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The PR Mud Puddle
Mr. Lewis, I am perplexed. Why is it that given a choice of two decisions, so many organizations opt for the public relations blunder? It is as if shooting oneself in the foot is what these folks do for target practice.
I'm speaking of the Ukrainian Credit Banking Union and its decision to, as reported by Interfax, "threaten mass media with advertising reduction for providing information on how to cheat banks."
Two points here: First, I question whether publications were actually counseling credit-challenged consumers to defraud banks. If so, the Ukrainian organization still took a ham-fisted approach to the problem.
Secondly, Ukrainians who took sizable loans are having an extremely difficult time with the shrinking of the hyrnva against the dollar and with most of these major loans having to be paid back in dollar equivalent. This means the cost of credit has nearly doubled.
Caught in this squeeze - and with the possibility of losing apartments or automobiles - consumers are looking for a way out. Bankers merely want to collect that which is legally due them.
However, to threaten news publications with the withdrawal of advertising unless they stop printing articles giving advice to consumers is arrogant at best and rather uninformed and silly at worst. It's a PR mud puddle.
While I am not privy to what prior actions the banks might have taken, I doubt they sought meetings with the newspaper editors to explain their problem and ask for cooperation. That would be the right way.
In this situation, banks and publications should work together. There are kinder, gentler ways for banks to work with consumers, so that loans are paid over the long term without tossing the borrower out onto the street. This is what should be communicated through the press.
To threaten the press with loss of advertising-to many publications - would be like waving a red flag before a bull. They would just charge harder.
Eventually, the economic crisis will end. Banks already have a tainted image in Ukraine. They don't need to have their boorishness confirmed with bad PR.
Where Have You Gone, David Ogilvy?
At one time, advertising was about a creative force coming together to move people to action. It was about targeted messages and concrete promises. This was good.
This is not to argue that the dancing and singing monkeys in old ad jingles represented the apex of creativity, but perhaps they represented more honesty.
At one time, the leading light in advertising was a copywriting genius named David Ogilvy. He founded Ogilvy and Mather. Now, the acknowledged leader - at least from his press clippings - is a green eyeshades-type named Sir Martin Sorrell.
For goodness sake, a financial guy!
What happened? It all started when ad agencies stopped being ad agencies and became a conglomerate pea soup of conflicts and fleeting loyalties. In a business once dominated by creative personalities, it is now the collective house of financial drones.
Is it really good for the advertiser when once-great agencies like Young & Rubicam, J. Walter Thompson and Ogilvy cohabitate in the same corporate tent - in this case, the Sir Martin's WPP?
What's the purpose? To create synergies?
It doesn't happen. It doesn't come close. Size serves no real purpose, and, as we see today, the stockholder value of these behemoths has the consistency of cotton candy.
Conglomerates create merely bigness. Conglomerates have very little to do with the end-product of advertising. They are financial houses that buy and sell and sometimes shut down. And, they are subject to excruciating economic fluctuations.
For the last several years, Sir Martin has been very visible, forecasting what kind of a year the ad industry would have and basing his view almost entirely on seismic events expected to occur over the year - usually a big sporting event like the Olympic Games.
He got it all wrong. The interesting thing is that smart people paid attention to him.
The ad industry, to a great extent, is a bellwether of the global economy.
It was never about how many major sporting events were to be held in a year. Or whether there was an important election. It wasn't even about the so-called sub-prime crisis, or a group of irresponsible American bankers. It was and is about people like Martin Sorrell who preside over virtually every publicly traded business.
For them, bigness is paramount, and the three-month race to the next quarterly financial report represents the Holy Grail. In the end, the house of cards eventually collapses under huge debt, amid conditions that folks like Sir. Martin helped create.
It is bound to happen - every time.
Oh, for the leadership of a slightly weird, somewhat profane, but brilliantly honest man in the ad business like the late David Ogilvy.
Not Being Late for Life
If you work in Willard World, as Mr. Lewis and I do, you would probably realize that there are few rules. The personnel manual could be written on the back of a napkin-and I think it was.
We instituted the 24-hour work day - which has nothing to do with nose-to-the-grindstone 'round-the-clock work, but completing a good day's work within that time. It recognizes that creativity doesn't necessary occur during office hours and while seated behind a desk.
However, there is one thing for which we are sticklers, and that is not wasting anyone's time, including our own. But let's put this whole time thing into perspective.
When you reach age 40, you begin thinking about your own mortality. When you reach the 50 marker, you find yourself grabbing the Economist magazine, and turning first to the obituary page, the publication's own cemetery for the famous and infamous.
At 60, you are quickly heading to that Noble Rot stage. At this point, you are selfishly protective of every gulp of breath. This is not a bad thing.
A few years back I wrote a book called The Portfolio Bubble: Surviving Professionally at 60. It was all about making the most of one's time, sort of a metaphorical Heimlich maneuver for those of us who believe that life doesn't end when the first grandchild comes along.
While recognizing that Sun City, big three-wheelers and shuffleboard courts are fine for a large segment of the population, others of us would rather suck down a soda pop with an arsenic chaser than retire.
Until I was almost 50, I could sit and watch automobiles race around a circle on television for half of a Sunday afternoon. I could take in a movie that I knew to be mediocre just for the sake of munching on a big box of popcorn, and I could watch big boys play little boys' games, like baseball, realizing perfectly well that a single game in a 160-game schedule probably wouldn't make a whole lot of difference in my life. It was interesting to watch Barry Bonds clobber another ball over the fence, and, interesting, I guess, whether he was on steroids when he broke the home run record. However, it will not materially affect my life one-way or the other.
Don't get me wrong. There is nothing I would like better than to be in the stands behind the third-base line, watching my Atlanta Braves. Going to see a Darlington 500 NASCAR race, and even serving in a pit crew, was the thrill of a lifetime. And I believe that movies, unless it is Rocky No. 10, are great entertainment and have a lot to teach about life.
However, as one gets a little older, he or she is increasingly worried about being what I call "late for life". We need to show up for the things we really enjoy, and tune out the humdrum.
Tiger's Whimper
Battling with Facebook friends is sort of like donning armor, unsheathing sword and flailing away at a stick of cotton candy. In the words of the Mick Jagger/Keith Richards song, you "don't get no satisfaction."
This particular issue had to do with the curious case of world-renowned golfer Tiger Woods. My friends somewhere in Ohio were suggesting that he was right not to talk to the police and to keep his incident private.
That incident - and I recap here in case the reader was on Mars - involved Woods leaving his house at 2 a.m. and somehow managing to run into a fire hydrant and a tree on or near his property. His wife, wielding a mean golf club, smashed the rear windows of the SUV ostensibly to get her injured hubby out of the car.
However, the more salacious version going around was that Ms. Woods was upset with Mr. Woods for seeing a New York nightclub hostess. The couple argued, Woods bolted from the home and crashed his car when his wife pounded it with a golf club.
In the aftermath, Woods on three occasions refused to speak with the Florida Highway Patrol, which was investigating the incident. Lawyers will tell you he had a right not to answer questions from the cops.
So what?
This, in my view, is a classic case of short-term thinking that could result in long-term misery. The one statement Woods did make taking the blame merely raised more questions.
In the aftermath, the story has been in the headlines since it broke last Friday. Woods has even pulled out of his own charity golf tournament, presumably to avoid press scrutiny. His accident injuries were not significant.
This is not the flu, Tiger. It's not going away.
However, my Facebook friends from Ohio argue that Woods has always protected his privacy and no one is entitled to know the details. That, my friends, is nice but not relevant.
Woods has made close to a billion dollars on endorsements. His brand is squeaky clean. Fans don't want him to come clean so they can just hear tantalizing details. They want him to come clean for his own sake.
Also, as a role model to millions of kids, he didn't do himself a service by avoiding the police. He should have given them the courtesy of allowing them to do their job of investigating an accident.
He doesn't need to go overboard with a statement. One suggestion might be as follows:
"There was a domestic spat. I decided to cool down with a drive, but in the excitement, I did the equivalent of tossing my clubs. The result was I hit a fire hydrant and a tree. It was stupid and silly. I am glad my wife was there to help me out of the car. We learn life lessons everyday, and I just learned one. By the way, I have invited the State Troopers back to talk with me, and this will be my last statement on an incident I would like to forget. I can't wait to appear in my own tournament in a few days.
One point we always make with clients in crisis training is not to substitute a short-term strategy for long-term misery. That's what Tiger is doing if he insists on continuing to stonewall the police, the press and his many fans.
Five Deadly Sins That Can Kill an Agency
The agency business these days is fraught with danger primarily because the economic environment within which they and their clients exist has a narrower margin for error. There are many ways to fall over the precipice of profitability. We list here what we call the five most deadly sins that can kill an agency.
1. Thinking in terms of time and not value. Time is merely a measurement. Value is more quantifiable to a client. One can see time committed, but one can experience value as in more sales. .Time can always be pushed down and usually is. If an agency allows value to be pushed down, shame on it.
2. Focusing on a single "big idea" without realizing the strategic value of having many satellite tactical ideas. Too often the emphasis is on a "kick-ass" television concept. That's a heavy load for any 30-second spot to carry, particularly in an age of multiple delivery platforms, traditional and digital.
3. Having a stable of 20th Century thinkers in the 21st Century. The tried and the true can be magnificent, but don't rest on your laurels of what you did successfully in the 1990s. You will be thought of as the agency that died but no one has informed the agency of this fact.
4. Believing that money is the currency of marketing, and not ideas. We recently saw this example: Question: How much does it cost to reach a million people in a medium-sized TV marketing? About $60,000. How much does it cost to reach a million viewers on You Tube? About zero. Nada. Zilch. Point made.
5. (Related to No. 3) Believing that measurements of reach and frequency and cost of impressions is really that important in a digital multi-platform world. We're often talking about that flirtations wink in the dark that is not really seen. It's about emotional connections. It is about that metaphoric handshake or hug. Everything else is merely air kisses.
Tough Love with the Omniscient Pablo PistachioWe had a news conference the other day, and though my boss had something important to say, he didn't get quoted as much as the other company on the platform.
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