Agency Outside#the#BOX poaches hotshot creative director

John Smith, CEO of up-and-coming agency Outside#the#BOX, announced yesterday that it has poached hotshot creative director Jimmy Jones from Droga5.

Jones, who has won more than 950 Cannes Lions during his career, will be an invaluable addition to the #BOX agency group, which is going great guns this year, said Smith, as it seeks to form integrated relationships with everyone from the digital dungeon to the coffee guy on the corner, and even the hot receptionist.

“The #BOX is in the business of developing #BOXish™ technology so there’s a lot of synergy between the way we work and the creative, #BOXish™ approach to business that #BOX takes,” says Smith.

“As an agency we’re in the business of creative thinking, and in many cases #BOXish™ thinking. Jones is the king of the #BOXish Brand Onion™ and is looking to break down existing silos. He’ll take the #BOXish™ technology offline and cascade its outside-the-box thinking back to the client.

“He’s clearly zigged when everyone else has zagged, which is central to the #BOXish™ mindset, and is a digital expert in creative thinking that will engage with dialled-back web experiences to an incentivized level.

“Going forward, at the end of the day Jones is a stellar example of how leveraging added value can heighten content for best practice.”

Jones will take up his position at the #BOX early next month.

So, did your eyes just glaze over? I wonder, then, what makes some PR people think that it’s an effective way to market to journalists?

No, Smithy doesn’t exist. Jonesy doesn’t exist. I’m sure, if they did exist, they’d be massively excellent scruffy-faced muffins with ripped jeans and painfully expensive black T-shirts. They’d play foosball and eat crackers, letting the crumbs get stuck in their face fuzz, before finally brushing them loose and going out for a Stella Artois, congratulating themselves on their #BOXish™ lifestyle.

The only elements that exist in the above are Droga5 and the horrendous Brand Onion™, and while the former is great, the latter deserves to die a grisly death.

Nope, it’s all fake, but all those elements – apart from the hot receptionist, sorry, couldn’t resist – are taken from press releases sent to NBR recently.

It’s time-consuming, Meaningless Twaddle and clients are paying through the nose for it. Some recent press releases are hang-wringingly, cringingly bad. Bad to the point of embarrassment. Bad to the point of making the grapefruit come out wrong.

Would you talk like that in real life?

Imagine a normal person having a conversation and suddenly throwing in words such as “LOVEMARKS!”, “DISRUPTION!”. Nonsensical, disconcerting and unpleasant for the recipient. No less so when it’s in print.

Perhaps we need a website where all Meaningless Twaddle Press Releases can go to die. Where every piece of jargon and stupidity therein will be replaced by the word SMUTMUPPET.

Ooooh, someone's got their Ranty Pants on! It is a serious issue, however. Watch the Ad Show tonight for publisher Vincent Heeringa’s take on why he’s sick of frivolous PR approaches, and how the rise of PR – in the absence of advertising – could spell death for media channels.