My FT column this week is on the advertising industry:
Duck Phillips! Thou should’st be living at this hour.
Phillips was the alcoholic account executive in the television series Mad Men who lost out after failing to marginalise his advertising agency’s charismatic copywriters, led by Don Draper. The power of the creatives was ascendant in the 1960s and 1970s, the prime era of the 30-second television advertisement.
Four decades later, the face-off between the people in suits – this time in media planning agencies – and the creatives is back again. Now, it is fuelled by recession rather than growth, and the internet rather than television – and the Madison Avenue creatives have a tougher fight.
It is the kind of turf battle that fascinates insiders but is often tedious to those who are not involved. Yet it says something about the precarious state of the industry.
I witnessed it this week in San Francisco, at the annual gathering of modern-day Mad Men (and Women): the leadership conference of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, or 4As.
It is usually where veteran creatives such as Chuck Porter of Crispin, Porter + Bogusky (creators of the Burger King “subservient chicken” campaign) and Dan Wieden of Wieden + Kennedy (Nike’s “Just Do It”) can swagger. There was not much swaggering this week.
You can read the rest of the column here and comment below.
