Chris Colbert joins panel at MITX on the future for advertising agencies
February 24, 2010 by Anita Tandon · Comments

- Image of Chris Colbert
Here at Holland-Mark, we’ve been thinking out loud for a while now about how the agency business has changed for good. It’s no longer good enough for marketing to just be interesting – it must be imperative. As CEO of our resurgent business, Chris Colbert has been asked to join industry heavyweights from Mullen, Razorfish, Sapient, and W2 Group to discuss his perspective on the new age of agencies. The event by the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX) will be held on February 25 from 6-8 p.m.
Keynoted by Sean Corcoran of Forrester Research, the group will discuss how agencies will adapt to new marketing paradigms, the impact of technology, and agency/client relationships in a new era.
“When I restarted Holland-Mark in 2007, I did it because I knew it wouldn’t be business as usual. The economy has allowed us to reinvent how advertising agencies work – and it’s a good thing.”
We’ve been thinking about this for a while, and we look forward to being a part of this new conversation. Come by and have a listen.
More details on this MITX event can be found on the event website.
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Achieving Scalable Intimacy
February 4, 2010 by Mike Troiano · Comments
Here’s my presentation from today’s LaunchCamp. The live version had a bit more energy, but this combination of audio and slides is easier to follow.
Anyway, here it is…
What do you think? Were you at the event today? Any questions I can answer, or comments on the day?
“Truck” Beats “Machine” in Massachusetts
January 20, 2010 by Mike Troiano · Comments
For those of you new to this blog, Holland-Mark’s branding approach is based on the observation that people have a tendency to boil things down to One Simple Thing™. We all do it, it’s part of our genetic code and an important adaptation to a world overrun by complexity.
We do this for brands (Coke = Real, BMW = Performance, Zappos = Service) and for just about everything else. We saw a potent example of One Simple Thing™ – or OST™ – thinking writ large last night in Massachusetts politics.
The truth is that comparatively few people met Scott Brown and Martha Coakley before yesterday’s election. Few closely followed press coverage of the two in the weeks leading up to the vote, and even fewer read their various position papers on the Web.
The vast majority of the 2.2 million votes cast yesterday were cast based on a single, simple distillation of what each candidate represented.
Martha chose her OST™ first, focusing on “Democrat,” which seemed like a sure bet for the seat vacated by Ted Kennedy, our beloved Lion of the Senate.
Scott Brown, though, chose a different OST™: “Truck.” Seriously. For those of you who don’t live here, Mr. Brown and his pickup truck were everywhere on Massachusetts media over the last few weeks, which for a long while made the Coakley team feel like this was going to be a cakewalk.
Well… it turns out that in an environment where voters feel Washington isn’t listening to them, “Truck” trumps “Democrat.” People like “Truck.” It’s solid. Populist. Dependable. When this began to become evident in the polls, the Coakley campaign tried to give Mr. Brown a new OST™: “Republican.” The Brown campaign countered by giving Ms. Coakley a new one as well: “Political Machine.” There was a shouting match for a while, in which Mr. Brown appears to have been more focused and effective, after which voters went to the polls ready to cast on the side of “Truck,” or “Machine.”
“Truck” won. By a lot. At least that’s how we see it.
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