Paul Longhurst’s shoes are disappointingly normal compared with his
usual footwear. Brown suede loafers have replaced the green crocodile
Guccis he was wearing when I first met him. ’Yeah, I took them back
after six months when they fell apart,’ he explains. He got his money
back, too (even though Gucci should have paid him to wear them).
Somehow, green Guccis might detract from the serious image he now wants
to portray as a co-director of a brand new media company, Quantum, set
up with 50/50 backing from Booth Lockett Makin (Campaign, last
week).
The objectives are laid out on a 24-page fax, but the key issue is
outlined on page one: ’To build a new type of media specialist agency
that can handle real change ... in a market suffering from a lack of new
ideas and investment in the future.’
So why did he plump for BLM? ’I didn’t really come close to any other
deal,’ he explains. ’I know it sounds cliched, but there is a genuine
like-mindedness between me and Steve (Booth); others I talked to just
didn’t get it.’
Didn’t get what? He answers by opening his copy of the Financial Times
and showing me the number of articles about digital television and new
media in general. ’All of this, by definition of being in the FT, is
close to the heart of business, but there has been very little
communication to the heads of business from the advertising industry as
to what the industry’s role will be.’
So if Longhurst’s proposition is a dead cert, why have so few others
made a stand and put themselves forward to represent the way ahead?
’There is a risk,’ he admits, ’but the central issue is that new media
isn’t an if, it’s a when. Agencies never seem to do anything until the
clients say ’why aren’t you doing this?’.’
The client offer is broad. ’The most interesting conversations I’ve had
have been with clients who want to use digital TV but don’t know where
to start. I can provide the knowledge and the resource for just that.
But for people who know a bit more about the area, I can simply
negotiate some great deals for them. But I haven’t gone into this just
to do a safe bit of, say, press buying.’
One area that is unclear is how Quantum will fit into clients’ agency
rosters. Longhurst isn’t sure who he’ll replace, or enhance, in the
media mix. ’Umm ... I haven’t quite worked out the answer to that one
yet,’ he confesses. ’Part of the reason that I can’t talk about my
existing clients is that I don’t know how their other media agencies
will see me. But on the creative side, I can see myself teaming up with
the likes of TBWA, St Luke’s, the innovative ones.’
It seems like a very long time ago that Longhurst was in the middle of
an unsavoury wrangle with Ammirati Puris Lintas, of which he was the
media director. Although Longhurst’s departure from Lintas was somewhat
less than amicable, he insists that he wouldn’t have changed a thing. ’I
left at the right time. Had I stuck around and done a deal with them, it
would have been a fudge; I wouldn’t have had the autonomy I would have
needed to steer their media in the right direction.’
He’s been gainfully occupied since leaving Lintas in July. ’I’ve been
getting the business plan together, having meetings, you know.’ Here
Longhurst’s reputation as a slightly off-the-wall type fails him. Didn’t
he learn to belly dance? ’Well, I thought about the jazz guitar ...’ he
tails off.
His wideboy reputation as a tough time buyer was built in part during a
spell at McCann-Erickson in the early 80s, golden years for a department
that then contained Gary Digby, Stuart Butterfield, Simon Lynds and
Nigel Sharrocks. His move to Bates Dorland (after a three-month spell at
MBS) in 1983 brought him into contact with Booth, and his knack for
working with highly regarded media men continued when he joined Bartle
Bogle Hegarty in 1987, where he was Richard Eyre’s number two for six
years. ’The key to the whole media lark is who you work with,’ he
explains. ’At Lintas, I felt a bit like a fish out of water as I wasn’t
working with the kind of people who wanted to be the best.’
Jerry Hill, the chief executive of TSMS, is familiar with Longhurst’s
reputation as an aggressive buyer. ’I’ve known him for 17 years through
a variety of guises,’ Hill says, ’and he has had a very colourful
career.
He was a very tough and thorough time buyer in his early days, but he
has had a very successful reinvention. He’s found a more subtle and
strategic area that is perfect for his fertile mind.’
THE LONGHURST FILE
1979: Lintas, trainee time buyer
1981: McCann-Erickson, TV buyer
1983: MBS, senior time buyer
1983: Bates Dorland, deputy broadcast director
1987: Bartle Bogle Hegarty, broadcast director
1993: Ammirati Puris Lintas, European media director
1996: APL, executive media director 1998 Quantum, co-founder.
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