Were one so minded, in a Little Englander kind of way, it would be
tempting to draw a parallel between the British motor industry and
British ad agencies. For Rover, Vauxhall, Jaguar, Rootes (remember
them!) and Lotus read Abbott Mead Vickers, GGT, Bartle Bogle Hegarty,
Manning Gottlieb, Banks Hoggins O’Shea and, last week, Partners BDDH
(and those are only the ones who’ve sold up in the last 18 months). Just
as the titans of British manufacturing fell to foreign invaders when it
became obvious they could no longer compete on the world stage, so, one
might say, the same fate has befallen the cream of British agencies.
Rubbish. That view is, of course, pure nostalgic nonsense. Don’t laugh,
though. Although we may have long since moved into the era of
globalisation, there are still some corners of British advertising
dogged by a pernicious British-is-best insularity. You can see this
every year at Cannes where, funnily enough, it’s evidently not true, as
well as in the nastier personal jibes at individuals such as Steve
Rabowski, Brett Gosper and Dave Droga which are underpinned by the
assumption that foreigners can’t cut the mustard on the London scene. So
let us not shed any tears for the passing of an era but instead think
about what it could mean for the future. Here, the most important
questions are: what can we learn from those with experience of other
markets and, to a lesser extent, what can they learn from us? But for
either side to learn from the other requires a degree of humility, a
quality which is not necessarily in abundant supply in this
business.
My guess is that agencies such as Partners BDDH will gain immensely from
first-hand experience of Arnold and Snyder Communications. Generally
speaking, and at the top level, my experience of American admen is that
they have a better all-round understanding of the pressures that afflict
their clients and are, therefore, more comfortable in the boardroom than
their British counterparts. In short, as one British adman says, ’There
is a lot they can teach us about how to run business and how to run
relationships.’
Equally, however, it is also true that there are some things that
outsiders can learn from British agencies. There can be no question, for
example, that DDB has transplanted BMP ideas and people throughout the
network. Planning, although it is already a very successful export, is
one British phenomenon that can be developed further overseas.
The paradox, therefore, is that, far from narrowing the horizons, the
takeover of British advertising by foreigners actually offers us all a
bigger stage on which to play. And we all support that.
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- with all that that means for communication strategies - Similarly,
British agencies’ experience of working in the world’s most
sophisticated and complex media economy will be crucial elsewhere.
