Trust Me: Idea-ware in the Mirror?

If you haven't checked out the new TNT series Trust Me you should. It's on every monday night at 10pm. Couple of things I like about this show:

1.) Tom Cavanaugh - I've liked his work ever since he appeared on the NBC series Ed. Kind of guy that seems like he's never really acting, but just being his usual looney self.

2.) The Characters - It's the story of two best friends who work in a big Chicago ad agency. One is a copywriter and one is an art director. Kind of like me a George. Except in reverse. Connor the copywriter (Cavanaugh's character) is a nut job, flying by the seat of his pants, thumbing his nose at authority, pushing the envelope, often irresponsible, but also unbelievably creative and successful. That's George. Mason, the Art Director in Trust Me is serious, driven, corporate and always worrying about the client. That's me.

3.) The Partner Idea - The other interesting idea in this show - which George also found in a book about Saatchi and Saatchi that he is reading - is that all great agencies operate on this 2 person pairings of design and copywriting partners. In Trust Me, each character refers to his or her "partner" with the opposite skill set. It struck me that our advocacy model - pairing one designer (George) and one copywriter (me) - provides exactly those same resources and all the good synergy that comes form their interaction, without all the distraction of big agency politics that this show so painfully displays!

4.) The Marketing Campaign - Finally, they have a great campaign supporting this show. Not as cool as HBOs campaign for Big Love, but the do have a killer website that is made to look like it's the site for the fictional agency in the show (Rothman, Greene & Mohr), complete with staff bios and a client extranet you can access and watch hilarious videos of a "focus group" gone terribly wrong. George noted the irony that RGM isn't even a real business and yet their website is better than 95% of the businesses out there!!

JPL