top 5 marketing agency sites (+ shitlist)

I have already been thinking & writing about marketing agencies' identity crisis & about their blogs, and a bit about their sites, too, so I guess now it's time to pick up where I left off with this last one. The way I think about agencies' websites is that they are display of 1) agencies' capabilities; 2) reflections of an agency's unique approach to consumers, brands, and business; 3) sign of a clear identity. When someone's site has all three of the above + clean, simple + minimialist design & navigation = great agency site. So I ranked the sites by these criteria. My all time fav are 1. Bond Art & Science site (yes, still), 2. Undercurrent, 3. Zeus Jones; 4. HUGE, and 5. LOVE Creative. Bond Art & Science and Undercurrent are great b/c their content&presentation&site format IS the web. Prob. also great b/c the sites tell a lot about the agencies' culture & the way its people think about digital. Also shows confidence in what those people can do, rather what these agencies has done in the past (which would be an old-school approach). Zeus Jones does the same thing a slightly less convincingly. HUGE brings in a different angle - accountability - as it displays highly-coveted numbers on its front page  [e.g. 120 million monthly visitors to sites designed & developed by HUGE]. Beautiful and clean look&feel of the site also sets expectations for prospective clients. V confident design & clear messaging about who the agency is and what it an do. The top-5 runner-ups are The Barbarian Group (a bit zzzzz but shows 2)) & Modernista (I really don't like their site, but it also scores well on 2) so I put it in). Leading the shitlist and slowly entering the all-time hall of fame is 1. Razorfish's "all-flash" site, followed by 2) truly scary DDB, which is disturbing if only for the butchered butterfly; 3. Grey, which made the list b/c of little aliens that I find very endearing; 4. shared place by Leo Burnett and Publicis & Hal Riney - loading time indefinite & navigation: impossible. Finally, let's not forget the agency for the digital age, R/GA (I actually think their site is just plain (not plain good or plain bad), but the logo (and bob greenberg) are so overwhelming that it actually made it here). Bonus rankings: best sound effects - Razorfish & Leo Burnett; Most confusing: Saatchi & Saatchi, uniquely featuring very timely "Bob Ideas Gallery"; Worst navigation: Leo Burnett; Fragile-to-nonexistent identity: McCannErickson; Preternatural reliance on color red & on Cannes Lions: Ogilvy; Who-cares-information (a.k.a. sales pitch of the year 2006) & giant fireworks (a sure indicator of cheesiness) on the front page: Tribal DDB.

Comments

[Brian]

i like naked nyc's site, also an aggregation of web services: http://www.houseofnaked.com/

it's interesting the agencies i'd expect to have great sites that don't. suspect no. 1: anomaly. it looks like one of those sites out of a box. akqa's is standard fare. an odd touch is going all pdf for the company factsheet. cpb's is also pretty boring, but it at least just focuses on the work, keeping with its 'ideas factory' identity.

[ana]

hey brian, thanks for your comment.

I was thinking about naked site, but it's too much flash and it not clear to me what they do, how they do it, and who they are (3 criteria that i had). so it didn't make the list. similar answer for anomaly: it's clear who they are & a bit how they do it (in a "different" way, no further explanation), but if i didn't talk to them in person i would not know what & specifically how they do business.

akqa is just an ordinary site. it's clean & easy to navigate but not interesting enough to be mentioned here. i also tried to focus on awesome sites and on terrible sites, not on those in between.