Each year during Ad Age’s Small Agency Awards, the outgoing Small Agency of the Year hands off the winner's trophy to the new honoree. Last year, Terri and Sandy celebrated the transition with a humorous video showing how the prize spent its year—and this year, BSSP created its own film.
On Wednesday night at the 2019 awards ceremony, Patrick Kiss, President of BSSP gave a few words of advice to 2019 Small Agency of the Year JohnxHannes and presented this hilarious video. It spoofs Nike’s celebrated “Jogger” ad from 2012’s “Find Your Greatness” campaign, reworking the idea to highlight the noble struggles of small indie shops.
The original Nike ad featured a lone boy, jogging laboriously down a country road. It characterized "greatness" as attainable not just for the rare, genetically blessed few. Instead the ad suggests we’re all capable of such feats. BSSP’s uncanny re-creation of the film instead features a man carrying the Small Agency of the Year trophy as he lumbers along the asphalt. The voiceover subs the words “small agency” for “greatness” in some of the original spot’s script—but then builds on that as it lists off the struggles that come hand in hand with being a tiny, indie player.
“Small Agency of the Year is not some rare DNA strand,” the V.O. says. “It’s not some precious thing. It’s about pitching anything that moves, hiring a shit ton of freelancers and being independent enough to lose money on any account you want.”
The endline reads, "Find your smallness."