There was a piece in Monday’s Independent about how agencies sell themselves to clients. It rounded up the slogans and claims of a few agencies and presented them without much in the way of comment. It’s easy to poke fun at these things (I will try to resist the temptation) but interesting  to see how a few of these statements of intent compare.

JWT
Slogan: ‘Time is the new currency’
They
say: "The power of brands can be measured in their ability to attract
people’s time. Time is what’s most valuable to people all around the
world, and the way they spend it is predictive of the way they spend
their money. Our role is to ensure that more people spend more time
with our clients’ brands, in the knowledge that their money will
follow."

Well, maybe. (Unless your service is partly about convenience, like say, Google or Amazon. In which case, you might want your customers to spend less time with your brand.)

DDB
Slogan: ‘Co-creation’
They
say: "Co-creativity is a process that puts consumers at the heart of
the solution. It’s agnostic about where the best idea comes from –
online, branded content, advertising, an event – in fact, it is
increasingly likely that it is through combining all of these and more
that the most creative and influential ideas will be gained."

This feels like an observation rather than a brand positioning.

M&CSAATCHI
Slogan: ‘Brutal simplicity of thought’
They
say: "The slogan comes from the idea that it’s easier to complicate
than simplify. Simple messages enter the brain quicker and stay there
longer, so brutal simplicity of thought is therefore a painful
necessity."

Well, true to their beliefs, this is at least simple and easy to understand. All that pain and brutality sounds a bit nasty, though. I’m a bit scared of M&C Saatchi now. I worry that they’re going to pin me down and forcibly penetrate me with their brutally blunt tools.

Saatchi &Saatchi
Slogan: ‘Nothing is impossible’
They
say: "From the outset the Saatchi brothers broke the rules, challenged
industry norms and created work that was groundbreaking in every
respect. Brands are faced with the danger of becoming commodities that
lack differentiation, but we believe that bold and infectious
creativity can drive loyalty beyond reason for brands."

Surprising to see that Saatchi & Saatchi still talk about the long-departed brothers. Living in the past?  I thought S&S was all about Lovemarks these days but no mention of that from The Indie.

BBH
Slogan: ‘When the world zigs, zag’
They
say: "Our first ad was a poster for Levi’s black denim: a flock of
white sheep heading one way, with one black sheep going the other way.
The message captures our approach to life."

TBWALondon
Slogan: ‘The disruption agency’
They
say: "All brands have ambitions to outpace the competition, but too
many go through life copying their competitors. We aim to uncover the
clichés, assumptions and conventional wisdom that hold a category back,
then look for opportunities for brands to grow by disrupting those
conventions."

Well, the two above are just exactly the same, differently expressed, aren’t they?

Ogilvy Group UK
Slogan: ‘To be most valued by those who most value brands’
They
say: "The slogan was coined in 1993, but its roots go deeper, to David
Ogilvy’s belief in the power of brands, as long as they stay relevant
and continually refresh their appeal. Our view is that branding is a
genuinely useful concept that helps good companies defeat bad ones, so
the clients we most want are those who share this belief. We don’t
apologise for this idealism, since the most successful brands tend to
have longstanding ideals at their core, which can be dramatised in
myriad ways over time."

This is a mission, not a slogan.  Can’t really focus on this one as I have a problem with the use of the word ‘myriad’ in any context other than fairy tales.

Wieden + Kennedy
Slogan: ‘Creating strong, provocative relationships between good companies and their customers’
They
say: "We believe that great brands lead from the front. They provoke,
inspire and change the cultural landscape. The most successful brands
have fans, not customers, and the relationship between a brand and its
fans is based on dialogue, not monologue."

Arrant nonsense.

Euro RSCG London
Slogan: ‘Contagious ideas’
They
say: "We live in a world where consumers can more judiciously edit what
they consume, [and can] mould and reconfigure ideas relatively easily
and be far more expressive to their friends, family and colleagues
about what they like and don’t like. Contagious ideas live beyond the
space in which they first appeared by creating word of mouth, word of
keyboard or media interest."

Well, Euro’s Woolite campaign could certainly be categorised as some species of virulent virus, so they’re practicing what they preach.

Fallon

Slogan: none
They
say: "We choose not to have a fixed positioning point. In an
increasingly open media and creative environment, where more is
possible every day, we feel that it doesn’t make sense to pre-pack what
we do. What we do, and how we do it, is fundamentally bespoke and about
building the confidence to do something different."

A very cunning justification for having no positioning at all. And it seems to be working for them. Maybe this shows that agencies don’t really need a coherent or differentiating proposition. All they need to be successful is some  smart people, some great clients and a shed-load of brilliant work. Simple.

Our latest campaign for Honda got some coverage in the national press yesterday.

Claire Beale wrote in The Independent:

"Great ads…are hard to find. Bland mediocrity is the norm.
So when you manage a great one: feel proud, collect the awards, bank
the bonus, but don’t bet on your next ad being as good. Your adland
peers certainly won’t. They’ll be sharpening their blogging fingers
ready to knife your next piece of work for failing miserably to match
the ground-breaking standards of its predecessor.

Unfair, but
remember what Gore Vidal said: "Whenever a friend succeeds, a little
something in me dies." If he worked in adland, he’d probably have added
"so I’ll slag off every ad they do from here on, so they know they’re
past their best."

Spare a thought then for Wieden &
Kennedy, the agency responsible for one of the greatest ads of recent
years: the Honda "Cog" commercial. That’s the one with all the car
parts assembled in an amazing chain reaction that eventually starts a
Honda car.

Naturally, every Honda ad from W&K ever since has
sparked passionate debate about whether it’s as good as Cog and
generally the conclusion is "no". Which is fair enough.

Few ads
from any advertiser are as good as Cog. Just a shame that W&K’s
greatest triumph should put every successive Honda ad it does in the
firing line."

Well, I guess that’s just tough shit for us and we have to try harder. Claire goes on to say she thinks that ‘Problem Playground’ is a great ad, but that it suffers by comparison to ‘Cog, and that it’s also reminiscent of, but not as good as, the recent Skoda ‘Cake’ spot. She goes on to say that given the incestuous relationship between advertising and popular culture similarities between ads are perhaps inevitable but that "It all depends on how good the ad in
question is, and for my money the new Honda work is definitely good
enough." (Phew.)

Meanwhile, in The Guardian, Naresh Ramchandani wrote:

"Honda is the finest exponent of advertising in the car sector,
arguably in any sector, and needs to be. Without advertising, a Honda
is just a minicab. Seen in the light of a Honda advertisement a Honda
becomes a minicab covered in subtlety, ingenuity and philosophy and so
ceases to be a minicab.

"The new campaign for the Honda FCX
Clarity is possibly its cleverest ad yet. The telly ad features a bunch
of designers running around playing with Rubik’s cubes, cantilevering
sugar lumps into mugs of tea and assembling a giant jigsaw to form a
gleaming red hydrogen-powered Honda."

He continues: "Honda’s ingenuity not only benefits Honda, it also R&Ds for the whole car industry." And he suggests that other marketers in the automotive sector are attempting to follow Honda with watered-down versions of old Honda ads.

"Ten years ago, Coldplay aped Radiohead balladry but softened the edges,
so turning art school music into Asda-stocked muzak and making
gazillions. Ford are hoping for the same success but let’s see."

All very flattering, but also kind of frustrating. The music analogy above prompted me to think of the documentary I was watching the other night on BBC2 about Stiff Records – "If it ain’t Stiff". Stiff was a fiercely independent, creatively driven, chaotic little company that found a bunch of misfit maverick talents and somehow got them to deliver amazing work. (Hmmm… something familiar here?) Stiff artists like Elvis Costello, Ian Dury and Madness defied expectations and became proper pop stars.  But founder Dave Robinson, reminiscing about the glory days, said that once they’d hit the number one spot with Ian Dury’s ‘Hit me with your rhythm stick’ it was impossible to be satisfied with just hitting the top 20 any more. That success changed people’s expectations. His partner and co-founder left Stiff, saying that he didn’t want race-horses and lunch with Richard Branson, he just wanted ‘to tear it up’.

Meanwhile, a bit like us with Cog, for many critics, Ian Dury never again matched the genius of his ‘New Boots and Panties’ album. And, perhaps a fairer comparison, despite 30 years of trying, Wreckless Eric has certainly never matched his genius first single "Whole Wide World’.

So,what conclusions can we draw from all this? That if/once you do something amazing you should pack it in and quit trying to beat it? That you shouldn’t aim for success because people will slag you when you don’t make it?  That success inevitably leads to a loss of mojo?

Don’t ask me, I just work here.