Don’t tar all us agency folk with the same brush

I was just having a looksee at some of the blogs and as a usual reader of John Lamerton’s blog i was particularly struck by a post of his. I have to say, it was an insightful post about why he hates affiliate marketing (after a why I love affiliate marketing post). The bit that really made me chuckle aloud was his section entitled ‘Too many suits, not enough substance’. I totally know where he’s coming from and to a VERY large extent agree – I’ve seen it, and to be perfectly honest I don’t blame him at all. I do love affiliate events – I like meeting the affiliates, and I’ve met some great guys (James Avery and Keith Bond always will get positive mention from me). And I have had some great laughs, but the description of ‘ the plethora of arrogant tossers in their flash suits, coked up, trying to stuff business cards into my hand whilst trying to get into the toilets’ made me acutally laugh out loud and nod in agreement. At times, the aforementioned types do smack of ’80s yuppie of the worst kind a la American Psycho (or the worst episodes of Miami Vice – whatever floats your boat and turns you on).

In response I say: ‘you’re right’ but not all us agency folk are bad, coked up tossers. It’s really hard at these things (I know when I went to my first event not too long ago) to get talking to affiliates and just saying hello. They see that yellow agency name tag and run a mile. I’ve always tried to just talk to people like they were intelligent creatures – as I would like to be spoken to. It does get hard trying to get people’s attention, and with the enormous number of people all vying for the attention of affiliates it could be a bit of an obstacle to ‘affiliate managing/relationship building’.

In the end, I stopped overthinking it did my own thing and well, we’ll see where that got me. In the end, I know what John’s referring to but we ain’t all that bad – honest! Some of us are passionate about the industry, and want to see the right thing being done (whether by the affiliate or by merchant). I know John’s referring to a specific breed of event goer but it has its ramifications on us regular folk. So I’ll make a deal to any affiliate out there – give agency types a couple minutes of your time and if you find you’re dealing with someone you think is ..ahem… of the aforementioned, then feel free to walk away. But at least give some of us a chance – we might actually be, well, human.