REMEMBER CREATIVE ADVERTISING?

Back in the 1970s and 80s it was the message and not the medium that mattered in advertising. Endless hours were spent by creatives trying to do something original, different and something that got talked about.

And then it all changed because it was money that talked louder than creativity and the procurement people, the accountants, the media men and a businessman called Martin took charge.

Sentimentality in part has clouded our judgement. Great icons of advertising like JWT and O&M were swallowed up, their lustre gone,  in an empire with turnover of £15 billion and profits of £2 billion. Sorrell was a brilliant businessman – a legend , a ruthless, piratical wheeler dealer but somehow seemingly a man devoid of magic, soul or joy.

As Ian Potter the creative director at FCO once said of an errant account executive:
“He wouldn’t know a good ad if it bit him on the arse”

I rather think this was true of Martin Sorrell too.

Not that it mattered to many. It was the share price and the growth that drove him. One somehow felt he  would kill creativity with a few well aimed swipes of his spreadsheet. And good luck to him the many said because he was a towering success. But the signs of cracks in the business were already self-confessedly showing. And this wasn’t helped by the size of his earnings – his net worth is about £ ½ billion and last year alone he “earned” £70 million and that irked many out to get him.

He was a genius no doubt, but a genius like James Pattinson, the richest best-selling author in the world rather than Ian MacEwan. In the end just a business man.

So why am I so vexed by his legacy? Because like the founders of the digital revolution, they’ve taken away as much as they’ve given. The senatorial hearings suggest Mark Zuckerberg is still uncertain as to quite what this monster is that he’s created.

It’s not just privacy that’s been stolen so much as quality of life. All of the heroes of digital and marketing services are mere businessmen in vast, introspective, rapacious empires.  They do not laugh much in Silicon Valley or in WPP.

The medium is everything currently. It’s the likes, the hits, the quantity of what is said not the quality that matters. Sorrell’s demise is a turning point, already signalled by P&G, Heinz-Kraft, Unilever and others loudly saying that it’s real creativity that counts now. They have bean-counters enough in-house but what they lack are the kind of idiots like George Lois the American art director who once stood on a window sill threatening to jump unless a client bought his ad.

Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Caravaggio and others were not necessarily going to be congenial dinner companions but boy could they paint and touch our hearts.

Persuasion is currently on a lot of agendas. It may sound out of step with the times but I think creative advertising is on its way back.

WHEN ADVERTISING GOT SCREWED

Today I read that international agreements about global GDP calculations had changed whereby money earning occupations like prostitution and drug-dealing, hitherto ignored, should now be included in the calculations. This is exceedingly good news for Mexico, Colombia and Afghanistan. This probably means Mexico has overtaken France (mind you at the moment everyone is overtaking France….sorry that’s very, very mean of me.)

The consequence is some £10 billion is added to the UK’s GDP. £5.5 billion of this is from prostitution. The calculations go as follow: there are just under 61,000 prostitutes with on average 25 clients a week, charging on average £67.16. Hmm…. it doesn’t seem much. And what, the mind boggles it really does, is performed for 16p?

But if you find this all mildly shocking I find the next disclosure truly awful. For years I worked very hard doing an honest, creative sort of job, oiling the cogs of industry, helping the wheel of capitalism spin. I thought hard about how to titillate, persuade and convert. I was a missionary of branding. I worked in advertising.

Yet it appears the economic value of prostitution in the UK is actually greater than advertising. Martin Sorrell will be horrified or, being smart, may change his business model. WPP will change to Whips, Panders and Prostitution.

It somehow seems deliciously appropriate doesn’t it? One in the eye for that old fraud Scott Fitzgerald who said of advertising:

 “You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero."

Advertising like prostitution enlivens the world, gives it colour and sometimes at its best has a sense of humour. Hugely useful…like farming …which is I gather a similar size. Now that is shocking.

Enough of this…we are off to Venice for some sun, some art and some Italian food for ten days. In the 15th century when Venice was the powerhouse of the world, it was four times the size of London and 10% of the population were prostitutes. This means that if you extrapolated their GDP potential to the UK on a per capita basis that would be worth £ 640 billion which is - let’s face it - a pretty impressive thought.

Enjoy the sun.

www.colourfulthinkers.com

PEOPLE POWER RULES OK

I feel sorry for bankers. They had a horrible 2010. They’re next in line for one of those entrapment scoops by one of the papers – probably the Guardian. And they’re about to make things worse by paying themselves large bonuses because (as everyone knows (sic) money is the only way of retaining talent.). No it isn’t. Never was. It’s a poor second to job satisfaction, interesting colleagues and so on. As long ago as 1959 Frederick Herzberg produced his “two factor theory of motivation” that still holds good.

So why fly in the face of this by suggesting that bonuses are so important.

Because they aren’t.

Unfortunately there is another myth with a body that believes global economics is a science.

The truth is well expressed by Sir Martin Sorrell boss of WPP the marketing services group:-

“All business decisions are marketing decisions and all marketing decisions are about people.”

Success or otherwise in 2011 will come to those who better understand what makes people really tick – customers, colleagues and employees. In a shrinking world where nearly all ideas seem to be conceived spontaneously and simultaneously, it’s the people who shape and execute the ideas and the teams who shepherd the gathering of ideas that make the difference.

Look at the spirit and creativity at Google, Apple, Nike and John Lewis – places where people really want to work. Places where people feel they’re making a difference.

What Steve Jobs said to John Sculley one-time CEO of Apple when he was trying to hire him out of Pepsico still holds true:

“Do you want to spend your life selling sugared water or do you want to try and change the world?”

No brainer.

Engaging with people and making them enjoy what they do will always be the key to real success.

Not money.