Posts tagged ‘agencies’
Would you follow them?
I’m due to meet up soon with my old Planning Director from years ago. He’s completely changed industries, but I always thought that if he ever opened his own agency, he’s one of the few people I’ve worked with that I’d seriously consider following to a start-up.
I suppose it’s the ultimate test – do you respect/admire/trust this person enough that you’d risk leaving your job to move to a (potentially) risky start-up to work with/for them? Over the last 10 years I must have worked with over 500 people one way or another but I can only think of maybe three that I’d even think about dropping everything for and following to a start-up.
But in the very unlikely event of W+K deciding to open a Leeds outpost I’ll be beating the door down demanding a job…
In search of missing stuff
I seem to have spent a large chunk of this week charging round the office hunting down missing books, scalpels, calculators etc. Which has reminded me of the Allan Ahlberg poem ‘Scissors’, which I’ve adapted here for agency use:
Scalpels don’t lose themselves,
Melt away, or explode.
Scalpels have not got
Legs of their own
To go running off up the road.
We really need those scalpels,
That’s what makes me mad.
If it was a couple of pairs
Of Creatives we’d lost,
It wouldn’t be so bad.
I don’t want to hear excuses.
Don’t anyone speak.
Just ransack this agency
Till we find them,
Or we’ll stop here… all week!
End of an agency
Those of you in the UK who work outside London might have seen the ad below earlier this month in The Drum – it was Poulters’ last ever ad. I’ve blogged before about how sad it was to see one of the long standing Northern heavyweight agencies fall, but the majority of copy here (which I’ve pasted below for ease of reading) seems appropriate for almost any departing agency and a reminder of both the good and the not so good sides of agency life.
The creatives behind the ad were apparently the lovely Mick and Gaz by the way, who are now freelance.
poulters-last-ad (click link for high res pdf)
They say you’re only as good as your last ad. Well this is ours.
After this there will be no more headlines, no more copy, no more
visuals, no more logo to make bigger. No more good briefs, no
more bad briefs, no more unreasonable deadlines and no more late
night food deliveries (sorry George’s Pizzas). No more budgets,
no more contact reports. No more filling out timesheets, no more
fabricating your timesheets. No more SP, DM, PR, B2B or PS2 over
lunchtime. No more getting on pitch lists, no more winning pitches,
no more wishing we’d won a few more pitches. No more creative
awards, effectiveness awards, regional awards, national awards or
international awards. Nothing more for the cleaners to polish. No
more art working, type kernin g, proof reading or spell cheking.
No more dealing with the lovely people at the BACC. No more
spending your evening with the security guard rather than your
family. No more money left to book lavish double page spreads
(does anyone know who’s paying for this?). No more account
handlers spitting blood with creatives. No more putting it all to
rights in the Adelphi after work. No more back slapping or back
stabbing. No more rumours, no more gossip, no more strenuous
denials and no more ‘no comment’. No more being on the brink of
greatness or the brink of disaster. No more wondering why
the phone list keeps getting shorter or why the client list
isn’t getting any longer. No more sliding slowly into the gutter.
No more enjoying the highs of a new business win. No
more enjoying the highs from smelling your Pentel marker. No more
brainstorms, thought showers or blue sky thinking. No more tissue
meetings, no more client meetings, no more clients. No more
turfing out the MD’s office for the World Cup. No more turfing out
the MD. No more above the line, below the line, through the line,
just the end of the line. No more blazing a trail through the 60’s and
70’s or living the advertising dream in the 80’s. No more advertising
Porsche cars. No more advertising Lada cars. No more choosing
Porsches over Ladas for company cars. No more animated oven
chips riding on surf boards (it was original at the time). No more
taglines we’ll never forget, like “they’re choc’a bloc man”. No
more taglines we’d sooner forget, like “they’re choc’a bloc man”.
No more brands that need building. No more airlines to get off the
ground. No more bookmakers to gamble everything on. No more
Tracy and Lorraine to keep the perfect reception. No more phone
calls to answer (unless they’re from recruitment agencies). No more
young industry hopefuls passing through the doors at Burley Road
or Rose Wharf. No more talented, inspired individuals coming
back out again. No more working with friends, rather than
just colleagues. No more being part of an advertising institution.
No more rollercoaster to ride. No more words left to say.
No more Poulters.
The passing of Poulters
One of Yorkshire’s oldest agencies Poulters is apparently being closed by parent company Bezier.
Although it looks like a handful of staff might reappear in Bezier’s new retail offering Coutts, for the majority there must be some very long faces in their Rose Wharf offices today.
My current (enormous by regional standards) agency started life as a Poulters breakaway in the 80s and Poulters also spawned several other start-ups. In fact nearly everyone in the comms industry in Yorkshire has worked there at one point or another.
Like any agency, Poulters (and it’s previous incarnations spanning nearly 40 years of Poulter Group, Poulter Partners and Graham Poulter Advertising) wasn’t perfect. But I learnt an awful lot there and had a lot of fun too.
cropped version of a pic by ex-Poulters Jim Moran on flickr
we need more Chris type people in AdLand
This is Chris, Cornish horseman extraordinaire and thoroughly decent chap.
Thanks to his gentle encouragement and laid backness, I ended up doing all kinds of things last week (like riding a dressage test on a stallion) that I’d never have dared to on my own, while feeling safe, confident and secure.
So I’m thinking that we need more people like him (account directors?) agency side to encourage (NOT bully) clients big and small to be that little bit braver when approving strategy and creative and to feel that they are doing so in as risk-free a way as possible.
I guess even more so in these wobbly times, in the end its all about people.
What are we going to do? Buy Heat magazine!
Its been around for a while, but I love this ad by Quiet Storm. It beautifully positions Heat magazine as the original and best gossip mag in a lovely gentle Smack the Pony type way that speaks directly to women who will stop at nothing to get their weekly gossip fix.
There IS life outside the M25
Phil Hicks of Golley Slater Cardiff has written a lovely post on Scamp’s blog about what its like to work outside London. Although its written from a Creative’s perspective, I wholeheartedly agree with him.
On the downside, client budgets do tend to be five or six rather than seven figures and we do have some truly boring B2B clients that tend to have words like ‘solutions’ in their name.
And from a Planner’s point of view, there just aren’t that many jobs (and therefore Planners) around, making it potentially a bit lonely as well as blumin difficult to recruit and equally challenging when the time comes to move jobs.
But on the upside, in Summer if I leave work at 5.30 (not everyday, obviously) I can be cantering across the moors on my horse by 6.30 while I imagine the London guys are still at their desk or sweltering on the Tube.
better for the soul than going to the gym after work
The whole Quality of Life thing is a biggie. A lot of the creatives and account handlers I work with are ex-London. Most of them realised: job in London agency + buying a house/having a baby = incompatible. Houses are cheaper, childcare (i.e. grandparents) are nearer and we are twenty minutes away from proper rolling countryside for all that fresh air malarky.
Land generally is cheaper so the office boasts a lovely garden, complete with wi-fi for al fresco client meetings in Summer and I can park/abandon my car for free in the adjacent (slightly crowded) car park.
We do tend to attract challenger brands who can’t quite stretch their budgets to the big boys in London but are up for trying all kinds of integrated coolness – even if you don’t often manage to get any TV signed off.
Then there’s the FMCG boys who have their HQs in the North and might balk at taking the TV outside London but will quite happily let you loose on almost everything else. I’ve got a CV full of brands most Planners would kill for, its just that I’ve been working with them on foodservice, promotional marketing, press or digital.
So if Having A Life matters more to you than doing the whole London thing, venture outside the M25 and discover a whole new world.
Here it goes again: oh where did you nick that ad?
The latest culprits in the ongoing ‘nick the creative from youtube and hope no-one notices’ saga has got to be whoever at JWT did the latest Berocca ads.
The agency must have assumed that they were the only people in the world who had seen OK Go’s fab video for here it goes again. Just them and the 32 million views so far on youtube then.
Disclosure: I thought twice about posting this as one my clients is part of the Bayer group who own Berocca. Then I thought s*d it, lazy creative is still lazy creative. If the ad was better than the original you could give them a bit of wiggle room, but to my eyes its worse.
Integration – your time has come (again)
I honestly think that big integrated agencies are coming round again (this obviously has absolutely nothing do with the fact that I work for one).
Client’s budgets and the size of their in-house teams are being squeezed and increasingly they’re asking my lot to become an extension of the marketing team - even to the extent of managing their relationships with other agency suppliers.
As the communications landscape becomes more complex and more fragmented, clients face a choice to:
- either employ upwards of a dozen agencies and manage those relationships, ensuring strategic and creative consistency
- or appoint a lead agency, give them the bulk of the work and have them ‘police’ the rest of the roster
For clients who want to go home before midnight, the second option seems increasingly the way to go.
It means that integrated agencies will really have to ensure that their offering is all about not only being integrated and an authority on the changing comms environment, but also as a circus ringmaster.
No small feat.
