Up the Agency

by Peter Mayle

  There might, in addition, be a personal assistant, but not the nubile little hussy with the big sunglasses; she is temporary vacation staff. The permanent PA is more likely to be a young man in a dark suit who shadows the great man everywhere. His functions are to take notes, to pay restaurant bills, to carry documents and attaché cases, and to liaise with the secretarial unit so that he can act as a mobile memory during any time spent out of the office. He is also sent off into the rain to summon the chauffeur.

  In London, agency chauffeurs are as acutely status-conscious as their employers and take great pride in having the longest, blackest, most shiny Mercedes of any member of the chauffeurs’ club. (The Rolls, for some reason, is not so popular nowadays, although one agency chairman’s chauffeur, a magnificently stately creature, has his own Rolls, which he drives when he’s off duty.) The top chauffeurs have a fiercely competitive streak that shows itself every time they attend a function in central London, and the competition is to see who can get pole position right outside the hotel entrance at the end of the evening. Park Lane becomes a death trap of swooping limousines, and the winner is the chauffeur whose boss has to walk the shortest distance. The prize—wonderful moment!—is when the boss turns to one of his peers and offers him a lift to his car, which is stuck ignominiously at the end of the line.

  This nucleus of four (secretaries, PA, and chauffeur) is often augmented by a personal chef. Strictly speaking, he is retained to cook nourishing and inexpensive meals for the directors’ dining room, but with very little persuasion he will be happy to prepare rather more elaborate menus for private dinner parties at his employer’s house.

  Domestic staff are essential, but not as satisfying, since there is a limit to the number of people who can see them. It is a problem that one monumentally pretentious advertising man overcame by arranging meetings at his home on Saturday mornings. In the course of these meetings, he would excuse himself to go to the back door, often, as legend had it, dressed for the occasion in a velvet smoking jacket. Lined up outside the back door would be the servants, waiting for their wages. After a suitable period of forelock tugging and distribution of largess, the meeting would be resumed.

  The retinue can stretch down to the country and even overseas, but the city is where it counts because London is where it can be seen.

  The same principle of high visibility dictates the choice of sporting interests. Very few advertising men, if any, enjoy the solitary pleasures of walking or fishing. The outfits aren’t glamorous enough, and the social opportunities nonexistent. Shooting, skiing, golf, football (in the capacity of non-playing patron), and sailing all have their share of supporters, but the one sport that might almost have been invented for the amusement and benefit of the advertising business is tennis.

  It has just about everything. The equipment, even down to the Boris Becker Grand Slam autographed socks, is hideously expensive, and it is clearly marked with famous names and logos to show that it’s expensive. There is the chance to increase the number of personal retainers by hiring Doctor Topspin, the Czechoslovakian coach. The private tennis clubs are suitably exclusive and sure to impress clients. And the social opportunities are infinite; better still, they’re deductible. The most elusive of new business prospects will always come to heel when a ticket to Centre Court at Wimbledon is waved under his nose, and an overpriced bowl of strawberries and cream will often do the trick where lunch at the Ritz has failed. Game, set, and account to the agency.

  We come now to the second and more specialized form of status hunting, which is practiced in a separate world of its own within the larger world of advertising. Only creative people can take part (although, given a little thought and ingenuity, no doubt something could be arranged for media planners and professors of research), and they do so with relentless enthusiasm and considerable political cunning. It is the pursuit of awards.

  There are dozens—no, hundreds—to pursue. A small self-congratulatory industry has grown up over the years to celebrate the achievements of art directors, designers, writers, photographers, illustrators, TV directors, and anyone else who can claim to have had a hand in the creative process. There are awards for cinema commercials and direct-mail shots, for packaging and stationery and radio spots, for the Best Use of this and the Best Use of that: a glorious, endless torrent of certificates (suitable for framing), medals, statuettes, Plexiglas icons, silver arrows, golden pencils, and desk jewelry of all shapes and sizes. Recognition—visible, tangible, stick-it-on-the-wall recognition—is there in abundance, and it is greatly revered.

  There are organizations in all major advertising cities that arrange, once a year, the collection of outstanding work and its assessment by eminent figures in the business. But since London, according to London agency people, currently produces the best advertising, it seems appropriate to see how excellence is rewarded there.

  Several generous bodies have instituted awards schemes as British advertising has become a more intrusive and prosperous part of industry, and their prizes are always welcome. One institution, however, that has managed to totter along for more than twenty-five years on the brink of bankruptcy, riddled by politics and guilty of sponsoring the year’s most inedible dinner, is undoubtedly the front-runner. Despite infighting, incompetence, and indigestion, the Designers and Art Directors Association (or DADA, as it is known to its intimates) is the single-most-influential source of creative fame. This is how it works.

  During the post-Christmas doldrums, when there is not normally a great deal going on in most agencies apart from hangovers and skiing vacations, the creative department is uncharacteristically busy. It is reviewing all the work it has produced in the previous twelve months and selecting the campaigns and individual advertisements that it feels worthy of DADA’s recognition. Naturally, all the writers and art directors consider that their personal output is vastly superior to that of their colleagues. They want to enter everything they’ve done, from the two-minute commercials down to the witty invitation they knocked out for the office party.

  Unfortunately, DADA’s entry fees are substantial. All items entered must be accompanied by a check, and so the creative director finds himself with a dilemma. If he humors his writers and art directors and submits the lot, the agency may have to lay out a few thousand pounds (real money, since it can’t be claimed back from the client). The financial director will not be pleased. He already thinks the creative people cost too much, anyway. On the other hand, if the creative director edits the submissions down to a more modest and affordable number, his sensitive staff will be upset. There will be cries of favoritism and, if he decides to enter any of his own work, blatant self-promotion. It is a testing time for him, but we must leave him to get on with it, because decisions of even greater importance are being finalized over at DADA headquarters.

  Each year, certain prominent and highly regarded figures are asked to act as judges of the work submitted in various categories. The judges are experts in their particular fields. In fact, they will probably have entered some of their own work in the category they’re judging, a situation that some might say could lead to a less than disinterested eye when it comes to judging the inferior efforts of their competitors. But that’s the way it is, and a battalion of eminent men and women (one year the figure nearly reached a hundred) is recruited to sift through the thousands of entries.

  Their first job is to throw out the junk that’s always entered by the optimistic or extravagant agencies. The items that survive will be properly commemorated. They will be displayed in the DADA Exhibition, and enshrined in The Book—a glossy volume produced each year with healthy sales guaranteed by the simple device of naming all the people connected with each piece of work shown. Thus, the list of credits under a single newspaper advertisement might include the names of the art director, the writer, the photographer or illustrator, the typographer, the advertising manager, the agency, and the client—most of whom will buy a copy on their expense accounts—not, of course,
for reasons of vanity, but for reference.

  The second task before the judges is to allocate the prizes, and since these can make reputations overnight, they are not awarded lightly. (Sometimes, in the case of a split decision or as a result of some determined sabotage by a vocal judge, they may not be awarded at all, which is not entirely in the spirit of the proceedings.)

  The method of judging, both in the initial editing stage and the distribution of awards, is not too far off from the time-honored principle followed by cardinals when electing a new Pope: Any self-interest is encouraged and protected by secrecy. The organizers of DADA have done their best, but that still leaves plenty of leeway for the pat on the back or the knife in the ribs. A judge can favor the work of friends and torpedo the work of enemies, secure in the knowledge that nobody will ever know. Fellow judges may suspect that you have allowed personal fancy to interfere with your usual lucid and objective assessments, but there’s no proof. Anyway, you say to yourself as you consign another poor wretch’s pride and joy to oblivion, everybody does it.

  When at last the jury sessions are over, the material is sent off to the printers who are producing The Book, and judges’ lips are sealed on the subject of who has won what. Secrecy must be preserved for months (virtually impossible in advertising) until the awards are officially announced and The Book is officially published to coincide with the highlight of the creative year, the Art Directors’ Ball.

  Curiously enough, not every hotel in London is prepared to give over its ballroom to this event, due to the volatile and often boisterous nature of the guests. But over the years one hotel, the Hilton, has shown considerable bravery, and it is only right that it should be mentioned here. The Hilton management long ago realized where the interests of its artistic clients lie, and it has catered accordingly; drink is copious and food is an also-ran. Each year there is chicken or duck in a mystery sauce. (The foul rumor that it is the same chicken or duck, untouched on the night and preserved in the bowels of the hotel kitchen for next year, cannot possibly be true.)

  The evening begins with a table-hopping marathon. Everyone is here, and some of them haven’t seen one another since lunchtime. And as they hop from table to table, they provide a fashion show of dazzling variety. There are dinner jackets and dress shirts with winged collars, bomber jackets and ripped T-shirts, six-inch heels and Azzedine Alaia skintight (no chicken for me) dresses, business suits, cowboy boots, Levi’s, silk bustiers, sequins, three-day stubble, blue suede crepes, ponytails and earrings for the gentlemen and purple crew cuts for the ladies, Day-Glo glasses and matching socks, shapeless Japanese designer outfits in shades of crushed money, webbing bras, leather trousers, plastic sandals, Lurex ties. No wonder there are some fragile souls, still recovering from lunch, who have kept their sunglasses on. The whole thing is extremely creative.

  There is a keen sense of expectation in the air. Tonight’s the night when fifteen or twenty winners will be publicly anointed as the best in the business. Waiter! Another bucket of Soave Bolla! Wine is consumed at a furious rate as several hundred people try to break the world record for high-speed intoxication. The speeches will begin soon, and it would be a mistake to be sober when they do.

  Experience has taught the speechmakers to be brief. Ever since one tycoon was howled down in the middle of his remarks, the rule has been three or four minutes at the most. The audience is not here to listen to platitudes about the changing face of British advertising. It wants awards, and if the preliminaries drag on for too long, there are likely to be a few bread rolls and catcalls flying around.

  As the great moment approaches and the waiters perform their final sprint around the tables with armfuls of Rémy Martin bottles, it is possible to pick out of the crowd the people who think they might be called up to the dais and presented with a golden pencil. They are relatively sober, and you can see them measuring the distance from table to dais, checking out the route to make sure they can get up there in the shortest possible time—just in case, as has been known to happen, two people go up for the same award.

  The main lights dim and the spotlight beams down on the rows of pencils and the piles of certificates. The president of DADA (a position held for one year) and the chairman of DADA (a permanent and thankless post) make their way up to the dais to the strains of some appropriately thrilling music, and the ceremony begins.

  In each category, the work being honored is shown on slide or on film and the winner is summoned from the murk for those magical few seconds under the spotlight. Fortunately, the winners are not expected to make speeches, and fortunately the audience is generally good-natured and generous with its applause. There is always disappointment, but there is always the bottle of Rémy Martin at hand and the imminent prospect of some harmless diversion as soon as the pencils and certificates have been handed out.

  Once this has been done, the evening moves into its dangerous period. The combination of drink, excitement, music, and some spectacularly revealing outfits plays havoc with restraint. The dance floor and the surrounding tables seethe with the joy of orgy; lurching figures, furtive embraces, bottom pinching, thigh squeezing, torn and wine-sodden garments, overturned chairs, prostrate bodies (still clutching their golden pencils), heads slumped among the bottles and decorum nowhere to be seen.

  At least, that is how it used to be. Recently, due to the increased respectability of the business, the Art Directors’ Ball has shown disturbing signs of sensible behavior. Now that art directors are businessmen, often with a seat on the board, it seems to have affected their capacity for enjoyment. Perhaps their chairmen have told them that it is not a good idea for the officers of public companies to be seen crawling around under tables and biting young women on the leg. Whatever the reason, the Art Directors’ Ball is not what it used to be. A great shame, and another small indication that advertising is now taking itself very, very seriously.

  The Ultimate Trip

  Despite wealth, success, the acclaim of their colleagues, and a permanent reservation at Lutéce, there are some advertising men who feel that their talents have been insufficiently recognized. It’s all very well to be on intimate terms with the chairman of Spandex International or Allied Biscuits, but they, in the end, are just businessmen. Outside their own environment, they are anonymous and, frankly, rather dull. There must be other, more stimulating people somewhere who would jump at the chance of working with a total communications expert, a legendary manipulator who almost single-handedly changed the face of the Condom Marketing Board. His skills should be put to greater and more public-spirited use, and where better than in the bright glare of politics?

  But definitely not as a politician (long hours, low pay, miserable expenses)—no, the spot we’re looking for is that of the éminence grise, the image doctor, the sage who advises nationally known men and women what to say and how to say it and not to pick their noses on television. Consultant to the nation’s leaders! Now there’s a worthy climax to a glittering career; in England, it can even lead to a knighthood.

  Politics and advertising have a great deal in common. Both occupations have their quota of avid self-promoters who understand the refinements of the verbal nuance (or “weaseling,” as it’s sometimes called). Other shared characteristics include a fondness for knocking copy to discredit the competition, a passion for research surveys, a willingness to change horses in midstream if a faster and more expedient saddle offers itself, a keen appetite for meetings, and an even keener appetite for the trappings of importance. Altogether, it promises to be a rare and fruitful meeting of minds and ambitions.

  The politician as client poses some interesting problems, most of which stem from the fact that in this case—very unusual in advertising—the client is also the product, and frequently the product is extremely badly packaged. The clothes look as though they’ve been rescued from a fire sale, there is an unfortunate jowliness around the chops (and we all know how television will add at least another five unflattering pounds), the tee
th are crooked and dingy, and the hairstyle—good grief, that hairstyle!—could only have been achieved with a lawn mower and a can of acrylic spray. When looked at objectively, through the eyes of the image doctor, the raw material needs a drastic overhaul.

  Objectivity needs to be exercised with some delicacy because we are treading on some thin-shelled eggs. The self-perception of politicians is rarely less than flattering, and to be told that the carefully cultivated public face is an unattractive mess might ruin the client/agency relationship before it has had a chance to get established. How simple it would be if we could just dispatch the budding President to the art department to be repackaged; unfortunately, the process has to be carried out little by little, one tactful step at a time.

  It would be a virtually impossible task except for the political ambitions of the client, which are so consuming that the occasional humiliating dent to the self-esteem can be justified as the necessary means to a glorious end. This is the tie that binds, and the image doctor knows it. All he has to do is to contain his impatience and deal with the various imperfections as diplomatically as he can. Today the hair, tomorrow the teeth.

  Appearance, in all its details, is perhaps the most straightforward part of marketing a politician. Good haircuts and clothes, and if necessary a little dieting and cosmetic dentistry, are not difficult to arrange. The other adjustments that need to be made, since they involve changing habits developed over many years, are more complex. They can be classified, for the sake of the strategy document, under the headings of technique and content.

  Technique