George Parker: I Know Nothing… Nothing!

Those immortal words of Sergeant Schultz in Hogan’s Heroes (Hogan’s wha???) sum up the current, continually festering state of the ad biz. Or to paraphrase another long dead guy, “No one in advertising knows anything about anything.” Yeah, I know, it won’t be long before people are paraphrasing me.

So, what am I on about this week? The increasing obsession with teams… Dedicated teams… Teams for a single client… Teams comprised of hacks who can’t find employment in a regular agency… Teams that rarely, if ever, make sense. This shit is what happens when one of the big douchenozzle holding companies comes up with an idea they believe clients are going to wet their knickers over. Namely, we will start a dedicated agency, or collective, or kibbutz, or ashram, which is totally and completely dedicated to your business. They will eat, sleep, defecate and fornicate, just for you.

For some reason, this seems to have the most appeal to car companies, as we currently have Team Ford, Team One, Team Mazda, and just announced last week, Team Volvo. What no one has explained to my satisfaction is how this benefits the client. Oh sure they negotiate some nut screwing deal with the financial Fagins at the holding companies, but in return, they get pretty shitty work, ‘cos very often it’s produced by the same hacks who got laid off from their old agency when it lost the account.

Volvo’s director of global marketing said the company believed a special unit to handle its advertising would afford more integration than separate agencies. “From day one, we put a lot of emphasis on trying to get as global as possible, and as deeply integrated as possible, across different media and executions,” he said. With Team Volvo, the car maker hopes to have a “true full-service, integrated campaign machine.” This is arrant bullshit.

I mean, what is this obsession with integration? It’s been proven over and over that “universal messaging” hardly ever works. The freshly hatched chicken that is a symbol of new life here is a sign of death in China… Honestly, I was actually told that by a client when I used to work on IBM at Ogilvy. He was probably just trying to piss me off, but who the fuck knows? Anyway, you need people on the ground in Kabul, instead of a bunch of wankers smoking dope in a loft in Amsterdam. Besides which the dope is cheaper in Kabul.

The living nightmare example of dedicated teams was of course, Enfatico. The “purpose built” agency that WPP put together to handle the Dell account. They hired over a thousand people, opened offices in eight countries, took a ten year lease on a twenty floor building on Madison Avenue, never produced a single campaign, and after three years, disappeared forever. The amazing part is that Team Mazda, the dedicated agency to handle this single account has also been created by WPP, who can’t even put it in their empty Enfatico building, ‘cos Mazda want them on their doorstep in southern California. It would seem that the Poisoned Dwarf (WPP – CEO, Sir Martin Sorrell,) doesn’t seem to learn from past experiences.

Anyway, as it’s all about costs, why don’t these clients simply take the account in house? Yes, the work will be shitty. Yes, it won’t build the brand. Yes, it won’t sell products, but it will be cheap.

Problem is, when the client realizes that it was a dumb idea and the cost savings don’t justify the lack of effectiveness, they’ll only have one person to blame… Themselves.

Anyone want to fund “Team AdScam?”

George Parker is a guest columnist for psfk.com. He is the perpetrator of adscam.typepad.com, which is without doubt, one of the most foul and annoying, piss & vinegar ad blogs on the planet. He is the author of MadScam and his new book, The Ubiquitous Persuaders, which is currently setting the ether ablaze (and which you can order now on Amazon). He will continue to relentlessly promote the crap out of it until you are forced to stab yourself in the eyes with knitting needles.