How will your approach to the IPA presidency differ to that of your predecessor, Moray McLennan?
It will be the same. Moray did a great job. He added two very valuable audiences – the board-room and the City. The audience I’ll add is ‘each other’. We need to talk to each other more. The danger is that advertising is becoming like plumbers and hairdressers – each agency believing they’re the only decent agency in the world. There’s a risk clients lose trust in the category as a result.
Do you agree with Sir Martin Sorrell’s view that Goliaths rather than Davids are best placed to survive this recession?
It would be hard to disagree with that. [Sir Martin is] in a good position to observe trends and respond to them. I have also been to talk to people who remembered previous recessions and they said the same thing – though they also mentioned that business polarised – some business went to large agencies and consolidated, some went to small shops; it was agencies in the middle who found recessions disproportionately painful.
So small agencies are in with a shout?
The very small and the very big may be able to weather recession better. In the UK we’re well supplied with medium-sized agencies. If I’m being candid, there may be a degree of over-supply. That’s because the barriers to entry are now very small – the only remaining barrier being talent. Really good talent is always scarce. Good digital talent is even scarcer.
The other scarcity we now suffer from is in people who are hard to categorise – renaissance admen. Mad Men’s Don Draper is actually a planner who writes ads – he defies catagorisation. What you need somewhere in agencies are people who are a bit blurry – people who are great at media buying, say, but who understand great creativity. Over-specialisation is a fallout of the payment-by-the-hour system. I’m a bit of a misfit myself – put me on one piece of business only and I’d mess things up royally.
Your day job is as vice-chairman of Ogilvy Group UK. How much time are you spending on IPA work?
As much as is required – typically one-day a week, but as many as four. The role will be more intensive upfront – getting people from the different disciplines to talk to each other, rather than stealing share. With the pressure agencies are under to grow by X per cent year on year, the temptation is always to do so by stealing other people’s share rather than by creating additional value – the latter is slower.
So that’s the other big issue facing agencies now – and forever – remuneration?
Agencies always rightly give priority to doing the things that clients pay them to do. One resulting problem, however, is the amount of time we spend on R&D is too small. I’m realistic - clients aren’t going to give you £900,000 just to do some interesting shit. The pay-off may be too long. But where is marketing or advertising R&D to happen?
What’s the best way to pay agencies?
You might need a mixture of payment by the hour with a very large bonus component that is reviewed every six months. That bonus component has to be determined through a discussion of the value you’ve added through ideas, insight and IP – not merely a discussion of hours and timings and banausic crap like that.
I’m very uncomfortable with a single answer to any question. Just as I’m uncomfortable with single metrics to define success. You wouldn’t choose a house or a car that way. It encourages a kind of stupidity that you see in media buying. Asking how many ABC1s you got per pound is payment without any regard for wider audience value. It’s like choosing drink purely on its alcohol content per pound. It’s bonkers.
What is your specific message to clients?
It's a very simple message. Come and talk to us when you have no media money sometimes. The assumption is that the only time to talk to an agency is when you have a media budget. That’s entirely wrong. We can add far more value than we are currently being asked to do in unexpected ways, some of which cost next to nothing.. Why are we so rarely asked to work on NPD, for Instance? Agencies have a greater reach beyond marketing communications.
What’s a day in Rory’s Ogilvy life like now?
I’m not full time on any specific accounts, but I am involved in what I call ‘timely interventions’ on brands I know well – about 8 of them in addition to new business.
I’m also involved with the international ideas network Ogilvy Brains – a high-speed brain-storming network of about 1000 people. During the Swine Flu crisis I answered an Amex-related call for ideas at 12.30am for a colleague in Mexico City who couldn’t leave the house.
What work are you doing on the eight brands?
One role is in the digitisation of those brands – anything to do with digital, direct or mobile. A lot of people in agencies are paid to do things that will happen anyway but I try to get involved in things that won’t necessarily happen – because there’s no budget for them.
I might go to a banking website of a financial client and point out they’re making a mistake in automatically displaying the customer’s bank balance when they log on – it’s off-putting. People don’t want to know. Presenting someone with usually bad news by default is not an encouragement to banking online.
Best digital work you’ve seen recently?
An iPhone widget for train times by Network Rail, which we didn’t do. Another ‘wish we’d done that’ is Sit or Squat – a public lavatory finder that uses the GPS in your phone and user ratings of public lavatories, sponsored by P&G's Charmin toilet paper. I am wildly excited about some of our recent work on Castrol and BP. Watch this space.
Are you a digital native or immigrant?
I’m an accidental digital native. I’m an inquisitive person anyway but my brother is an academic so I first used the internet in 1988 five or more years before it emerged into the public consciousness. When the web came along I was familiar with its power. I at least spotted that it was not merely another medium but of wider significance.
You’ve come a long way since you joined Ogilvy & Mather Direct in 1988 and were fired from the agency’s planning department two years later.
I went to the same school as Paul Feldwick and the same college as Martin Sorrell, so in my mind I'm a bit of a loser. What I’ve done quite well is approach things from an unusual perspective. I'm very grateful to Ogilvy for indulging me in this.
Do you miss being a direct marketer?
I’m still a direct marketer! Whatever brief you’re given, spending time considering it from a direct point of view is hugely important – even though you may not come up with a direct solution.
Direct is an approach – a philosophy: it’s not a strait-jacket.
The best job in the world is being a copywriter or senior copywriter – with minimal management responsibility. My message to them is, enjoy it while it lasts. Having said that, I love the fact that Ogilvy has given me the freedom to intervene with discretion.
A message for direct marketers?
Don’t allow the blurring of disciplines to cause us to forget what made Direct Marketing really worthwhile in the first place. At the same time don't be so hidebound by DM purism that you never beyond these first principles. It's not an easy balance to strike. The danger is you either lose sight of your roots or you never grow beyond them at all.
Direct marketers you admire?
I owe a big debt to people like Steve Harrison [former global creative director at Wunderman/OgilvyOne]. Steve and I have had our differences – but I revere the man. I hope he comes back to agency life.
I owe a mention to Rod Wright [former Ogilvy MD and latterly the director of development at TBWA\Worldwide] who tragically died a few weeks ago. Drayton Bird is still immense – his blog is fantastic.
The present team at OgilvyOne is also formidable – and is in one of those golden periods where every cylinder seems to be firing in sequence. It won’t last forever, of course, but if you can get more than one ride on the big cog (read Neil Strauss’s biography of Motley Crue for an explanation of this phrase) it’s amazing.
Have you read the first extract of Steve Harrison’s book in 北京赛车pk10? Dan Douglass of Meteorite says Steve's done "a hatchet job on digital".
I think Steve is being far too narrow here in the part of digital he chooses to attack – but that he is right to attack what he sees as a slightly self-indulgent strain in a lot of digital work.
The distinction I choose to make is between those large and valuable audiences who use the internet as a means to an end and that much smaller group of people for whom digital is an art-form, an end in itself. Far too much award-seeking digital work seems to be addressed at the latter group, who are a not very lucrative curiosity, frankly. Steve is right to make this criticism, but completely wrong to conflate a few self-indulgent ideas with the wider economic and behavioural significance of the internet - which already drives something like 10% of world GDP.
I might also add that Steve has a more puritanical approach to the value of time than anyone I have ever met. So certain aspects of digital, such as gaming or social networking, are probably disproportionately hateful to him. Don’t expect to see a Steve Harrison Twitterfeed any day soon!
You’re very genial in your approach. Do you have any enemies?
Probably. Interesting question. I believe in mischief making but not nastiness. I’m pro mischief-making but there’s a line. I like the BBH phrase playing the ball not the man. The argument should remain focussed on the problem not the personalities. It is vital in a good agency to be able to argue passionately over the rights and wrongs of a question without it ever becoming personal.
Best friends in direct marketing?
Too many to mention. At Ogilvy alone. The problem with Ogilvy is a lot of your best friends end up buggering off overseas.
Did you not think of doing the same?
I suppose so. I’m fat and Celtic, though, so I don’t much like the heat.
Looking forward – what can we expect from your presidency at the IPA?
I don’t want to define things too tightly yet. I’m adopting an ‘open source’ approach in first three to four months. If my task is better collaboration, you can’t just impose that from above. If somehow we can agree on new forms of collaboration that will benefit our clients – to grow the business rather than fighting over the limited turf between us – I’m very open-minded about the means we employ to achieve this.