Ironically, I wasn't busy, and that's why I saw it

This morning I was reading an email from a friend, exchanging congratulations on our respective jobs, when I noticed a Google AdWords ad above my inbox.


I thought, What kind of schlock is this? Is that really a convincing argument? Then I thought, Is "schlock" even a word? [Editor's note: Yes. Of course it is.] Clicking on advertising-rated AdWords ad has yielded some real gems in the past, so I went for this one.

I was pleasantly surprised with the result. Think Tank 3 is a very small ad/branding agency out of New York. Although I don't care for the name or positioning as a "modern day think tank", they actually have a pretty cool style. Very reminiscent of Howard Gossage, sort of that voice of the intellectual small guy that can flip deftly flip between erudite and absurd. The shop's creative director is a woman, Sharoz Makarechi, who apparently has worked in post-Taliban Afghanistan to "train Afghans in modern communication skills for journalism and social campaign creation." It seems like a very small, tightly knit shop, but someone should check them out. I'd be interested to know more.

Oh yeah, and apparently there are more ads like the one I saw, trying to steal work away from the big guys. They won a One Show Merit. Pretty funny, especially the latter ones.




But on more thought, maybe this ads only work on people like me that see their agency's name, and think, Hey, what the?