Friday, July 26, 2013

11302: C’MON WHITE MAN! Episode 29.

(MultiCultClassics credits ESPN’s C’MON MAN! for sparking this semi-regular blog series.)

John Winsor’s professional titles include CEO of Victors & Spoils and Chief Innovation Officer at Havas. Um, Chief Innovation Officer at Havas is an oxymoron. And based on his recent editorials, Winsor is an ordinary moron.

Winsor managed to turn the Harvard Business Review into AgencySpy, inspiring caustic comments for The Dinosaurs of Cannes. He later added idiocy at Digiday with Time to Lose ‘Creative’ as an Agency Job Title—which has so far garnered a single robot response.

What makes pseudo thought leaders like Winsor so annoying is their delusional belief that they are revolutionaries. Realizing the advertising industry needs a better business model is a no-brainer. Thinking the solution involves crowdsourcing is brainless.

Victors & Spoils has yet to produce anything beyond mediocre—they really should remove the word “creative” from the company’s vocabulary. Over the past few years, the place has seemingly degraded into nothing more than an understaffed agency relying on freelance support (a pretty standard operating procedure for small to mid-sized firms today).

Despite Winsor’s cries for change, the officers listed on the agency website are regular veterans with regular titles. And the mystical crowd is probably comprised of cronies. In other words, V&S is virtually perpetuating the exclusivity that has fueled the industry for generations. Plus, asking people to work on spec during recessionary times—while privileged Caucasian leaders enjoy salaried positions—is 21st century corporate evil.

To top things off, V&S is now part of Havas, the least interesting network of all. Condemning the status quo and then joining it displays hypocrisy of the highest order—a common trait of old school Mad Men. In short, Winsor has succeeded in building just another typical White agency with a few obscene twists. The fool rightly deserves a title that’s been around from the start: Huckster.

C’MON WHITE MAN!

No comments:

Post a Comment