Why Can't Banks be Honest?

Naturally, I'm not referring to investment banks. From the South Sea Bubble to Goldman Sachs dodgy sub-prime bets against their own clients; with banksters, shenanigans always have and always will hit the fan.

The resulting fraud charges from the SEC are naturally ”completely unfounded," according to Goldman, CEO Lloyd Blankfein.

He goes on to defend the firm by stating, "We are not a fiduciary".

Which in layman's terms means, "You shouldn't expect to trust us".

Which is just a hair's breadth away from saying "Of course we're dishonest."

So you'd hardly expect investment banks to be honest.

But the banks I'm referring to are your common or garden high street retail bank.

The type of bank most people use because they have to keep their money somewhere in order to access it through an ATM.

In Canada, unlike the UK, if you use an ATM belonging to a bank other than your own, you pay a fee of $1.50 to the other bank plus a fee of $1.50 to your own bank.

Withdraw a hundred bucks and that's a 3% fee for accessing your own money.

This double dipping earns the big five Canadian banks a lot.

I say “a lot” -- because no one knows how much.

"We won't comment on that," the Royal Bank's Jim Westlake told the Toronto Star.

This lack of transparency is typical of the big five, but collectively it's hundreds of millions, if not billions a year.

The issue has been mentioned in Parliament and trotted out at elections; but once Parliament goes into recess, or the election is over, the gouging goes on.

Of course gouging is perfectly legal.

But there’s a huge difference between being legal, and being honest, because honesty requires fairness and decency, in addition to merely obeying the law.

Another lucrative source of income for Canadian banks is Interest Rate Differential charges or IRDs.

Basically this is a fee charged to get out of a fixed rate mortgage.

That probably sounds reasonable, but it’s the unreasonably complicated way these fees are being calculated that are making the banks a fortune by unscrupulously penalizing their customers.

And again it’s perfectly legal.

Or is it?

A recent class action suit against the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) suggests it may not be.

Legal or not, it’s dishonest.

I’m not bashing Canadian banks per se, it’s just that I’m familiar with the issues.

I’m bashing all banks who’ve lost or badly misplaced their moral compass.

Examples aren't hard to come by.

On a recent trip to the UK a Barclays ATM was charging 4.5% commission to withdraw pounds from my Canadian dollar account.

“It’s our duty to maximize profits for shareholders ” the banks would say.

But unbridled pursuit of profit, solely in the interest of shareholders is detrimental to customers.

It’s simple logic.

To generate higher profits for shareholders, one way or another customers pay more.

And customers are beginning to act.

Bank Transfer Day is a response to excessive fees from US banks particularly, $5 per month debit card fees from Bank of America.

It’s objective is to get customers to move their accounts to credit unions.

How successful it will be is any one’s guess, but the fledgling movement has already influenced Wells Fargo to drop their $3 per month debit card fee and made Forbes sit up and take notice.

And some banks seem to understand that fairness can work for them.

Ally have just come out with the follow up to their much lauded “kids” campaign.

You might expect the former GMAC to be stodgy.

You’d be wrong -- strategically and creatively.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r_Ld2h6Wnw&feature=relmfu]

So one bank at least gets it.

We don’t mind you making a honest profit.

And we’d like you much more if you stopped taking the piss.

Advertising -- the Worst Profession in the World

Try this. Ask a member of the ad industry what percentage of ads they think are crap.

Most will say 90%.

Some will say 95%.

David Ogilvy said 99%*

No one I’ve ever asked has gone below 90% but lets allow a big margin for error.

Let’s say 70% of ads are crap.

I don’t think anyone is going to say it’s less than that.

And the hypothesis also means 30% are good, right?

30%!

Can you imagine if bus drivers operated with a 30% success rate?

Or heart surgeons?

Or refs?

There would be carnage on the roads, corpses piling up in hospitals and riots in every football stadium.

No other profession I can think of would tolerate a 30% success rate.

But in advertising it’s par for the course.

Which suggests that as a profession we seem to be OK with being crap.

Of course it’s not all crap.

Any given year Cannes, CLIO, D&AD and The One Show, among others, hand out awards that prove it.

Even if you disagree with some of the stuff that wins, it’s undeniable each year turns up a slew of very good work.

It even gets published in convenient annuals to inspire us to do more good work the next year.

But we keep right on producing 70% crap.

It’s amazing we even get paid for being so ineffective.

Why do we do it in the face of all that excellence?

Not to mention a whole literary sub-genre dedicated to producing great advertising.

From Claude Hopkins' Scientific Advertising or Ogilvy on Advertising to Those Wonderful Folks Who Gave You Pearl Harbor from Jerry Della Femina through to Sorry for The Lobsters by Neil French.

There are bookcases of erudition aimed at fostering excellence, and most of all, of avoiding crap.

Doesn’t anybody read them?

If they do then, why doesn’t all this knowledge improve things?

Or does it?

Would we be suffering even more than 70% crap without it?

Maybe we should take a closer look at what we mean by crap.

If I don’t like something, I may well say it’s crap.

And I probably like different ads than you do.

So your crap and my crap may be poles apart.

You may even like my crap and vice versa.

Crap is subjective.

A creative person’s criteria for good advertising may be freshness and imagination.

A client’s may centre around ROI.

An account exec's may revolve around a happy client.

As much as I believe creative advertising is the way to go to maximize ROI.

It’s also undeniable that crap can be effective.

Think about all that dreary financial direct mail.

Or all those bad infomercials.

Someone is crunching the numbers.

They don’t keep them coming because they’re ineffective.

They work.

But just because they work, doesn’t mean they’re not crap.

Since they work, does it matter?

That depends on your point of view.

And what is advertising, if not a point of view?

Theoretically you could give the same brief to two different agencies and get exactly the same ROI.

But one agency's work would win loads of awards and the others' would be crap.

So does it really matter?

Well, I like to sell stuff with a bit of dignity, style and wit.

I think it works best and it’s the way I prefer being sold to.

And if it makes the industry a little less crap.

I’m all for it.

* "Ninety-nine percent of advertising doesn't sell much of anything." -David Ogilvy

Rebranding the Airport - Why Stop There?

I just got back from a very nice holiday. I flew out and back from Toronto’s Pearson Airport.

I was looking forward to seeing Ove Design’s recent rebranding of Terminal 1.

So I was a bit disappointed to fly in and out of Terminal 3.

I was hoping it would be Terminal 1 because I’m intrigued as to what extent design can improve time spent in an airport.

I imagine even the best design can only make an incremental difference to an experience characterised by ever lengthening line ups, over priced food and beverages, and inevitable delays.

Since I didn't get to see it, I don't know for sure.

Then I was struck by, dare I say, an entirely bigger thought.

Why stop at airports?

Why not rebrand entire countries?

Countries are not static, they evolve.

And the evolution of nations is somewhat more complex than the evolution of brands.

But national brand identities are invariably remnants of  the past.

A glorious history is all very well, but  sometimes you need to get with the program.

So following the order of my trip, first up for a makeover is the United Kingdom.

Or to give it its full title the “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" - a term coined in 1927.

And badly in need of an overhaul after 84 years.

What with the resurgence of Scottish separatism and the London riots, United seems stretching it a bit.

And isn't Kingdom just a tad chauvinistic for a country ruled by a Queen?

The Disunited Monarchdom would be more apt, if a bit dour.

So how about the United Drinkdom?

Surely this encapsulates the brand character of a country where everyone is united by being on the lash, hungover, or nipping out for a swift half.

It’s a well-known fact that when you arrange to meet a Brit you‘ll end up in a pub, (which is fun when you’re on holiday).

Even if, the legendary stiff upper lip has metamorphosed into, the much-loved-by-the-tabloid-press, rubber legged Friday night.

Maybe Diagio could sponsor all that new signage.

Are you thinking cross promotion?

The English word "Turkey" is derived from the Medieval Latin Turchia circa 1369.*

Not surprisingly, this is a hopelessly outdated brand.

Then, Turkey was famous for Sultans, harems and Constantinople.

Today, Turkey is famous for Istanbul, archeology, beaches and hospitality.

And Turkish hospitality is wonderful because it genuinely stems from cultural values even when there’s a commercial aspect to it.

The Turks know how to make you feel at home with warmth and excellent service that anticipates your needs through extra-sensory powers.

Meze, wine, olives, glasses, ice and raki, uncannily appear seconds before you were going to ask for them, in a fine example of just in time supply chain management.

While your host is being charming in four or five languages.

But the name Turkey hardly reflects this, evoking things that don’t work very well and Christian holiday roasts.

No problem, a simple rebrand to HospiTurkity, and they can own hospitality.

They deserve to, so it’s only fair.

That should see them alright for the next seven centuries.

Which brings me home literally and figuratively to Canada.

A country whose copious natural resources include either the second or third largest oil reserves in the world, depending on the credibility of restated Venezuelan reserves.

With a natural conservatism that has made its banking system the envy of many.

Not to mention  Justin Bieber.

Canada doesn’t quite capture the new Canadian exuberance.

But in homage to the original Iroquoian word, kanata, meaning  village or settlement* Kanada has a bit of bling to it.

And as an abbreviation for the currency, K$ with its connotation of “a grand”, is way cooler than C$.

It’s a timely reminder of our relative economic stability and new-found standing in the global order.

Which is just as well when you have bills to pay.

And when you get back from vacation -- you always do.

*Wikipedia

A Brilliant Idea Goes to Waste

Once in a while you come across a solution to a problem that's so simple; you’re torn between applauding it and kicking yourself for not thinking of it. The Bagster is an ingenious product from Waste Management for the disposal of debris from smaller renovation projects.

As they say it’s “the alternative to bulky metal dumpsters”.

Essentially it’s a dumpster or skip (UK) made of some heavy-duty fabric that holds up to 3300 lbs of garbage.

It comes in a bag for around $40 and when you need it you simply unfold it and start chucking stuff in, it’s a cracking piece of kit.

It costs more per ton than using a dumpster, but for downtown locations where a dumpster won’t fit, or when your demolition date is uncertain, it’s a premium worth paying.

When it’s full you book a collection and a chap with a boom truck comes and hooks it off your yard, just like this demo.

My mate Rick is a bona fide renovation genius, so when I challenged him to demolish my existing kitchen and rough in the new one over a weekend, he was totally up for it.

So Saturday morning the ingenious Bagster was unfurled on our tiny front lawn, and once most of our 50-year-old kitchen had been ripped out, I started chucking armfuls in.

And on Monday the kitchen fitters arrived and by Thursday the new kitchen was pretty much installed.

All that remained was to schedule a pick-up by calling 1-877 789 2247.

And that’s when it all went pear-shaped.

OK, I confess that my reading of the packaging was perfunctory.

When I called the call centre, it turned out I hadn’t grasped that there was a pick-up window of 3 business days.

No problem I thought, I’ll just park the car on the street in front of it, to ensure boom truck access.

But what I hadn’t factored in was, they could show up for pick up anytime within the 3 day window, and if I wasn’t around to move the car when the truck arrived, “a penalty charge may apply”.

There was something about “may” in the same sentence as “penalty charge” that made me uneasy.

Thinking, maybe I’d just got a particularly unhelpful call centre rep, I called  a couple of days later with much the same result.

Meanwhile, the Bagster was losing its lustre as it lay on the lawn like a beached whale.

What offered so much, as a convenient disposal solution was proving inflexible and inconvenient – the exact opposite of its USP!

I viewed the web demo again and noticed the entire operation appeared to take place in a vast white aircraft hangar.

Maybe the problem was I live on a real street.

What hurt far worse than the now permanent mound on the lawn was promise betrayed, I felt like an MIA fan after the release of Maya.

A hashtag search on Twitter revealed @BagsterBag, hence:

Soon after DMing my number, a very helpful woman named Bev contacted me from Waste Management Canada.

She not only offered to shorten pick-up window, but also to liaise between me and the boom truck operator to ensure I’d be around to move the car.

And sure enough on the specified day voila, just like that the infernal Bagster was gone!

So how did this brilliantly simple idea get so frustrating, I felt compelled to blog about it?

Maybe the problem is cultural.

Waste Management is predominantly a commercial waste company.

They acquired the Bagster which had started life under the brand name Rhino Bag from founders Randy Uens & Mark Handley.

I'm sure  the word “synergy”  was bouncing around the board room, and fair enough, because this would appear to be an acquisition with a great fit...on paper.

But a 3 business day pick-up window in a major urban centre is hardly practical.

It felt like the mindset of a corporation unused to dealing with consumers -- a different kettle than handling commercial accounts.

Presumably an algorithm or app could be deployed to shorten this window.

Or if the logistics truly can’t support more flexibility then maybe a phrase such as: "this product may not be suitable for use in certain locations” ought to be prominently displayed on the packaging.

Because it really shouldn't take at least 7 phone calls plus a string of tweets to get the Bagster, or any other product, to do what it says on the can.

Sadly, the idea is so much better than the execution.

Turn Off the GPS

Some years ago I was driving through Picardy in Northern France with my mate Danny. We were in an old MG with no GPS.

By the time we realized it, the moment of getting lost, had passed.

We’d missed a turn somewhere and before we knew it we had no idea where we were.

We were good and lost.

The map wasn’t much help because we couldn’t fix our location.

We reached a fork in the road and had to make a decision.

We tossed a coin.

Then we were turning left and climbing the brow of a gentle hill.

As we crested the hill, spread out before us bathed in the golden evening sunlight lay the picturesque town of St-Valéry-sur-Somme.

As its name suggests the town sits on the southern side of the wide Somme estuary.

Coasting down the road into town we were met by the tang of salt on the breeze.

And the sun had just begun to turn the water the colour of flame.

The MG seemed to steer itself, right into the gravel car park of the Relais de Guillame, a splendidly ramshackle fin de siècle château, turned hotel.

We decided to spend the night there before we even got out of the car.

The bar and restaurant were spacious and high ceilinged lined art with Art Nouveau wallpaper faded by sunlight and time.

But the meal we enjoyed was light and contemporary.

We stuck around, and over the next couple of days we explored the small town with its medieval walls and gatehouses.

We ate lunch at charming and inexpensive quayside restaurants bursting with fresh fish.

We strolled along the boardwalk past substantial Edwardian seaside villas built by prosperous bourgeoisie, to the point with the light house.

It was the best part of our trip.

And if we hadn’t got lost we wouldn’t have found it.

But getting lost is usually viewed with frustration.

It’s the antithesis of our rigid compartmentalized time-starved lives.

So it’s usually seen as a failure to arrive.

Instead of an opportunity to discover something new.

Getting lost is wrong; it denotes a lack of planning or navigational nous.

Like wasting time it’s seen as non-productive, almost sacrilegious.

But what is creativity, if it isn’t getting lost?

Staring at a blank piece of paper, thinking what if I can’t think of anything?

If you don’t feel a little afraid you’re just going through the motions.

Using the tricks and techniques you know and staying in your comfort zone.

Relying on what has worked in the past.

After a point, that’s repetitive not creative.

Creative means throw away the compass.

Get in the un-comfort zone.

Put some random back in the mix.

Turn off the GPS.

Get lost.

Blogagon Smack Down

Before the UFC wherever beer and testosterone intersected in sufficient quantities, a question was likely to be asked. Ali or Lee?

Meaning of course, who would win in a rumble between the GOAT Muhammad Ali and Bruce “The Dragon” Lee.

The beauty was the issue could never be settled.

It lent itself to the most hyperbolic hyperbole and much hilarity all round.

Today, maybe the question would be phrased in terms of Couture or Liddell?

Somehow, it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Then again, the UFC doesn’t really do it for me.

I’m up for it when they’re on their feet but I lose interest as soon as they hit the floor.

I know they’re skillful athletes, but when they’re rolling around the Octagon, it reminds me of so much dodgy wrestling

An equally intriguing question is who comes out on top in the Blogagon?

Because when marketing or advertising folk and beer intersect in sufficient quantities the question is likely to be asked.

Godin or Trott?

Meaning, if you were marooned on a desert island and had to choose one, who would you choose?

So, Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Blogagon Smack Down.

In the red corner blogging out of Hastings on the Hudson, New York – Internet entrepreneur, author and speaker Seth”Godinzilla” Godin

In the blue corner blogging out of Poplar, London – author and advertising legend Dave “The Trottinator” Trott

And remember, two men enter one man leaves

At first glance the case for Godin seems overwhelming, with over 4100 posts, 12 books and 103,560* Twitter  followers against Trott’s unknown (by me) number of posts 1 book and 5536* Twitter followers .

However, popularity bears little relation to merit, hence: Kim Kardashian - 8,715,859* Twitter followers.

Stats aside, these blogging behemoths bang out brilliant blogs by the book load.

Godin, following some rhythm detectable only to him, alternates between short and long posts.

The short posts are pretty accessible with a nod towards pop culture.

The longer posts can be more academic.

Sometimes he short posts twice daily, as if to say I’m thrice as smart as you’ll ever be.

And he probably is.

To paraphrase Voltaire, if Godin didn’t exist mankind would have to invent him.

Trott, on the other hand favours a more classic long-form approach.

His references are widely drawn, history, formula one racing, boxing, football, science, travel...

But everything this magpie mind writes about is accessible.

Actually, it’s the epitome of accessibility.

You'd have to be very dumb indeed to not get Dave.

While Seth is a bit of a smartass:

“Give up control and give it away... The more you give your idea away, the more your company is going to be worth.”

Or: "If you can’t state your position in eight words, you don’t have a position."

He gets away with it because he’s such a mind-bogglingly smart smartass; smarter than a paint store.

His best insights are uber geek chic.

As befits a man with a degree in computer science and an MBA from Stanford, he really gets digital, both the scale of change the digital economy has wrought and the hows and whys of a new way of doing business.

Trott, in contrast is more of an everyman, if every man has a record of building a string of successful agencies; from seminal 80s agency Gold Greenlees Trott to CST The Gate and a career that illuminates advertising history.

He’s up to speed digitally, but believes the idea takes precedent over the delivery system.

And if some people think this makes him a bit of a dinosaur, he doesn’t give a monkey’s.

His writing has a haiku like quality and sometimes verges on the metaphysical:

“For me, the best writing takes complicated things and makes them simple.

So everyone can understand them.

If it’s really great, it also takes simple things and makes them powerful.

So everyone can feel them.”

The infuriating thing about his writing is it’s so deceptively simple, sooner or later you think, why can’t I write like Dave Trott?

Well it’s best not to try, because you almost certainly can’t.

Whereas Godin tends to make you think, why can’t I think like that?

And again, you almost certainly can’t.

Especially when he’s on:

It's impossible to have a coin with only one side. You can't have heads without tails.

Innovation is like that. Initiative is like that. Art is like that.

You can't have success unless you're prepared to have failure.

As soon as you say, "failure is not an option," you've just said, "Innovation is not an option."

But he also excels at more complex analysis, like this insightful piece on:

The game theory of discovery and the birth of the free-gap

Trott tends to stories that illustrate ideas, whereas Godin is drawn more to pure ideas.

Here’s one of Trott’s best, it’s structured like a classic short story with a wicked twist at the end: The Train is Leaving the Station.

At his best Godin dazzles with the breadth and speed of his thinking and a head that’s not wired like yours or mine.

Although sometimes he comes over as an overbearing headmaster, it’s hard to dislike him when he acknowledges the fault so honestly.

“This attitude gets me in trouble sometimes. Perhaps I shouldn't be pushing people who want something but have been taught not to push themselves. Somewhere along the way, it seems, I forgot that it's none of my business..”

Trott is more of a humanist.

As such, he understands not only that he’s not always going to be right, but as the title of a recent post of his puts it:

There’s Not Always a Right Answer.

He may possess awareness and compassion, but he's definitely no mug:

See, I don’t think my mate lost his visa for taking drugs.

I think he lost it for being stupid.

Did he really think that if he admitted taking drugs they’d admire his honesty and give him a visa?

Well, knee-deep in sweat and adjectives it’s crunch time here at the Blogagon.

My money’s on the Trottinator.

Of course your verdict may differ.

But isn’t that the beauty of it?

Or perhaps the real beauty is we get to read both.

* All Twitter stats as of August 3^rd

Stop Trying to Sell me Shit While I’m on Hold

Nobody likes holding. Nobody likes being force-fed muzak and told:

Your call is important to us.

But there’s an even worse fate that can befall your captive lugs.

Being told how important your call is and then being pitched to.

I’m on hold with Bell Canada when the voice tells me:

Streamline your business communications with Bell*.

But I’m in a bottleneck, on hold.

For your extra convenience you can contact us by email.

If I wanted to email you, I probably wouldn’t have called.

Bell offers a wide array of services and products including voice systems…

I’m on hold on your voice system, thanks.

To help you stay productive and minimize business down time.

Hmmn I’m not feeling very productive right now.

Who thinks this stuff up?

Let’s take the opportunity while customers are frustrated because they’re on hold...and sell them something!

What’s the logic here?

Engaging with the customer at every touch point?

Because I’m pretty sure the hold line is never a positive emotional experience for the holdee.

Once I was in a meeting with national Canadian brand when the subject of their hold line came up.

I suggested looking at things from a different perspective.

Maybe something like this:

Hi, we’re a really busy company and we can’t take your call right now.

And because we value your business, and know you can’t really hang up we are not going to try to sell you anything.

So here’s some entertainment while you’re waiting.

For jazz press 1.

For classical press 2.

For hip-hop press 3.

For stand-up press 4.

If you really want to find out more about our services press 5.

This suggestion was well received but sadly never implemented.

If it had been, I’m guessing less that 2% of callers would press 5.

Much less.

I don’t know why hold lines don’t work like this.

(If anyone knows one that does work like this, do let me know.)

I think it would generate a significant amount of good will and maybe some positive word of mouth.

Perhaps the problem is too many marketing people have actually never sold anything in person.

Never worked in a market or shop, sold door to door, or done telesales.

They may be great with strategies and metrics, but don't know much about sales psychology and how to close a sale.

But the guys who sell hold line programming, are apparently stellar salespeople.

Because they persuade company after company to piss off 100% of customers on hold, for what I’m guessing, if it’s even calculable, is an infinitesimal conversion rate.

The other day I called Rogers to cancel my cable.

The cable box had stopped working for the third time in twelve months.

All they ever say is bring it in and we’ll replace it.

I tired of explaining that since it was their product that was habitually defective, maybe they should deliver a replacement.

The logic of this seemed to escape them, so they put me on hold waiting to cancel the account.

I got this:

Love to text message all your friends or stay in touch with an easy to use touch screen phone -- Rogers has the hottest wireless devices. Check out Rogers.com*

Of course, as soon as I cancel my cable I just can’t wait to buy a smart phone from you. Wait I’ll take two!

This doesn’t seem like a great cross selling tactic to me.

Ironically for two companies in the “communications” business, both Bell and Rogers seem completely oblivious to the notion that communication begins with listening.

Rogers in particular confuses noise with signal, which is especially irritating because they own the cables, and play their own excruciatingly lame commercials at least ten percent louder than anyone else’s.

They always deny this, but everyone I know who has Rogers cable scrambles for the volume button the second one of their monstrosities comes on.

Even the government regulatory body, the CRTC,  has had to acknowledge the issue of excessive volume levels of Canadian commercials.

And the dinosaurs still don’t get it.

Noise doesn’t lead to sales.

Haranguing someone is not salesmanship.

And haranguing someone on hold, with no out option, is just as bad as spamming them.

Actually it's much worse.

* Transcriptions may not be 100% verbatim due to my slow typing.

How Agencies Fool Themselves

I got hired by an agency that had a slogan: Creative First. And as a creative person, I was delighted to join an agency that subscribed to this idea.

But it didn’t work quite like that.

One of their clients had absolutely no interest in creativity.

They were a bank and a rather stodgy bank at that.

Once in an internal meeting, I joked the agency slogan ought to be:

Creative First – Except the Bank.

Because when it came to the bank’s rather large slice of business, creativity was simply not required.

There was no real client agency fit and the work simply got ground out.

The agency didn’t like this.

But they put up with it.

In another meeting, I suggested that the agency fire the bank.

(I was a little naïve in those days in case you’re wondering.)

The way I saw it, firing the bank would send a signal that the agency was serious about: Creative First.

So serious they were prepared to live by it.

New accounts would arrive to fill the vacuum.

Better accounts.

More creative accounts.

Maybe this scenario would have transpired, but one thing was certain.

Firing the bank would hurt the bottom line.

Still, someone at the meeting was at least partially listening.

Because a couple of weeks later, instead of firing the bank, the agency fired me.

It was a blow at the time.

But a few months later I experienced a hit of schadenfreude when the bank fired the agency.

I still don’t really understand why the agency couldn't acknowledge, internally at least, it was Creative First – Except the Bank.

True, it doesn’t have the same ring to it, but what was so wrong with admitting they had to do some dull stuff to pay the bills?

Why adopt a slogan that was 70% true at best?

Why not reposition the agency, instead trying to live up to an unattainable ideal?

More recently I worked for an agency that didn’t have a slogan.

They swore by a somewhat long-winded version of account planning.

So instead of a slogan, they had a manifesto.

“We are extremists”, it commenced.

Seeing as they were based in the Middle East, it was funny.

It was ballsy.

It was also sadly untrue.

They were more like waiters.

And not even wonderfully polished waiters, the type who’ll gently steer you away from the three-day old fish, and towards the fresh lamb.

They just took orders from clients.

Admittedly the Middle East is not the easiest place to work.

When the Sheik says “Make the logo bigger”, you basically just suck it up and make the logo bigger.

But not every client was a Sheik.

In spite of which, this “serve the Sheik” mentality, seemed ingrained in the account people.

I wondered what Allan Kazmer, my old boss would have made of it.

Allan used to say, “It’s a service industry not a servile industry”.

That’s an important distinction.

Because recruiting people with the promise of extremism but a reality of ordinary work builds an atmosphere of frustration that doesn’t help the agency.

Why endorse a manifesto you can’t live up to, when you could just position yourself differently and live up to that instead?

We’re extremists disguised as realists or waiters or whatever.

Positioning is what we’re supposed to get isn’t it?

Agencies also fool themselves without the aid of slogans or manifestos.

I worked for a small agency in Toronto, that sometimes pitched against big agencies.

The big agencies would invariably mention to the prospect that they had bigger resources.

And that these bigger resources translated into bigger and better talent.

Well yes and no.

Big agencies may be able to lure established talent with big salaries, but they’re not necessarily any good at spotting talent.

A few years before I worked at the small agency, a guy was about to graduate from the University of Toronto.

He was interested in the advertising industry.

He wrote to the 18 largest agencies in Toronto asking for an interview.

He got 18 rejection letters.

So eventually he got a job writing for the New Yorker.

And then became a best-selling author recognized as one of the most original marketing minds of his generation.

His name is Malcolm Gladwell.

And not one of those 18 agencies could spot his prodigious talent.

Now, if an agency is fooling itself, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s fooling its clients.

But it’s almost certainly not getting the best out of the people who work there.

Which means it’s unlikely that clients are getting the best out of the agency.

And isn’t that the point?

What I've learnt from the good agencies I’ve been lucky enough to work at is, they invariably aren’t fooling themselves.