Sir Martin O'Sorrell

Once upon a time in Ireland, if you earned your living as a writer, you didn't have to pay income tax. What a great way to encourage a creative culture, from the country that brought you Joyce, Behan, Yeats and Samuel Beckett. Now WPP is moving to Ireland to take advantage of the tax conditions.

Is the Irish government encouraging creative accounting as well? Of course it's not so simple. WPP is a holding company with hundreds of entities serving a variety of distributed client contracts around the world. It is, on one level, a British 'success story'.

As the Goverment launches its 'Creative Britain' campaign, it seems ironic that one of the major firms that capitalises on creative talent should be fleeing the country. I wonder if they'll all fly Ryanair.

Is it useful?

Speaking at Ad tech today, we discussed how the shape of the new media agencies is changing again. I love this business. Because no sooner have you sorted out your organisation to cope with the client demands as is, you need to reorganise because the industry has changed again.

Brand utility is the latest trend – the principle being that because there are so many consumer controlled barriers (PVRs, Sky Plus, general indolence to advertising and the like) that giving useful stuff to consumers is the way to get through. Stuff that is so useful it attracts, engages, builds loyalty, keeps customers happy.

Shiny stuff, as they say at Naked. Good stuff works, though. Colour selection advice if you are Dulux, or traffic reports or train times for Brighton’s commuters, or fun things to play with like Doodle dogs and so on. Widgety goodness. Measuring is is a bit more problematic though. That discussion deserves a conference of its own.
 

Mad Men, the Gorilla and Galaxy

One insight from the Mad Men TV Series was just how ‘competitive’  (read selfish and self-obsessed) the ad men were in 1960. Plus ca change? Chatting over a brisk lunch with an old buddy in Soho, we discussed the fall of Fallon’s Gorilla in face of recent research damning the campaign for failing to grow market share. My friend pointed out that there are probably agency people all over town going  “ha – it didn’t work! Told you so. One off.” A more detailed look at the numbers showed that the Galaxy’s share has indeed grown by 12%, but size of share relative to Cadbury’s is 40%. Now there is a well travelled view that it’s far ‘easier’ to grow smaller share aggressively, but there does appear to be something behind the change in that Cadbury’s had changed the packaging and the promotion of the product, but haven’t done anything to the product. Galaxy (and Dove as the brand is know in Asia) had changed the packaging and promotion, but also the product. The chunks are smaller, rounder, more appealing to women, as is everything about the brand. Cadbury’s may well have tried to target ‘everyone’ which is always a tricky brief.

Can brands be friends? Version 2.0

MySpace are on the panel session I'm doing at ADTECH LONDON in two weeks time. What would you like to ask them? I'll pose your questions on the day to the panel, which includes Mark Cridge, Steve Henry, George Bryant, Anthony Lukom and Shaun Gregory. According to Facebook, brands can have fans rather than friends, but what's the value in having ten thousand fans compared to advertising impacts, for example? As the word 'utility' slips into the marketer's vocabulary, what does it mean for advertisers?

Crisis does not equal danger plus opportunity

Dontcha just hate pseudo profundity? I’ve recently seen (again) the PowerPoint urban myth of the Chinese symbols shown as an answer to the economic conditions the marketing community and indeed the whole community faces. It really doesn’t wash. In fact, check out an incisive critique of this pictogram/linguistic fallacy. I know, I know, we work in the world of overclaim. We are all simple purveyors of seductive presentation technique. But I am also very keen on substantiation, evidence and consideration of the facts in making decisions around investing Clients’ money.

Today the OECD published stats that indicate the UK economy is in technical recession, according to the definition of recession as two consecutive quarters of negative growth. Are we able to substantiate this in our own industry? Can we ‘create’ our way out of the gloom?The last Bellwether report back in July used the dramatic turn of phrase ‘worst downturn in marketing spend since 9/11’. It’s a whole two months to go till the next one, but I predict that it won’t be particularly favourable. On the other hand, I am not sure how slavish we should be in responding in a flippy floppy way to these quarterly reports. In Q2 last year, marketing spend was at its highest levels for three years. Not even six months later, it’s at its lowest. Now whilst this data is well qualified, I am of the view that we need to reflect on slightly longer term trends to help focus our minds, and indeed our investments, when it comes to planning.

Where are consumers spending their time? Where can we deliver the most engagement with a brand? Which is more important - providing a useful service from the brand (a brand utility in the fashionable parlance) or creating advertising to seduce consumers into believing the proposition? What is the most cost effective way of getting consumers to spend time interacting with the brand? Does our idea actually make a difference to the brand? These are great questions. It has to be enjoyable, challenging and exciting to answer them. But there remains no excuse for intellectual paucity in our answers.