Expanding in this economy means one of 2 things. Either you’re f*@ck%ng nuts. Or you have a lot of people to thank. In our case, it’s probably a little of both. So without further adieu, from the bottom of our twisted hearts, “thanks, we wouldn’t be here without you”.

Kristina Cortese. Cynthia Rhea. Chris Dealy. William, Robbie, Julia, James, Sean, Clay and Owen. Dan Gearity. April Kandel. Angel Zhang. Mark Rodriguez. Michael Holton. Linda Spellman. Jim O’Neill. Andrea McGann. Heather Finney. Jeff Greenberg. Eric Altbush. Hez & Jeng. Alice Tang. Xin. Kristen Bryan. Alan Kwon. Michael Daly. Jamie Gorowitz. Beth Meyer. Chuck Williamson. Tony Portero. Angela Natividad. Rob Farber. Courtney Norych. David Drucker. Don Davidson. Ed Cortese. Jamie LeFrak. Greg Christman. Gretchen Shugart. Rupal Parekh. John Kaufman. Richard Kaufman. Judy Hirsch. Steve Hall. Charlie Hopfl. Matt Seiler. Nancy Hill. Laura Michalchyshyn. Mark Mitchell. Michelle Zimmerman. Mike Levine. Angela Wei. Neilan Tyree. Ran Poliakine. Ray Jolicoeur. Kate Newlin. Eric Graveline. Agency Spy. Reatha Braxton. Dick Costello. Mark at Adholes. Richard Lewis. Ron Ferber. Rupal Parekh. Sam DiGennaro. Sarah Barnett. Marina Mirchevskaya. Sarah Helbig. Stephanie Fagan. Stephanie Herbeck. Steve McCarron. George Logothetis. Chris Pace. Victoria Todis. Cydney Goldberg. Steve Smith. Carly Heims. Robbie Wenger. Cha’s Cha’s Club Atlantis (R.I.P.) Jayco Kingpin. Mommy Poppins. Riccardo “Kahn” Montalban. Beer. Our real estate agent Michael Pinney, and contractor Tod Fox.

Awww Angela, we’re not worthy. But all the ballsy juniors who worked hard and entered, all the steady giggless veterans who drank too much, all the tone deaf rock-and-roll wannabes who entered the rock band contest and last but not least, all the confused hipsters who wandered into the East River Bar wondering “what the hell is going on?” certainly are worthy of…something anyway. Read more here.

SHOTS: Wrath of Cannes is in its third year now – what made you decide to launch it?

WWDS: Foolishness, childishness, snarkyness, jealousy, 4 or 5 cheap beers, and a total lack of good judgement.
 
SHOTS: How has the response from the New York ad industry been? 

WWDS: Remarkably positive. We don’t get it.

SHOTS: And are you expecting a bigger turnout this year?

WWDS: It’s been predicted by the experts. But the more people who come, the more $1 beer we have to procure so, you know, it’s a double-edged sword.
 
SHOTS: With so many agency parties axed at Cannes this year, has the 2009 awards season turned into the year of the anti-party?

WWDS: Well, you’d have to ask someone who gets invited to these things. We have no information at all on what what’s going on at Cannes. But yeah, it’s feeling pretty much like an anti-everything year.
 
SHOTS: Do you think this marks a new beginning of people being able to laugh at the recession instead of it all being so serious?

WWDS: That would be craptastic. People have always laughed mercilessly at us, so f*&% yes, we think it’s time this booger-eating recession got ridiculed a bit more.
 
SHOTS: What type of work are you hoping people will bring along to the event?

WWDS: The best their talented-but-too-dumb-to-quit souls can muster. 

More on Wrath from AdAge. We share their disappointment in Coney and Cha-Cha’s demise but with all the demolition going on over there, could we ask everyone to wear a hardhat to the party? Not so much. (Oh crud, the next thing you know, hipsters will be wearing hard hats with their skinny jeans.) Read the story here.

AdRants says, and I quote, “Wrath of Cannes Powers into Third Year”…They’re damn right, like Kenny F***in Powers…Even though we’re pretty sure those popular kids at Adrants are going to France (and we’d be right there with them if we were, you know, invited or popular) they sure do have some nice things to say about this year’s Wrath of Cannes. We think. Read about it here.

After we built his website, the owner of IRO Cycle hooked me up with one of his bikes, a fixed gear “Angus” model. It must be a particularly virulent strain of the brand, because it set off an old school marketing virus in Brooklyn.

Last month, I stopped by a local bike shop to pick up a spare tube. The owner (an IRO dealer) eyed my bike, greased his jeans a bit and congratulated me on such a fine specimen. He took note of every part: Black Angus frame, Chris King headset, riser bars, Brooks leather saddle and grips, Velocity rims–even the toe clips and pedals.

Two weeks later outside my apt, I noticed a guy taking what seemed to be a fancy to my ride. He was doing what the shop owner had done–listing the parts out loud. But his expression told me that he wasn’t admiring. He was fuming.

Apparently, he had the exact same setup, stolen in the exact neighborhood we stood. After convincing him that I wasn’t the guy who filched his bike, I learned that he had just bought the bike at the same dealer who sold me the tube. Since then, I’ve seen like 14 identical hipster-type guys riding around on an Angus that looks just like mine.

It was like I “sneezed” my ride on that shop, it incubated, and now it’s spreading all over Brooklyn.

Which I guess is how the viral thing used to happen before the internets.

First, we need an art director/writer team, both with some serious computer skills. Adobe Creative Suite. Flash and WordPress chops will be smiled upon.

Second, we’re looking for someone to help with Social Marketing. You’ve gotta be a great writer and networker with an impeccable ear, and a real feel for how brands can live and prosper in the social arena.

The gig is 5 days per week. Compensation is $75 per week, work for your book, and course credit where applicable.

Art Director/Writers should contact us by email only. Send a short note describing yourself and why you would kick butt, with a link to your online portfolio/spec site. If you’re applying for the Social Marketing position, find us on Twitter or Facebook.

Sorry, no phone orders. To protect our own sanity, you gotta follow this process to be considered. Feel free to leave a pithy comment that will remind us of your name when we see your email/social intro.

In January ‘09, CNBC asked us to help them turn their original, prime time programming into destination TV. In March, our first ad was featured on Best Ads right about the time Jim Cramer was featured on Jon Stewart. Hooray controversy!

Read the whole article here. Or download it here.

Once upon a time, we worked at a big agency where 99% of the cheese generated by the place went to 1% of the people who worked there.

But somewhere in that agency lurked a shadowy, tech-savvy figure whose identity was never discovered–The Ram Bandit. She couldn’t swallow the fact that Senior Management got the new computers loaded up with tons of precious time-saving RAM (even though they used those machines for little more than email, Googling themselves and downloading porn).

She probably sat at her Mac, crunching big In-Design or Excel files, watching the ball spin, and fuming over the disproportionate allocation of resources. Late one night, this champion of the proletariat took things into her own hands.

Over the next few weeks, RAM boards began disappearing from computers in the corner offices and turning up in the cubicles, in the computers of art directors and account people who actually used them.

The rich were left with barely enough memory to turn on their machines while the poor suddenly began crunching layouts and spreadsheets at benchmark rates. They even started getting out of work early enough to go to the bars before they closed at 4 a.m.

As fast as the IT department would replace the stolen RAM boards, the RAM Bandit would steal them, and redistribute to those in need. Productivity increased. For a month or so, there was a new sense of liberty, equality and fraternity in the land.

Until the levers of power were once again grabbed by the Dark Lords in Charge. One Monday we came in to find locking cables strung through the motherboard access doors of our Macs. The brown shirts from IT had restored evil order. Our fingered RAM boards were put back in executive computers where they could more efficiently check email.

The revolution was squashed, the Ram Bandit was out of business. But wherever you are, may you muster the courage (and bolt cutters) to once again champion the little guy while pushing the man’s face in his own rancid poop. Godspeed you sexy, mysterious computertrix.

Now you kids go back to work. It’s past our bedtime.

*all characters are fictional whether they bear exact resemblance to someone or not.

Some called Lee King the Bill Bernbach of Chicago. He passed away this year, and when Adweek asked me to write an article about him, all I could think about was the first time I met him. It was my first day at LK+P, my first copywriting job. I was sitting on a window ledge, 14 floors above Wacker and Michigan when he walked into my new office and gave me the best advice I’ve ever gotten.

Read the whole article here. Or download it here.

“The brand has modernized with an e-commerce Web site, smaller free-standing mall kiosks and pop-up shops around key holiday selling seasons, to supplement its mail-order gift-food business.
It needed to do the same for its overall look while hanging on to its rich heritage.”

A total strategic redesign from logo to packaging, catalog to kiosks, website to seo affiliate and ad programs. The most comprehensive project of the agency to date. Read the whole article here. Or download here.

“It’s a sticky, authentic, community-building shopping showcase.”

Nice props, thanks CA. Besides, I just wanted to say “dubs.”  To read the whole story download it here.

“Closing a high-engagement sale is always a challenge online. Lost is the sense of urgency, the gentle prodding by the “expert” in the room. Instead there’s the ability to browse, to get frustrated, to wander off…Imagine how much harder that sale is when you add in ignorance. An entirely new group of novice buyers entering a specialists category. Ouch. Indie ad agency Woods Witt Dealy & Sons paired education with e-commerce to solve just such a problem for IRO Cycle.”

Now everyone in the agency is riding their “fixie” around acting like a hipster. Jeez. Read the whole article here. Or download here.

Once upon a time we were in LA shooting a spot. At the end of a long shoot day, we did what any other creative team worth their beans would do, we hit the bar at the hotel.

Around midnight, a slurring industry creative leader swaggered past the maitre’d and perched on the barstool next to us. Clearly there had been a long, wine soaked dinner he’d forced on some poor production company rep.
He sat, stuffed a few bar nuts into his gob and proceeded to tell us about the old days when the spots were better, flight attendants were all women, and art directors knew how to shut the hell up in meetings. We never tire of this brand of “good old days” doppelganging, honest.

At a crucial moment in his story, he sneezed and his glass eye flew out of his head onto the bar, fell to the floor with a sharp crack, and rolled under the table next to us.

Never breaking the narrative thread of his insightful story, he teetered off his stool, got down on all fours, and retrieved the runaway orb. Then he stood, regained ballast, and returned to the bar where he rinsed the blind marble in his cocktail and popped it back into the dark, forbidding hole in his head.

With a wobbly nod, he knocked back the rest of his martini/eyewash and brought the evening to a close by shouting that a typewriter and a bottle of WhiteOut were all any copywriter worth a turd ever needed.
We cite the events of that night as one of the main reasons we started our own agency. That, and getting fired for shooting off our mouths.

Now you kids go back to work. It’s past our bedtime.

*all characters are fictional whether they bear exact resemblance to someone or not.

AdAge covers the 2008 Wrath of Cannes alternative awards festival at renowned Coney Island Dive, Cha Cha’s Club Atlantis. And uncovers the fact that Harry and Gill are in some serious need of in-front-of-the-camera media training.

“It doesn’t take itself to seriously.”

Well, how could it with a straight face? Hope to see you in ‘09, Adpulp! Read the whole story here. Or download here.

We got tired of hearing ourselves saying, “Wouldn’t it be cool to start our own agency?” So we did it. Oh, it’s cool. But it ain’t easy.

Read the whole story here. Or download here.