An ad agency, gasp, lets Facebook go dark!

Posted on February 23, 2010

Tired of hearing how important social media is to your agency new business efforts yet? Well, it is, don’t get me wrong, but it seems to come from all sides doesn’t it? (Yes, even from us.) I came across something interesting this morning however, and I wanted to share it.

Park&Co is a branding and marketing agency based in Phoenix, AZ. Last month, they made the decision to have their Facebook page “go dark.” I posted their reason why, directly from their FB page, below:

Park&Co’s Facebook effort is going dark. I know you rely on us for tons of compelling industry and agency news but I’m sorry to say you’re going to have to wait awhile before you see us again.

Before panic sets in let me explain. It’s not that we don’t have time or we don’t think the medium is valuable, it’s that we’re done posting underwhelming news and links you can find a number of other places. And let’s be honest, you don’t sign on to Facebook to see our next birthday celebration photo or snarky quip.

Facebook is a valuable medium and one that a bunch of us here at Park&Co love and use regularly. But we love it because it’s a place to share and connect with friends, to see what’s happening in their lives and to broadcast the highlights from ours.

So until we can come up with a really good reason to have a Facebook page for the agency (and we’re working on it), we’re going dark. Despite our Facebook darkness there are still a bunch of places you can connect with us starting with our website – http://parkandco.com/

I like this a lot, for a variety of reasons but mostly because the folks at Park aren’t falling victim to the “you’ve got to engage in social media right now or fall behind” mentality. (They’re not forsaking social media mind you, they’re still blogging away for example.)

And there are two other reasons I like their current FB plan. The first is, if I was a client, or prospective client, I would respect this move as one based on strategy and not herd mentality thinking and it’s the type of thinking I would want for my own business.

And second, I just like what they left for everyone on their FB page for the time being. I don’t fish, but it’s just good stuff:

In the meantime, with our focus based solely on providing as much value to our clients, readers, followers, and yes, even “fans,” enjoy this wonderful fishing video…

Park&Co’s Facebook page here and main site here.

7 responses to "An ad agency, gasp, lets Facebook go dark!"

Sid 26/02/2010 11:52 am Reply

You just gotta love an agency that calls a spade, well, a spade. We have not gone quite as dark, but turfed our website and replaced it with a blogsight. The website made us look big. The blogsight makes us look good. And clients look for good people (in my opinion).
Sid Peimer http://www.behp.co.za
Lee McKnight Jr. 26/02/2010 14:41 pm Reply

Thanks for the comment Sid. Would be interested to hear what kind of feedback you've gotten or overall impressions from clients and/or prospective clients, depending on how long it's been since the switch.
Sid 02/03/2010 14:48 pm Reply

Hi Lee – we have never intentionally promoted the site (and to think we're in the business of communication!). However, I'm sending out an ezine tomorrow with a feature article about blogsights (and a link to http://www.behp.co.za). I'll let you know the response.
Lee McKnight Jr. 08/03/2010 15:19 pm Reply

Thanks Sid, and looking forward to getting your guest post up on the blog this week!
Shirlee Lemont 21/04/2011 16:35 pm Reply

Just thought i would comment and say neat design, did you code it yourself? Looks great.
- Lee McKnight Jr 22/04/2011 09:07 am Reply
  
  Thanks Shirlee, we worked with Once Blind Studios here in Cincinnati. They were fantastic.
Corry 11/11/2011 04:49 am Reply

how correct. Properly Said!