Five things the regional marketing trade press should stop banging on about and five things it really ought to pay more attention to (part 1)

Reading The Drum’s website, as I occasionally do just to remind me that I’m best and to keep abreast of the latest skulduggery being perpetrated by my one-time employers, I was struck recently by just how cyclical the regional marcoms press is (and, frankly, always was). Just as certain major clients seem to forever return to the realm of regional agencies, despite occasional forays into London (Redrow, Iceland, Morrisons etc), certain issues similarly perpetually pop up as a source of mock indignation for the cerebrally-challenged individuals who currently edit these publications and their on-line equivalents.

A Drum reader recently

The latest topic to be recycled is that hoary old topic of free pitching. Even Gordon Young, recently recycled himself as the editor of The Drum, had to confess that he had to “stifle a yawn” when the age old issue once again shuffled to centre stage in his editorial  for the Feb 3rd issue.

Gordy’s editorial made me think two things:

1) The University of Life, from which Gordon proudly graduated, obviously doesn’t have a literacy module (witness: “Disquiet at public sector tendering – even the concept of free speculative creative pitching – is nothing knew” and “And the truly depressing things is…”).

2) The trade press, in both its print and digital incarnations, really ought to try harder on behalf of its readership. There are certain issues that are deader than the market for “I heart Mubarak” mugs in Tahrir Square, deader even than Niall Kennedy’s career prospects. With this in mind – and being a helpful sort of chap – I have come up with a list of five subjects that should be gathered up, bound together and posted to Iraq in a parcel marked : “Flammable: Amusing Danish cartoons About the Pophet Mohammed. May contain pork products.”

To replace this Infamous Five, I’ll also suggest a quintet of issues that really do merit a little more attention than they are currently receiving.

1. Pitching

There is more chance of Frankie Boyle hosting next year’s Children of Courage Awards than the marketing communications industry ever abiding by any guidelines relating to participating in pitches. The root of this is that, unlike many of the other sectors that offer professional services – lawyers, accountants, surveyors etc – there is simply no bar to entry in the worlds of PR, advertising or design. Any tosser can go into business into any of these sectors and be completely unchallenged as to providing credentials, demonstrating experience or proving their insight. The proof of my assertion is the number of tossers who already have.

The upshot of this is that any company high-minded enough to eschew free pitches is automatically excluding itself from the industry’s chosen route for allocating new business. If the IPA/IPR/Design Society – hardly truly representative bodies for their respective industries anyway – today agreed on binding guidelines for all of their members with regard to free pitching, the first item on the agenda of its following meeting would be just what sanctions to impose on the 70+ per cent of its members who had already broken the code. This doesn’t even take into consideration the massed ranks of agencies who would rather spend their money on Stetsons, spurs and renewing their annual membership of the Harrogate High Chaparral fan club than subsidising the cucumber sandwiches in Belgrave Square

Quite simply, this is not an issue that is pining for the fjords.

2. London

Award-winning work from the regions recently

Neither is issue number two. For all the UK regions that are home to any marketing communications community outside of London (particularly the North West, the Midlands, Yorkshire, the North East, Scotland and the South Coast), the capital has long been the subject of fist-waving fury. Management and creatives (in particular) are forever banging on about being every bit as good as “that London”.

The MD of one agency that I had the misfortune to work for, once told his assembled staff that, if Coca-Cola called the agency the following day, he had every confidence they could handle the whole account. This was despite the fact he only had a staff of 7 (some of them full-time) and his infirmity was such that I seriously doubted his ability to successfully open a can of the fizzy drink in question, let alone mastermind its international branding strategy.

There is a word for every creative or account director who tells you that they chose to make a career for themselves outside of London. That word is “dishonest”. Just as every housewife rehearsing her Blanche Dubois for a debut at the Firth Park Community Theatre dreams of getting that phone call from Andrew Llloyd Webber, so too does every creative completing his 20th Costcutter shelf-wobbler of the day dream of getting a call from any agency with “0207” on its headed paper.

"That London..." recently

As one of the world’s leading centres of advertising, PR and design excellence (though, admittedly, having lost some of its international cachet of late), London inevitably hoovers up the finest UK talent across all of the marketing communications disciplines (inevitably accidentally also taking on board more than its fair share of out-and-out wankers in the process). This pool of talents and resources, in terms of both perception and reality, is inevitably going to see all the really sexy clients gravitate towards London, especially if they have TV on their agenda.

A regional PR exec recently

The regions can – and do – thrive on other less thrilling work, the kind of stuff no-one really goes into the business to produce. Retail work, local implementation, and below-the-line activity pay the bills of every local advertising agency. PR firms fare a little better, tending to secure a number of truly national brands, perhaps because creativity is perceived as less at a premium among the PR community, perhaps because regional PR girls wear shorter skirts than their London counterparts and look more “up for it” or perhaps because the PR industry is better at retaining local talent. It’s probably a combination of all three to be honest.

On the design side, a number of companies have managed to attract serious clients, keen on capitalising (pun sort of intended) on the quirky regionality that once made places like Manchester (well just Manchester, actually) internationally renowned for its music and fashion. Companies such as The Chase, True North, Elmwood, Thompsons, Designers Republic, Attik and, once upon a time, Love have long attracted serious player to use their services, but then there is a lot less risk in trusting a one-off design project to a company in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, than in switching your entire TV spend for the year into an agency in Beeston, no matter what its MD may tell his staff on away-days.

In short, the London issue, particularly in the advertising sector, is one that is well past its tell-by date. Many individuals have made a good living out of working in advertising, PR or design without ever having to own an Oyster card. Enjoy the benefits of living outside the capital, but accept that the Man from Del Monte he never going to say “yes” when it comes to adding your agency to his roster.

Staff on the  regional trade press can also play a role in addressing this reality. After all they seem to have accepted that their own destinies lie in slightly re-writing press releases about the exaggerated spend some obscure Bath-based agency is claiming on behalf of a new client in the regional fried chicken sector, rather than in uncovering evidence of high-level political embezzlement.

As a post-script to this, I would like to pay tribute to possibly the only wholly honest regional creative I ever met, the almost-but-not-quite-legendary-except-in-his-own-mind-obviously Rick Kieswetter.

Rick (not so recently)

When I first met Rick, he was working at McCanns in Prestbury and was desperate to get out. At the time, we had brought Trevor Beattie down to the agency to chair the judging pair for the first ever Cream of Manchester awards. I swear, Rick hung around outside the doors of the agency’s boardroom for the whole day, clutching his book. As soon as Trev emerged, Rick thrust his portfolio into the bemused creative maestro’s hands, completely ignoring the fact that an incredulous Brian Child, then chief exec of McCann Manc, was a witness to it all.

Rick eventually managed to secure a creative role in London and, as part of his farewell celebrations, seriously discussed the possibility with me of taking out a full page ad in the following issue of The Marketeer. Ostensibly, this would be to “thank” all the people who had helped him achieve his dream, in reality, of course, the subtext would have been: “Farwewell suckers, I’ve made it! Now get back to your shelf-wobblers.”

Coming soon: Three other things the regional marcoms press really should stop banging on about.

Cunt of the Week: Riddle Me This...

>It is often said that if you remember the early days of the Marketeer, then you never really knew where the sales department stashed their coke. This is a tale from those days.

An interesting counterpoint to the public humiliation that Alistair Sim has had to endure over the last 18 months is the vast number of people in the industry who Got Away With It, individuals who did similar or worse things to Mr Sim, but simply escaped vilification solely by virtue of not getting caught. One such individual is Robin Riddle, one time Northern Sales Rep for the Economist, a role he presumably fulfilled through either osmosis or telepathy as, despite sharing an office with him for some six months, I never actually saw him do anything at all.

One of the typically far-sighted and innovative moves made by the Carnyx Group during the brief period they genuinely had a presence in England was to arrange to reduce the overheads of its Manchester office by sharing a space with the Economist, which consisted entirely of the “Riddler”.

When I say reduce the overheads, what the ever-duplicitous Carnyx Group actually did was inflate the claimed rent and allocate a supposed portion of it to the Economist, a portion which actually pretty much covered the whole of the real rent.
Robin was bought into our one room office (on the third floor of a building on the corner of York Street and Fountain Street), on the condition that whatever happened in “Marketeer Mansions” stayed in “Marketeer Mansions”, However, the keen Carnyx-costcutters overlooked three vital facts about Robin:

a) He was a compulsive gossip, with very little to do
b) He organized the MPA lunches so a had a ready made audience of people to compulsively gossip to
c) He was a complete cunt

Far from keeping schtum about the goings-on in Marketeer Mansions – which at that point was a marginally less happy ships than one ferrying a dead Viking to his eternal reward - Robin used confidential information – sales data, internal squabbles etc–to persuade the many that that usually bodyswerved to avoid him to break the habit of a lifetime and spend more than 50 seconds listen to him pontificate. He was an Olympic class pontificator.

He then compounded this by getting involved with one of the Marketeer sales girls, whose main interest in Robin was promising sexual favours in return for him paying off her burgeoning credit card bills. Unfortunately, whilst her visa final demands were the exclusive province of the Riddler, her heart and sundry other organs were, largely, the exclusive province of another (married) man.

When, despite howls of protest from me and James O’Donnell, the Marketeer’s deputy editor and token grown-up, said sales girl and Romeo Riddler decided to move into together (said sales girl now having rent arrears as well as threats to her pets from Visa hitmen), it was obvious things were going to get worse. Much worse.

When the World’s Least Trustworthy Woman moves in with the World’s Most Paranoid Man, Dark Satanic Forces can take the day off, and put their feet up, secure in the knowledge that they are well surplus to requirements.

And so it came to pass that WLTW and WMPM were sharing an apartment, a bed, her bad debts and, most critically, a PC.

Said sales girl made the mistake of using the shared PC to arrange a hotel tryst with her One True Love of the Month, fatally neglecting to clear her in-box and sent box. The Riddler, of course, having found his previous fiancée in bed with another on at least one occasion, scrupulously checked WLTW’s email accounts on a daily basis. Hourly, if she was out.

On this occasion, the Riddler found details of hotel bookings, times, dates etc. Unsatisfied with merely being able to confront the visa-indebted vixen with his discovery, he stalked her all the way to Leeds on the day of the tryst.

Entering the hotel, he then knocked on the illicit couple’s door and pretended, in squeaky tones, to be housekeeping. Upon looking through the peephole, the coitus interuptees swiftly realized it was not an amusingly-voiced Malmaison manservant but rather a revenge-bent Riddler. Quite sensibly, they decided to remain on the reverse side of the door, until the Riddler began reeling off details of the married man’s home address, phone number, wife’s employment and, most chillingly, the name of the school where his kids went.

Understandably freaked out by the Riddler’s OCD stalkery, said married man did the dishonourable thing and promptly fled, leaving our tiny slip of a sales girl to tackle the disapproving-of-their-nobbin’ Robin alone. Hardly his finest hour – and you know who you are and I know you’ll read this.

Now the Riddler is hardly an impressive specimen of masculinity, but he was twice as tall as his petite ex-paramour to be. Such inequality, however, did not stop him from smashing her head into a wall and then spitting in her face. Nor was this the only time. After this he took to hanging around outside her apartment at night and repeating the process on more than one occasion. A nice guy. I wonder what his new colleagues at the Economist in North America would think should they ever find out…

An amusing aside on the whole Riddler affair and one which sums up the Walter Mitty-like nature of his existence… Early on in my acquaintance with him he started using an alias – “Robin James”. He explained to the bemused Marketeer crew that was this because his father had been a counter-terrorism operative working against the IRA and that he had been officially warned by the Secret Service that his distinctive surname made him a target for revenge attacks by disgruntled Irishmen.

The truth, like most things about the Riddler, was far more prosaic. His former fiancée, Jenny, had baulked at taking on his surname should they marry, feeling that “Jenny Riddle” sounded far too similar to a well-known urination euphemism – hence the name change. Upon finding this out we quizzed him as to why he hadn’t opted for “Taylor” rather than James. Although, we found this hilarious it rather predictably, like so many other things, went clear over Robin’s notoriously vacuous head.
If you would like to nominate a Cunt of the Week, please email me on tonymurray37@hotmail.com. Anyone, of course, who nominates me may well find themselves in this hallowed spot.