Intersect this

If you’re wondering where the best place to meet up with your ad agency is, don’t worry. They’ll tell you exactly where they live. Spoiler alert: it will be at an intersection.

For all the creative minds working in agencies, somehow they’ve collectively decided to glom onto the word “intersection” as the word of choice to describe who they are, what they do, and what they’re bringing to the party.

And because agencies have never met a bandwagon they didn’t want to jump on, you can now find these roadmaps plastered across agency “About” pages all over the interwebs.

One agency wants you to know you’ll find them at the intersection of creativity and strategy. Kind of feels like the price of admission for an agency, but sure. Put up a sign.

Another will meet you at the intersection of creativity and technology. Welcome to the AI bandwagon. Please keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle.

Insight and imagination? There’s an agency for that.

Human behavior and technology? Apparently the robot revolution is already taking client meetings.

Some agencies have decided two roads simply aren’t enough. Their intersection needs an intersection. Culture, creativity and commerce sounds nice. Maybe not as nice as data, technology and creativity.

I’m sure there are agencies out there living at the intersection of curiosity, connection, disruption and authenticity. And I'd bet front row Springsteen tickets they're wearing black turtlenecks.

Personally, I think a lot of these agencies actually live at the intersection of bullshit and more bullshit.

Somewhere along the way, “intersection” stopped being a useful description and became an agency magic word that takes two expected agency job descriptions and makes them sound like they’re cultural insights no one else has ever thought of.

Chocolate and milk? Peanut butter and chocolate? Strawberries and yogurt? That’s just crazy talk.

Here’s the thing. Not every agency needs an intersection. And almost none of them need a manifesto.

Virtually every agency website shows work they've done and they're proud of. And if it doesn't, that's definitely not the agency you want. But if an agency has great creative that gets the job done, how about letting the work do the talking. It’s much more convincing than a paragraph about how your agency exists at the crossroads of human truth, cultural relevance, transformative possibility and whatever other words survived the edit.

I’ve written countless manifestos for agencies and clients over my career. (Pausing to laugh for using the word "career"). But in all those years and manifestos, I never once used the word “intersection.” Somehow I managed to describe what an agency did without pretending it occupied some mystical piece of real estate between two nouns.

Does that mean I live at the intersection of smarter and less hackneyed? Who's to say.

Tell ya what. Meet me at the intersection of modest and humble, and we’ll talk about it.

If the agency hasn’t rebranded that corner yet.

Manifesto

Sung to the tune of the Eagles' Desperado:

Manifesto, why don’t you come to your senses

You’ve been full of pretenses for so long now

Oh you’re a hard one

I know that you got your reasons

These words that are pleasin’ you

Don’t matter no how

Fancy sentences don’t impress judges boy

You know they’re just a fable

They’re wanted by a client you ain’t met

Now it seems to me award shows

Like the ones you see on cable

Leave you filled with nothin’ but regret

Manifesto, oh, you ain’t getting shorter

Cause it’s the first quarter, the budget’s approved

And creative, oh creative, well that’s just some people talkin’

Your prison is balkin' when good words are removed

Write a spot you’re proud of this time

Don’t squander it you’re in your prime

It’s the only way to get an increase in pay

You’ll have your highs and lows

Ain’t it funny how this assignment blows, cliché

Manifesto, why don’t you come to your senses

They’ve paid your expenses, go write something great

It’s now or never, a book piece is just what you’re needin’

You better stop your concedin’

You better stop your concedin’

You better stop your concedin’

Before it’s too late

The first manifesto

From airlines to peanut butter to Japanese car companies, they all want one. And not just one. One like the one that started it all. And agencies want to give it to them.

The manifesto. That crisp, concise group of words that at once lays out the philosophy, character, promise, mission and direction of a company.

My friend Rich Siegel over at Round Seventeen is the best manifesto writer working, and he's written more of them than anyone I know including me. But as he'd be the first to tell you, even when it's right in front of them, they don't always see it. In a global campaign gang...effort for a luxury car company, I won't say which one - Infiniti - Rich wrote an incredible manifesto. I walked in the conference room where it was pinned on the foam core with about 25 other, lesser manifestos, and was in awe. In fact, I gave it the ultimate copywriter compliment: I wished I'd written it.

At the end of the exercise though, Infiniti stayed with the work it was doing.

The benchmark for all manifestos is and will always be Apple. But that particular one is uniquely reflective of an uncompromising leader with a singular vision. Two things too many companies are lacking.

But don't think I'm completely against them. I'm not. They're good for business.

So here's to the crazy ones. Because people who are crazy enough to think they need to hire freelancers to write manifestos are the ones that do.