The Fear of Godbeer

My biggest international client in Poland was Polgate Calmolive. It's quite a simple account as it's all household products and you just buy a lot of TV.

Everything was fine the first couple of years. But then a new German GM arrived. In our first meeting he said that as most of our creative work was adaptations we would have to be clever with our media strategy. He suggested that we get the Global Media Director to come to Warschau. As Charles Courtier once told me when the world isn't big enough they go global.

Hearing that Roger E Godbeer is coming is like an escaped convict hearing the baying of the bloodhounds. It's like the Inquistion coming to your media monastery. The Canadian client service director gave me an evil leer as we left the meeting, I started to tremble.

The thing was we had been buying TV using diary ratings, not peoplemeter. We were also spot buying. Any half-wit marketing director would realise that the numbers were wrong given that in every market where we had switched from diary to electronic measurement there was a 40% drop in ad viewing. Also people always over-estimated their viewing to larger channels. Clever clients would buy 100% Polsat in Poland. But Mito Chanalo was less than a half-wit. We bought natural delivery which is the stupidest way to purchase airtime.

As we were spot-buying with diary ratings there was no point doing post-buying analysis. We would send Polgate a list of spots, they would approve them, and we would buy the spots they wanted. Any post-buy would simply be a case of, "remember those spots you approved...we bought them."

Godbeer arrived a few weeks later. I believe the polite phrase is that he "ripped me a new arsehole." For 2 days I had to go through every plan, campaign by campaign, week by week, day by day. "Why weren't we buying ratings?" he demanded. "Why were we using so much Polsat when it was only 15% of viewing?" he thundered. "Why weren't we achieving our KPIs and and CPTs and CPPs and PBAs and other TLAs" (three word acronyms)

I got a 15 page summary of my incompetence. I believe I achieved the record as the Worst Media Director in Polgate history. I landed in Moscow to work for Initiative a few months later.

Stop Spending.....Start Drinking

When I got to Y&R Poland our biggest "local" client was Heineken who had bought Poland's largest brewer Zywiec. They used to send us a free barrel of beer every Friday.

There was only one problem, it was illegal to advertise alcohol in Poland. Most brewers got around this by advertising non-alcoholic beer. Heineken/Zywiec didn't want to do this so we had a white box with Zywiec written on the side. There was no image of beer & so this didn't break the law. It also didn't sell very much beer.

Then a new President of Zywiec arrived in Poland. He was a very tall handsome Belgian and had come from Heineken in Africa. Even his name was large, President Jean Francois Van Boxmeer. He had apparently learnt 3 local languages in Africa & the rumour was that he learnt Polish in 3 months. He was clearly a very bright & capable man.

He saw our shitty creative work and told us to come up with some campaigns that were beer-ish not box-ish. We presented him our work a few weeks later at a very nervous meeting. Our creative director started to shakily show him the work.

After a few weak ideas were shown President Jean Francois Van Boxmeer used simple English to get his point across, "Stop Spending...Start Thinking" he said. We nodded in agreement at his wise words & wrote them down.

We showed a couple more poor campaigns. The large President said with more emphasis, "Stop Spending... Start Thinking." We underlined his earlier words.

We got halfway through the next average ad when Van Boxmeer stated loudly, "STOP SPENDING, START THINKING."

I looked across at the Client Service Director & mouthed the words, "We're fired."

The beer stopped arriving within a fortnight & we were quite rightly fired within a month. Today Jean Francois Van Boxmeer is the Chairman of Heineken Worldwide. To use his method of repetition to get a point across, he was clearly a very bright and capable man.

Around the World in a Day

A decade ago I wanted a Coke machine for the office. They are apparently free if your staff drink enough of the sugary stuff. I asked every few weeks "where is my Coke machine?"

Eventually the office manager wrote me a marvellous email;

1. Giving Coca Cola a square metre of floor space free of charge is against article 575 of the civil code
2. Sub-letting or sub-leasing without the landlord's consent is against article 615 - have you met our landlady Gareth...?
3. There is a risk of tax inspectors as we are operating without an official cash register
4. Selling soft drinks counts as retail trade in foodstuffs & therefore means potential trouble from fire inspections & sanitary, medical & trading standards

I thought that this was hilarious and so sent it to my friend at the Economist. He agreed that it was Kafkaesque & asked if they could publish it. One day later it was in the Economist (see headline link) which enjoys a global circulation of 1 Million+ and a readership of 3 Million+

Top Gay Songs

New survey...what is your favourite Gay song? See link in the headline & survey on the left

First I was afraid...I was petrified

Several years ago we were told that each agency had to make a performance at the Summer Party. My trusty Tatar friend Lilia Fakhrutdinova groaned at the prospect. Being of a sunnier disposition I suggested that we "perform" Y.M.C.A. I had taught Miss Fakhrutdinova the dance moves in Kyiv at a delightful restaurant/disco/bordello we had visited.

Lilia was happy to give me the brief. First I had to find the music... which gave me a wonderful morning out of the office searching the shops on Stary Arbat. Then I organised auditions. I got all the boys in the conference room & showed them the moves...see link in the headline. I then did the same with the ladies. As I am not a qualified choreographer I recruited our attractive receptionist Julia who was the best dancer to improve the routine.

It was going to be an expensive production. We bought some Russian Navy T-shirts for the boys and I told the ladies to wear white T-Shirts. Everyone was to wear blue jeans.

The summer party was going to be on a bloody boat. When I got there I noticed in horror that it was called the Felix Dzerzhinsky... the founder of the KGB. I nearly refused to board. But then I realised that I was going to perform a gay classic and get a hundred Russians dancing along. We were dancing on Stalin's grave.

And I always sing "I will survive" at agency karaoke events.

Something in the Water...

Years ago I realised that to save time and money it was easier to meet clients en masse. But it did have one potential problem... they might talk to each other.

Once we had to cancel some posters for a big beer client & we gave them to a tobacco client instead. When they met Mr.Piwo said to Mr.Fag, "Oh, you're the man who took my posters."

Another time I arranged dinner with the Economist with the General Mangers of several major companies. Unfortunately this was the same time that Georgiy Gongadze was killed. My Economist friend was flying to Kyiv instead of coming to dinner. I was left with several GMs and no journalist. To make it worse one of the GMs had been sent to Russia because he got a colleague's wife pregnant. Another GM knew this and asked him, "did you bring any family with you?"

Later when I was working in Kyiv I invited the GM's of Danone & Nestle for dinner. They were both French speakers so I thought that everything would go swimmingly. It did until the waitress offered us water. Vittel (Nestle) or Evian (Danone) were the options.

I chose Evian. Nestle had fired us in an international pitch.

When Filip met Inez....

Years ago we won the Danone media business for Russia. This is how it happened.

Firstly the Marketing Director for Poland was in Moscow. He stayed in my apartment as we were friends from my time in Warsaw. He introduced me to the Russian Marketing Director.

I then had dinner with the MD in a grotty bar that was famous for it's strong drinks & loose women. However it was -30 centigrade that night and my poor driver in his trusty Volga was freezing outside. So he decided to warm up for a while by coming inside. I was trying to impress the MD with my yoghurt knowledge when a frozen Volodya joined us for a cup of coffee. I hoped that this would demonstrate my intimate understanding of the average Russian consumer. The MD thought it was very strange & we didn't get a pitch.

But a year later there was a new Marketing Director who was an old friend from Unilever. He told me to get in touch with the General Manager Filip Kegels. I started my usual practice of sending Mr.Kegels an Economist article every Friday. I tried calling, I tried writing... but could never get hold of him.

Then one weekend I was at the Moscow country club with my daughter. We were in the Sports bar with another young family who were speaking French. My troublesome two year old stumbled over to steal the Francais Fries from their table. I had to go over to stop this brazen theft.

I noticed that the handsome young man had a Danone Sports bag so I asked him if he worked for the company.

"Oui" he replied.
"Are you in Sales or Marketing?" I enquired.
"I am ze General Manager!" he said with a smile
"You must be Filip Kegels"
"And you must be ze man who sends me these stupid articles every week"

We got our pitch. Which we won easily as the team from Y&R was 4 hours late for their presentation.

News just in.... Sex Sells

Also a sense of humour helps. See link in the headline for a wonderful ad we did at Y&R.

A bit sexist...but then there is nothing wrong with being sexy. It was immediately banned by the TV stations of course which gave us lots of free PR.

Motorhead...& Making your mind up

Motorhead was the first concert I ever went to. It was 2 hours of ear-splitting noise. Recently someone in London had the brilliant idea of getting Lemmy to slow down "Ace of Spades" for a beer commercial. See link in the headline.

Years ago we used to amuse ourselves by imagining Frank Sinatra singing swing versions of Motorhead songs ...or even better "Whole Lotta Rosie" by AC/DC. Other greats would be Tom Waits doing the Wombles theme or Morrissey doing "I wanna be like you" from the Jungle book.

But the greatest would be Bob Dylan singing Bucks Fizz. With Dylan's sandpaper & glue voice the words would sound significant & deeply philosophical. "You've gotta speed it up, you've gotta slow it down...cos if you believe that a love can hit the top, you've gotta play around. And then you will find. There comes a time. For making your mind up."

Just Say No...

...to Airlines & Tourist boards. They are always a nightmare. The budget may appear large but it is spread across 100+ countries & is therefore tiny in each market. And Tourist boards are usually Government organisations so they have hellish bureaucracy & call a pitch every year.

Other clients to avoid if possible are local clients in Eastern Europe. These tend to be organisations that did not hear the Berlin Wall fall. They make the Byzantine Empire look like a model of efficiency & transparency. Their indecision is final.

I once had a pitch meeting with a Russian mineral water company. I didn't want to win it as we already had Nestle & Danone. I also had a bad experience with a local drink company in Poland.

Admittedly our presentation wasn't perfect. The client service director suggested print, the creative director showed some posters & I had a vision....television. We didn't win the business. The client thought that we didn't show "teamwork." A strange conclusion. I thought we demonstrated a remarkable ability to work across different media.

I was in trouble with the suits. But I offered the humble opinion that if their company was any good it would be bought by Nestle or Danone.

Nestle bought them 6 months later.

James Bond was a Virgin

Click on the headline for another epic commercial from Y&R. The same agency that brought you the Pirelli ad at the bottom of the page.

Strange how it's taken the creatives 40 years to come up with something decent instead of the usual Cadbury's Milk Tray/Austin Powers type of Bondage. And if you want to see the history of British advertising simply click on the link on the left hand side of the blog - Popular Posts - "The History of Advertising.

The Brilliant Santa Brand book

A Nesty Lunch with the Economist

In the late 90's I met the Moscow correspondent for the Economist. At this time most expats were enjoying their high salaries & the low life of casinos & prostitutes.

We agreed that Russia in the 90's was corrupt, disgusting, decadent & dependent on oil. It was heading for a crash. Not too different from Russia today actually. We got along famously.

He agreed to meet with our clients to tell them what he would be writing about Russia. I invited our 2 major blue chip clients for "Lunch with the Economist." The first client arranged a private room in a restaurant near their office within 2 weeks. They invited their entire board. They also brought along their supervisory board from Switzerland who were in Moscow that week.

The second Blue Chip client took 6 months to arrange a simple meeting between their GM & my friend at the Economist. I wasn't invited.

But I was at the first lunch. My friend told the Nesty client that he believed Russia was a terrible place to invest. He told them that they should put their money in China & India instead. He told them that Putin was a KGB man, didn't understand capitalism or democracy and would suppress free speech.

At the end of the meeting the Nesty client expressed their gratitude for his opinions, even though they disagreed, & offered him a gift of their finest products.

My friend thanked them but said that he couldn't possibly accept. It was against the Economist's rules for journalists to take presents from companies.

"But I'll happily give it to my cleaning lady" he announced.

The Best Education System in the World

As Jill Blenkinsopp used to tell me, "never argue over a fact." Finland & South Korea still head the table.

Click on the headline to find out where your country comes.