We’ve received several tips over the past week or so about San Francisco agency DOJO.
First, we heard that former GS&P account lead Marty Wenzell, who joined DOJO in July 2012 and most recently held the president/MD title, was out. Then we heard that the agency — founded in 2009 by veterans of SF shop Fancy — would cease to exist at the end of this month.
Way back in January, we did confirm that Chris Masse, the DOJO art director turned creative director, had departed.
We didn’t hear much more from the shop until last week, when we got our first tips about Wenzell. We reached out to the agency’s contact email but received no response — and yesterday the listed phone number stopped working.
FWIW, the agency’s last Facebook update posted a couple of weeks ago and its last tweet came around the same time Masse departed, announcing that principal Geoff Edwards had been named to the One Club jury.
DOJO’s first official campaign, for LG, hit this blog more than four years ago in August 2010, and we know from the website that the shop also did work for Google, Playstation and AT&T, among others.
But based on the Glassdoor reviews, it seems that trouble had been brewing at DOJO for some time. Here’s a snippet from May attributed to a former full-timer in the creative department:
“This is the most stressful, chaotic work environment you may ever see in an agency.”
Sounds familiar. Here’s another, which was suspiciously posted on the same day:
“You will pitch every day at Dojo, because they don’t have any clients.”
Again, we’ve received no response despite multiple attempts to confirm tips — but it certainly seems like this anonymous source knows something:
“DOJO SF will be closing its doors on 10/31
Finally,,”