The most fascinating thing about the Marketing Forum on board the
Oriana a couple of weeks ago was not trying to stay awake while a
futurist called Watts Wacker told us about the importance of the
five-hundred-year plan, when, as we all know, five-minute plans are the
exception in most ad agencies. No, it was discovering the reasons
clients were there, and indeed why some keep coming back year after year
to indulge in what sane people would describe as social torture. Some of
them offer absorbing insights into the state of agency/client
relationships. One client, for instance, told me that, contrary to
persistent rumours, he would not dream of changing his agency - well,
not since they had fired the creative director and rewritten the work at
his insistence.
At least he had a reason. Other client behaviour was less
explicable.
Me, to an fmcg client with a pounds 10 million annual budget: ’Of all
the agencies you met here, which ones stand out?’ Him: ’Well, none of
the big ad agencies, of course, but I did meet an interesting woman from
a direct marketing agency. She talked a lot of sense, but the real
reason I remember her was because she had a bowl of sweets on her
meeting table instead of one of those electronic handbag laptop
thingies.’
There is some innocent fun to be had from reading between the lines of
this type of comment, of course, for the client in question has enjoyed
a successful relationship with a major ad agency for as long as I can
remember. It’s just that he didn’t expect to be surprised by any of the
ad agencies he met, while the marketing services companies, he reported,
were bursting with new ideas.
To end, some good news. The Visa Delta campaign that inspired the joke -
Q: What’s the difference between ’kerching’ and a bucket of shit? A: The
bucket - is no more. Mel Smith’s character has been killed off and the
creative has passed into the safe hands of Matt Ryan and John Pallant at
Saatchis. What a relief.
