John Farquhar, President & Creative Director of Wild Mouse Advertising, has written an excellent post on his blog today about surviving in a new economy.  When big companies are laying off employees in big numbers, there’s a huge opportunity for the small guys who work smarter to keep growing – even when the going is tough.

That’s a huge change in thinking for many organizations who got where they are today by virtue of being big.  But, the reality is that being big today is a liability – and an unnecessary one at that.  The New York Times is competing against 4-person blogs for ad revenue. Microsoft is competing against 2-person startups and open-source communities for software revenue.  In many cases, big does not equal better.

From John’s post:

How big do you need to be to create the best product possible? It’s probably smaller than you think.

Ford Motor used to hire shepherds to tend Ford sheep on Ford land to create Ford cotton to weave into Ford seats on Ford Cars. That, of course, seems insane today.

Technology is changing the way we interact with business, but it’s also changing how business is done.  We don’t necessarily have to be in the same building / city / country to do business anymore.  Virtual collaboration and communications technologies that were prohibitively expensive five years ago are now boiled down to a monthly subscription that’s less than you pay for your local newspaper.

It’s a brave new world out there… and a lot of the companies who come through this economy are going to be the ones who were brave enough to resist being big, and who kept thinking small.

Also, if you haven’t checked out John’s blog yet – you should.  He’s got some extremely intelligent takes on what’s going on in the creative and marketing world today.

There’s been some debate over the past few weeks about a Firefox add-on called “Adblock,” which, true to its name, blocks ads from websites. The plugin is nothing new – I had it years ago – but what’s new is some websites blocking Firefox users (whether they have the plugin or not) in protest of messing up their ad models.

Guess what, advertising. This is just further proof that your “audience” fucking hates you. You can piss and moan all you like about ad blocking software and Tivo and all of that, but the reality is that the model you have come to worship of making shiny blinky things and forcing them in front of people’s faces is dead – and the entire industry will be too if you don’t learn to adapt.

People are in no way obligated to you, and they never have been, but until a few years ago, their only recourse was to go to the bathroom when your mindless ad came on. Now, we have technology to protect us from your intrusive ads and you’re crying foul.

The content producers are crying as well. The whyfirefoxisblocked.com site includes the line:

While blanket ad blocking in general is still theft, the real problem is AdBlock Plus’s unwillingness to allow individual site owners the freedom to block people using their plug-in. Blocking FireFox is the only alternative.

No. It’s not. There is no contract between viewers and publishers that binds them to read, enjoy and absorb their noisy little emoticon banners. To insinuate that there is an unspoken agreement of this is not only ridiculous, it’s insulting.

When it comes to these few content producers who have opted to block Firefox users for “stealing” their content, I expect the realization that nobody cares about them will hit them far harder than the lost nickels from Adblock users. Things are a bit different for all but a handful of blogs, but for the most part, if you want to block me from viewing your precious content because of the browser I use – fine. I’ll get your recycled opinion from someone else.

What I will not do, nor should anyone, is compromise the way I want to surf the web because it interferes with your fundamentally flawed and frankly annoying business model. I understand the need to make money from a site that you spend hours a day on, and for that reason I don’t use it, but avoid particularly annoying sites altogether.

For online newspapers and newsblogs, the problem is a little deeper, but the creator of the program, Wladimir Palant, cuts right to the heart of the issue in a story in the International Herald Tribune, when he says:

“There is only one reliable way to make sure your ads aren’t blocked – make sure the users don’t want to block them,” he wrote. “Don’t forget about the users. Use ads in a way that doesn’t degrade their experience.”

Bingo. This guy understands more about advertising than most of the industry does.