I was sitting in a Millward Brown meeting the other week. Watching their dull charts flash by I started thinking of the motto of House - "everybody lies".
Millward Brown (no relation) is a research company. They look backwards not forwards. Bill Bernbach said, don't trust the research, it won't give you an idea.
I wouldn't even trust research to report the current situation. Because numbers can lie. People won't admit that driving by a poster made them part with $50,000 for a car. And yet it's true. We buy posters for automobiles & people go & buy metal.
Research won't tell you that. It will tell you to buy a print campaign for information & radio to reach people in traffic. Never trust research, nobody knows anything & everyone lies.
And watching "House" taught me another thing; our job is even simpler than I thought it was. With medical diagnostics there are so many possible options. A fever can suggest many things. But when our brands are sick we only have 6 potential prescriptions - TV, Press, Posters, Radio, Cinema & Digital.
There are many medical dramas on TV & very few about advertising. This is because advertising is a simple profession with no complex outcomes.
After many disasters they finally came up with a successful TV drama about advertising - Mad Men, which is more about the men than the mad. There will never be a great TV show about Media Men... because our job is too simple. There is no drama in that.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Thursday, April 22, 2010
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
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
Monday, April 19, 2010
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."
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."
Friday, April 16, 2010
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.
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.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
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
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
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
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.
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.
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