Once in a Blue Moon....

One of our big important clients decided to have an all agency meeting for one of their wonderful brands. They invited people from all the agencies working on the brand.

This included a rum mix of sales, promotions, media & creative. The idea in these meetings is that no question is foolish, no idea is too stupid. This was about to be proved wrong.

There was a gentleman there with a marvellous fruity voice who embodied Churchills maxim that “never has so much speech been filled with so little thought.” I believe he was from sales. He started by proposing that as the moon was yellow & our brand was yellow we should sponsor the moon. I thought this was aiming a bit high. But I listened with interest.

The problem though was his voice. It was so mellifluous (look it up) It was so sonorous (look that up too). Every stupid thing he proposed was amplified & made musically magnificently comic. I started to get that horrible feeling we all know from school & church where we want to laugh but know that we can’t. The knowledge that you shouldn’t laugh only makes you want to laugh even more. This makes you giggly. Which is worse as you look like a naughty schoolboy. I went to make a cup of tea to distract myself.

Next to me however was my trusty Tatar friend Lilia Fakhrutdinova. A serious mathematics graduate from Moscow State University. I knew that her inscrutable appearance would see me through. The only problem was that she was starting to laugh as well. I prayed to all Gods that Mr.Fruity Voice wouldn’t start talking again. My Gods didn’t listen. Maybe they have a sense of humour.

He started again. The voice filled the room. “MayBE our BRAND could SPOnsor the MetRO….and people would no longer say shall I take the MetRO but ShALL We take the BRand”

I lost it. I had to leave the room.

But maybe I am wrong...see link in the headline

My Worst Meeting - No TV this year

We once had a big blue chip client with a tiny little budget. They had fired us a couple of years before because they wanted to keep the business in the family. The marketing director prefered to give her media budget to her husband at a rival agency.

They reluctantly returned to us due to pressure from their HQ to honour the international contract. They didn't particularly want to work with us & we didn't fancy working with them. The meeting was never going to be much fun.

The GM was in the meeting and told us that as his budget was small we needed to be clever. However his media strategy was stupid. He wanted to support every brand in his portfolio with different media. Internet for one product, magazines for another....a little radio here, some posters there. TV was on the table, literally, as we were going to look at some commercials they had.

I wasn't in a great mood anyway as I was on my way to airport to see my father who was dying of cancer. I was therefore dressed very casually which didn't impress the little GM. We took an instant dislike to each other to save time. He even had a small moustache which is never the sign of a marketing genius.

My job title suggests that I should have an opinion of media. I therefore suggested that perhaps he was wasting his tiny budget by dividing it between all his brands. I humbly proposed that perhaps he might want to identify the product which responded best to advertising and put all of his money supporting that brand on TV. He disagreed.

I pointed out that TV was the cheapest media in Russia. He said that this was normal. I offered the opinion that "normally" TV was the most expensive media. He said that the reason TV was expensive in the USA was because America has a lot of TV stations.

I then had a better idea of how to invest his cash. As he was a small man, with a small moustache, a small budget & a tiny brain perhaps he should put the money in the bank & collect the interest payments. As a public company this would give the best return on investment for the shareholders. I then announced my need to leave.

As I walked past my foot caught on the TV cable & the television crashed to the floor. I couldn't resist saying; "I guess we won't be using TV this year."

My First Meeting - Drambuie meets Christo

When I was a young media planner I moved to Young & Rubicam to experience full service advertising. This was in the old days when creatives & media people actually sat in the same meeting.

My first "full service" meeting was with a Scottish client Drambuie, which is a sickly blend of whisky, honey & herbs. There was also a sickly blend of client, distributor & advertising agency at the meeting. Apparently we had agreed with the distributor IDV that we would be doing a print campaign. But no-one had told the conservative Scottish client this fact.

Print was enjoying a renaissance in the UK with brands such as Haagen Daz & Boddingtons buying the outside back covers of magazines & calling it the "poster in the living room". Y&R proposed copying the famous artist Christo in covering the world's famous sites with the golden liqueur of Drambuie. I thought this was a brilliant idea. The client didn't.

The meeting started badly when I introduced myself to one of the grey haired men in the room. I didn't know if he was from Drambuie or the distributor. It turned out he was the Chairman of Y&R. The meeting then got worse.

Drambuie didn't want Christo, they didn't want posters in the living room & they didn't want Y&R any more. They wanted what they had got for the last 40 years; TV at Christmas.

I thought the meeting was wonderful. Very creative. A sparky honest conflict of ideas. A dramatic discussion of different media. The suits thought it was nightmare.

Drambuie got their dull Christmas campaign and Y&R was fired in the New Year.

No Swearing Please...We're Russian

One thing that strikes you after a while here is that Russians don't swear. At least not the ones who work in Advertising and Marketing. This is very strange.

There are so many annoying moments during the working day that swearing is a natural release of all the stress of dealing with difficult clients & annoying media owners. It only takes a few weeks in Warsaw for those with a keen ear to pick up all the main Polish expletives. Poles love to swear. Brits also love to swear. Both Poles & Brits love freedom. Perhaps the two are related. See the link in the headline for the ultimate Polish gesture of defiance.

But in Russia people don't swear. They close down all the free press... but they don't swear. They invade their neighbours...but they don't swear. They arrest your parents & put you in the gulag... but they don't swear. They can follow communism & create famines... but they don't swear.

If I am wrong please send your Russian curse words to pgarethbrown@gmail.com

Media Placement of the Year

Near my house is a car wash. It wasn't very popular as nobody knew it was there. So the owners parked a big "fuck off" Hummer on the main road nearby with a big "fuck off" sign saying Car Wash here.

It's not going to win any awards at Cannes but there are now queues for the Car wash.

This proves that people who run small businesses are better media planners than digital gurus who talk about communication paradigms & moment architecture. You put great creative, a Hummer in this case, with a call to action close to where your target audience is. That is all media planning is. Simple really.

McDonalds in McMinsk

I heard a fantastic story about McDonalds in Minsk. Apparently the local McDonalds manager was unhappy about the locals using the toilets without buying anything. So as in many McDonalds he introduced a system where only customers could use the facilities.

The people of Minsk were not happy about this so they kidnapped the plastic Ronald statue from outside the restaurant. They then threatened the manager by cutting off one of the plastic statues fingers and sending it to him. And they said that they would cut off a finger every day until the toilets were re-opened to the public.

Re-mantling the Posters

Years ago we were discussing discussing Outdoor with a big Nesty client. The problem was that our big special poster sites would suffer creative wear-out as they stayed for too long in the same place. They became part of the landscape & consumers would no longer be surprised by their presence.

The grand boss asked why we couldn't dismantle our large posters & re-mantle them somewhere else. The fact that he was a French speaker & said this with such confidence made it rather amusing.

I tried not to look at the marketing director who was a fellow Brit. But when our eyes met we both started giggling like schoolboys. However the big boss was right. If you mangle English with enough confidence you can create a new word. And Re-Mantle is now in the Urban Dictionary - see headline link. If enough people use re-mantle it will graduate to the Oxford English dictionary.

Another popular candidate from marketing meetings includes, one month, two months & therefore three monthes. So celebrate the ability of English to adapt & re-mantle your media plans every 3 monthes to keep your creative fresh.

A New Paradigm I'd Like to Amplify

Click through the headline for the answer

Are they Big Enough...?

How big can should a promotion be to work in a country as large as Russia?

There are around 142 Million people in this country so if you only have one big thing to give away 141,999 people will be disappointed.

So using the concept of 6 degrees of separation you need a few thousand gifts for a promotion to work. That way someone should know someone who has won. But how many thousand? This question came up 10 years ago with a client who wanted to give away "golden hearts of Russia" with their boxes of chocolate. We were faced with the choice of 5000 reasonably large golden hearts to give away or 10,000 hearts which were half the size.

At the meeting was a lady from the promotion agency who was blessed with a generous decolletage; the absence that suggests a presence. The client was concerned that the smaller hearts were not large enough. While he was voiceing his doubts this lady took one of the smaller hearts, put it on her necklace & then placed it between her generous breasts.

She then turned to the Marketing Director, invited him to look at her ample chest, looked him in the eyes & said "I think they are big enough".

The lesson here is that when planning promotions you should always ask yourself, "are they big enough?"

Never Trust a Fat Gay Bulgarian

My dear late Father always told me this