I grew up on a council estate.
Every few years the council would redecorate our house.
They would send a man round with a big book of wallpaper samples.
Mum would choose what wallpaper she wanted for each room.
She’d pick whichever colours and patterns she liked, and a decorator would wallpaper the rooms.
But it was different when it came to plumbing.
When the council sent a plumber round Mum would make him a cup of tea.
But she didn’t need to know what he was doing.
Plumbing was seen as a very different job to decorating.
Decorating had one function: the tenant had to like it.
Plumbing had a very different function: it had to work.
The plumbing was there to do a job, not be liked.
Most marketing people can’t understand the difference.
They don’t think the advertising is there to do a job, like plumbing.
They think it’s there for them to like, like wallpaper.
So they choose the advertising the way my mum chose wallpaper.
They want to see a huge selection of ads from which they will choose the ones they like.
This is fair enough with wallpaper, where they are the only person it has to please.
But plumbing is different, it has to do a job.
It has to move a lot of water from one place to another without any of it leaking.
That’s why the council employed people who knew more about plumbing than my mum did.
They didn’t want my mum telling the plumber what joints she thought he should use, or what ballcocks were prettier, or what colour pipes to put in based on what she liked.
When it came to plumbing, my mum’s personal taste wasn’t important.
And that’s the way it should be.
Because that’s the difference between function and decoration.
Marketing people think they should choose the advertising they like.
But that’s not the job.
The job is to run advertising that solves a business problem.
So the personal preferences of marketing people are irrelevant.
As they would be to a plumber.
The plumber is simply there to deliver a result.
If they can’t deliver that result, if the pipe leaks, you don’t ask to see a selection of pipes, then tell them which pipe you’d prefer.
You get another plumber.
You get a plumber who can do the job properly, and you get out of the way.
But most marketing people can’t see that.
They choose the plumbing based on what they like.
They employ a person who is supposed to know more about advertising than they do, and then they tell them what to do.
Because they believe the job is to give them what that they like.
Which explains why most of the advertising we see around us looks just like wallpaper.
And everybody wants their plumbing channelled these days as it upsets their sensibilities.
Fantastic!
Great read fella – but now it’s got to the point, everyone thinks they’re a plumber hence there’s $hite everywhere.
Brilliantly written as ever, Dave!
I’m not sure it’s right though.
You’re implying that clients make decisions based on their own personal taste. Not really the case. They rely heavily on consumer research, for example.
You’re also asserting that agency folk know more about how to fix the client’s problem than the client does. I think we’ll do better if we accept that the client has lots of knowledge about their market and their brand, usually more than we do, and try to build a good relationship in which we’re working together to fix the problem, rather than pleading with them to simply let us get on with it, without their ‘interference’…
I understand that is the conventional view Simon.
Next time you’re over here we can discuss it over a pint
I grew up on a council estate too.
The council never sent anyone round to do the decorating.
My dad did all the decorating.
He wasn’t very good at it.
Sometimes the wallpaper fell off soon after it was put it.
Sometimes he hung the paper the wrong way, so the pattern was upside down.
My mother was rarely happy with the situation.
We never had any problems with the plumbing.
I think my mother was eternally grateful for that.
Surely clients are able to maintain impartiality and are not prone to misinterpreting research?
I don’t work in advertising, but enjoy the blog anyway. One thing puzzles me though. You write a great deal about the ‘custodians of the brand’ (the marketing people) being, well, being worse than hopeless. I’m assuming you’ve being doing this job a long time, probably longer than I’ve been doing mine (32 years and counting), and I would have thought that by now, you’d have found a comprehensive way of dealing with such situations. In any creative job, we all have to deal with people who aren’t as creative, or who fail to see what it is we’re trying to achieve (I’m an editorial art director for the record). After a while you find ways of winning battles that perhaps you didn’t when you started. I know you use your collected posts as the basis for books that hopefully help the new generation of art directors and copywriters. I’d personally like to read more about how you out-fox your more ‘leaden footed’ opponents, when it comes to getting your ideas through to fruition. (But then again I’ve only being reading for a few months and can see that there are many posts I need to catch up on, which may well cover such subjects…)
Oh, and also in my bitter experience, you really need to keep an eye on plumbers, as they can make a right mess of your under-stairs pipes and central heating, because like most people in life (some art directors included), they’re a lazy bunch of bastards who just want an easy life, and will do any old botch, and charge you a fortune for it, precisely because they have a skills advantage over you…
Are you by any chance talking about Reverse-Engineered Advertising Dave, where the tenant asks a Wallpaperer to recommend a good Plumber based on his beautiful selection of paste?
Good Column. It reminds me of the old saying “It is not creative unless it works”. Too many clients and agency folks still want to advertising that is cool or stylish. Advertising is more a craft than and art. It’s first and most important job is it needs to accomplish a goal.
I love this Dave.
A while back my team, a Search team at a large media group, set out to define our personal and professional visions.
We settled with ‘Lets make advertising a utility’.
Although perhaps not quite literally a home utility
And! Plumber of the month is…Tum ta ta tum!
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-39509419
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If the plumber is Dave Trott, the fair enough. But what if the plumber is the person who made this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfCiV6ysngU
David Brain,
That’s exactly my point, that wasn’t made by an ad agency.
Pepsi made that ad themselves.
They made a big deal about how they didn’t need ad agencies anymore.
QED
“They employ a person who is supposed to know more about advertising than they do, and then they tell them what to do.”
That’s the issue – the agreed (and correct) assumption is that the creative knows more about advertising than marketing.
Unfortunately, marketing don’t see it that way, they see a creative is a tool, a resource, a contractor to be directed.
I’m not sure when it changed, and I don’t see any way of changing it back.
I just amazed! Keep it up!
Great Article
Excellent read. Nice article. Thanks for sharing
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Quite helpful information. thanks for sharing it. I am very thankful to you as your article has given me lots of ideas about PLUMBING.
Great article, thanks Dave.