Poke

Ah, it's awards season. Let the scandals, dust-ups and hurt feelings begin! Sigh... Poke New York is a bit upset with Droga5. Over on the digital agency's website, a post has appeared that reads:

"So, a while back we partnered with the awesome crew over at Droga5 to help them develop the Million, a project in conjunction with the New York City public school system that aims to ignite students' interests in their studies by offering a free cell phone that's fueled by merit-based achievements (grades, attendance, etc.)."

Who knew? The Million, which is great project, won an Andy last week, as well as the Richard T. O'Reilly Award (for Public Service Announcement. On the Andy's entry form, Poke was listed as a production company and this is where the agency is taking issue, albeit very sweetly:

"It was a true partnership where POKE worked hand in hand with the fine folks at Droga to create a comprehensive digital and mobile strategy along with a full-term roll-out plan on how to take Million to the world.

Now, our sources say that Droga5 filed all the entry forms and Poke was never ask about how they wanted to be listed. Then again, (from what we know) Poke never interjected to make sure they got the accolades they felt were due. Here we go again... how much hand did the digital agency have in the strategy, as well as the execution of a campaign? Poke declined to comment. A message was left for Droga, but alas... this snafu over credit will just have to be piled atop the rest.

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Earl Nightingale said that "Creativity is a natural extension of our enthusiasm." It's a crying shame then that digi-agency Poke has gotten punished for their invention and innovation. If you recall, the agency recently launched Snckrz! - a site that allowed users to create their own Snickers' logo and also tracked users on Twitter. The site, which according to the agency cost almost nothing to create, has had over 80,000 users with an average visit time of 5-8 minutes. To top it off, the site lead many people to go to the actual Snickers. Agencies beg, borrow and steal for that sort of engagement.

Well, it's over kids. Tom Ajello, the creative director at Poke, has begun tweeting that the site has been forced off of the web. Why? Snickers and their parent company, Mars, have sent a cease and desist. On one hand you get it, right? Snickers didn't authorize Poke to do anything with/for their brand at all. In fact, the brand recently dropped way too much on a complicated website of their own.

However, um... Snickers? Why bite all of the consumers who have enjoyed interacting with your brand? They love you and now, they will hate you. Also, Ajello worked on the award winning design for Snickers.com way back in 2001 for Modem Media. So when he and his two partners Aaron Rutledge and Michael Kantrow, were in a cab dreaming up the site, they loved you, too.

It's the same old story - brand shirk the love of consumers in favor of control. Okay. Well, Snickers... if you wanted control, why not just co-opt Snckrz! and make it part of what Nick Parish from Creativity called the "pretty-but-obtuse" legitimate site?

Let's face it - Mars, the parent company of Snickers, has been struggling to understand the web. Consider the Skittles Twitter homepage from Agency.com. There, Mars decided it didn't need any control. For the real Snickers site, they took the opposite tact of too much control. There's a fine line in there and it seems that Poke found it.

A quick search of Twitter will turn up numerous tweets from people who loved Snckrz! Snickers better hope there isn't some backlash in this decision to get the lawyers involved. Oh! I spoke too soon. Already, Twitters are having a reaction with responses like the image below or the newly created Snickers fail tag (#Snickersfail). Seriously. Snickers, I thought you were smarter than this?

If you want to get your logo, you best do it in the next six hours. According the cease and desist, the whole thing is donezo at 6 pm. The logo above, which reads "shame on you"? What happens to it when the site shuts down? Can't wait to find out... :sniff, sniff:

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Okay. Hands down. Poke wins the agency holiday greeting card competition. The wacky agency has created a website called the Global Naughty Or Nice List. Beneath the tags of nicest and naughtiest are a list of names. You can add your friends, your boss, those wacky kids who had sex on tape, etc. Users can vote these folks up or down, to heaven or to holiday hell. Right now, the usual ad suspects are listed (example: Alan Wolk, nicest), but that's sure to change as the days go by. Right now, it's just like an ad professional playground.

Still, bravo Poke. Bravo! Oooh, what fun!

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