POGOF - THE NEW PITCH SENSATION

4GET EMAIL. USE TXT

Have u noticed that people don't reply to emails any more? But no-one's 2 busy 2 answer their mobile. Txt & they always tb, however impt they are. No point in grammar & syntax. Let's blog in txtspk from now on. Cul8r

You can’t stop at Thought-Showers

Tunbridge Wells council have banned the term ‘brainstorm' for think tanks in the gentle Kentish spa. ‘Thought-Showers' is regarded as less offensive to people who are mentally ill. (You couldn't write this stuff, much less marvel how much brainstorming ever happened in the town.)

Please Jaqui don't save blogs on your new database

Can you imagine having to file a job lot of George's rants or Rory's whimsy - or even my whinges about dear Gordon and his cabinet of nannies.

Why do agencies wait for briefs?

Ever wondered why agencies aren’t as creative as they should be? Ever stopped to think why an agency can produce dull work and then make a fantastic pitch? Ever been really impressed by a start-up?It’s not difficult. The client brief / agency response / client feedback scenario is not inspiring – and can lead to a really tedious game of table tennis. Of course a client needs to brief its agencies carefully. Equally the agency has to be disciplined in the way it develops creative work in response. But that shouldn’t mean that the agency ONLY works reactively. There’s no rule that says that agencies can’t be proactive. You can’t win a pitch unless you are – however tight the brief. And start-ups have so little business to begin with that they create all sorts of ideas on spec. I blame the wretched people hours remuneration system. Because time sheets are the basis of agency charging, we have fallen into the trap of believing that unbillable hours are a crime. Most of the best ideas in history were thought up by clever people in their own time. Very few were commissioned to order.  If you come up with a really brilliant creative idea, find someone to sell it to. Might be a client. Might be a prospect you’re pitching to. Might be a company or an individual you’ve never met. Think about it, and get selling. The payback will come later. 

Why don't agencies sell problem-solving?

Big ideas. 360º. Red hot service in 47 markets. Digital at the heart of the agency. A complete campaign ready-to-run within 6 weeks of the pitch. A saving of 20% on what you are paying now. We’ll create a completely new agency for you. Try our Brand Orgasm proprietary tool.………………There’s a lot on offer from agencies right now. But is all this what clients want? We have been running pitches for very nearly 20 years now, and most clients want a transformation. A new look. A radical and fresh approach. In short they have a problem, and they want someone to help solve it. Not: 

• Free goods
• A year’s campaign put together in four weeks
• A hastily put-together team to outperform the one we have now

No. Most clients look to pitch their way out of a problem, not into an instant creative solution. Restraint and professionalism is everything. Less is more. A problem shared is a problem half way to being solved.

Why should anyone launch a 1000 strong house agency?

So the 'DaVinci' agency commissioned by Dell from WPP is behind schedule and still lacking a CEO.

Blame the Blackberry and malingering sickie throwers

Are you one of the unfortunates who caught this year’s vicious flu bug? Did you have a high temperature and a horrible cough? Was it hard to sleep? Did you find it impossible to concentrate on your work? Was it even difficult to read a newspaper or a book? Did you in the end decide to go the doctor, get some antibiotics and take to your bed?How much sympathy did you get from colleagues and clients? Did the milk of human kindness curdle and go off? Did you get emails saying that you had promised to deliver that report on Monday and threatening exclusion from polite society unless it was on his/her desk by Thursday? I compounded the scenario by moving house at the same time. But that didn’t increase the sympathy vote. You see, no one cares any more. If you’re well enough to receive a text or email you’re well enough to respond and jump to it. 24/7 accessibility is half the problem. The tradition of feigning illness and taking days off at will is the other half. What do we do about it? Easy. Don’t try throwing a sickie unless you’ve got a doctor’s note. And treat people with contempt (however powerful they are) if they bully you by email when you’re really ill.

Why the Diana inquest shames us all

We have all had to accept restictions on free speech. Nowhere more obviously than in marketingville and adland, where we must observe all manner of limitations on how we promote brands, as well as having to provide consumers with information that may well put them off.

Ads used to have to be ‘honest, decent and true’. Now that’s not enough.

For instance there are incremental restrictions on advertising HFSS products to children. HFSS is not a class A drug. It’s all foods that are high in fats, salt and sugar – including confectionery and snacks.

So Cadbury and McDonald’s aren't allowed to ask children to sample their tasty wares. But those same children are now exposed to a tasty and salacious diet of scurrilous gossip emanating from the High Court.

It's apparently perfectly OK for kids to read in newspapers and hear in news bulletins about Princess Diana's lovers, phobias and unusual dress habits. The Diana brand is undergoing systematic character assassination under the pretext of an 'inquest' (don't we know how she died?) organised on the say-so of a rich retailer. Not being a trained lawyer it is hard to see the relevance to the inquest of tittle tattle from a bizarre collection of policemen, butlers, therapists, 'friends' and even – amazingly – divorce lawyers.

We live in a strange time when you can give unsubstantiated evidence in a court – which is immediately broadcast around the world to destroy a brand’s reputation, when you can’t suggest to a child that she buys a bag of crisps.

Bumper New Year Competition – What next for the giants of adland?

 So Gordon Brown has chosen Stephen Carter as his Principal Special Adviser. That depending on your historical focus is consigliere, Alastair Campbell, Rasputin or Cardinal Wolsey. Quite a compliment for our industry and its powers – as well as recognition for Stephen personally.But he is certainly not the first of adland’s finest to grace a bigger stage. One thinks of Adam Crozier, who has led the FA and now Royal Mail.  Then there’s Rupert Howell, MD of Brand and Commercial Operations at ITV, three Lords a leaping in Barons Saatchi, Bell and Chadlington, and three knights that changed our world (but stayed put) in Sir Martin, Sir Frank and Sir John.  My challenge to you, gentle reader, is to nominate candidates for the next round of advancement. Gay Haines and Gary Stolkin can’t enter, because there are undoubtedly many names on their lilac notepaper already. To start you off, here are some early thoughts:

• Robin Wight to Archbishop of Canterbury (much needed flair after the sombre Dr Rowan)
• Garry Lace to replace Sir Ian Blair at the Met (he’s already conducted a few investigations)
• Lee Daly to succeed Sir Alex – he went to the right club last year, but in the wrong job
• Cilla from AMV as St Peter (well she wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in the other place)
• Johnny Hornby to sort out the railways (with a name like that he should be able to handle a train set)

Get Tim Martin to do the Army recruitment ads

Another bumper weekend for crazy stories from adland and marketingville. Who’s Tim Martin? He’s the breathtakingly cool Chairman of JD Wetherspoon. And they are the pub chain who are turfing out punters after two drinks if they have brought children with them. It’s a really interesting attempt at social engineering, and somewhat at odds with the customer-service ethic. “We don’t want children there bored while adults drink”, a spokesman explained. A man so dedicated to telling it as it is (why on earth should a Wetherspoon patron think they are entitled to stay for more than a couple of Becks?) would be the perfect choice to develop a much more realistic campaign for the Army. What’s Army recruitment advertising? Those are the ads, according to researcher David Gee (as financed by the Joseph Rowntree Trust) which omit reference to a distinct possibility of strict discipline, injury, death and having to kill the enemy. With recruitment and retention not going awfully well what with Iraq, Afghanistan etc, a more realistic slant to the ads should do the trick, and empty the recruiting centres completely. And we know what Mr Gee says makes sense, because it’s well known that young men are totally non-violent, don’t buy video games and never read about war in the media. There does come a moment when we need to defend both our business and common sense. 

Is the holiday shut-down crazy?

How smart is it for an industry that earns its revenue from selling time to shut up shop for the best part of a fortnight at the end of every year? It’s not that either marketing or advertising are in such glorious shape that the industry can really afford it. From the agency standpoint the revenue loss is largely cushioned by the assumption in the fee agreement that weeks 51 and 52 in 2007 and week 1 in 2008 are business as usual. But sharp-eyed procurement folk will already have that anomaly in their sights for the end of 2008. Most agencies have plenty of people. It shouldn’t be beyond the wit of man to devise some kind of shift system to keep the creative furnaces alight during the festive season. London, after all, is a global co-ordination centre. Even if Britain decides to close down, there are plenty of countries who work on, and need our output. The chattering classes have been swift to castigate Network Rail for failing to complete their holiday engineering programme on time (‘fire the managers; dock the bosses’ bonuses’). But at least they were doing something while we caroused and slumbered.

BBC's breathtaking bias against advertising

The Wethey Forecast seldom gets written on a Sunday. I’m normally tucked away from controversy on the golf course. But yesterday I listened to Radio 5 Live instead (for the sports coverage, which is excellent), and caught a remarkable example of the BBC’s mission to discredit advertising.

The programme, called ‘Classroom Commercials’ and presented by Rachel Burden, was broadcast at 11.30. It had been trailed all morning as a news item: ….’The Government has been looking at a major enquiry into the possible harmful effects of advertising on children’. To call the 25 minute feature a mish-mash would be generous.

It started with a reference to the junk food debate and a link to the “Put the fizz into science” promotion by Mentos. In return for repeating the Mentos and cola experiment, schools can receive £2000 of teaching equipment for chemistry lessons. Adidas contribute to physics teaching by allowing teachers to demonstrate the properties of the Predator football boot. Among the other ‘villains’ are apparently BAE and the nuclear industry, who supply teaching materials to schools. Almost unimaginable evil apparently flows from Disney helping with dance teaching in association with High School Musical, and Revlon who offered money off vouchers for a new fragrance. There were no commercials in the classroom (despite the title), but at 11.52 the programme was – hysterically – interrupted by a commercial promoting DAB radio receivers! Also the producers appeared to have forgotten that the Government itself uses advertising to talk to school age children. Kids are also allowed to listen to 5 Live and other radio stations, which don’t hesitate to mix editorial with news content – like the trail for this programme. It is hard to imagine a feature which was more contrived, more biased, more trivial, or more potty. If Peta Buscombe or Hamish Pringle are interested, I actually taped it, to make it easier to prepare a riposte to this rubbish. Meanwhile an army of thought police are presumably covering up brand names in schools all over Britain, lest the corruption children suffer in the classroom could in any way influence the way they react to the commercial world they encounter the rest of the time.

Be angry. At the very least be concerned

Hundreds of thousands of commuters will have read in this morning’s Metro that Sir Terry Leahy has been branded the godfather of binge-drinking. Who said this? A hitherto unknown Labour MP called John Grogan, the leader of a Select Committee studying the health consequences of drinking alcohol. He sits for Selby in Yorkshire, but probably not for long as his majority is only 467. Health Minister Ben Bradshaw (remember him from his days saving us from Foot and Mouth, BSE and Bird Flu at DEFRA?) backed Mr Grogan by revealing that he and other ministers are planning to change the law to ban price discounting on alcohol. Let’s suspend the anger for a second to ask why it’s Tesco’s fault that some people drink too much. Has the Select Committee done an econometric analysis to measure price elasticity of demand among head bangers? Have they established that inebriated people outside pubs and clubs buy the stuff at Tesco and then pay corkage to take it inside? Claire Beale’s editorial in yesterday’s Campaign says that the ad industry has to grab the initiative next year. She says that consumers won’t put up with having their intelligence insulted by lobbyists or ministers. She is completely right. But where’s the evidence that planners are using their understanding of the consumer to inform the fight back? Are our best PR and digital conversation experts engaged in the debate? Are the most talented creatives sharpening their pencils? Are the most articulate agency bosses honing their soundbite skills for the benefit of Action for Ads (A4A)? I see no evidence whatever. Be concerned. And if you have to get angry to get involved, for God’s sake get angry - and encourage your friends to get mad too.

How to increase profits by 13%

The Wethey Forecast doesn’t normally give away free business ideas, but ‘tis the season to be generous. Here’s an infallible way for agency chiefs to start the year with a built in hike in profit.When you re-open for business on 2^nd January, start the working day at 8.30. Allow an hour for lunch (quite generous nowadays) and let them go at 6.00. At a stroke the official working day becomes eight and a half hours instead of seven and a half. That’s a 13.3% increase, and you can sell all that extra time at the normal multiplier of 2.4 or whatever. So profit can rise at the same rate as revenue. It’s crazy that agencies don’t get properly going till 9.30 or even 10. Equally crazy that middle and junior level staff are bullied into staying well into the evening, largely because of the aforementioned late start, and because most agencies aren’t efficiently managed. At the dawn of time (well…the late sixties) there was an agency called KMP (later KMPH) where all the staff had to clock in and out. A few years later I worked in Kuala Lumpur for three years, where we started at 8.00 and worked Saturday mornings. Simple ideas are the best. Your guys and gals might actually enjoy the better travelling conditions, and when they get in, they’ll be able to chat to their continental cousins, who will already be well into their morning. And just think how pleased the clients will be.