You’ve probably heard a bit about Carrot, the New York digital shop that VICE Media purchased back in 2013 as the one-time “punk” property moved into the old content game in order to continue paying its salespeople twice the amount that it pays its writers.
The agency has done a good bit of work since then, and it landed a spot on the coveted Crain’s New York “Best Places to Work” list for the past two years due, in part, to “A private, enclosed rooftop shower” that “makes for fresh, invigorated employees after morning and lunch workouts and bike commutes, as well as providing quick pick-me-ups.”
Other members of this year’s crop include The Barbarian Group, Horizon Media and Deutsch, whose entries are also worth reading because what sort of business gives its people free coffee?!
The employees of Carrot, like those at every modern agency, sometimes struggle to explain what they do for a living, exactly…so they wrote a children’s book and made a video to simplify the process.
The book is real, it costs $10, and it’s appropriate for “the countless advertising workers who need to explain their jobs to family members young and old,” age 5 to 95. Here’s the microsite (cute URL, guys).
Things we learned from the video:
- Someone at Carrot qualifies as “a freak”
- Strategists are sort of like gypsies
- The agency studio is staffed by gymnasts
- Creatives are “known for their dramatics.” We have never heard that before ever.
- Success = being stuck to consumers like a tattoo. (Not a temporary tattoo, though.)
The YouTube entry tells us that Carrot picked the circus theme because it’s simple enough for a child to understand, “But mostly because agency life really is like a circus.”
Feels relatively tame to us!