Even with a kindly and forgiving eye, it is difficult to select from the millions of advertising messages on display at any one time more than a handful with any original merit. These are the famous advertisements and campaigns, the work that is remembered and liked, the work that sells products and services with wit and charm and imagination. Triumphs such as these are held up, quite rightly, as examples of what advertising should be, but they are rare. A very generous estimate might put the incidence of good or brilliant advertising as high as 10 percent of the overall output. The rest is dross.
The rest is either boring, derivative, strident (when in doubt, shout), offensively stupid, patronizing, or so smug that the most mild-mannered consumer could be forgiven for being provoked to physical violence. There is a limit to the number of times anyone can endure the sight of plastic middle-class couples gloating over their new cars, sipping their sticky after-dinner drinks, or going into raptures over a thin, mean liquid that masquerades as coffee.
We are often told that advertising reflects the face of society, which would be extremely depressing if it was wholly true. Nearer the truth is that advertising reflects the face of the client. He is the first member of the public outside the agency to judge an advertising idea. He can approve it, tinker with it, or kill it and demand something worse because, as he will point out if faced with too much argument, he’s paying for it. “Just remember it’s our money you’re spending here” is a phrase that has hung ominously over many a conference table, and it is enough to make most agencies back off and do what they’re told.
As you would expect, agencies do not enjoy the situation. It is not comfortable to live with. But, ingenious to the last, they have developed a philosophy that enables them to take the money and duck the issue at the same time. Expressed in simple terms, it is the whiskery old excuse that clients get the advertising they deserve, which conveniently ignores the option that agencies can always take against nightmare accounts and their attendant goon squads. They can resign the business. They seldom do.
To provide themselves with some daily consolation, agency people take pleasure in devising new and ever more derogatory ways of describing their tormentors—“pigs with checkbooks” being one of the more moderate phrases in a litany of invective and profanity that is muttered (out of the client’s hearing, naturally) in agency offices throughout the world.
It would be tempting to dismiss this as nothing more than the harmless grumbling of an oppressed minority group, but we would be wrong to do so. While all clients do not automatically qualify as the subhuman morons that agencies claim them to be, there are enough suspect characters in the client population to justify many of the accusations that are made against them. Since clients themselves are lovers of labels and pigeonholes, it is appropriate to label and pigeonhole them here.
The Agency’s Pal
This is usually a brand manager who finds the environment of an agency much more to his taste than his own modest surroundings in the suburbs. He likes the slightly racy nature of agency people and makes a point of cultivating the writer and art director so that he can feel he’s up there in the front line, on the cutting edge of the creative process. He likes the secretaries, who tend to be prettier and more respectful than the women in his office. He likes the lunches. He lives in hope that one day he might be permitted to go off on location (with lavish expenses) when the agency team shoots the next commercial in the Bahamas. And, quite often, he has ambitions to change sides and become a racy advertising person himself.
He is never in a hurry to go back to the suburbs when the meeting is over. Instead, he loiters in the agency, friendly and admiring, until eventually he is adopted as an ally, a good guy, a client who is human.
This testing time comes when a new campaign is presented to his god and master, the marketing director. Our pal has been closely involved in the campaign, and he has been unwise enough to tell the agency, over another three-hour lunch at Luigi’s, that he thinks it’s great. He’s committed. Terrific! The campaign’s as good as sold.
But the marketing director, resplendent in his expensive silk tie and rather less expensive suit, is not happy with the campaign. He looks down his nose and shakes his head. He has concerns, grave concerns. Oh dear.
The agency looks to its pal for support. Does he stand up and pound the table and argue passionately for the campaign? Does he repeat those words of praise and encouragement that flowed as profusely as wine during lunch last week? Does he come out fighting? Does he, hell. He is bent over his notes, avoiding eye contact with his old cronies, nodding in agreement as the marketing director drones on. He is no longer the agency’s pal. He has reverted to type. He’s a client.
The Eunuch in the Harem
There are two characteristics that identify this particular pest. The first is a reflex action: As a script or a piece of copy is presented to him, he produces his gold pen and holds it poised over the paper like the scalpel of a surgeon about to remove a malignant growth. After a few moments of slashing and scribbling, he looks up with a rueful smile and a sigh, as though he has just averted a disaster. Here comes the second characteristic:
“Well, I’m no copywriter, but I think I’ve made some improvements.” He slides the defaced text across to the account executive and sits back. God, sometimes you have to do everything yourself.
He’s quite right, in fact. He is no copywriter. He can’t even write a short, lucid letter. His “improvements” are gobbledygook, great chunks lifted straight out of the marketing strategy and dropped on the page like dead mice. The agency may duck and dive, but to no avail. He won’t allow a word to be changed. He is bursting with the pride of authorship. He has written an advertisement.
A variation is sometimes slipped into this performance in the shape of “my wife.” She has been shown or told about the new campaign, and she is unimpressed. Her opinion carries considerable weight because of her dual qualifications in the matter of judging advertising: She is not only “my wife” but she is a housewife, too, and therefore possesses some secret knowledge denied to the rest of us.
At least in this case the agency is not obliged to accept gibberish verbatim, but the revised brief from “my wife” is impossibly vague and causes much discussion in the creative department.
All this springs from the widely held view that any fool can write copy, which is partly true. Any fool can write bad copy, and many fools do.
The Thug
He acts the part of a bluff, no-nonsense man of the people, too shrewd to be manipulated by a slick bunch of kids with marketing degrees, whom he invariably addresses as “you admen.” “Don’t play any games with me,” he says. “I like the straight-talking, direct approach. I call a spade a spade.”
This may initially be quite refreshing, but it is not a reciprocal arrangement. He can and does call a spade a spade, often using blunt and insulting language to do so. But should the agency take this as a cue to respond in the same way, the bluff veneer disappears and the thug is revealed, a crude bully who will not tolerate argument and who uses his advertising budget like a cattle prod.
He likes to make his agency jump, and he doesn’t bother with any of the conventional forms of commercial politeness. He will call up on Tuesday night to summon the agency to an out-of-town breakfast meeting on Wednesday. And then, just to show who’s boss, he’ll be late. He will demand complicated revisions to commercials, revisions that must be done in twenty-four hours so that he can see them before he leaves the city, and then refuse to approve the overtime bills. “You should have gotten it right the first time,” he’ll say. “That’s what I’m paying you for.”
When he visits the agency, he treats it as his personal domain, using secretaries to make his dinner reservations, to go out and buy his cigars, to get his theater tickets, to confirm his travel arrangements, and to order his limos. Curiously, for such an important man, he never seems to have any money with him to pay for these small services. If anyone has the audacity to suggest reimbursement, he will fix them with his bully’s stare and mention the vast profits that the agency is making from his business.
He likes loud, aggressive advertising. Any attempts at subtlety are dismissed with a sneer as being too clever by half (one of his favorite bluff, no-nonsense expressions). He assumes that the public, like his agency, can be browbeaten into submission. If the agency should dare to dig its heels in, he will unveil his secret weapon: a man he plays golf with every weekend who runs a small provincial agency and who would be delighted to take over the account and bellow to order.
Thugs are common in advertising and always will be. For every agency prepared to throw them out, there are half a dozen others willing to pocket their self-respect along with the commission.
The Man with the Outstretched Hand
A certain amount of petty bribery exists in any business, whether it’s described as entertainment, oiling the wheels of commerce, or a token to mark the sincere appreciation of a wonderful working relationship. The odd case of champagne, the days at the track, the evenings at the Met—these are all considered perfectly harmless and acceptable.
But it doesn’t always stop there, because every once in a while (rarely, it’s true) the agency will find itself dealing with a client on the take. He won’t be the top man in the client organization, but he covets the top man’s salary, the top man’s suits, and the top man’s car. He knows to a penny how much the agency is making from his business, and he will start referring to it more and more often during those informal chats at the end of the working day.
At the same time, he will drop wistful and very clear hints about some desirable object he can’t afford. If the agency man is sufficiently alert and naïve, the hint will be picked up and the desirable object will be given as a Christmas present. After all, he’s an amiable client (they always are) and it is a good, profitable account.
But the hints don’t stop. They become more blatant and demanding, and the naïve agency man begins to realize that he and the agency are being blackmailed. Either the presents keep coming or the client will initiate an agency review, and we can imagine what that means. No need to spell it out, old boy. I think we both know where we stand.
The agency can report the man to his boss, possibly ruining his career or losing the business. Or it can continue to pay the squeeze, which will become progressively more severe: After the TV set and the stereo equipment, there might be two or three Armani suits, airline tickets, and a new Volvo. It has also been known for a child’s tuition to be taken care of in order to cement the bond between client and agency.
Of course it’s dishonest and stupid. But it can be so gradual and insidious, when practiced by an expert in the art of the backhander, that an agency can be compromised while it is still trying to decide what to do. And where do you draw the line between the acceptable and the unacceptable? The difference in cost between a case of champagne and a car is enormous. The difference in principle is not that easy to measure. A man once asked a beautiful woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars. She agreed. When he reduced his offer to five dollars, she was outraged. Did he think she was a prostitute? “Madam, that principle is already established,” said the man. “All we’re discussing now is the price.”
The Good Client
Yes, he is out there somewhere. He is reasonable, receptive, and intelligent. He assumes that his agency has skills that his company does not have, and he is happy to work with people rather than dictate to them. He has his opinions, but he’s prepared to discuss them and is not afraid of changing them if a valid argument for change is presented to him. He doesn’t require lunch every time he meets the agency, he doesn’t pass the buck, and he’s honest.
One of the best of the good clients I’ve known, Anthony Simmonds-Gooding, was in charge of the Heineken account when it was small beer. He approved and stayed with a campaign that is still running after thirteen years, winning awards, helping to increase sales every year, and becoming part of the language.
He got the advertising he deserved. It sometimes happens.