A few short hours later my Facebook desktop notification bliped at me I went to my inbox to see that I had recieved a note from Maya Heart, her avatar as Joan from mad men caught me offguard, her note however took me even more by surprise. Below is our correspondence.

Wow! I was shocked, I had done something so little as like and comment on their video on Facebook. This was awesome I thought, and plus I love getting free stuff. So, I replied and then set out to Twitter to tell them how awesome this whole thing was.

No later than an hour later my iphone buzzed to let me know that I had a new follower from twitter. Lately I’ve been getting some strange followers, so I took it with a grain of salt when a fellow named tombed was following me.

A quick profile check showed me that Tom was infact the CEO of AKQA. Now this type of thing has happened to me before with the good folks at popeyes chicken. I dont expect that I’ll be interesting to Tom but the real deal with this is that they are looking out for people that talk about AKQA. They are in tune to whats out there and are monitoring and then taking some action in the social space, and I have to give them props for doing that. I even followed tom back just to see what kind of CEO he was in relation to other CEO’s I follow ( i do follow a couple)

Today I got a call from Emily while I was at work. A package had arrived. I honestly thought it was from somebody else, heck for a second I thought it might have been the books I ordered this morning. ( a dude can hope right?) But no Emily informed me it was from AKQA, in the best of her 3 year old ability and I mentioned it must be my shirt I got from liking their video, something I’m still a bit shocked by.

Below you’ll find a flickr set of my unboxing. A seemingly hand wrapped box from over the pond. Containing a fancy frosted plastic box containing one Nike sportswear t-shirt with embroidered chest logo. the 5 stars representing the 5 awards they won this year “Creative Review magazine: Advertising Agency of the Year, Campaign magazine: Digital Agency of the Year, Revolution magazine: Agency of the Year, British Interactive Multimedia Asc.: Agency of the Year, IAB: Creative Agency of the Year, Cannes Grand Prix” and a small screened AKQA logo on the lower right of the front of the shirt. Included with the shirt was a letter thanking me and letting me know that my shirt was # 20 of 250 total. That was something that was even more unexpected than getting a shirt in the firstplace.

So whats the big deal right? Wrong, to me this was simply put something that I’ll remember forever an experience that will make AKQA and their work, their smarts and their passion shine above the rest of the digital agencies out there. They not only took the time to do this but they did it with great style that makes me feel like they actually understand the interactions between the online social realm and the real world importance of bringing that experience to you life. Was it hard to do? No. But the fact that they thought enough to do this and it in turn made me blog about it and subsequently I’ll tweet about it, leaves such a great impact of how I view their agency that I’m sure to talk about this many times over.

It’s no doubt to me that the folks at AKQA have great passion for what they do, their execution has proven themselves in all the major awards shows. For me i’m not an awards kinda guy, but what I do love is when somebody in my industry gives me props for doing rad work, so to AKQA I say good on you. I look forward to more.

2. We’re on offense. All the time

3. Perfect results count – not a perfect process
- Break the rules; fight the law

4. This is as much about battle as about business

5. Assume nothing.
- Make sure people keep their promises
- Push yourself; push others
- Stretch the possible
- Expect success – always

6. Live off the land

7. The job isn’t done until the job is done

8. DANGERS:
- Bureaucracy
- Personal Ambition
- Energy takers vs. Energy givers
- Knowing our weaknesses
- Don’t get too many things on the platter

9. It won’t be pretty

10. If we do the right things, we’ll make money damn near automatic

from here