Being a bank holiday weekend we decided to do the traditional thing and drive to the coast. We went west from London down to the Christchurch/Lymington area. Very nice part of the world and the views of the Isle of Wight were pretty spectacular.

What hit me was the instant arrival in the real world rather than the unreal world of central London. Our first stop was for coffee and we pulled in to a service station on the M3.  It was rammed and packed with members of the general public going about their holiday weekend.

Looking around I immediately thought about the monumental gaffs by all politicians recently trying to pretend they hang out with the general public. Pastygate being the most humiliating with senior members of all parties standing outside Greggs munching, yum yum, their favourite pasty. Hilarious.

The accusation of being out of touch hit me hard. Most of the people in the service station were, I’m sure, good and upstanding members of society who all have real concerns about mortgage interest rates, declining disposable income, putting decent food on the table, etc. I was thinking I wouldn’t see George Osborne stopping by with his family for a cuppa on the way to stay at an important persons country pile in Dorset.

The most popular food item seemed to be buckets of KFC. A chubby family of 6 near us were tucking in to three buckets of chicken and chips as though they hadn’t eaten in weeks. The amount of fast food being consumed was just astonishing. Still no sign of the Osbornes.

The rest of the day continued in the same vein wherever we went.

I’m ashamed to say when we returned to London we headed straight for our favourite boozer on the Chelsea/Pimlico border where they do a very nice chilled house white.

When I worked with Dave Trott in the 80′s he would often say “I wonder what my mum would think?” about a piece of work. Some of the agency folk around at the time would think this was a bit banal but he had a point. He meant the ‘ordinary person in the street’. Dave oversaw a great deal of ‘popularist’ creative work – Hello Tosh – and the agency had a bit of a ‘blue collar’ reputation in the ad world but not of course in the real world; many of the campaigns were very popular amongst the general public.

A great deal of creative work these days is more about ‘lifestyle’ and I wonder who this belongs to or vice versa? My theory is that social media is a driver of this trend and then it is worth considering what drives what. For example who are the leaders and who are the followers of Twitter. I would have thought it might be worth following someone interesting such as a celebrity or academic or politician but Bill Bloggs from 4a Acacia Avenue? It would be fascintating to be able to quantify the number of true leaders versus followers.

My point is sitting in the M3 service station on Sunday I would guess 99% of the customers were receivers of information and not providers. It brought home to me the relationship between the relatively small number of people involved in broadcast communication relative to the population. I don’t know the actual numbers employed in the wider advertising world in the UK but the populations is c. 62m so if 62,000 people were working in advertising then that’s 0.1% of the population so my previous guess would be wrong – 99.9% of the people in the service station would be on the receiving end with just me and the good lady representing the 0.1%.

My comment at the time was a long the lines of “everyone working in advertising and marketing should be obliged to go out and mingle with the general public every month”. Not a popular move I would guess.

If one is fortunate to live in the leafy NW3 area of London – Hampstead area – it is quite common to see mates from the ad industry and sit opposite actors in a pub, or members of a successful band. It’s an obvious point but there exists a huge concentration of these kind of people in London and an even greater concentration in certain areas. So that’s ‘our world’ which we just take for granted because it is the way it is.

I used to live in Hampstead and my close neighbours included Boy George, Ester Rantzen, John Le Carre, Nick Mason, plus many more well known personalities. On a train recently a young couple from Somerset started chatting and the girl asked me if I ever saw famous people in London! Truthfully I told her Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher ( I thought music names were the best bet) lived nearby and I see them in the local shops from time to time and she couldn’t believe it. To someone from the Somerset countryside these are people she would only see on TV who live in a mystery, far away world.

Years ago I was sitting in a research de-brief with someone from the Cameron/Osborne world on the subject of attitudes towards/consumption of wine. When the person doing the de-brief mentioned the social habit of taking bottles of wine to a hosts home my chap blurted out “how ridiculous, wine doesn’t travel”.

 Another pastygate moment.

My conclusion of our little trip to the seaside was confirmation that not only can politicians be out of touch but so can many of us staying inside our cosy world of trendy offices, smart restaurants, wine deliveries from Waitrose, Soho House.

We should get out more often.

The latest news that Miller Coors has consolidated its $200m business in to ‘Team WPP’ throws up a number of questions that are likely to be talked about in the HQ’s of the global networks.  The key one I would guess is “Will more global clients follow suit?”

The obvious question for me is if WPP have committed to opening an office in Chicago with 200 staff  is this another version of a single agency or will it be staffed by all disciplines from across the group? I have no doubt Sir Martin will make sure it will be managed in an exemplary way and will ensure both WPP and Coors review performance continuously.

The trick to pull off is getting different agency brands to play nicely with each other. The CEO’s of each agency are under the cosh to deliver and I found in Ogilvy internal back-stabbing going on to snaffle income from one business to another. Maybe this has been cured by now however I have one current example (I can’t name names out of confidentiality and not within WPP) with a large global name where the same antics go on between the agencies working with the said client. I know the client finds it tiresome and distracting.

The benefits for the client are pretty obvious if it works. There is bound to be saving – economies of scale – plus the efficiency of everyone singing from the same hymn sheet. As more and more brands are working across different platforms and channels the need for genuine, seamless, joined up communications is commercially vital. Also the added complication of multiple territories adds further pressure to get everything aligned.

I wonder though if Coors are going to mirror the structure within their organisation. Local client management may not welcome the command and control structure. I’ve found this to be a problem in the past where the Italian or French or German client is prima facie on board but in their own local way sabotage the instructions from the centre. National pride can often feel like the resistance movement in France during WW2.

Lou Gerstner pulled this off with IBM with his approach of ‘one brand one voice’ where the global account was consolidated in to Ogilvy & Mather. In his book “Who said elephants can’t dance?” he describes the internal challenges of aligning the worldwide organisation behind one direction. How he pulled this off is well worth a good read, very inspiring leadership.

I believe the leadership question becomes one of the big challenges on the agency side of things. It is important for the staff they have their own defined culture and don’t feel like they are the in-house ad department for Coors. The words ‘dependent’ and ‘independent’ have powerful meaning in terms of the culture. If the leadership is weak then the agency tends to say ‘how high’ when the client says ‘jump’. The main man or woman fronting such a venture needs to be strong, have clear principles and be prepared to tow it out from time to time with the CMO on the client side – hopefully based on mutual respect.

In the end the creative work either thrives or whithers depending on the relationship.

Best of luck to all who sail in her.

In the early series of Star Trek there was always that moment when Captain Kirk said “Beam me up Scotty” via his hand held device. I wonder if the props man on the set thought to develop his bit of science fiction in to a working model? I bet he is kicking himself now. Walking around today most of us have our hand held devices and who would have thought it when watching Star Trek at the time?

We can do most of the magic stuff Captain Kirk had on his device – talk, look at movies, view maps, get a pin point accurate geographical position, work out the square root of 736 (27.129), plus many more – except the ‘beam me up’ function but guessing it won’t be too long. Perfect for escaping that over-served bigot who keeps saying ‘and another thing’ whilst sticking his/her finger in ones chest at a drinks party.

It got me thinking about the fragmentation of this modern communication tool in terms of early and late adopters. Also does the interest and appeal of the functions decline by age? I’ve met a lot of people who work in the IT/mobile/games worlds and they all have one obvious commonality – they are all younger, say 30 or lower. Do they have marketing teams focused on different age groups? Or don’t they bother worrying about the over 40′s?

One possible answer is global reach and the scale of market opportunity. The world population is c. 7 billion so if 5% bought a new handset, e.g. Apples latest iPhone in the first year of launch, then that’s 350 million sales. On those numbers why worry about the late adopters? Also based on limited visits to Apple stores in New York and London where the stores have been rammed with customers aged around 25 it perhaps pays to focus on early adopters. It’s no wonder Apple has a cash mountain of $bns it’s thinking of dispersing somehow.

Also Facebook has 850 million users so this site reaches around 12% of the world’s population, or put it another way, 1 in 8 people. Guessing it is more like 1 in 2 of people aged between 12 and 30. Staggering.

So maybe the deal is focus on younger early adopters. In marketing speak going from zero to 10% penetration of an expectant, enthusiastic market is relatively easy and very profitable. It’s far tougher in saturated markets trying to squeeze out a tiny increase in brand share. To keep this momentum going it means a steady stream of new products to market coinciding with current products beginning to slow down in sales terms.

So I get the scale point but I don’t get some of the creations. Twitter being my favourite one to ask people about. I’m left stony cold, it leaves me gagging for anything that is remotely smart. Do we have global thought leaders tweeting their thoughts all the time? All I get is drivel and more drivel. Why in a million years would someone believe I could be interested in knowing which airport/hotel/office/bar they are in at that moment. I just don’t get it on any level.

I don’t think the clever crew of the Starship Enterprise would have been too impressed if Captain Kirk sent them a message saying ‘I’m just having a pooh at the moment here on Planet Zog, Scotty can beam me up in 5 minutes’. Too much detail, the second part of the sentence would suffice. 

The technology advances and the ability to go global is truly amazing and has changed the world in many ways.  It feels, however, there is a growing age divide because the modern mega brands are clearly focused on a younger customer group and quite honestly why not? They are both earlier adopters and embrace new ideas plus they are the future. Although we are living longer and the silver surfer is a reality I would guess the decline in interest in all things new and shiny does gather speed as time ticks by.

It is all about personal band-width. A younger person has more available memory whereas someone older has used it up. No available space for more information. Maybe that’s why when people get really older they start going backwards in recall, the memory cells start deleting stuff. Young people have fresh wiring whereas older people have analogue wiring.

I would quite like one of those machines they had on the Starship Enterprise where you could plug in and get a download of data, it would save me those sinking feelings I get when I open the instruction manual of my latest technology purchase. I rarely get past the ‘fast set-up’ section.

During my teenage years my Mum had hung a piece of  homespun philosophy in our hallway. It said “I complained because I had no shoes until I saw a man who had no feet” Anon. I saw it every time I arrived home and even if I didn’t read it I knew it was there. Say twice a day, 7 days a week over 8 years. That’s an OTS of 5,824. Perhaps obvious but it is a thought that has never left me which is why I’m not too good with people whinging about wanting the next reward they think they are due.

It struck me there’s another quote I always remember that could hang in the entrance hall of ad agencies.

George Bernard Shaw made this observation:

“Reasonable men attempt to adapt themselves to the world,

Unreasonable men attempt to adapt the world to themselves,

Progress is in the hands of unreasonable men.”

Each agency could vote for which they are so everyone gets it. For certain they are not comfortable bed fellows. I was once accused of being ‘prickly’ by a senior board member of Ogilvy who went on to say ‘you are more like a creative’. I think he meant it as a slight whereas I took it as a compliment. The reason I was hired was to inject some ‘revolution’ in to the business. It is a strong word and not one to be used casually.

The  notion of ‘progress being in the hands of unreasonable men’ seems to make a lot of sense to me.  I wouldn’t have thought Richard Branson has achieved what he has by being reasonable. Turning my attention back to ad agencies this notion should apply but it doesn’t, well not across the board; maybe it’s why creatives often have the reputation for being difficult, maybe they are just being unreasonable for a higher gain?

I worked with Chris Palmer for about 5 years (now of the very successful film production company Gorgeous) and I would put Chris fairly and squarely in the unreasonable category. Basically Chris was fighting against any pressure to push him in to the mediocre space so he would make a stand for his position. The result was an agency with a glowing reel and great poster work. Over time the collective effort to maintain the quality of thinking and execution influenced most people who worked at Simons Palmer.

One of the very tough calls in a good ad agency is the balance of the account mans feel for the client with the intentions of the creative teams. I’ve had many a cross word with account men/women who start a sentence with “the client thinks…”. If all work was developed on the basis of what the client thinks then the output would be at a much lower level. One of the top blokes at Chiat Day in LA said the job of account management was ‘to find out what the client wants, then find out what they need, then get them to want what they need’. Brilliant and a really good approach to get the agency and the client on to the same page.

I think one of the tugs of war that goes on, in particular with the large US multinationals, is the philosophy of the agency. I’ve overheard very senior management say things like “We need the client to love us and can’t be without us” but it begs the question of ‘on what terms exactly?’ So for some clients it might literally mean doing rubbish work to pander to the ego of the client President. It isn’t very helpful as an MO for the staff.   However if the agency philosophy was “Our goal is to produce to most compelling, original, creative work for all of  our clients” then suddenly you have a mission plus a yardstick to evaluate the output of the agency. Also for the clients there can be no misunderstanding about the intent of the agency. Further you can also bet in this agency there will not be too many people trying to ‘adapt themselves to the world’.

In my mini book about starting an ad agency I talk about this point. Lets say the biggest ad agency in the UK is AMV/bbdo. Close your eyes and guess what share they have of the advertising market, given the total spend in 2011 is estimated to be c. £16bn? No peeking.

Well AMV/bbdo has about a 3% share! 3%! Ogilvy has about a 1% share. What this tells me loud and clear is a big success would be 1% therefore you don’t want 99%. How liberating because you can decide what you want to be knowing you do not have to be all things to all men, just the reverse.

At Simons Palmer we had a very clear opinion; “Outstanding creative work stands a better chance of commercial success than average creative work”. Discuss. We pinned our colours firmly to the creative output of the agency. Funnily enough we ended up with clients who believed in the same approach. Prior to the pitch for European launch of PlayStation I asked the President, Chris Deering, why we were on the pitch list when we didn’t have a network in Europe. His reply was very explicit as he said “We think you will come up with the most exciting ideas, the rest is distribution”. What a man; I will never forget that conversation as it validated our stance and philosophy.

As a footnote I fully understand the massive differences between a large multinational and a local indie – they are very different beasts. I’m not making one right or one wrong as that isn’t helpful. What I am suggesting is every agency of note should have the creative NPD group in the corner whilst everyone gets on with the paying clients. Finding the space for fresh ideas outside the confines of a particular client’s culture could convert in to more revenue down the track. Times are tight I know but I fear the consequence might just be creative reasonableness which won’t be good in the longer term for anyone.

I spend most of my time doing what ad folk would call planning, figuring out what are the core challenges and goals for a future campaign. Some times these are pretty heavy duty jobs - I’ve worked on an airline closure and re-launch for example - and they can also be lower level jobs for a new ad campaign.

I believe the thinking upfront is critical as it informs everyone involved on what they are trying to tackle and if done well can also provide the answer. A good example of the latter was the development of MORE TH>N for RSA. The thinking and strategy solutions spat out the brand name way before any detailed implementation work began.

I’m beginning to wonder though if the purpose of ‘planning’ has lost its way over time because I keep bumping in to thinking which starts at the wrong place; it often leaps to execution before the task has been defined properly.

The origins of planning was a UK initiative formed somewhere between JWT and BMP back in the 1970′s. Some of the people who were early thought leaders were people like John Bartle of BBH fame. That generation were brought up on what I regard as necessary due diligence resulting from understanding the business issues. John and I both worked for Cadbury-Schweppes in our early careers and we were expected to be totally knowledgeable about the metrics of the brands we were in charge of. We had to know the fine details of issues such as distribution, rate of sale, etc., etc., as did the agencies we worked with. It was obligatory for the ad agency teams to attend Nielsen presentations for example.

The benefit of these disciplines was thinking rooted in fact and the quality of the intel was impeccable.

These days I find myself sitting in meetings with clients and agencies where the basic foundations of a strategy are simply not there. I hear a lot about social media, search, click through and so on but the question I always end up asking is ‘what are you trying to do and why?’ Usually a few moments of silence and then random answers not related to the question.

A basic start point. In 99% of cases the client wants to sell more and increase profit. So some elementary questions; is it about growing the market or increasing brand share, is it about getting current buyers to buy more often or attract new buyers, is it about getting more distribution, etc? Once these elementary questions are answered then moving to the ‘how’ is when social media might have a role to play, or not.

Another favourite question of mine is ‘what are the barriers to achieving the goals agreed?’ They can be many and varied but they need identifying otherwise the resulting strategy may well be pointing in the wrong direction or trying to achieve the impossible.

Some years ago my agency was asked to pitch for an instant coffee, Red Mountain, and the client team were obsessed with the humour in the excellent original advertising campaign. This had nothing to do with the challenges the brand faced. Only after a call to the Marketing Director did we discover the real problem – they were in danger of being de-listed by grocery multiples because sales were in decline. That was the big challenge but the client team were looking in the wrong place and were negligent in their due diligence as explained to the agencies pitching for the business.

Great initiatives result from smart thinking and nobody has a monopoly of wisdom on the subject. I’ve seen flashes of inspired thinking come from all kinds of people and in the ad agency world it can often be the creatives, in particular writers, as their job is to distill the 10 page briefing document in to a 30 second TV spot or a 96 sheet poster. As someone said to me years ago ‘you can’t run a 30 slide powerpoint presentation on TV’.

I am from the camp of facts as the source of all strategic thinking. Some years ago Robert Senior and I pitched for the pan-EuropeanFuji account. One of the random facts we uncovered talking to Fuji’s technical staff was that 70%+ of 35mm film (old technology) sent in for processing from professional photographers after football matches was Fuji film. Our mission was to increase share and challenge Kodak. We checked out a thought based on this fact: “7 out of 10 professional photographers choose Fuji film, shouldn’t you?” 100% of the people we canvassed said they would switch brands. We won the account but sadly Fuji decided not to go head to head with Kodak, shame. It was a great fact that appeared to be a winner in he real world.

In the Times today (29th March 2012) there is a piece on the ad breaks in the new series of Mad Men which featured old work such as Milk Tray ‘man in black’. The writer goes on the feature famous ads from the past and his headline is “When the ads were better than the programmes”. I do believe there was a golden period of creative work which is behind us and the question I hear people ask is ‘why is this?’ I don’t believe it is nostalgic rose tinted spectacles at work here.

I would suggest there are two contemporary dynamics at play. The first is the difference between the 70′s/80′s and today. Back then life was much less cluttered in terms of media channels so the adworld had the choice of TV - 2 channels, outdoor, print and radio (limited). So the focus was much greater than today; all of that creative energy was competing for a limited set of options. Today that energy is dispersed across hundreds of possibilities so inevitably the focus is lost.

It seems to me we have more and more jacks of all trades and fewer to claiming to be masters of one. Just looking at agency websites I haven’t seen one brave enough to say our specialisation is broadcast advertising, we love television and are pretty good at posters too.

Secondly the dominance of the global networks works a bit like the car market. As most mass market cars are designed and tested by the same people (just different names from the same owners) they all end up looking like each other – globalisation detests difference as it costs money. (How many times have you picked up a rental car and not known what make it is once you are behind the wheel?) It is similar with the big networks albeit for different but similar reasons. Give or take a few %’s they are not risk takers as too much is at stake so the middle ground is where they all head to. No room for maverick creative directors or challenging planning directors.

Like politcal parties they are becoming interchangeable, all chasing middle England or is it muddle England?

I work alongside a planner who could be seen to be ‘old school’ but he is a delight to work with. He is impatient, doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and pushes to get to the root of a problem. I’ve heard him mutter many times ‘what a load of old bollocks’ after some waffly presentation that manages to avoid coming to any conclusions. He has that rare ability to tease apart the important from the unimportant leading to highly focused answers. We have many successes under our belt and the common denominator is working for clients who value and want rifle shot answers.

Great thinking is worth buckets of gold bars whereas sloppy planning is a curse in these times.