Like most websites, advertising and digital agency websites have About Us sections. Read them here. Unfortunately, most agency About Us sections are uninspiring. This is a big missed opportunity.
The agency Anomaly (one of the most effective agency brand names by the way – a perfect agency brand name for our times), kicks it by just listing its excellent press from major league publications. What more could the agency possibly say about themselves that would inspire an incoming call from a mega client?
Just read the glowing press. The copy hits all of the current client-think hot buttons (“thinks different, new model agency, idea-led, structured for innovation.”) You know that Anomaly is cranking its PR machine and/or its leaders are as good at promoting themselves as they are promoting their clients. Strangely most agencies are a bit too reticent when it comes to PR. I’ve seen this reticence even at agencies with savvy PR partners. Why wouldn’t you want to seek out and massage trusted third-parties to generate this kind of lavish praise. In Anomaly’s case, it’s praise that tells us what to expect.
Since its inception in 2004, the founders and directors have truly shown a different way of doing things, blurring the borders between providing traditional marketing services and working as a business development partner. Eschewing the traditional client/agency relationship, Anomaly works to develop intellectual property for both itself and for its clients…
Business WeekWhen a client comes in with an advertising problem, Anomaly addresses it more broadly as a business issue, analyzing everything from design to product development.
Fast CompanyAnomaly bills itself very clearly as a new model agency. It describes itself as a response to the notion that the old agency models “are all broken” and “the traditional solutions are becoming less and less effective”. Its positioning sounds like a bunch of cliches, because so many agencies are talking about the need to re-gear their approach around the same principles: ideas-led, media-neutral, integrated, multi-disciplinary. Anomaly, though, launched with these principles at its core.
CampaignAnomaly is definitely not an “Ad agency” the company sets store by developing its own intellectual property which it can license to clients in return for share in revenues. Their aspiration is to be a product developing IP company, marketing their own portfolio of IP as well as doing that for major brands.
Creative ReviewAs you might expect from its name, Anomaly is no ordinary agency; it is more of a response to the countless calls for agencies to drag themselves into the 21st century.
CampaignAnomaly decries tradition and craves revolution. Its real selling point is that its principals have diverse skill sets in interactive marketing, media strategy, and design – as well as advertising – so that clients can have faith they will get a marketing solution rather than an ad campaign.
AdAge“They were intriguing to us because they weren’t mired down in a lot of layers. They were great creative and strategic people on a mission to create a vision for their agency to solve client problems,” says Sara Schmid, advertising manager. “They were very conscientious … about how things worked in stores, how the visual language would play into it.”
AdweekThe agency [Anomaly] is structured for innovation and multidisciplinary problem solving – not just the partners, but every member of the team contributes on every project on all levels.
CreativityAnomaly have started up to capitalize on the desire among marketers to do things differently – and the inability of many bigger agencies to accomplish that.
New York Times
Marion Kello says
Another missed opportunity in the website “About Us” copy is discussing the company’s employer brand (for larger companies with great hiring demand). Very rarely do companies discuss what it’s like to work there in the “About Us” copy–typically the first place candidates go when researching a company beyond their job listings.