if anyone's in any doubt that we're once again living through a bubble being inflated as fast as the last dot com one then you don't have to look too far. There are a plethora of articles written by people far cleverer than I that demonstrate this with proper examples and historic data and graphs n stuff (e.g. "all bubbles begin with a pyramid, end with a pop" - post by broadstuff), but I got passed an email the other day that had been recieved from a recruitment consultant.
I started in Recruitment Advertising towards the end of the 90s and remember the times of VC fuelled excess and tales of boardrooms with real grass on the floor and the like. I remember working on the Vizzavi account where it seemed, to even a junior account manager, that WAP games would never be able to generate returns that would ever sustain the whacking great pay packets and benefits of the staff, let alone the fancy pants break out areas, glitzy head offices & "benefits to attract and retain the best".
Right now even in our niche corner of the economy there seem to be some "interesting" VC investments into businesses that seem, to my admitedly untrained eye, to be signifcantly more style than discernable substance. Anyway - when I read this email I couldn't help think anything other than "here we go again"
"Good day to you Robert,
The sun is shining brightly through one of the large windows of the Digital Agency, Pascal has just finished a highly interesting iPhone app which traces the harmonious reciprocity between day and night, meanwhile Xavier is on the next bank of plexiglass desks tinkering on an app which purports to measure the sleep patterns of the user, plotting the findings on a graph. An iPhone mentor sits by a corinthian pillar, perched upon a copy of Le Corbusier's life works, an icon of stoic reticence, fastidiously watching over the progress of his young charges.
This may sound somewhat bizarre, but I can assure you that this is the reality in the London based Digital Agency that I am recruiting for at this present time. They are an extremely well known agency in the world of digital marketing, who are currently expanding their mobile wing. Currently they are seeking...."
I'm off to build me a Corithian pillar in the middle of our modest office and change my name to Alexandros.
:-|
and here's another of those articles about such things written by far cleverer people than I: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-is-the-second-dotcom-bubble-underway-ten-telltale-signs/
compelling reading IMHO
Posted by: Alex Hens | 21/02/2011 at 02:22 PM