{"id":1907,"date":"2026-02-02T11:43:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T11:43:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=1907"},"modified":"2026-02-02T11:43:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T11:43:00","slug":"people-buy-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/people-buy-people\/","title":{"rendered":"People Buy People"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A substantial disconnect (one of many to be fair) between advertising people and financial commentators and investors is the degree of (dis)comfort with the old notion that 70% of an agency\u2019s assets go up and down in the lift every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ad people naturally enough believe this to be true. The greatest asset they have is their people, and the reason for that is that they\u2019re convinced, as am I that advertisers buy people. Plus it\u2019s always reassuring to be described as an asset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Clients buy experience, talent. They want people they can trust, people who will put their needs first, people who can sit alongside them and help them solve their problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s not to say they don\u2019t want tools, technologies, AI, data geeks and dashboards. It\u2019s just that those things are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To paraphrase Sir John Hegarty at the launch of Advertising: Who Cares?<\/a> in September 2024: \u2018Nobody remembers Gutenberg\u2019s second book. The guy invented an astonishing piece of technology, which changed the world. As far as we know he never printed a word of his own. Bartolomeo Cristofori may have invented the piano, but history suggests he never composed a note\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This reliance on human creativity unsettles those happiest with spreadsheets. How can they value a genius over a mere mortal? How do they identify a genius in the first place? Geniuses are unstable assets; they may very well go down in the lift and then continue on straight out of the door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course many also can\u2019t articulate why AI will change the ad world for the better, although they\u2019re happy enough pointing out how many jobs it will replace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was working in Leo Burnett in the US in 1993 when a Chicago-based fund manager called David Herro initiated the campaign that eventually led to Maurice Saatchi and his brother Charles being removed from the agency they founded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was asked by my bosses for my opinion, I suppose as the resident Brit. I said I thought it likely that the brothers would attract a number of Saatchi and Saatchi clients to their new agency, M&C Saatchi. Others would be unsettled. Maybe we could benefit?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This observation was met with incredulity; clients were loyal to institutions, not individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turns out many weren\u2019t then, nor are they now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These thoughts were prompted by what\u2019s happening today, with mergers, layoffs, closures. Ivan Fernandes\u2019 post<\/a> a week or two ago on LinkedIn puts it well. Those being cast aside won\u2019t disappear; they\u2019ll reappear bursting with talent and ideas that have been suppressed over their time in a large holding company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many will use the tools, the technologies in the way they\u2019ve learned. They\u2019ll focus on clients and putting the tools to work. Rather than boasting online that solution A is so superior to solution B for reasons that only the true specialist can be expected to appreciate, they\u2019ll be adding in their human expertise, and mixing it all together to benefit their advertisers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thanks for the piano Bartolomeo, time for the geniuses to create music.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A substantial disconnect (one of many to be fair) between advertising people and financial commentators and investors is the degree of (dis)comfort with the old notion that 70% of an agency\u2019s assets go up and down in the lift every day. Ad people naturally enough believe this to be true. The greatest asset they have […]<\/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\/1907"}],"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=1907"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1909,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1907\/revisions\/1909"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}