Emphatically not into Enfatico ad

You pretty much never see an agency buy an online display ad to promote itself, and that's not a good thing. In fact, the first time I've ever seen this done came today, from Enfatico, the new all-Dell agency created by WPP, and to me it seems crazily off strategy. (I found it on the Adweek home page.) The ad, at left, would seem to exist to attract clients, and yet, the agency's first, and probably only, priority in the near-term is to concentrate on Dell. Maybe the ad was meant to recruit talent, but all it does is link to the Enfatico home page. Why does this exist? Branding? Why do you need to brand when you're Dell's house agency?

Did 'Ad Age' kill the name "Synarchy"?

You may have seen yesterday that the new name for WPP Group's Dell-dedicated agency is Enfatico, instead of Synarchy. Now the question is, "Did the name change because of what happened after the name was leaked, or was it never all that definite anyway?" Fortunately for Ad Age, its initial story did leave an out, stating, "WPP could change direction if the name doesn't pass legal muster or translate well into the various international locales in which it operates." What it didn't say, of course, was that the company might also steer clear of the name if it was linked to something, like, say, Nazis, a connection that I believe was first made by the writers of that story, who pointed out that the term synarchy's Wikipedia entry, " ... quotes from a book on Vichy France that had an account of French industrialists who saw Nazi Germany as alternative to Communism." The blogosphere noticed, and now, the unit has a new name, Enfatico.

Jarvis revistis Dell, likes what he sees

Finally getting around to posting about Jeff Jarvis' new opinion that Dell Hell has turned to Dell Swell. As you might recall, Jarvis went on a one-man jihad (although of course, he soon gathered an army of outraged Dell owners) against Dell a few years ago when the company proved at best, inept in handling the matter of his melting laptop. Now, he admits in BusinessWeek, Dell gets it, having honest dialogue with its customer base and also taking concrete, real-world action that resolves customer issues more quickly and more pleasantly. (Jarvis went down to Dell's Round Rock, Texas headquarters and interviewed Michael Dell in a video accompanying the story.) Like millions of other people, I've recently experienced this first-hand, when I took a flyer at calling Dell when my desktop PC, way beyond warranty at 5-plus years old, simply stopped one day. (Don't use it much except for my vast iTunes collection, but wanted it to work anyway.) What amazed me was that they actually stayed on the line for me twice, in two free phone calls of at least 45 minutes, as we troubleshot the thing, and even opened the CPU and started fooling around with the hard drive. So far, it looks like the computer may be destined for the great beyond, but it isn't dying for lack of interest on behalf of Dell. Impressive.

More on Dell's agency switch

A story today on the Business Week Web site gives a bit more insight as to why Dell decided on a new tagline and agency to replace BBDO’s “Purely You.” While at least one official report of the recent split from BBDO attributed it to the agency’s winning of the BestBuy account, the new marketing chief’s obvious displeasure with the BBDO work comes through loud and clear in the BW piece. The story says of “Purely You,” “Those ads missed the mark … and and one of [Jarvis’] first moves was to pull the plug … " His analysis? That the ads simply weren’t “cool” enough. "Customers are focusing on cool," he says. "Consumers are increasingly conscious of the brand itself," he adds. "People say, 'I'm an Apple person, I'm an HP person, I'm a Dell person.' We're reflected in the brand we use." The new spot, carrying the tag, "Yours Is Here" can be viewed here. Created by Mother, New York, the main point it seems to get across is that Dell's apparently can be had in a lot of colors, though I don't remember that feature from when I bought one last year. There's also a cameo appearance by an AMC Pacer.