The Nice Agency.com

We all know most agency management treats its employees like idiotic children and, while most employees may truly be idiotic, pampered, over-paid children, it's still humorous when an agency head pulls out the ruler and lays down the gauntlet like a Kindergarten teacher. Today, we're informed Toronto-based agency Henderson Bas President Dawna Henderson was displeased the assigned group didn't properly organized the agency's monthly Round Up, an agency wide cleaning event, and took matters into her own hands in the form of a stern email. There are rules, damn it and "this is not a joke!" The kicker in all of this? The agency's URL: theniceagency.com. Read on...



Subject: Spring Time Round -UP
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2006 09:12:30 -0500
From: Dawna Henderson
To: yyz@theniceagency.com


The agenda for today's Round Up has changed

Because the assigned team failed to coordinate this month's Round Up - and we don't want to waste the time that has been allocated - everyone will be required to participate in henderson bas spring cleaning.

Beginning at 4pm, each of you will be responsible for cleaning your individual pod (just not moving stuff around) and making sure the area around your desk is neat & tidy. Once your area is perfectly clean and organized, you will each be required to participate in office cleaning. Tech and creative will be responsible for the kitchen which includes the fridge and above the sink cupboards. The PMs and AMs will be responsible for cleaning the down stairs coat closet and making sure every single screen & keyboard in the building is cleaned.

Once you are finished cleaning your pod and assigned areas, please come and find me as I would like to make sure the office is cleaned to my standards.

To this month's Round Up team instead of buying snacks and drinks for the group, you will be required to purchase the following cleaning supplies before 4pm today - paper towels, Fantastik, Pledge for electronics, J-cloths, and computer screen wipes (@ Grand & Toy). This is not an option.

If anyone has any problems with this, please be sure to thank this month's Round Up team. Do not come and whine to me.

Rules: This is not a joke.
1. all computers must be turned off from 4:00PM- 5:30PM
2. no calls are to be taken
3. attendance is mandatory
4. everyone's shred box must be emptied
5. no one can leave until the offices are clean
6. no smoke or coffee breaks

dawna
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agency Makes Joke Out of Nasty Internal Email
On Friday, an internal email about office cleaning from the President of Toronto-based Henderson Bas was leaked to us and has, as of Saturday afternoon, spawned 57 comments. Most, it seems, from former agency employees. The email, which you can read here along with the comments, reads like a displeased parent blasting her children after returning from a vacation to find the house trashed. Now, everyone has emotions and, at times, everyone says something they wished they hadn't. Perhaps that's the case here or perhaps it is, as the clear majority of commenters claim, a true representation of affairs inside the agency.

Whether a fair representation or not, we have to hand it to Henderson Bas President Dawna Henderson, sender of the email, for her attempt at injecting a bit of humor into the email leak. If you visit the agency's site now, you will be met with the message, "Please Come Back Later. We're Busy Cleaning," a t-shirt offer and a read "As Seen on Adrants" logo. Some have labeled the stunt a lame attempt to brush off what many say is indicative of an agency with some serious internal issues. Others have said Dawna is a great business person and this is just a smart move to show a sense of humor about an email that could have come from any agency head.

On the other hand, we're told the person who leaked the email has been fired. Clearly, there's not a forgiving sense of humor in that move. Based on the comments and emails we received, we're inclined to believe life inside Henderson Bas is pretty intense. In fact, the issue appears to be so hot one person went out a created a CafePress store selling items emblazoned with not so nice statements about the agency.

We, ourselves, have worked in an agency run by a tyrant and have witnessed, first hand, how a dictator-like agency president can, even while guiding the agency to success, turn employees into slump-shouldered yes men who have given up all hope of having an individual thought unless it's exactly what the president said the day before. Of course, we were fired from that shop soon after raising our voice to the man and, to be fair, doing a shitty job because we were too busy getting Adrants and another project off the ground. So, we don't really have the right to complain too much but these occurrences indicate just how much an agency's top dog can effect employees. Some leaders instill the desire to do great things. Others fill you with dread at the thought of spending one more hour inside the agency's doors. Hopefully, throughout your career, you get more of the former and less of the latter. Thankfully, we did.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PR Disaster As Viral Opportunity?
Posted by Ken Schafer on March 25, 2006.
Related to Interactive Agencies, Public Relations, Viral Marketing, Web Sites

There are 0 comments on this entry. Add your own.

Did April Fools’ come a week early this year? Something very odd is going on over at henderson bas this weekend.

Their home page has been replaced by this:



The page title has been changed from “henderson bas - the nice agency” to “henderson bas - the cleanest agency in Canada” (the company’s url is theniceagency.com).

What’s going on here?

All of this seems to spring from Adrants’ publication of a purported “all hands” e-mail from the agency’s President, Dawna Henderson (One Degree Profile). Adrants Friday afternoon post called The Nice Agency Isn’t So Nice goes for the jugular, reprinting the full e-mail and then standing back as the comments flood in.

I’m not going to republish the supposed e-mail here but you may want to go read it to see what all the fuss is about. In particular, look at the vitriol flowing in the comments to the post.

I can’t imagine that this e-mail was planted at Adrants as a hoax by henderson bas - it just makes them look too bad. Part of me thought the “leaked e-mail” and the “humorous corporate response” looked a bit too much like a PR stunt but if that is the case it has gone horribly wrong in my mind. I can’t believe there could be a reason to inflict something like this on your company intentionally.


So if we assume their home page is an attempt at damage control by making light of what’s going on at Adrants I’m not sure it is successful. My guess is lots of people (certainly most clients and potential clients of henderson bas) wouldn’t have caught wind of this. Now they’ve nicely drawn attention to the whole mess. Heck I’m writing about it and now a few thousand more people know that not everyone thinks Henderson Bas is the Nice Agency!

Finally, someone has done a nice job of taking this to the next level by starting a CafePress Shop selling commemorative shirts, hats, aprons, and wall clocks (as pictured here).