Key West Inc.
Beyond Miami and the glades, there’s a bridge that leads to the Keys. If you’ve never been on them, you need to before you die – the most famous of these bridges is the seven mile bridge. It divides the Atlantic Ocean from the Gulf of Mexico. It’s a bridge which extends over the clear blue for so long it feels like you’re driving on the water itself.
Beyond such names you might have heard of like Key Largo, are a bunch of names you haven’t. Names like Rockland Key, Shark Key, Park Key, Sugarloaf Key and the auspiciously named: No Name Key.
At the very end of this drive is… Key West.
A little dot where Hemingway once lived.
A little dot where President Truman used to come to for its healing properties.
And a little dot that has an ad agency?
I switched on The Google. My computer’s loading bar jerked forward and I typed in my search. After a hunt I found Studio Key agency – a slick design agency with some web savvy, but for those of us who work in advertising – a design agency is not an ad agency any way you cut it.
On the second try, my computer struck the jackpot: Caldwell Marketing and Adverting www.knotink.com It has possibly the worst ads known to man and their TV ads are encoded using Quicktime version 3.01. Yet there it is. An ad agency.
And it wasn’t entirely new to me either.
I can remember in 2008 when I was in Key West I wanted to use the toilet in the gift-shop “First right – up the stairs” I was told. I went left.
The door on the left was the entrance to Caldwell Marketing and Advertising. I imagine sometimes what Caldwell advertising looks like through that door. An office with two chairs and a Billy Bass singing fish on the wall with batteries so low it only gets through half a song.
I turned around and used the right door. Relief is a pleasure second only to eating a Daim Bar.
Sometimes I wish there were less agencies in the world. But then again I wish there were less people too.