You remember Honeyshed, right? That’s the Home Shopping Network for teens that Droga launched last year. Apparently, the site is out of beta and ready to be unleashed to the general populace. I guess that means they are going to start advertising, because really, it’s the web. If you want to find Honeyshed, if it had buzz, the kids would already be on the damn thing.
But I digress, in preparation for total world domination, Honeyshed has gotten a CEO in Stephen Greifer who was the senior VP-global lead of Digitas’. Holy crapola. How much do you think Droga coughed up for Grefier? I’m guessing a straight 100K salary, plus some ownership points, a bonus structure, etc. Hopefully, Stephen wrote in a golden parachute, too, because Honeyshed just isn’t so sweet.
David Droga admitted to Adage that the team had “their head in the trough a bit” and that the staff was lean. Evidence comes from an ex-staffers Tumblr in case you were in doubt:
“-just make sure they take the “associate” out of your title because there’s nobody to be an associate to… it’s just you.”
Dude. Really… you got some serious content issues with that thing. I don’t care that Nike coughed up some dough to try it out. What you have is a bunch of kids acting forced as hell trying to move some sneakers. It’s a great idea, but it’s not cute. It’s not cool. It’s a lotta look and trust me, because I did a focus group on it once. P.S. The Shed’s blog is way off point from the content to the functionality. Like way.
That said, Grefier wants you to know that Honeyshed is more than a online front for Publicis. Yes, Publicis is paying for the accumulated one-year-in-beta-hell-debt. Come on, someone had to be footing the bill.