GANG-BANG ADVERTISING

 

 

Recently, a memo David Abbott wrote in 1994 came to light.

It’s so good it’s been circulated online.

In it, David talks about what was a relatively new thing at the time.

The creative gang-bang.

Every team cranking out work for every brief.

Then the suits showing everything to the client and letting the client choose which they like.

This wasn’t how David Abbott saw his agency.

In fact it wasn’t how David saw advertising.

He saw the job more like bespoke tailoring.

The client shares the problem with the agency and the agency puts their best team on it.

(Note the singular.)

Then the agency comes back with the perfectly tailored solution exactly fitted to the client’s problem.

Notice how different that is to the self-service model of most agencies:

“Come in and look around: choose whatever you like, from dozens of different solutions, in dozens of different sizes, and dozens of different colours.”

One is Savile Row, the other is a cheap store on Oxford Street.

The amazing thing is they both cost the same.

Both solutions burn through the media budget at the same rate.

Of course they don’t deliver the same results.

One keeps the client happy in the short term by indulging their whims.

The other keeps the client happy in the longer term by watching their sales go up.

David’s solution, like Savile Row, is of course the long term one.

So why doesn’t everyone do it David’s way?

Well, the truth is, not everyone can.

Most people aren’t good enough.

They can’t see the best solution, so they avoid choosing.

That way they don’t have to take responsibility.

If the client chooses it, it’s not their fault.

But David thinks these people are taking money under false pretences.

In his memo, David says this (my italics):

“We get paid to make choices.

I must choose the right creative team for the job.

The planners/account managers must choose the best possible strategy and creative brief.

I must choose the best idea submitted by the creative team, or I should choose to send them back for another go.

If necessary I must choose to replace them with another team. In this process everyone is accountable.

This is good discipline and will make us a better agency than just “pick any one from three.”

The most important line for me is the first one:

“We get paid to make choices.”

Yes we do.

But we don’t want to make choices because we don’t trust ourselves.

So we don’t.

And we become self-service agencies.

Contrast that with Collett Dickenson Pearce.

They built the ad agency that, over fifty years, won more D&AD awards than anyone else.

For at least two decades, CDP was the best agency in the UK, if not the world.

What was their secret?

Well, they seemed to agree with David Abbott’s memo.

Perhaps not so surprising, two of the all-time greats sharing the same principles.

One of CDP’s ex-clients recently summed it up like this.

 

“They didn’t give you the choice of three mediocre ads. They gave you no choice, and one amazing ad”.