Mornin’ beautiful

The 2007 Crispin Porter + Bogusky (Boulder, CO) creative interns w/ Alex Bogusky (Executive Creative Director) and Bill Wright (Burger King account - Creative Director).

Standing (from left): Brad, Elmer, Alex, Tavnir, Roger, Shadi, Fabian, Daniel, Bill Wright

Sitting (from left): Frances, Pruch, me, Jeff, Alex Bogusky, Nathan

Crispin won Nike Running, Nike Plus and Nike ID. Nike announced this on Friday but for some reason, not a single industry publication has run a story or even mentioned it. This Oregon paper was the only reference I could find to it. How weird.

“Nike said Friday it has selected Miami-based agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky to handle advertising for its U.S. running, Nike ID and Nike Plus businesses.”

Wieden + Kennedy recently launched a new version of their web site to celebrate the agency’s 25th anniversary. The general consensus within the online design community is the site’s difficult to use, its technological wizardry overshadows the portfolio and it has an eerie similarity to Think Map’s Visual Thesaurus. Personally, I don’t find the site particularly difficult to navigate, but I certainly see how it may overwhelm less savvy web surfers, such as clients. I feel allegations of poor usability trivialize what I consider to be a much larger problem: W+K didn’t build the web site.

There’s been a whirlwind of speculation surrounding Nike’s new Running account not going to W+K. Critics assert W+K was overlooked by Nike because their interactive capacity isn’t up to par. To date, R/GA has been responsible for most, if not all, of Nike’s interactive work in the United States.

It would make sense for W+K to launch an impressive interactive web site to show the world that they are in fact capable of great interactive work. Hell, it might even justify their new site’s impressive, but superfluous, emphasis on technology. With that said, it perplexes me that W+K outsourced the project. Sure, most agencies are too preoccupied with billable work to develop a decent corporate site, BUT with allegations that their agency was overlooked for its weak interactive skills, this sure doesn’t help their image. To their credit, W+K certainly had a role in the site’s design. On the other hand, judging from the site’s emphasis on technology, most of the work was done by Marumushi. This, unfortunately, doesn’t leave much for W+K to take credit for. As someone who has the utmost respect for W+K’s offline, I was disappointed by this move.

Edit: W+K certainly began working on the site before the Nike conundrum. Consequently, I probably shouldn’t be as critical of them having someone else develop the site while there are assumptions roaming around about their interactive capacity. It may just be inopportune timing.