BOTW: Cantankerous egotists, phonies, zeros and bastards – a curious week for the old guard
Welcome to Best of the Week, written on Friday and Saturday at beautiful Sisters Beach, Tasmania.
Today: The mixed fortunes of Rupert Murdoch, Martin Sorrell and David Ogilvy; and what went wrong at Dentsu?
Happy National Checkers Day.
If you believe there’s a need for independent analysis of the industry your work within, you can help sustain it by becoming a paying member of Unmade. Join today.
A 78-year-old, a 92-year-old and a 112-year-old walk into a headline
Tim Burrowes writes:
Rupert on the move
Yesterday was one of those mornings. I woke up early to a series of text messages, and was on national telly and local radio before eggs had been scrambled or bread toasted. Everyone wanted to talk about Rupert Murdoch stepping down as boss of News Corp.
Reading this morning’s newspapers feels like a lot of already written obituaries have been swiftly repurposed for what is more of a punctuation mark than a full stop.
As I wrote yesterday, while he may no longer officially be in day-to-day control, through his voting rights, 92-year-old Rupert Murdoch remains the proprietor.
Chairman Emeritus means whatever he wants it to. It certainly doesn’t mean retired.
And at least he got to read his own obituaries.
Ogilvy on the mediocre majority
Indeed, it was a mixed week for the old guard.
On the up was 112-year-old David Ogilvy, 24 years after his death.
Adland celebrated the most influential copywriter of all time on the anniversary of the launch of the Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson & Mather agency in New York. It was 75 years ago today.
In some rule of name shrinkage, the agency became Ogilvy, Benson & Mather in 1954, Ogilvy & Mather in 1964 and, in Australia, Singleton Ogilvy & Mather in 1997.
Back in 2018 the agency simply became Ogilvy. Somewhere in an alternative timeline the agency Singleton, Hewitt, Benson & Mather is thriving.
Give it another couple of years and perhaps all that will survive is the letter O within one of those clumsily agency names that WPP is so fond of. VMLOYR maybe?
But David Ogilvy deserves to be celebrated. Indeed, my very first proper post for Unmade, back when this newsletter launched as Fifth Day (everyone’s guilty of random rebrands) was on the topic of David Ogilvy’s brilliance.
The tribute ad above is not a bad piece of copy, although if you listen very carefully, you can hear Mr Ogilvy spinning in his grave at the clumsy word “diplomatist”. He’d have gone with diplomat.
I doubt there are many agencies in 2023 that would proceed with an application from a 38-year-old novice copywriter. For all the industry’s talk of wanting diversity, age is a significant barrier. If you’re not one of the bosses by the time you’re in your 40s, you’ve probably left the industry.
This link to Ogilvy’s best quotations is worth saving. So many of them still ring true. Here are a dozen of his best. You could write 1000 words about any of them:
“Resist the temptation to write the kind of copy which wins awards. Most of the campaigns which produce results never win awards because they don’t draw attention to themselves.”
“Few of the great creators have bland personalities. They are cantankerous egotists, the kind of men who are unwelcome in the modern corporation.
“Nowadays it is the fashion to pretend that no single individual is ever responsible for a successful advertising campaign. This emphasis on “teamwork” is bunkum – a conspiracy of the mediocre majority.”
“We sell, or else.”
“Unless your advertising is built on a big idea it will pass like a ship in the night.”
“It takes uncommon guts to stick to one style in the face of all the pressures to “come up with something new” every six months. It is tragically easy to be stampeded into change. But golden rewards await the advertiser who has the brains to create a coherent image, and the stability to stick with it over a long period.”
“Our offices must always be headed by the kind of men who command respect. Not phonies, zeros or bastards.”
“I always use my clients’ products. This is not toadyism but elementary good manners.”
“The best way to get new accounts is to create for our present clients the kind of advertising that will attract prospective clients. We do not have new business departments in our offices.”
“The consumer isn’t a moron; she is your wife. You insult her intelligence if you assume that a mere slogan and a few vapid adjectives will persuade her to buy anything.”
“Our business is infested with idiots who try to impress by using pretentious jargon.”
“I abhor advertising that is blatant, dull, or dishonest.”
Sorrell’s poor numbers
Speaking of cantankerous, another of the non-retiring old guard had a rotten week.
Shares in S4 Capital, headed by 78-year-old Sir Martin Sorrell, tanked. The parent company of Media Monks is now worth a tenth of its 2021 peak.
The fall – about 30% early on Monday although it pulled some of that back later in the week – means the company’s share price has never been lower.
S4C is an attempt by Sorrell – who founded WPP – to reinvent the holding company business model, but without exposure to the disrupted non-digital sector. It was a good theory, which also got Media Monks lots of tech clients. That worked until the tech sector started to go through its own slowdown.
Sorrell’s method of growth has been by acquiring businesses through merger and incentivising the sellers to stick around via stock options. It was a good theory until S4 Capital’s share price started falling. Who’d sell their business if they worried the options they’d get in the deal would lose value?
Sorrel remains a bellwether for the industry though. The 500 job cuts at S4 Capital came with the warning that more will follow. In recent days I’ve heard of a number of the holding companies losing people locally, but less publicly.
As we run towards the end of the year, it’s likely we’ll see more, particularly from global holdcos trying to get staff off their books before the end of their calendar financial year.
Success postponed at Dentsu
There was a big move in agencyland this week, with Dentsu Creative’s joint chief creative officers Mandie van der Merwe and Avish Gordhan shifting to Saatchi & Saatchi.
There were a number of curiosities about the move.
For starters, the duo are effectively moving one step down the ladder. While they were at the top of the creative pecking order at Dentsu Creative, they’ll report in to ANZ chief creative officer Dave Bowman at Saatchi & Saatchi.
Another is the fact that they only lasted a year at Dentsu Creative. It was their first time as joint chief creative officers after being executive creative directors at M&C Saatchi before.
Their hire had been a key one by CEO Kirsty Muddle who’s overseen the local execution of the merging of Dentsu’s global agency brands DentsuMcGarryBowen, Isobar, 360i, along with BWMdentsu, Isobar and PR agencies Haystac, and Cox Inall.
When you get new creative leadership at an agency it takes a year or more of being told “You should see what’s in the pipeline” before you find out whether that’s true. When I interviewed her back in April, Muddle argued for 18 months.
Something clearly went wrong for van der Merwe and Gordhan at Dentsu. They’ve departed without visible change the agency’s output. It’s a bad look for both sides.
Once Dentsu locks in a new chief creative officer, presumably somebody with greater experience than the last attempt, that work clock will have to be reset.
It’s now more than two years since Dentsu became the biggest holding company to have a single creative brand. That’s too soon to call the approach a failure. But you could certainly call it success postponed.
Dr Spin: Get a tiny coffin ready
Dr Spin writes:
As we celebrate the 75 anniversary of David Ogilvy’s agency, the art of copywriting lives on in the digital age.
Kmart is advertising plywood coffins on Instagram. As you do. It takes some scrolling to discover they are only 25cm long, (and presumably for Halloween, although the ad doesn’t mention that).
But the copyline is where the magic really comes together. “Low prices for life” indeed.
Flat end to the week as SEN and TMH take opposite paths
Seja Al Zaidi writes:
There were highs and lows at the small end of the Unmade Index on Friday.
The Market Herald hit the lowest point since its transformative deal to buy Gumtree, Carsguide and Autorader, the messy ousting of CEO Jag Sanger and the reputation-shredding criticism of board chairman Alex Pismiris by the Takeovers panel.
TMH shares dropped by 10.34%, taking it down to a market capitalisation of $83m.
Meanwhile, Sports Entertainment Group, parent company of Sports Entertainment network, surged by 15% – one of the biggest jumps the sagging stock has seen.
The Unmade Index, which measures how ASX-listed media and marketing stocks perform, was broadly flat yesterday, recording a fall of 0.15% to 627.3 points.
Enero Group dropped 1.81%. Southern Cross Austereo and Domain also performed poorly, dropping 1.35% and 1.26% respectively.
Pureprofile climbed 3.57%. Printing and marketing firm IVE Group inched up 1.63%, and Ooh Media experienced a modest lift of 0.71%.
Campaign Of The Week: The Mo Is Calling
In each edition of BOTW, our friends at Little Black Book Online highlight their most interesting advertising campaign of the week.
LBB’s ANZ reporter Casey Martin writes:
“This week’s campaign is from DDB for Movember. DDB Melbourne produced a spot that screams 1970’s cult classic film, celebrating the return of Movember and encouraging people around the world to get involved in the month-long charity event. DDB created a sense of camaraderie by using only one word – “Mo” – leaving audiences excited and ready to see the amazing facial hair of those participating in Movember.”
In case you missed it
On Tuesday, Seja Al Zaidi examined the state of ad spend in the supermarket wars:
On Wednesday, we investigated whether Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson are worth the $200m deal purported to be on the table:
On Thursday, Cat McGinn interviewed retail media evangelist Colin Lewis who explained how Australia has got ahead of the retail media game globally:
And on Friday, seismic news of Rupert Murdoch stepping down as chairman of News Corp triggered our analysis of the new power structures at play:
Time to leave you to your Saturday. If you work in retail media, hopefully you’re spending it finishing your entry for the REmade Awards. Late entries close on Tuesday. Don’t say you weren’t warned.
Have a great weekend.
Toodlepip…
Tim Burrowes
Publisher – Unmade
tim@unmade.media
