Top 10 Bullmores
course you’re prepared to review the ad market. Indeed, you were thinking exactly the same thing yourself – and, you plan to do it comprehensively, objectively and, indeed, ruthlessly.
have been good advice. I can’t remember the last time I watched regular television. I skip ads online and have ad-blocker programmes on my computer, and yet I still work in advertising. Am I a hopeless hypocrite? Hypocrite’s not the right word.
Had Mary Whitehouse been a closet Penthouse subscriber, she would have been a hypocrite. A senior banker who publicly preaches the importance of corporate rectitude while knowingly laundering the profits of drug barons is, without question, a hypocrite. To be a bona fide hypocrite, you need to parade your righteous beliefs while actively flouting them.
From what you tell me, you’re not in principle opposed to advertising; you just don’t find advertisements very interesting so you choose not to watch them. This doesn’t make you a hypocrite. It does, however, make you slightly stupid – and may before long make you unemployable.
The CEO is insisting that I ask agencies to pay for the right to pitch for my creative brief. I’ve told him it’s very bad practice but he’s adamant. What should I do?
I’m sorry you say “my creative brief”. This suggests that you keep the marketing and advertising functions tightly clutched to your own chest and resent anyone else, including your CEO, from coming too close. This is always a mistake, not least because it encourages others – such as your CEO – to see marketing as just one of the spending departments that need to be constantly reined in. Procurement will see nothing but good business sense in demanding that potential suppliers pay for the right to compete to supply – and your CEO will applaud them for being hard-nosed and wish that marketing showed some of the same rigour.
You’re going to have to tell your CEO about the nature of brands; about the critical need for intuition and talent in the successful pursuit of profit; about the incalculable value of agency partners who prize working on your business for reasons not entirely driven by mere money. You’re going to have to tell him that he’ll send out an unmistakable signal to all good agencies – “we are insensitive and unimaginative” – and will thereby deny his brands access to priceless alchemy.
You won’t be able to prove the truth of anything you say. But if you sound as convinced and as passionate as you should be, my guess is your CEO, probably with a sly aside about your going native, will give you the benefit of the doubt. And, from now on, please, don’t keep marketing to yourself. The more it’s seen to drive the entire company, the safer you’ll be from ignorant interference. How long should you stay at an agency before thinking about moving on? You should think about leaving an agency not less than six months before it thinks about leaving you. Is it time to stop using the word ‘digital’? I’ve reluctantly come to the conclusion that digital resembles Japanese knotweed; it’s become ineradicably embedded in our language. Its greatest value is that it doesn’t mean anything. Or, rather, it can be used to mean just about anything. I’ve often wondered what the digital landscape looks like. Whole conferences are devoted to the subject and I still don’t know. Its main function seems to be making people like me feel hopelessly analogue. There’s a campaign to get Coca-Cola to stop advertising for a year and spend its entire, multibillion-pound marketing budget on environmental concerns. Do you think Coke should do it? Oh, yes. But only if Coca-Cola is certain that the publicity generated by this decision would have a more beneficial effect on sales, profits and reputation than if the marketing budget had been spent on conventional marketing. (The beneficial effect on the environment would, of course, be a great deal harder to evaluate but of less immediate interest to Coca-Cola.) Do you ever worry that you won’t have any advice left to give? All the time. But, luckily, people keep asking me the same questions.