of long-winded comments on blogs continues, this time in response to Valleywag’s call for Mark Zuckerberg to resign.

My comment:

I wrestle with this one every day. It’s interesting you’ve come down so strong on the resign camp. And while I recognize Zuck’s managerial limitations, I think it’s probably best if he stays. It’s a close call for me, but on balance two arguments win it out for me.

First, what we are all dreaming about for facebook to do is to have another “hit.” We all, I think, are subconsciously secretly hoping it’ll do something awesome, and become totally cool again. OK, maybe we’re not all wishing it, but i think we can all say it’s what they need. And let’s face it, that’s hard. I think I prefer Zuck’s relentless efforts at trying to find that, even when it sometimes fails, like the last redesign. And I can’t think of anyone else who would have the chutzpah, naivete, or balls to keep doing that. Certainly not Marc. Marc would turn it into the good days/parts of Yahoo! – competent, solid, always there, profitable, and boring. And since this thing isn’t public, and it’s my understanding that Zuck still owns the largest share (if not a majority?) and everyone else invested in it with that understanding, they should go for it.

Okay that was a long “one reason” – but I guess we can summarize it as “Facebook needs to keep trying radical things, and Zuck does that like no other.”

Secondly, and this is a bit of a hedge because ultimately Zuck’s responsible, but WTF? He hired a bunch of seasoned, qualified executives, and what did that get him? A COO’s as responsible for this mess as a CEO, especially when they’re the supposedly seasoned executive.

—-
Zuck should fire Sandberg, issue a mea culpa to the entire company, learn from his mistakes, and keep going. It’ll cost him his licks, but it will fix things, and he’ll learn from it. He’s young, but not too young to learn his lessons and improve from them.

Got a little riled up this evening reading a TechCrunch article from guest author Eric Clemons from Wharton on Why Advertising is Failing on The Internet. I got a little riled up. Mainly these posts irk me in how we’ve just been hearing the same old, same old, for years, even as people do interesting, compelling, effective stuff on the internet every day.

Anyway, here is my long-winded reply:

Okay. I see you significantly revised your article in the update, and, really, this is more a problem of an inflammatory headline, but I think a comment from an advertiser is warranted nonetheless. Take a second, look me up. I know what I’m talking about. Honest. I do advertising. On the internet. And it works. And I make money off it. And my clients are happy. And I don’t care two whits about banners, search, or any algorithms.

Advertising is not failing advertisers, and it’s not failing consumers. It’s failing everyone who expected it to fund the whole of the internet. But advertisers are just like everyone else. Why would we pay someone (websites) for something (messages) we could get for free?

You’ve got a few fundamental logical problems with your assessment. Let’s dissect a bit.

First, you say “advertising is failing.” But your argument here is not that it’s not working, but simply that it’s not the web’s economic salvation. You’re conflating the failure of advertising as a means of funding all the fun the internet has with the efficacy of advertising as a means of impacting users’ behavior. They’re different things. It’s doing each of them well to different extents. Just because it’s failing to fund the whole internet doesn’t mean it’s failing to influence consumer’s purchase patterns.

Secondly, you list the age-old problems with advertising. People don’t like it. They don’t trust it. Whatever. it’s a red herring. It’s always been the case. The internet didn’t change anything about that. Advertising worked before in the face of these obstacles, and it works now in the face of these obstacles. We all like to bitch about advertising. It has challenges. Nonetheless, it still works.

Next, you’re conflating the need of websites and media properties to make money with the need of advertisers to make ads. Just because there are different ways for sites to make money now means nothing. So what? Fewer sites will run display ads? What does that have to do with the existence of advertising? Will it stop someone needing to market their product just because Facebook found another way to make money?

And lastly, like everyone in the tech world (though you seem to not be from there), you seem to be under the impression that all advertising online is display ads, text ads, and maybe a rich media unit here or there. But the definition you give is more broad than that. You said it yourself. It’s getting a message in front of people where they’ll see it, in order to influence them. It’s not clicks. It’s not this page or that.

Here’s the stone-cold fact. Your analysis is outdated. Effective advertisers have already adapted to the years-old “new” reality you outline. It’s more expensive than anyone hoped, it’s less profitable for agencies, and it’s a hell of a lot harder than everyone hoped, but the fact is it works.