Publicis spends $530m to land Razorfish

For me Razorfish holds a special place in my heart for being the first major agency to show the world that you could run an agency whose sole purpose was digital services primarily focused on the web and actually thrive. I credit both Razorfish and The Designers Republic, who sadly to say went RIP earlier this year, for playing a major role in my drive to become what I am today in this industry.

In their height Razorfish kicked the dust off of the straight laced advertising world and proudly stood up to say, “We Are Rock Stars!”. The amazing part is they not only expected to be treated as such, they actually were. Unfortunately in the coming years, as internal corporate global growth took hold, they got so muddled up, charging millions for “strategy” meetings and delivering fewer and fewer tangible results for every client-dollar spent. And as many boutique agencies started to spring up off of the Razorfish wake it became clear that highly creative and motivated “rockstars” could be had for pennies on the Razorfish dollar.

Years later Microsoft would absorb them into their own corporate collective while still allowing brand atonomy. But by now the Razorfish that once was had died long ago. As different as hip-hop was during its infancy compared to its blinged out status now Razorfish is also culturally no longer and has not been the Razorfish I remember.