My Friend Jack

Today I visited the London offices of Jack Morton Worldwide. They are one of the very best experiential agencies around and I just wanted to post a few quick observations. Full disclosure: I would love to work with them - they are a good bunch of smart, friendly people. New business goals aside however:

1. JMW is a business that undertakes the most complex tasks in brand marketing. They design and create immersive brand experiences: they put brands in live spaces, let people feel them, push and pull them around and test them. They demand of their audiences that they are engaged physically and emotionally. What other agencies even try this?

2. For a business that has used music for many years as a part of the brand experience, it is amazing how poorly the music industry has served them. There has been no focus on the creation of long term assets, no unifying processes or standardised pricing. Why does the music industry think it is so special as to avoid such megatrends as ROI measurement and industrialisation?

3. If more clients really understood the potential that the brand experience agency offers, they would fire their ad agencies today and divert the budget. The new paradigm; from passive consumption of messages to active participation in a brand's purpose is too compelling to resist!

DJ