I took this personally, seeing it as a grievous slight against my bullshitting abilities. I have spent the last eight years evolving bullshitting from a futile last resort to a thing of unrivaled artistic accomplishment. I have written papers comparing two books of which I may have read a combined five pages, I have feverishly argued points of which I knew absolutely nothing, and I have made it through 21 years of life doing roughly 2 percent of school-assigned readings. And a lot of those percentage points were made up in a creative writing class where we actually read a lot of interesting stories.
"Oh I'm supposed to read Lois Tyson's Critical Theory Today: A User Friendly Guide? NAW. I'M GOOD. PEACE."
"Or maybe Women Through Women's Eyes: Latin American Women in 19th Century Travel Accounts? NO THANKS. PEACE"
"Library summer reading program's when I was like six? HELL NO PLAYA. SUMMER IS FOR GETTIN' YA FEET DIRTY AN 'SHIT, NOT READING. PEACE."
So I get to Green Brand Strategies, and I'm told that my supreme skills at the Art of Bovine Defecation are anything less than transcendent? That dog won't hunt, monsignor.
I'm sitting in class, brooding at this latest affront to my character, secretly plotting my revenge with an scowl of Eastwoodian proportions on my face, when I get schooled.
"Thought leaders? Deep Diving? Using the word 'matrix' when not referencing the 1999 film of the same name?" Damn. She's good.
So what's the moral of this tale? While I may not be as accomplished a bullshitter as my inflated ego led me to believe, I am certainly no padawan. I know bullshit when I see it.
And I see a lot of it at OgilvyEarth.
"We help brands harness the power of sustainably"
Come on. You can do better than that. This isn't some Bullshitting Open Mic Night. This is a serious business venture. At least I think it is. I mean it has to be, what with a terribly un-vague graph like this:
Oh. Yeah. That... uh... that clears it right up. Got it. You've hollowed out a giant redwood and set up your various offices inside its ever expanding rings. That's cool. I would have purchased a keyboard with a functioning space bar before I spent money on that, but it's whatever.
There is some good bullshit though. And I mean GOOD.
"OgilvyEarth helps brands identify their own role and opportunity within the sustainable economy, and then extract the value that lies within by guiding them on the path to facilitate that change."
WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN? Answer: Absolutely nothing. But it sounds soooo good. I love it. I could put that quote in an essay about the decline of global quality of life since Roger Moore stopped playing James Bond, and it wouldn't sound out of place.
"The Systematic Decline in Global Quality of Living as Directly Correlated to the Termination of Sir Roger Moore's Tenure in the Portrayal of Ian Fleming's James Bond" will be assigned reading in most college-level classes within ten years, by the way.
The point is that Ogilvy is jumping on a bandwagon here; a fact they are trying to hide under several steaming layers of Grade A bullshit. But hey, at least they're doing something. Maybe for the wrong reasons, or not as completely as they would have people believe, but it's still something.
Then there is egg, which demonstrates a better end to what OgilvyEarth is trying to accomplish. That is not to say that their website is bullshit-free, it's full of it (this is advertising after all), but egg presents a much more cohesive attempt to build a socially conscious advertising agency from the ground up.
Their client list has some eyebrow raising members, like a bottled water company and a hardwood furniture company. Don't bottling water and cutting down trees kinda stand in pretty stringent opposition to sustainability?
You might think so, but Urban Hardwoods actually builds furniture out of dying urban trees that would otherwise rot in a landfill, and Athena Bottled Water donates 100% of it's proceeds to breast cancer research. (Although it still donates *97% of it's used bottles to the trash cans of the world.)
*Statistic made up in order to make a point about the inherent wastefulness of bottled water.
And lastly, there's Enviromedia. And yes, the childhood jingle is incorrect, THIRD is in fact, the best, while second is the one cursed to forever have a hairy chest.
So let's just take a little look at Enviromedia's website and... WHA?!?!?! No bullshit?!?! I... don't know what to say.
"If you’re looking for ads, go to an ad agency. If you’re in search of smart, memorable campaigns that connect with your target to drive real change, we’re going to get along fabulously."
What the fuck is going on? Straight talk from an ad agen(OOPS. Sorry) a... um... social marketing... agency? That's straight Christopher Bridges.
And copy that actually mocks other Greenwashed agencies? Sweet.
And their advertismen(dammit) Their... um... social marketing thingies get major props for actually capturing McConaughey on film with a shirt on.
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