By now you’ve all seen the Pepsi PDF. It’s funny to us how many of you (within your rights to do so — we encourage your thoughts) though that it was wrong of us to post “proprietary” agency documents. But then AdAge, Gawker, B|Net hell, even AdScam and Adrants posted the thing or at least mentioned it — and it morphed from what was believed to be an agency document into a marketing strategy. Well, that’s one possible reality, anyway.
The truth is, no one at Arnell is saying what this thing is. And for good reason — why tell anyone, when they can just as easily remain tight-lipped and thereby stay in the limelight a little longer for creating it. After all, no one else has come forward to explain it away. It’s better for them not to tell us what it is, because the moment they do that they open the flood gates for ridicule.
If it’s legit, we know how fantastically arrogant they are. If it’s a marketing tactic, we know that their aim was to stir up a fake conversation about their client’s logo — and they turn to Pepsi and say, “see the entire ad community is still talking about you.”
Oh shit, that’s exactly what we’re doing.
Many comments on our original post (we got it from Reddit, and within days everyone else had it) were aimed at the alleged “freelancer” who posted it on reddit. He shouldn’t have done that, some said. He violated Arnell’s trust, others noted. Maybe so, but the violation has landed Arnell in every trade publication from here to there — making the “violation” a boon for the agency. The “violation” made their client happy, and all it took was a little PDF on a hidden away forum — and an e-mail to AgencySpy.
To send us your agency’s “proprietary” documents, e-mail matt@mediabistro.com or superspyin@gmail.com.
More: “Arnell Somehow Equates Pepsi to the Sun’s Gravitation”