No fat, no flavour
For a while at least, I was lucky to work in advertising in the days when a long lunch at Simpson’s in The Strand was neither unusual nor frowned upon. Simpson’s is one of those institutions that’s actually worthy of the name. It’s famous for its perfectly roasted joints of meat, which are expertly carved at your table, and washed down with Claret. My boss used to ask for extra crackling with her roast pork, explaining as she did that the fat is the best bit of any type of meat. She took a dim view of me trimming the fat from each slice and pushing it to the side of my plate.
That was back in the late eighties. From today’s perspective those fatty lunches were themselves fat. Lunching plays no part in a lean advertising process. Lunches are fat. And they’ve been trimmed by accountants and procurement and pushed to the side of the plate. I take a dim view of that.
Lunches are fat but they’re also fun. They’re fun because they’re fat. I recently did some work for an agency that still has fun. It’s independent and privately owned obviously. Having spent some time with them, I wrote, ‘Fun comes from doing great work. Great work comes from having fun.’ I wrote this because it’s a source of competitive advantage for the agency. It shouldn’t be.
I wanted a job in advertising because it looked like fun. I think fun was the motivation for most of the people I’ve met who are really good at it. Fun attracted talent that could easily earn more money in finance or one of the professions. Fun made fifty hour weeks feel like forty hour weeks. The extra work from those extra hours was useful because of fun. Fun is an antidote to resentment. Fun is a productivity hack.
In the first three agencies I worked in, every creative team had its own office. They had their own wall space to use as a gallery for work in progress. They had privacy in which to work through the stupid ideas to get to the brilliant ones.
Dedicated wall space and privacy are not necessarily fun, but they are fat.
Having several weeks to come up with a new campaign idea, rather than a day or two, is fat.
Taking unnecessary people on shoots as a training exercise is fat.
Lots of things that make advertising better look like fat if you don’t know how advertising agencies work. And people who lack that knowledge, people who know the per-square-foot cost of floor space but who are clueless on the value of culture, have been allowed to cut the fat away.
Efficiency is often the enemy of effectiveness. And people who should know better have butchered the industry.
Fat equals flavour. My boss was right. Advertising smells better, tastes better, and works better with the marbling. Advertising is worth more with the fat left on. In its haste to appear efficient and accountable, the industry has excised the very things it should be selling. Advertising is all about the sizzle.
Procurement has a lot to answer for. You don’t have to be a vegetarian but it almost certainly helps.
Agency management has a lot to answer for too. Selling a commodity process instead of priceless magic is stupid.
And on 21st December, with Scrooge in mind, it’s worth noting that ‘miserly’ comes from the Latin word for ‘wretched’.
I think my next post will be about train tannoy announcements. Subscribe and tell your friends!