No Guts, No Glory
Jun 14 2009
The Portland Creative Community took some bold steps with its launch of the Portland Ad Federation Rosey Awards website themed “Nothing Says I’m Better than you Like a Rosey.” The messaging has an East Coast directness to it that takes many Portlanders by surprise in a city that fosters friendliness to strangers, foes, and friends. However, I think it’s the perfect time for Portland to step up and talk with confidence about its creative talent here. Yes, we’ve recently been discovered by the NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and other publications as the destination for hipsters (employed and unemployed) to hang out. But, we aren’t getting much positive press for having the second highest unemployment in the country. Now is the right time to shout from the roof-tops that Portland creative agencies do kick-ass work! Kudos to Anthill Marketing for the concept, design, and messaging in the site and entire Roseys this year!
2009 PAF Rosey Awards site
I’m not so sure this site would work in most other industries as it is definitely edgy, controversial, and provocative, but I think it’s a shot in the arm that Portland needs. The true test is to see if agencies from other cities take notice. Then, an interesting dialog will begin.
You’ll start to see this campaign promoted more on Twitter (I love the “Rosey Smack Feed” section of the ‘Win Tix’ part of the site), Facebook, and other blogs in the upcoming months. I’ve got to sign off from this blog post to think of some good Smack Talk myself – submit your own here >>
Loading ...
June 16th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
Well, judging by all the hate mail in the comments section of Seattleist.com http://seattlest.com/2009/06/09/check_it_out_portland_discovered_sm.php I’d say that talking smack is a ridiculous idea and that this campaign is ill-informed and not representative of all the amazing creative people in Portland. Basically this campaign has opened the door to all the out-dated prejudices that folks hold about Portland. Rather sad to set us back about ten years…
June 16th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
I don’t think any one, including myself, would take exception to ‘edgy’ or Portland taking pride in it’s work. But this campaign is neither of those thing. It’s childish and foolish.
First, on a practical level, talking shit to NY or LA or SF is just dumb. They have accounts that no shop in this city is even remotely prepared to take on (save for WK, but Im not sure we can collectively hang our hat on them).
Secondly, nowhere in this campaign do we talk about why exactly we’re better than all these cities. As someone who worked for one of those agencies in NY, I know what they’re capable of, I know exactly why I moved to Portland, I’m proud to be here, and I don’t want to work anywhere else. But as soon as we fall back on petty name calling, we let ourselves off the hook to actually compete on a national or international level. I think that Portland has a glut of talent, and with a little organization, and a little less self congratulation, there is no reason we couldn’t have the lifestyle we love AND our pick of any account in the world. Rather than mindlessly thumbing our noses at these cities, we should be looking to them not just to see how the best in the world work, but to understand what we love about the industry in Portland and exactly why we don’t want to be them.
June 16th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Wow. Makes PDX look like amateur hour.
June 16th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
This is a subjective campaign and not for everyone. We, at eROI, didn’t create it, but I like the intent of it which is to have a little FUN between cities. This is the first time I’ve seen Portland be self-congratulatory and it’s not all bad. I know it’s not Portland culture to talk about itself which may be why it’s rubbing the above commenters the wrong way.
Regardless, the dialog is good. Keep it coming.
June 16th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
I think though thats my issue with it: it’s distinctly NOT Portland talking about itself. It’s us talking completely baseless smack about other cities.
Again, I have NO problem with Portland being proud to be Portland, but lets talk about how awesome we are instead of trying to score cheap points tearing others down.
Ultimately, where this leaves us is having every city on that list saying: Huh, now that you bring it up, what HAS Portland done lately. And frankly I’m not sure that’s a fight we want to get into.
For the record, I know this isn’t your campaign, and hope my feedback isn’t seen as a dig on eROI. It’s nice of you to host this forum for conversation on the campaigns behalf though.
June 16th, 2009 at 3:50 pm
I also would note that the ‘hate mail’ section of Seattleist is pretty much one guy…
June 16th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
I dunno, this seems right on par with the infamous roseys “porn” bit from the 90s. Portland’s always been the punky self congradulatory city on the west coast. I think Chuck Palahniuk’s guide book put it best.. To paraphrase, if you’re too weird for the east coast, yo head to the west coast. If you’re too weird for california or seattle, you head to portland. We’re the black sheep of the black sheep of the black sheep.
It’s weird, you can have all the creativity in the world – if that’s all you got… meh. … helps to have demand, no?
Portland needs better outreach to cities that need the hipster creative skills we got…. Pointing out we’re better than everywhere else (which of course we are) is probably not the brightest way to do that..
can you say echo chamber?
June 16th, 2009 at 7:12 pm
I actually saw this and wrote to the PAF because I think it is such poor taste. I can see what it is trying to do and I can also see that it’s a bad idea. I am just coming out of school and was really disappointed to see this come out of Portland. Taking risks, being provocative and edgy is all good, but this isn’t Portland and it’s not true to our brand.
Do we even need to say it? Award shows are presumptuous enough- I don’t think we really need to spell that out for people. Instead of bashing on other creative communities, we should be working to build one another up and if we are going to pick fights with other cities, we at least have to be able laugh at ourselves a little too.
I don’t think it is wrong to celebrate Portland, it’s amazing here. Anyone who has visited Portland knows what we’re talking about. This campaign just isn’t attractive to an outside audience and it certainly doesn’t represent the majority of the creative community. We aren’t going to make friends walking around saying, “we’re better than you.”
Jamie Sexton from the PAF did write me back and asked, “At this point what do you feel would be an appropriate follow up to what has been done so far?”
What does everyone think?
June 16th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
Many well-articulated arguments in the Comments section here on the “Against” the 2009 Rosey Award campaign. I’ve seen many Tweets in the “For” column who’ve enjoyed the humor and other elements of it. I’d love to see more of both in this dialog here in the comments on this blog post.
June 17th, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Having been to, and honored in, the self-congratulatory Rosey Awards last year, I have to join in the disappointed voices from the Portland creative community.
I’m one of the relatively recent transplants from elsewhere (which, I suppose, means I should take issue with the “Two things come from Minneapolis”) and wholeheartedly agree that Portland is a place to be celebrated. That said, the particular way we’ve decided to frame our creative community to the outside world seems a bit questionable.
Not only would I cite the overarching message of the copywriter-clever campaign (and resulting website), but also feel the need to note that, outside our amazing community, the Roseys don’t hold much water.
Ask Minneapolis, or New York, or anywhere else for that matter.
Let’s all get together for our OTHER long-standing tradition of a friendly beer, ride our bikes home, and get down to creating amazing work.
June 17th, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Good thing nobody outside of Portland even knows about these awards. Otherwise it would be embarrassing. Brilliant strategy. Call out all the jerks in other cities that do cool work. What does Portland do better again? Nothing says “better” like a sixth middle-rose-finger.
Idea for the Rosey Awards: Instead of the guy who told Burgerville war-stories for nearly an hour, this year we could get Jim Rome to help us all set up custom Angelfire pages.
Congratulations to the mouth-breathers that put the Portland advertising community in such good light. (Smile) I’m not normally grumpy.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Yes, the 2009 Rosey campaign is in poor taste. It’s also obnoxious and goes for cheap laughs.
In other words, I think it’s perfect.
And if gets our creative community attention and shake things up, all the better. Ryan, your post was spot-on. In fact, it inspired me to add my $.02 here:
http://joelgunz-adcreative.blogspot.com/2009/06/2009-roseys-brash-cheap-and-i-wouldnt.html
Joel
June 24th, 2009 at 6:38 pm
In our view, this campaign has drawn attention to a very provincial and brutish side of our creative community, which I hope won’t be applied across the board to the people who genuinely find this type of bottom feeding to be offensive.
As a local company working on campaigns for high-profile clients, we’ve decided to boycott the awards this year and have been suggesting other companies do the same.
Our dignity is better than your awards.