Up the Agency

by Peter Mayle

  In those days, it was strictly an American preserve, because only the United States had the giant clients—Coca-Cola, IBM, Ford, Procter, Colgate—whose foreign budgets were big enough to justify an agency branch office. These branch offices rumbled along, picking up local business where they could, securely based on the income provided by the mother client across the Atlantic. British agencies found it very frustrating; they could pitch until they were hoarse for the British slice of an American giant, only to run up against the impregnable client/agency relationship that was so carefully maintained at Head Office, USA.

  The great achievement of the Saatchis was to leapfrog all the long and usually fruitless nonsense of pitching for big American clients and just buy the agencies that had the business they wanted, using paper provided by the City. Once they had shown that this could be done, not just in the United States but all over the world, there was obviously a need to find a brave new description for it, and for the more wide-ranging marketing opportunities that could make it attractive to clients. We can imagine the search for the perfect label, the various combinations of international, multinational, growth, progress, wider business horizons, and a dozen other words and phrases that partly explained but never encapsulated the girdling of the earth.

  None of them was quite right. None of them had corporate sex appeal. None of them was new. And then, enshrined in the pages of the Harvard Business Review, Maurice Saatchi found the magic word, credit (or blame) for which should go to Professor Theodore Levitt: globalization!

  Well, the good professor may have invented it, but the Saatchis and the advertising business have now taken it over and sold it. Apart from its brevity and its world-conquering associations of thinking big, globalization fits the bill so neatly because it is not just the agency beating its chest; the client can join in, as well. We can all globalize together, treating the world as one market, leaping national boundaries with our toothpaste and soft drinks and detergent, selling aspirin and acne remedies from Nome to Tierra del Fuego, to thousands of millions of consumers who are going to be thrilled to find their favorite brand of catsup in every corner of the earth. Who could resist? It is marketing’s Promised Land.

  Access to the Promised Land, unfortunately, is only available to agencies and clients who are not only globally aware but globally capable, and it is here that the British agency—publicly quoted and successful though it may be—is weak. Giant clients can’t be expected to globalize with domestic agencies. And sooner or later, without those giant clients, the growth rate will slow down, the security analysts will resume their nagging, and the agency may well be seized and swallowed in a takeover. In the end, there’s nothing to do but go over to the home of the biggest, most globalized clients and seek an arrangement with one of the mammoths of Madison Avenue. (Although nowadays they are likely to have less glamorous addresses like Third Avenue or Sixth or that distant netherworld called downtown. But what the hell; it’s only a long cab ride from the Pierre or the Carlyle.)

  America the Bountiful

  Gadgets are popular with advertising people, particularly if they are highly priced and supersonic, and so the suitable way for a British adman, as I once was, to begin any reconnaissance trip to the conglomerates in New York is by Concorde. It may be cramped, but in a way that adds to the delightful feeling that we are members of a small and exclusive club, traveling with people who are as busy and important as we are. Why, we might easily find ourselves rubbing knees with a famous film director or David Frost or some Texan squillionaire who has forgotten where he’s left his private jet. As the passengers file on board, they size each other up—not in an obvious way, of course—to reassure themselves that they are among fellow movers and shakers. Frivolous holidaymakers who are starting to punish the free champagne at ten in the morning are ignored because they have no place here. Concorde is not for them; it is for the lords of the stratosphere, the executives for whom time is money. The plane takes off to the sound of a fusillade of clicks as attaché cases are snapped open, and documents are shuffled assiduously all the way across the Atlantic. A working day in the Mecca of advertising lies ahead.

  It takes several visits for any European emissary to adjust to the monumental opulence of the world of the big New York agencies—the acres of oiled teak and leather and plate glass, the vertiginous views from the power offices (always on the corner of the building, so that the visitor has a choice of vertigo), the vastness of the budgets and salaries, the length of the limousines, the size of the lobsters at the Palm Restaurant, as big as basking sharks, the price of burgundy at the Four Seasons—it’s all so wonderfully excessive. In fact, it’s advertising heaven. Until you look at the advertising that pays for it.

  Twenty-five years ago, the best American advertising was the best in the world, and British visitors used to return from New York with tales of commercials that might have been written by Woody Allen; commercials with extraordinary people—black, Jewish, Italian, all incredibly ethnic—saying funny things in those funny accents of theirs, minor comic masterpieces. And the same approach could be seen in print advertising. Instead of demented housewives comparing soiled clothing or the endless repetition of leaden slogans, one or two brave souls were producing witty, colloquial advertisements that assumed the general public had a sense of humor.

  Bill Bernbach was selling ugly, unpretentious little cars by being honest and amusing about what a Volkswagen could and couldn’t do, and making the obscure Levy’s Jewish bakery famous with one small poster campaign. David Ogilvy was selling Hathaway shirts and Rolls-Royces with intelligent copy that contained words of more than two syllables. And, wonder of wonders, it seemed to be effective as well as noticeable. The agencies that were doing what was then called “creative advertising” flourished.

  The larger, older agencies who weren’t doing creative advertising had a comforting line of argument if anyone should suggest that their work might benefit from a little humor or originality. It’s all very well, they would say, for these rinky-dink advertisers with tiny budgets. They can afford to make jokes and take risks (conveniently forgetting the risk and the waste involved in running advertising that is either not noticed or actively disliked). But we, the big agencies, are dealing with vast budgets and important products—cornflakes and detergents and laxatives—and we’re not talking to a handful of East Coast intellectuals. We’re talking to Middle America, and they won’t buy that kind of cute shit.

  But at that time, quite a few large clients weren’t so sure. Why shouldn’t a housewife in Kansas have a sense of humor? Why should noticeable and effective advertising be restricted to small budgets when big budgets would make it even more noticeable and effective? Were dirty shirt collars and constipation really such grave and important issues in consumers’ lives that they couldn’t be treated with a lightness of touch? If the new advertising could sell cars and bread, why couldn’t it sell coffee and aspirin and beer?

  For a number of years, creative advertising was in danger of taking over Madison Avenue, and some old agencies felt obliged to invest in some window dressing, hiring high-profile creative directors to show that they, too, were ready to clamber on the bandwagon if it should really start rolling. These hirings usually ended in tears, but it was an indication of how seriously the old agencies took the threat posed by the upstarts.

  Ironically, the beginning of the end for creative advertising was probably helped along by one of the upstarts herself. Mary Wells, who had produced brilliant work for Benson & Hedges 100s and Braniff Airlines, responded to a recession in the American economy by saying that times were getting harder and that selling should get harder, too. No more jokes, boys. Let’s get the presenter out of retirement and put him back on camera, holding the product and selling for all he’s worth.

  The sigh of relief from the traditional agencies must have been audible all over Manhattan as the flash in the pan flickered, then petered out. It had been an anxious few years.

  Today, the ol
d heroes have either disappeared or grown too tired and rich to bother anymore, and American advertising, for the most part, is in the hands of committees instead of individuals. They have succeeded in bringing back the days when you could look through a magazine or watch an hour or two of television without once being disturbed by a hint of originality. The commercials are once again dull and predictable, and many old stereotypes have popped out of the woodwork: the clean-cut young people capering around to the accompaniment of jingles, the lantern-jawed men driving cars across deserts or drinking beer, the desperately sincere presenters, the women pouting at the camera, the adorable families going into ecstasies over Mom’s meatloaf—they’re all back, coining their residuals, tricked out in modern clothes and modern haircuts but otherwise firmly rooted in the past. To complete the evening’s entertainment, there are those wash-day widows from Cincinnati, Mrs. Procter and Mrs. Gamble, comparing their grubby garments. But they’re in a special category, since they never really went away; like death and taxes, they are always with us.

  There is no great relief to be had from turning off the TV and picking up a magazine. Even The New Yorker, which was once the setting for some of the most memorable and influential print advertising ever produced, from Volkswagen and Polaroid to Hathaway and Avis, is now stuffed with ponderous plugs for businessmen’s hotels and a bewildering variety of running shoes.

  The decline in American advertising should be taken as a warning by British agencies, because what happens in New York tends to happen, some years later, in London. But for the moment, the visiting British executive finds, perhaps to his surprise, that what he has said so often might actually be true: British advertising is now the best in the world.

  And so it is with a pleasant but well-concealed feeling of creative superiority that he steps out of the elevator on the thirty-eighth floor and into the conglomerate’s den. More teak and glass and cunning lighting, and the ruffle of air conditioning. Or is it someone counting money?

  He is led into the corner office to meet—or since he’s in New York, to “meet with”—one of the conglomerate’s top men. This is an exploratory visit, so there’s nothing as formal as a meeting with the executive committee or the board—just two guys talking over philosophies and possibilities, followed by a two-hundred-dollar lunch.

  The top man’s office, it has to be said, is damned impressive. For a start, there are those dizzy double views, with the worker ants barely visible thirty-eight floors below as they scurry along the street. No two-hundred-dollar lunch for them; probably some kind of low-rent sandwich in a brown paper bag.

  Inside, the view is wealthy. Graphic starkness and architectural minimalism might be appropriate in Covent Garden, but not here. There is an abundance of carpet, suede, rosewood, polished granite, brushed steel—but not a vulgar abundance. It is extremely tastefully done. Mies van der Rohe would have approved. In fact, it’s the kind of office that can give you second thoughts about graphic starkness, which seems a little bleak and uncomfortable by comparison. There is one touch of minimalism: The spotless, gleaming desk is bare except for a leather document folder and a few hundred dollars’ worth of Mont Blanc pens and pencils. And behind the desk, barbered and manicured and shoe-shined to perfection, glowing with a tan acquired in the Hamptons (summer) or the Caribbean (winter), is the man himself.

  He is damned impressive, too: a heavy hitter in a silk suit, with those impossibly perfect American teeth much in evidence as he smiles and chats in a relaxed arm-around-the-shoulder style that makes you feel like an old and intimate friend. Right away, he confesses to being a great admirer of British advertising in general and the work being done by your agency in particular. And he’s done his homework. He knows the accounts and the campaigns, the billings and the share price. He sympathizes with the difficulties of achieving better figures and bigger dividends. He has the same cross to bear; his shareholders are always kicking his ass, too. It’s a hell of a way to earn a living.

  But, as you discover in the course of the next few days, it’s a hell of a living, what with the duplex, the summer place in the Hamptons, the forty-five-foot boat, the condominium in Vail, and those minor odds and ends—constant limos and accounts in a dozen good restaurants—that make living in New York more than tolerable. And, as the chats continue, you discover something else: The man is not just a professional charmer. He knows about art and music and books and wine. He knows Europe better than you do. He has a healthy sense of humor. What a pleasure it would be to work with him. And yet… how can you reconcile this cultured and discriminating fellow with some of the crap turned out by his agency?

  The contrast between the highly articulate and intelligent individuals who work in American advertising and the banal junk they often produce is a puzzle that is perhaps partly solved by looking at some figures.

  There are at least fifty U.S. corporations whose advertising budgets exceed $200 million worldwide. A $200 million account delivers $30 million income to the agency. For this kind of money, the client expects and demands advertising that he considers to be effective, but advertising effectiveness is extraordinarily difficult to measure with any kind of accuracy. After all the research and testing has been done, there is still room for debate and opinion. The client’s opinion may, and frequently does, differ from the way the agency sees things. If persuasion fails, the agency can either agree with the client or kiss $30 million goodbye, and it’s easy enough to guess what will happen. Business is business, and if there are some small qualms about expediency and compromise, these can always be soothed in one way or another. Living well is the best revenge.

  This may sound simplistic and unkind, but what other answer is there? Could any sane adult reveal with a straight face that he was sincerely involved in the Doublemint Gum commercials, the painkiller sagas, the dramas of the postnasal drip and germ-infested bathrooms and greasy T-shirts that take up ten percent or more of American TV viewing time? Nobody could devote a career to this with any enthusiasm were it not for the money.

  That in itself is no crime, and there are plenty of honest and cheerfully cynical people in advertising who will privately admit to turning out puerile work for the rewards it brings in. For the others, there are different ways of coming to terms with the problem, and the higher they proceed up the corporate ladder, the easier it is to distance themselves from creative matters. Finally, although advertising is the product their corporations sell, they themselves cease to be advertising men and become instead international businessmen. And the liaisons they arrange with other international businessmen have very little to do with creative philosophies other than the creation of a few more million.

  It’s something to think about on the flight back to London. Like it or not, that’s the way the big league is, and if your agency has been invited to join, there are a number of reasons for accepting the invitation.

  Greed

  While this is not something to be aired over the conference table with the rest of the board, it is impossible to resist making a few rosy calculations about the extent of personal gain that would accrue as a result of joining a conglomerate. The couple of million that came in when the agency went public now looks modest when put against the many millions that have been hinted at in the event of a successful international deal.

  Boredom

  After a few years of running an agency, a certain repetition creeps into the mechanics of management. The same old problems reappear with new faces attached to them—disgruntled staff, disenchanted clients—and what was once a stimulating challenge turns into familiar drudgery. As a top-level man in an international conglomerate, however, much of this day-to-day tedium can be delegated. Who can forget the international executive creative director, for example, who spent his time touring the offices of the world in his lofty capacity as corporate critic? Pausing in each office just long enough to dispense a few days’ worth of wisdom, he was well out of the firing line by the time his suggestions had been implemented. If they
proved to be disastrous, he would complain on his next visit that they had been misinterpreted. Try again, he’d say. I have a plane to catch.

  Opportunities such as this exist in many walks of top conglomerate life, and for a few years, providing a person can endure endless first-class hotels and travel, it makes a change from the continuing grind of dealing with the politics and administration of a single office, although it does play havoc with the digestion.

  Self-defense

  More and more, any agency that doesn’t belong to an international network will find itself excluded from international clients. As the blessings of globalization spread, so clients will appoint a single chain of agencies that can service them wherever they happen to be. Having a sound local client list is no lasting protection, because it’s always possible that some clients themselves may be taken over and extracted from the agency to fit in with some grand global plan. One or two bad breaks like this and the agency will be in trouble, wide open to a bargain-basement takeover offer.

  A Sense of Mission

  The optimist’s theory, which permits the cash to be taken without the stigma of selling out, goes something like this:

  We know that the advertising produced by our prospective purchasers is wretched stuff compared with our own memorable and original campaigns, but we have been assured that we shall be creatively independent, left alone to do our noble work without interference from our owners. In fact, they admire our advertising; they’ve said so time and again. Why buy us if they’re going to change us? But that alone, as comforting as it may be, is not the end of it. The optimist’s mission is not merely to maintain his high creative standards, but to impose them on the rest of the conglomerate’s world. Global excellence, and stinking rich to boot!