Recently there have been a few big agencies with big budgets releasing videos combating the charge that they are old school and lost in the past - last year Saatchi's produced the "Last Ad Agency on Earth " and when i came across Thisvideo via Charles Firth's blog I I felt compelled to react strongly - I resisted the urge for a few weeks to see what the fall out would be but now the hiatus has died down I thought I would consider in a rounded and less emotional manner.

I must say my immediate reaction was "What the f@@@ is a traditional media agency doing sticking their head above the parapet?" they must know what they are doing........it seem not - they not only produced a toe curlingly awful video they removed comments that were negative and had no response strategy in place when (inevitably) the stones were thrown (sticking with the parapet analogy) -...not counting the fact that they used children and planted words from long in the tooth planners who are far too used to the sound of their own voices.

That said they did get 148k views and 200+ likes BUT to date there are also over 1,600 dislikes and the first 4-5 pages of Google are dedicated to blogs, articles and comments roundly criticising the exercise and their reaction.

I have thought long and hard about why I hate it - over and above the obvious - and I have decided that I feel the same about this as I do about "Call me Dave" 's Big Society - it smacks of everything that is wrong about the establishment trying to dance with the kids and become relevant by claiming it knows what is going on and it can do something about it at a time when even those integrally involved are not sure - does PHD have the same view on the impact of a digital generation that Dave has of the struggling classes from Notting Hill, Stow in the Wold and Downing Street ?

On the flip side part of me applauds that both PHD and Dave are at least trying the acknowledging an issue that won't go away- only time will tell if they start to walk the talk and act on their rhetoric.