Andrew McMains and Brian Morrissey of Adweek delivered the sad news yesterday that Current Media, purveyors of Al Gore’s ideas about journalism, have put their Twitter review on hold. We never covered this story to begin with, but we’ve chosen to mention it now because now that it’s on hold we’re worried there will be nothing to write about.
The original Tweet from Current’s Jordan Kretchmer, vp of branding, shocked and awed the twasses. “This is a TwitteRFP for The Current Network. Searching for a full service ad agency partner,” wrote Kretchmer.
So what’s happened since this ingenious plan was hatched? Kretchmer “has exited” (read: been fired?) and the Twitter RFP is no more; well, for the time being anyway. Taking K-bomb’s place is Michael Streefland, a lowly svp of marketing. Er wait, is he more senior?
Regardless, he said this of his predecessor’s pet-project, “The Current RFP triggered a lot of constructive internal discussion and we realized we put the cart before the horse and need to lay down some strategic direction before we engage with a creative agency to execute upon that direction. Those discussions are happening right now and we should emerge in a few weeks with an update for the agencies.”
And if by discussions he means guffaws at the total lack of order involved in vetting what probably amounts to dozens of crappy responses to the call, then yes there’s a lot of talking going on. In the past, we’ve been critical of the consulting process involved in matching brands with agencies, but only because it’s a pay-to-play system. In theory, Kretchmer’s plan circumvents that issue, but Current’s marketing team probably realized early on that this was a terrible idea, and decided hmm, maybe we should dig up the cash for a consultant’s help. Or at least call Rahm Emmanuel; he knows some people in the corporate branding business.
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