Jun 6 2002

Agency ComPile starts out looking like a traditional "we want your money" collective of service providers, but there's much, much more to it. A lot of service-provider organizations do put their members online, but with little more than contact info and a "we do this for you when you give us money" blurb. Agency ComPile is a comprehensive resource, giving a lot of information about the clients listed in a useful way.

I ran across it when trying to find the ad firm behind the Tommy Jeans ads, but I found much more. The public relations, marketing, advertising, and media companies featured on the ComPile website have the opportunity to show how they shine. A lesser site might just give each client a place to write "We do this, and we've done this, and these people work for us," but Agency ComPile provides a lot of space for a media producer to demonstrate their work. Videos, Print ads, links to websites, PDFs of entire brochures, and anything else you could imagine are there. My favorite part, not used by every producer on the site, is the "Case History" section. Along with showing the end result of a design project, the case histories also explain what the customer wanted, what was decided upon for the final product, and what the resulted from their work. This information is very important, both for a customer and for budding designers & artists. If you can see how a firm does their work, it's more likely that you'll find a good match for your advertising needs. If you are trying to learn the ropes, having a resource full of the pro's thoughts available is worth it's weight in gold.

The site does require registration, but it's not a big deal - the only periodic email I get from ComPile is actually one of the most-anticipated messages I get each week. Like the rest of the site, the email isn't a hard-sell. The contents consist of links to some "spotlight" media pieces from a variety of marketing firms. Watching TV or reading a magazine, ads are meant to be secondary, something you catch almost subliminally and devote to memory. ComPile takes those ads and presents them as the artwork they are, complete with artist commentary and genre organization. I hope that this site does well; I think this is an excellent format for attracting clients, and the general public can get something out of it as well.