MattCreamer.com

Somewhere Tom Friedman is smiling. Over the course of the past dozen or so years, the Internet has managed to shake up most old-line businesses, making things like geography and borders increasingly irrelevant. The ad industry has resisted or somehow been ignored by flat-earth economics, with agencies, still by and large brick and mortar businesses based here in the U.S., dominating how major corporations spend their marketing bucks. Sure, they’ve seem some disintermediation, most significantly from other marketing disciplines that trade more on customer relationships or unsponsored and therefore more credible forms of persuasion, but less so from a globalized economic reality. Finally, the advantages of flat-earth communications are beginning to take root, in the form of OpenAd.net, a Slovenian website that’s essentially a hub where 9,000 freelancers are displaying their work or taking part in online new-business pitches. Up until now, OpenAd’s clients have been largely European, but, as I wrote in today’s AdAge, Procter & Gamble seems to be interesting in kicking its tires, recently running a pitch for some Gillette business on the site. Others are sure to follow.

Also in today’s AdAge, I weighed in on the recession worries and on the unlikely turnaround of Boston’s Hill Holliday, following the departure of its the agencies most identifiable figure, Jack Connors.