From an Ad Age article headlined “Leo Burnett Buys Space in Virtual World” (Link):

Burnett claims it’s the first ad agency to buy “real estate” within the construct.

Are they? I thought Rivers Run Red was an ad agency, and they’ve been in SL longer than I have. And I know that technically Text 100 is a “PR Consultancy”, but considering that Leo Burnett is so late to the party, why try to make that distinction when it just makes it even more obvious that the supposedly-creative advertising community has turned out not to be as in-touch with what’s happening in the world – real or virtual – as they like to believe and try to claim.

So now Leo Burnett is going to open an “ideas hub”, huh? Sorry guys. The big headline in Ad Age and the grand claims alone make you sound… stodgy and outdated. And it gets comical with this:

He [Chief Creative Officer Mark Tutssel] described Burnett’s foray into Second Life as part laboratory and part global water cooler for the agency. “It’s not a virtual agency, but it is a cathedral of ideas,” he said. “It allows our collective creative firepower to come together.”

Uh, Mark, how many prims you using for that cathedral?

Y’know, someone needs to tell these old agencies that the first rule of Web 2.0 (and Second Life) is: Don’t go around bragging about how you figured it out and are now (finally) going to set up an “ideas hub”.

“[C]ollective creative firepower”. Right.