adland expenses scandal
A smart west-end restaurant. Curiously, waiting agency limos not pictured.
Coverage in the UK press of the MPs’ expenses scandal led me to wonder what would be revealed if there was a similar public disclosure of expenses in our industry.
W+K has never been an agency that goes in for high-ticket expenses. It’s more of a ‘sandwich for lunch at the desk’ sort of place than ‘private box at the opera’. (This may be why Ben Walker refers to me as, ‘The tightest MD in London.’) It's often been remarked – usually by Kevin Chesters – that you can't even get a packet of peanuts out of the hotel minibar on expenses at our place.
But still, it's interesting to wonder what might be revealed if adland’s expenses became public knowledge. It’s long, long time since I’ve been there, but I wonder if there’s still a line of cabs and chauffeur-driven cars outside The Ivy, waiting to collect those advertising luminaries who have a standing daily table reservation. There certainly used to be that line of waiting limos – Every. Bloody. Lunchtime.
2006 wasn't long ago but, looking back at Campaign's A-List book for that year, it seems like a distant era. Favourite lunch venues were listed as: The Ivy, J. Sheekey, Le Caprice, Zuma, The Wolsley and, of course, the Colombe D'Or in Provence. In these recessionary days, that cab waiting time outside The Ivy, plus a modest lunch for a few senior agency personnel, once or twice a week, over the course of a year, adds up to the annual profit margin on a UK account win that would make the front page of Campaign. Tricky to justify that cost to the junior art director being made redundant as a result of “cut-backs”.
And going back a little further, I can remember personally witnessing some expense account madness that surely can’t persist today. There was:
– the vast numbers of cases of quality booze that were routinely delivered to creative services staff around Christmas.
– the client whose country home extension was charged to the TV production job
– the agency board director who had £100 a day ‘walking around money’ out of petty cash to ensure that his ex-wife and creditors couldn’t get their hands on his earnings
– the agency director who bought a Winnebago on expenses so he could take the client to Formula 1
– the dinner receipt so gob-smackingly huge that it was framed and hung on the wall at TBWA
– my first boss, who – at a normal daily lunch for the two of us – ordered ‘sharpeners’ before lunch, a bottle or two of wine with every course, a bottle of dessert wine, a bottle of brandy, ‘stickies’ and a cigar and, at the end of the meal, had the waiter re-seal all the half-full bottles and give him a carrier bag in which to take them home
– the super-expensive Japanese restaurant where such huge quantities of sushi and sake were ordered that the only thing that could be done with all the leftover fish was to have a food-fight
– the agency director who claimed for several thousand pounds’ worth of ‘escort services’ from a gentlemen’s leisure venue in Amsterdam.
– the agency staff member whose flat was carpeted and furnished with ‘extras’ from the office refurbishment
– the agency boss who, at the end of a lavish Wimbledon bash for clients, had the caterers load all the undrunk booze into the back of his Jag so he could take it home.
I could go on, to the point where claiming a few grand for moat-cleaning would seem positively frugal. But I’m feeling a little queasy. (Of course, that could be on account of the enormous lunch that I had at Le Gavroche.) No wonder these companies went bust.
Welcome, puritans, to the new austerity. More salt on your porridge?