It's warm all over and now is the time when agencies begin to trot their employees out in front of the sun, remind them there's more to life than their cubicle walls. First trip we've heard about this year is MindShare's June 13th outing to... SIX FLAGS! No, really. Reminds you of that class trip you took senior year like three weeks before graduation, right? Check out the email from Nadine, Managing Director, of MindShare New York below. Comments are in brackets.

Subject: SIX FLAGS - FRIDAY, JUNE 13 - COMPANY OUTING

I am pleased to invite you to our annual corporate outing, this year to be held at Six Flags Great Adventure & Wild Safari in New Jersey. The day should prove to be fun and a great opportunity to get to know each other outside of the office!

[Gag. Gag and gasp. Get to know each other outside the office? Hello... do you really think, like really, that your employees 1) aren't commiserating about your new polices over nightly brews? 2) That if they don't like each other inside the office, that they're really going to ride Batman together, share a cotton candy and bond because they are outside of the office? These are grown-ups Nadine. Big people.]

When????

Lunch is Our treat if you meet us when lunch be served (from 1-3pm) at the park - actual site details to come. We encourage you to join us for lunch to meet with your co-workers as other food related expenses will not be reimbursed.

[Bribing your employees to hang out with you and each other with free sandwiches is not actually a bad idea considering how expensive food is at an amusement park.]

******Important to know******* -----

We would like you to make every effort to attend so please plan client
business accordingly - the day is after all on us. If you choose not to attend, you will either need to be in the office or take a pre-approved summer Friday/vacation day.

[Note to management: Who the hell is going to use one of their precious vacation days when they could sit in the office all by themselves and watch movies, play a game of spin the bottle, whatever? The real party is going to be with the twenty people who DON'T go on this field trip. Lock your desks. If it was me, I'd be going through Nadine's desk like hasta pronto.]

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As you know, MindShare has decided to totally reorganize their structure by dissolving MindShare Interaction and spreading its employees throughout the network. CEO, Scott Neslund, told Adweek that:

"Digital is not at the core of what we do. We are integrating it into the offering, but not at the center, because that would mean you're no longer media neutral."

Okay. That's not what Scott was telling staffers at the mandatory meeting on Friday at Gotham Hall. The meeting ran a whopping three hours at which each division head spoke about what their section would be responsible for moving forward - complete with mind numbing, repetitive PowerPoint slides. Let the brainwashing begin...

MindShare leaders informed staffers that digital would be woven into everything the company does with a heavy emphasis on digital, digital, digital.

And catch this, Neslund said these changes were a "reinvention of the agency," to the trade journals, so naturally, one bigwig told the assembled attendees that they would be getting MACs! As if a MAC is going to change the atmosphere, make folks more creative, um... more digital even? Way to buy deep into the Apple branding.

Something big is about to come out of MindShare sometime next week. The leaves are twittering and we can't get a straight answer. Not sure what it is, but apparently, the company is looking to deal with the fragmentation in media and evolve the overall business. Currently, the agency performs strategic media planning, negotiation and execution with specialist services including modelling, research and a sports and entertainment sponsorship consultancy. So, what's the next step for MindShare?

Our guess.... an agency of their very, very own? Well, that's one the record already. The WPP-owned media agency is currently interviewing creative candidates for a digital creative arm to be based in the UK.

Hmm... here's another hint - the internal lexicon at MindShare has nixed the words "creative agencies." The term has been reduced down to just plain ol' "advertising agencies," as to MindShare (and they're right) media can be creative, too.

We're going crazy. Help!