{"id":1119,"date":"2018-10-19T07:33:34","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T06:33:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=1119"},"modified":"2018-10-19T07:33:34","modified_gmt":"2018-10-19T06:33:34","slug":"the-past-is-all-around-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/the-past-is-all-around-us\/","title":{"rendered":"The Past Is All Around Us"},"content":{"rendered":"

Disclosure: BJ&A has done work for both Suzuki and the7stars<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/u><\/strong>It\u2019s been a good few weeks for the old git community, even the Cynical Old Gits in honour of whom the Cog Blog is named. We\u2019ve had the 30th<\/sup> anniversary of Zenith, the first of the media agencies to be spun off from the old full-service ad agency model; \u2018Campaign\u2019s 50th<\/sup> birthday; and only this week the 30th<\/sup> anniversary of the demise of the first real agency I worked in, Davidson Pearce.<\/p>\n

Davidson Pearce was a great agency. Based on the fact that agencies are only ever as good as the people who work there it\u2019s interesting to reflect that the agency spawned media luminaries like Ray Kelly (one of the founders of TMD, that in turn became Carat), Mike Sell (founder of Total Media), and Allan Rich (founder of The Media Business, that became MediaCom); as well as creative geniuses like Norman Berry and Allen Thomas.<\/p>\n

The ads weren\u2019t half bad either \u2013 the PG Tips chimps, The Observer Citizen Kane spoof, and a fantastic print campaign for Colt air conditioning stand out in my memory but there were dozens more.<\/p>\n

This week many of us gathered to remember the agency (and each other). It was of course an excellent afternoon, and (as was only right) evening. Thank goodness for large-print name tags.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure the Zenith guys had a brilliant reunion too; as indeed do the Leo Burnetters \u2013 given Burnett was blessed with super-efficient account people those reunions happen every year.<\/p>\n

This started me thinking whether in 30 years\u2019 time the likes of the large platforms, the programmatic salesmen, the DMPs and data aggregators will gather to remember the good old days when algorithms were truly algorithms and java scripts argued the toss over a pint or two (OK I\u2019ve run out of analogy here) with pixels. Happy days.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy for any generation to look back and say yes, we were the golden ones. We may have been; but someone will say no it was far better further back, or whenever. But I doubt there would be many saying it is all far more fun now.<\/p>\n

\u2018Campaign\u2019s\u2019 50th<\/sup> birthday edition is wonderful. A nostalgia-fest that truly captures the industry\u2019s journey over the magazine\u2019s life-time. It\u2019s also a printed thing \u2013 it simply wouldn\u2019t work as well in any other format, although you can of course trail bits of it very successfully online.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say print is always great and online always sucks, the media world isn\u2019t binary despite the efforts of far too many ignorant people to try to make it so (TV is dead, print is great, and all that crap).<\/p>\n

But sometimes print is<\/u> great. Kudos to the Account Planning Group (the APG) for their \u2018Eat Your Greens\u2019 book of essays on how to improve your brand\u2019s health by considering the facts as expressed by a stellar array of writers, bloggers and thinkers. Far better as a printed thing if you ask me.<\/p>\n

Finally, in \u2018cynical old gits\u2019 week I shall set aside my innate sense of cynicism to offer huge congratulations to my friends at Suzuki and the7stars for winning Gold at the IPA Ad Effectiveness Awards.<\/p>\n

I may be wrong, but I think this is the first time a media agency has won one of these without a creative agency co-author. Certainly, there weren\u2019t any in the year I was a judge. Suzuki is a brave and innovative client \u2013 and they\u2019ve found themselves the perfect fit in the7stars.<\/p>\n

\u2018Study the past to divine the future\u2019 said Confucius. Probably when he was at JWT.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disclosure: BJ&A has done work for both Suzuki and the7stars \u00a0It\u2019s been a good few weeks for the old git community, even the Cynical Old Gits in honour of whom the Cog Blog is named. We\u2019ve had the 30th anniversary of Zenith, the first of the media agencies to be spun off from the old […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1119"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1120,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1119\/revisions\/1120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}