hundreds of thousands of coloured balls down a San Francisco hill in order to sell your TVs<\/a>. All the time knowing it was one take or bust.<\/p>\n\n\n\nToday\u2019s marketing geniuses would be cutting that ad into pieces, personalising each one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob was a writer and creative director; I was a media planner and geek. One of my bosses once described me as being a media guy who \u2018cared about the creative work\u2019. I took that as a compliment, and a sign that he\u2019d been mixing with the wrong type of media person; I wasn\u2019t that unusual. Some of us preferred ads to deals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I knew full well that I couldn\u2019t do what the creatives did, but then again, they were hopeless at audience measurement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We worked together to deliver something that worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sometimes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It would be quite wrong to look back on some sort of golden age where everything we did was genius. Of course, it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob\u2019s valedictory blog makes the point that: \u201cDuring my many years in the business, advertising was overwhelmingly crap. There were, however, instances of excellence among the dross \u2026 there were moments when video, audio, print, and poster advertising strived to provide new and stimulating ideas to the world. I don’t think any serious person today considers advertising anything much more than a constant annoyance\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And it was fun. Today it really isn\u2019t. And that shows in the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bob has stopped his blog because, in his own words: \u201c(\u2026 in 2022) the big news in the advertising world was not about anything remotely interesting. It was about some of the world’s biggest assholes — Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Writing about advertising is one thing. Writing about creeps like that is quite another\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As an antidote, Bob told a David Ogilvy tale, which he was then kind enough to send me in the original from \u2018Confessions of an Advertising Man\u2019:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI was once invited to a corporate meeting, to compete for a major account. When I entered the board room, the chairman said this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMr Ogilvy, we are interviewing several agencies. You have exactly fifteen minutes to plead your case. Then I will ring this bell and the next agency waiting outside will follow you.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI asked: How many people will be involved in the decision?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cThe chairman replied: The twelve members of the Committee here today\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\u201cI responded: Ring the bell.<\/em> And rose from my chair\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\nRing the bell; or to bastardise another line from Ogilvy, this time from an ad that certainly did run<\/a>: \u2018You can hear the clock ticking\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\nTo be continued..<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last week I had the pleasure of having lunch with Bob Hoffman, aka the AdContrarian. Bob has decided to stop his weekly blog posts (although he will continue writing and speaking) \u2013 which is a loss for the industry as a whole and something of a disaster for me given the number of times the […]<\/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\/1693"}],"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=1693"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1695,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1693\/revisions\/1695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}