Corruption on Khreshchatyk

The most centrally located football ground in the world is Dynamo Kyiv.

The Valeriy Lobanovskyi stadium is just off Kyiv's main street Kreshchatyk.  It is as if the New York Yankees played their games in Central Park.

Liverpool played there in 2006 in a European Cup qualifying match against Maccabi Haifa.  They had moved the game to Kyiv as they were concerned about the safety of their expensive squad in Israel.

The tickets were expensive at £10 each so I decided to invite the whole media department to the game.  This would give me some guaranteed support.  We won the game 1-1 thanks to a Peter Crouch goal so it was a successful evening.  But the offside rule was waiting for me on Khreshchatyk.

Walking home I was stopped by two policemen.  I have only ever been mugged in Eastern Europe by men in uniform.

They asked me for my 'dokumenty'.

I replied, in Russian, that my passport was at my home.

They were willing to let me off if I gave them 100 hryvnia, about £10 at the time.

I refused.

They reduced the 'fine' to 50 hryvnia.

I still refused.

The Ukrainian I was with told me to pay to avoid the hassle.

I continued to argue.  They could come to my apartment & I would show them my passport.

They told me that I might have to spend 4 hours in a Ukrainian prison.

I replied that Nelson Mandela managed 27 years so 4 hours was reasonable.

Eventually they gave up when they realised that I wasn't going to pay.

I tell this story not as an example of my heroism, which was clearly Dutch courage fuelled by footballing victory.  It is a tale of the stupidity of Ukrainian corruption.

There were many Liverpool fans in Kyiv that night.  Few of them spoke Russian.  Why were the boys in blue wasting their time trying to extract a bribe from the Scottish fool who wouldn't even hand over a fiver when there were plenty of Scousers walking past who would have happily paid £10 just to tell the tale of how they bribed a Ukrainian policeman?

Sadly Ukraine still suffers from this short sighted policy when it comes to its economy.  Their are hundreds of hotels still not built because some bureaucrats are waiting for a large bribe instead of taking a smaller bribe now.... & possibly a few smaller bribes regularly once the business is operating.

We have seen this with the football currently being played.  Ukraine built the stadiums but Poland got the tourists.  Ukraine was simply too expensive to fly to & to stay in.

Kyiv still doesn't have an IKEA.  Ukraine doesn't have an IKEA.

And if you can't even get the fascist Ingvar Kamprad to exploit your peasants for profit you are truly failing to serve your people.   

Only in Eastern Europe...

Slawomir Petelicki just died.  Suicide apparently.

Petelicki was a Polish spy under communism.  He was one of the men responsible for attempting to murder Zdzislaw Najder, chief of the Polish language section of Radio Free Europe.  Petelicki's second wife worked at Y&R on Madalinskiego in the 90s.

Krzysztof Najder, Zdzislaw's son, was our creative director at this time.

Ed Assarabowski, who worked at RFE & Y&R Poland, was in the building in Munich when the bomb went off.  It failed to kill Najder but it did injure a secretary.

So at our Christmas party that year you had; the man who put the bomb in the building, his wife, the man who was there when it exploded & the son of the man who was supposed to be killed by the device.

Thank God Christmas is a time of forgiveness.

Tell them about the money, honey

I have complained about dubbed movies several times. There is a slight hypocrisy here as we usually dub our commercials.

I was very proud recently when we had subtitles for a Lipton tea ad aired in Russia featuring Pierce Brosnan. But I have to admit ashamedly that I was part of the team that dubbed a Quaker Sugar Puffs ad.

Not big news usually as we dub ads all the time for different European markets; especially for children's products. But this short film did not require dubbing for one market.

And in all the pre-production meetings & during the shoot nobody noticed.

Watch the film & see if you can spot the mistake.  Answers to pgarethbrown@gmail.com

Definitely, Maybe : Probably, Yes

One of my favourite rom-coms was on the other night; Definitely, Maybe.

Unusual plot, great performances from excellent actors & a wonderful soundtrack. Or maybe it's because it is about a divorced advertising executive with a daughter, who works on the Quaker account.

When I first came to Moscow I foolishly went to a St.Andrews dinner.  If I had wanted to hang around with Scottish people drinking cheap whisky I never would have left Edinburgh.  But I was sitting next to a charming lady.  Or at least she was charming until she asked for my CV.  It turned out that what she was asking was where had I worked before.  When I mentioned Y&R she exploded with joy.  She was Bridget from Quaker, my first serious client.  And boy was she serious.  Especially considering that her brands included Sugar Puffs, the honey monster.

But after having children & living in Kuala Lumpur she had chilled out considerably.  She had also stopped dyeing her hair blonde so she wasn't as striking as before.

I was now presented with the opportunity to ask her the media/marketing question that had kept the famous Y&R media department perplexed for many years; did she fancy Greg Turzynski...?

"Oh, he was gorgeous" she replied, confirming our long held suspicion about the effectiveness of using long half-Polish TV directors to attract the consumer to our brand.

I had always felt guilty about Quaker as when Bridget buggered off to Malaysia we lost the account.  I thought it was my tardy approach to competitive reports.  But Greg told me years later it might have had something to do with him calling the new Marketing Director an idiot in the middle of their marketing department.

I had also been party to the crime of spending £5 Million on launching Quaker Feast of Flakes.  Have you heard of it...? I didn't think so.  Again Greg consoled my youthful guilt by telling me the story of the Milka launch in the UK.

Apparently Kraft spent considerably more trying to get Brits to migrate from Cadbury.  However all our research suggested that the purple cow wouldn't be productive in Britain.  For Brits purple was Cadbury & had been for generations.  Y&R suggested a humorous campaign making fun of the ridiculous purple cow.

The Germans were undeterred & insisted that Y&R use their proud lilac bovine in a serious way.  After considerable money was spent the post-buy analysis came through; "What's with the purple cow?" would be a good summary.

Kraft finally gave up & bought Cadbury in 2010.

Consistent; but never the same

Was watching TV last night.  You should try it... it's still a wonderful form of entertainment.

There was a Ramsay-esque show called the Restaurant Inspector on Channel Five.  It always amazes me that when given free advice by an expert in front of a camera people still object.  But it shouldn't.  Happens to me all the time.

Clients ask for an opinion on which media to use & how.  I tell them to buy lots of cheap TV & then they often object & offer their own opinion.  As if they have spent the last 20 years doing nothing but media planning & buying.   I am not a celebrity chef & I usually don't have a TV crew with me: & as they are a client I sit & listen politely.  Only I don't, that is my problem.

There was the time I broke J&J's TV written about before.

The ejection from Dubai typed up below.

Another time a client complained about 90% of the budget going on TV, to which I replied that I agreed there was a problem, "It should be 100%".  To be fair he corrected his error and was 100% black box within a few weeks.

A client suggested that we advertise the fact that men use baby wipes in the car to clean their hands to which I said "Boys fill condoms with water and throw them off the roof, but we don't advertise this USP"

This bluntness has got me into trouble on more than one occasion.  I was banned from J&J obviously, barred from Polgate Calmolive, removed from Nestle for being "too British" & rejected by LVMH for apparently not being "Luxury". 

In my defense I would say that at least I am consistent, but never the same.  The advice we give clients about maintaining their brand value.

TV Buying using Moneyball

Watching Moneyball the other night I realised that it is very similar to our job.

In the film Brad Pitt (Billy Beane) uses statistics to win at baseball.  In media smart clients use measureable data to buy undervalued spots.  Stupid clients pay too much for overvalued spots - principally major events, in prime time & first in break.  The famous Superbowl buy is a classic example of this.  Although it might be the exception that tests the rule as it has become an industry creative showcase.

P&G and Masterfoods have famously been using Moneyball TV buying techniques since the invention of the peoplemeter.  Other clients have been slow to copy them.  Obviously to their advantage.

I can now only pray that the FSG Sports group can repeat their success with the Boston Red Sox with Liverpool, their other red socks team.

English vs. Russia(n)

My father was the original nutty professor.

Odd socks, lively hair, an inevitable beard & appalling ties. He once took the TV remote control to work after mistaking it for his scientific calculator. I guess that his considerable brain was concerned with more important things, like solving the vibration problems on the engines of the space shuttle.

He was a lovely man. (the link leads to a bio of the head of his department)

And he did take the trouble to cook us breakfast every morning before school. With his scientific approach to life this led to some interesting fruhstuck solutions. The best & most eagerly anticipated was fish fingers. Fast, protein packed & good for the brain. It wasn't until I was 10 or so that I discovered that "normal" families have fish fingers in the evenings.

Living in Slavic countries for the last 17 years I have realised that I could easily have been raised on fish toes. There is no separate word to differentiate the digits on a your hands from those on your feet. This highlights the richness of English against the poverty of slavic languages; Russian, Polish, Ukrainian etc. Russian has many marvellous books and a few great plays but surprisingly few words. Look it up if you don't believe me. There isn't even a word for thirsty in Russian.  At least Polish has 'spragniony'.

As well as comparing the fight between English words & Russian words you can instantly check if the English town of Berwick-upon-Tweed is still at war with Russia.

The pub argument has been killed by the smart phone.  Life is more accurate but less colourful.  I am not sure if my father would approve.

Paper Trail

The dream of every IT department is the paperless office; but we appear to be using as much paper as ever. 

There was a greater mystery in our Moscow office a few years ago when our paper use rose dramatically & we couldn't work out why.  We weren't planning more plans... we weren't buying more buys & we certainly weren't writing more letters.

We finally discovered the source of the leak.  One of our security professionals who guarded our precious computers at night was printing off books from the wonderful world wide web.  The CPT (cost per title) was around $50; higher if he was using colour paper.  It would have been cheaper to buy him signed first editions.

But as we applaud all efforts at self-improvement in our miserable media business we merely offered to buy him the publications in question if he promised to close his private publishing house.

The Toxic Truth About Tobacco Advertising

I smoke. I like it.  I know that it's a disgusting expensive habit but it makes you look cool.  Oh, and it's addictive.

However I would argue that advertising has nothing to do with the fact that many people smoke.  I've worked with 3 of the biggest tobacco clients in the world.  PMI, BAT & JTI, or Philip Morris, British American & Japan Tobacco as they are commonly known.

And the truth is this...they have no interest in getting people to smoke.

What they want is for you to pay more for your fags.  It costs them the same to make & distribute cheap cigarettes as expensive cigarettes.  Unsurprisingly they want you to smoke the expensive ones.  That is where the profit lies.  Most companies have the same objective.  Johnnie Walker wants you to buy black not red, but best of all blue.  Airlines want you to fly business not economy, but best of all first.  And big tobacco wants you to smoke Marlboro, not local or worst of all grow & roll your own.

Think about it.  Under communism most people smoked in Russia & China.  Big tobacco didn't come to these markets to get you to smoke.  People there already smoked.  They came to make profits by getting people to smoke more expensive "branded" cigarettes

And here is the shocking truth.  One of the big three above allegedly wants to ban tobacco advertising.  That might sound insane but possibly true.

Think about it.  If a major FMCG company could move into a market, build up 50% market share & 90% distribution & then prevent their rivals from competing with them they would leap at the opportunity.

The only question is which one of the big three is it... ?

Qu'importe.....?

Germans are not the only naive nation working in the meshagus we call the media business. The frogs can be a funny bunch too.

Working on a Danone pitch years ago I wanted to compare how much TV the yoghurt company bought in different markets around the world. A charming French lady at Paris HQ was helping me collect the data. The results were surprising. They bought more ratings in developed markets than emerging countries. I had expected the opposite as TV is cheaper in poorer countries and Danone were top spenders in Poland & Russia.

Then I realised that we were not comparing cows with cows. In France they would include the biscuit business (since sold to Kraft) & l'eau, Evian. I called Miss Paris the international co-ordinator & she re-worked the numbers. But they were still too high for France.

I went for a long lazy lunch with a bottle of wine to understand the French way of thinking. I had my Eureka moment by the time the fromage arrive'd. The Frogs were probably using lots of 10 second commercials whereas in rising Russia we were buying 30"s. In Poland we even made a 60" to promote Kefir. I called Mademoiselle Grenouille again & asked her to re-calculate the numbers as 30 second equivalent.

"Does it matter?" she replied.

Deutsche Discounts

A sales rep from Q magazine in London once told me a wunderbar story about negotiating prices with the Germans. In the UK one of the greatest works of fiction is press title rate cards. Steep discounts are always available depending on the season, the category, the volume & your 'relationship' with the media owner.

However the Germs weren't aware of this and so when they called London to buy pages they only asked for the normal volume discount available on the ratecard.  Which was how business was conducted in Germany.

As Q is one of the strongest music magazines in the World & Bertelsmann is one of the biggest music companies  there was quite substantial trade flying over the channel. 

Apparently one of the favourite jokes was to try to teach the poor teutonic fellows how to negotiate English style in a way inspired by Monty Python.  It would go something like this;

"Hallo, can I book zwolf pages in Q fur die nachtse jahre fur Village People bitte"

"Don't you want a discount mate"

"Ja, das ist fantastiche, can I have a discount bitte?"

"No you can't; now bugger off"

Ironically Q (and Empire) are now owned by the Hun - Bauer bought them in 2008.

The King's Speech

I once went to an MTV party in Warsaw.  Typical media party with lots of self-important people.  I met my friend Tom King there who being Irish was very down to earth.  This was appropriate as his day job was General Manger of British Airways.  I gave him one of my business cards as I was proud of my beautiful Y&R cards with Media Director written on them.

I then continued mingling (like a moose: see link here)

After a while I met an attractive lady and introduced myself as Brown: Gareth Brown.  She was surprised as she had already met Gareth Brown & pointed over to Mr.King.

I went over to Tom & asked him what he was doing.  "I get bored of going to parties & talking about planes" he replied in his lovely Irish accent.  "I decided to be a Media Director for the night".

Shark's Tale

Y&R used to have a little client called Andersen Consulting. Not a lot of money but brilliant creative work.

I worked on the business in London for a while. The problem in London was that the target audience was unknown. Who made the decision to hire expensive IT consultants? Was it the managing director? Or was it the lowly head of IT? Perhaps it was the Finance Director or even the media director (no need to capitalise that one) Being a reasonably clever but essentially lazy chap I could not be bothered coding all eleven targets into the computer. So I devised an elegant solution. We would target Economist readers.

At this time I did not read the Economist but I understood from their poster campaign that they targeted "decision makers". This meant that I only had to use one code on the computer. It also meant that I was guaranteed a fabulous lunch with the Economist at a restaurant of my choosing.

A couple of years later I was working in Warsaw & who should appear with a small budget but Andersen again. The client, William Anal Englishman as I recall, told me that the target was Economist readers. It took supreme will power not to shout "I know, it was my idea". His budget was about £10,000 including production. Not a lot.

The question was which one of the many brilliant images to use from our New York office. Again being an efficient chap I conducted some quick research amongst finance professionals to understand their opinion. I went to our CFO George Szyman (or Jerzy Simon depending on his mood) & asked him which one he liked best. The shark he replied. New York did not feel that my survey was statistically robust. They insisted that we waste £2000 conducting a proper survey. So we spent 20% of the media budget finding out that several decision makers preferred "shark". See the TV ad here.

My small budget was now tiny. But being a sunny sort of fellow I saw necessity as the mother of invention. Big beautiful airport posters were £100,000 for a year but cheap crappy posters on the road to the airport were only around £300 a month. I asked the wonderful Malgosia Wegierek of penguins/Zywiec fame to book as many sites as possible on Zwirki i Wigury. After production costs we could afford about 17. Several people thought that we had bought badly as there were so many sites in close proximity. I would ask them how many posters we had nationally? Probably 2000 they would say. "Just 17... & you noticed the campaign" I would happily reply.