ADS R US?: Brand-Name Agencies

Peruse the list of winners at last month’s One Show and you’ll find several agencies that are conspicuous for their quirky names – for instance, New York’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen and a Philadelphia outfit called Ads While-U-Wait. Among the brainy winners were Think Tank of Nanaimo, British Columbia, and Streetsmart Advertising of New York. The clients for which the oddly named agencies won were mainly small or non-profit (or both). But is a broader trend aborning? After all, there’s something quaint about the use of partners’ names (or, often, former partners’ names) to identify an agency.