I don't spend a lot of time paying attention to the traditional advertising industry. In my world, it is an old school, outbound marketing, TV and magazine ad producing, industry that doesn't understand much about inbound marketing.
As a result, I was impressed when I learned that agency Crispin, Porter and Bogusky is releasing (it hasn't actually launched yet) a beta site that is very inbound marketing focused.
The site, beta.cpbgroup.com, does a couple great things. When you arrive, there is a spunky, short video explaining the site. In it @Bogusky explains that they hope the site will be "a giant digital fishing net that gathers everything that is relevant about us and out clients."
Great Thing #1: The intro video is short and not over produced. I can't imagine it took them long to pull together. Video doesn't have to take forever!
@Bogusky goes on to explain that there is only one section of the page where CP&B controls the content, the rest is auto generated coming from blogs, twitter and other news sites.
Great Thing #2: CP&B has accepted letting go and losing control. By using content created by others, CP&B opens themselves up to whatever the loonies that inhabit the internet want to say. They also make their site a great hub of information for the industry and create a cool site that doesn't need a ton of management to keep running.
I clicked around the site, and realized the home page is all about CP&B and the ad industry. Then I noticed the true brilliance, at the top there are 9 tabs each going to the same type of page for a different big name customer. This means, I can go check out the latest TV ads from VW, Burger King or Hulu and read the buzz about them on Twitter, in the blogosphere and in the news.
Great Thing #3: There are really two great things here. First, GP&B is doing something @mvolpe and I talk about on HubSpot.tv all the time. They are using the information and data they have as part of their business to create a cool/fun tool online. HubSpot does this with the State of the Twittersphere and Technorati does this with the State of the Blogosphere. If you have interesting information that people want, you should use it to your advantage!
Second, they have pulled the site together for themselves AND ther customers. This will help their customers (see Great Thing #2) and shows their prospects that they are an ad agency that understands this new inbound marketing thing. Brilliant!
