Did you hear Microsoft sold Razorfish to Publicis? Great. PaidContent and ClickZ, sites we usually think of as pretty hard-nosed, ran interviews with agency CEO Bob Lord. You can read ’em, but honestly the guy didn’t say squat, making the respective posts come off…soft and sensual. He probably really enjoyed the experiences. Here’s a list of the lamer questions he agreed to answer.
ClickZ
— Now that this deal has been inked, can you say frankly to what degree Razorfish has struggled to convince clients it’s really unbiased when selling Microsoft properties?
— Razorfish joins a much larger family of agencies in the Vivaki unit. Do you think Vivaki has a recognition factor with advertisers?
— The money that Publicis pledged to spend with Microsoft — how much of that will be spent by Razorfish and how much by other agency units?
PaidContent
— What are the particular benefits to Razorfish of being part of a traditional ad holding company structure, as opposed to operating within Microsoft?
— What will the relationship with Digitas be like? Is there any room for collaboration? How do you complement what they have?
— Serious rumors about Microsoft’s plans to sell Razorfish had been circulating for at least a year. How big a distraction was that for the agency? How did clients react to the rumors?
— As an independent agency within Publicis, will you still be able to make acquisitions? Or does being acquired mean that you don’t have to worry about those kinds decisions?
Questions that should have been asked
— When will Razorfish learn about social media?
— Did you know that your employees are incredibly nervous about the merger?
— If I was thinking of hiring Razorfish, the idea of using Bing would make me throw up. Who wants to use a second rate search engine that was so second rate it had to be paired with another second rate search engine? It’s not added value, it’s crafty product integration by Microsoft — packaged in a way that makes it seem valuable.
— What does this mean for your Dell work?
And if you fine folks would like to add anything, feel free. Look, these questions sound a little vitriolic, sure. But that’s only because the other questions he’s been asked lately have been a complete waste of time. Except that they gave this story some fuel.