So it seems Fallon beat Glue (and Beatties lot) to win Eurostar.

I'm sure many people will see that as a moral victory for the old order (not that Fallon are old, clearly they are far from it!) over the digital imposters. 'Get back to your banners and leave the TV to us', will no doubt be muttered in a schadenfreude stylee in the soho pubs. Obviously Glue are one of dare's main rivals and I would have been very jealous had they triumphed but, jeeze, it would have been interesting!

So, not this time, but hopefully someday soon?

There has been a wealth of words on the lack of digital talent. If even half the time people had spent writing about it had been spent on doing something about it we'd all be better off.

In an attempt to stop the madness of poaching staff from friends at other agencies and pushing up salaries to ridiculous levels we started dare school last year. We advertised for creative grads to join us, just like the big boys do for account managers.

We had a lot of interest in the site and interviewed lots of bright young things. We whilttled it down to 5 and they have been with us since January. .

They have two days school a week, taught various things by people in house and spend the rest of the time working on proper projects.

So far they have worked on Sony Ericsson, Google, Barclays and Vodafone. Not bad for your first job!

They have a blog, not much there yet. But watch this space. Their future's so bright, they gotta wear shades.

Bugger, Fallon have won the Eurostar pitch. If I'm honest, I already had the gloating blog post written, ready and waiting for Glue's victory, to drive the final nail in the coffin of the above-the-line dinosaurs.

As James Cooper points out:

'Get back to your banners and leave the TV to us' will no doubt be muttered in a schadenfreude stylee in the Soho pubs.

Perhaps. But for Glue to even make it to the final round of an above-the-line pitch of this magnitude is an achievement in itself.
 
I'd love to see copies of Glue's and Fallon's leave-behinds – was the decision based on the quality of the ideas? Did Glue propose a digital only approach? Did Eurostar's publicity hungry Marketing Director, Greg Nugent, only include Glue in the final round because of the press coverage it would ensure?
 
So many open questions. Can anyone illuminate?

Update – more from Campaign:

Greg Nugent, the Eurostar marketing chief, said: "Fallon has come up with something very special about the launch of High Speed 1 in the UK. However, glue will be contributing all the way through. We already know glue London can do the 'digital bit', but we want it to sit with us and Fallon and come up with ideas above its station."

Mark Cridge, the glue chief executive, said: "Obviously we're gutted not to scoop the whole account, but for our first above-the-line pitch, it's not bad to be beaten by the best agency in London."

Lee McEwan on not re-inventing the wheel:

Too many agencies and brands are still adopting a not-invented-here approach rather than using the services that others have developed.

As I'm perhaps overly fond of saying, the world doesn't need yet another branded version of MySpace, iTunes, YouTube, Second Life or Flickr!  Instead, grow the potential of your site by linking into these services in every way you can. 

Ben Terrett at the Design Conspiracy provides a great example of how to build an interactive presence (for the South Bank Centre in London) by mashing up a series of existing web 2.0 services. Whilst Ben says that this was partly a matter of necessity he also notes that it benefits the user:

"Partly because of a small budget and mainly because it makes sense to use tools people are familiar with … we've used a lot of stuff like Typepad, Flickr, Feedburner and YouTube."

Ben points to one of the BBC's fifteen web principles which explains why a component model of web development is the way to go:

"Do not attempt to do everything yourselves: link to other high-quality sites instead. Your users will thank you. Use other people's content and tools to enhance your site, and vice versa."

Using existing web 2.0 services to build a site … reduces the development time and ensures that you are plugged into pre-existing social networks rather than having to create your own (as the One Million Masterpiece team learnt a little too late). It also bolsters the credibility of your site and provides reassurance to anyone wishing to contribute content that this is not just a here-today-gone-tomorrow marketing campaign but an enduring web presence.

Some of us have been doing this for a while. In evidence, I submit Voice of a City, built for Eurostar using WordPress and Flickr in the summer of '05, GooTube, a channel on YouTube we've done for Cadbury, where we're soliciting entries for the £5000 YouTube Goo-Off and Goo Earth, a game using Google Maps.

6 milliards d'Autres, un projet de Yann Arthus-Bertrand.

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