Client comments

How come nobody has anything useful to offer when faced with a blank sheet of paper yet everyone has an opinion when there are words and pictures on it?

Healthy budgets, dubious results

Sore back? Not eating enough fruit and veg? Poor mental health? Using too many illegal drugs? Drinking too much? Don't worry, the ad boys will keep you right.

Monday night is band practice for me. It's a bit of weekly welcome relief from the grind of a life/work balance that has never quite managed equilibrium. After rehearsals we usually have a quick pint in a bar that has been selected for proximity rather than anything else. It's an old man's bar - brutally bright, full of regulars sipping fizzy beer, crossing off the nights between now and eternity. Four months of Mondays since we started nodding in for one, the bar staff have started to say 'good night' when we leave. You know the kind of place.

And being media folks, you'll be familiar with the advertising in the toilets. This week's essential message from the Scottish Executive has moved on from enquiring whether I need to pee too often to pointing out that my mental health is as important as my physical health. There's a website for me to look at too. If only I had a pencil to hand, I could have noted it down.

It's great to know that the Scottish Executive is so concerned for my well-being that it will spend time, effort (and lots of tax-payers money) to address public health issues through advertising. But who are the ads really for? The guys in the bar quietly drinking themselves do death don't look like they're listening and even if they did want help (or even need it), would advertising really be the way to deliver it?

It seems to me that being seen to do something is easier (and more important) than actually doing something when it comes to public health. This model works for the agencies and the civil servants but I doubt that there's much value for the man and woman in the street.

Oh well, better get back to drinking my three litres of water, eating my five pieces of fruit and walking around to prevent my sore back, while avoiding cigarettes, booze, cocaine and forgetting to wash my hands after using the toilet ... 

Life beyond the deadlines

I'm in the middle of a pitch. I'm tired, emotional and on edge. Things aren't going quite how I planned. My family hate me, my friends haven't seen me for weeks and the nearest I've been to leisure time this week is a can of Tennent's lager while writing this post.

Sound familiar? 

My kid wants to be a doctor. I can't imagine why. Imagine every working day filled with the stress of life or death decisions. One slip of a scalpel blade, one missed diagnosis and you're in the dock, doc.

Wouldn't he be better off writing headlines and dreaming up strategy for lovely people who make pensions and beer and stuff? What could possibly be stressful about all that?

The long hours, the thankless tasks, the lost weekends, the unbelievable highs and the desperate lows, the rejection, the fear, the mood swings, the crazy colleagues, the ungrateful clients - that's all for the doctors, son, right?

At least in advertising, nobody dies. 

And now, a word from our sponsors

When 30,000 Hibs fans let out a collective roar on Sunday as the Club lifted their first major trophy in 16 years was anybody thinking about insurance?

I'm really not convinced about sponsorship. Currently, the Scottish League Cup is called the CIS Insurance Cup. When Hibs last lifted it, it was called the Skol Cup. And while I'm sure that the victory in 1991 was celebrated with a jug or two of Skol, I'm not at all convinced that event sponsorship does much for the brand.

Unless, that is, it's part of a much bigger programme and all the bits really join together. But just sticking a label on everything doesn't work for me. The Barclays Premiership, the Bank of Scotland Premier League (Clydesdale Bank next year), the Carling Cup - we may see the names associated with events endlessly in the paper or hear them read out on the sports news but is it actually doing anything more than annoying people?

Having tasted the glory of a 5-1 cup win just a few days ago and enjoyed one of the best days in my sporting life, I'm no more attached to CIS Insurance than I was to Skol. Sure I know the name but I can't imagine how that's going to make me want to buy whatever they sell - unless they sell policies protecting against disappointment in the Tennent's Scottish Cup, there may just be a market amongst Hibs' fans for that.

The customer is King

After a few weeks of being caught in the crossfire between Virgin and Sky, I'm voting with my feet. 

Both camps have been very active. Virgin have wagged their fingers and beat their chests about Sky's bully-boy tactics. Sky have laid on the charm and, to a greater extent, let the product do the talking. 

If the truth be told, my Telewest service was overpriced anyway and I was already contemplating a move. A call to customer services brought about an instant reduction of over £10 a month 'for as long as you remain a Virgin customer' but even that's not enough.

'Check the small print', claimed my call-centre girl. 'They say it's 8MB on the broadband 'but that's only an up-to figure and it may be just as slow as ours!'

'Our prices are going down in May.' she countered. 'One of my colleagues told me but I don't have any details yet.'

Then her final desperate roll of the dice ... 'phone this number, they may be able to cut your bill even further than I can ...'

If only I could get through. Every time I've tried I've been stuck on hold for ages. 

In the end, while the price is a big factor, customer service will win the day. How much Virgin's embattled stance is influencing its customers to either depart or stay will only be known in the fullness of time but the desperate air with which they've conducted my business has definitely lost me. 

Where's the benefit?

Sometimes you can see the hand of the client all over an ad and you can picture the moment of capitulation when the agency gives in and collapses under pressure. 

Surely that's what's happening with the latest Scottish Widows' ads currently appearing at bus stops near me.

The headline is the proposition. And the proposition is so convoluted and weak that it's hardly a benefit at all. 

If I remember correctly, I'm being invited to 'Save 50% off the initial charge on any lump sum ISA' if I apply before 6th April. Uh, sorry, what was that again? Oh yes, instead of taking a certain amount of my money off me up front, you'll only take half of your normal charge. How generous! I can hardly wait. 

Now I'm not going to single out the old Widows for a bashing here but, seriously, is it possible to turn a charge into a benefit? Alongside a beautiful young lady draped in the black cloak of a grieving widow we're used to this particular brand suggesting that all is not what it seems. But boosting the point size isn't enough to create a motivational benefit. Personally I'd be querying why I'd have to pay something as odious as an initial charge anyway.

No doubt, as the latest incarnation peers out from behind her cloak, the Widow will remain as popular as ever. But would the business she represents be even more successful if the benefits were real and the medium employed wasn't the bus stop? Feel free to discuss.

You have to laugh ...

I had a wee chuckle at InterPublic's disappointing results earlier in the week having been on the wrong side of InterPublic's failings in the past, I know how it feels. 

In my last 'real job' before I set off on the rocky entrepreneurial road that I'm currently following, I was Creative Director of Draft in Edinburgh. That ended in tears, of course, as our American friends didn't take long to forget why they'd come to Edinburgh in the first place. 

Anyway, I've been burnt by InterPublic's failure to deliver shareholder value in the past so it's no real surprise to me that their business model continues to 'disappoint'. The biggest surprise for me is that there's any expectation at all. Sure they bump agencies together and they go in search of economies of scale but they're still just advertising agencies - a bunch of difficult to manage folks with heads full of ideas that clients are never quite sure that they want to buy. Their only assets are up and down in the lift every night and worst of all, they're operating in a shrinking market. Disappointing? What did they expect?

I reserved my biggest chuckle for Draft/FCB Worldwide, remembering a tale from my Draft days. We had been Draftworldwide and overnight we rebranded to 'Draft'. 'We were Draftworldwide to give the sense that we were worldwide,' went the explanation. 'Now that we truly are, we're just Draft.'