Where luvvies and bean counters unite
As Jonathan Mildenhall proved for Coca Cola, creativity means commercial success – so why, wonders Dominic Mills, aren’t more brands making the connection…
Finding common ground in adland between the luvvies and the bean counters is not always easy. Cultural clashes and different agendas are usually underpinned by mutual suspicion.
The former want fame, impact, originality, brand recognition and attribution – mostly soft values. And they’re especially fond of awards – no matter how small or relevant.
The latter deal in the hard currency of sales, margin, enterprise value and share price. And they don’t give a monkey’s chuff about awards.
Of course, the two are linked – but it isn’t always easy to see the join.
I’m sure those who voted Sainsbury’s Brand of the Year at the Marketing Society awards last week will have based their choice simply on the evidence of their own eyes – namely the supermarket’s marketing and advertising output which, most of us can agree, has been of a uniformly high standard.
It’s certainly working: last week it (finally) overtook Asda for the number two spot.
I’ll guess that few will have looked at this chart, which shows that, while it may be off a twelve-month high, the Sainsbury’s share price has ticked up gradually over the last six months from around 379p to 404p.
Asda is part of Walmart so there is no meaningful share price metric, but you don’t have to be a genius to see that, in terms of marketing creativity, it is being outpunched by Sainsbury’s.
Which makes you wonder why more hard-nosed, corporate bean counters don’t make the connection between creativity and commercial success. Or the luvvies don’t try harder to demonstrate the connection.
Last week I saw Jonathan Mildenhall, Coca-Cola’s global advertising ace – actually, he’s just been promoted to the very American-style title of SVP, integrated marketing communication and design excellence for North America (bloody hell, they really know to mangle job titles…) – expand on the link between creativity and commercial success.
Talking to the IPA, Mildenhall explained how the world’s most famous brand had become, in the words of his CEO, ‘creatively bankrupt’. You can read more about what he said here.
But one of the most interesting things was how he pitched for the job back in 2006. Interviewed by the board at its Atlanta HQ, he told them his aim was for Coca-Cola to be named Cannes Creative Marketer of the Year within the next decade.
Naturally, this didn’t go down too well, and it probably didn’t help that Mildenhall was a Briton with an agency background (Mother, BBH and Howell Henry). They must have thought: “Oh no, not another awards-obsessed luvvie” (or words to that effect).
Mildenhall’s response was to take them through the last few Cannes Advertiser of the Year winners: Swatch – highest growth on record; Nike – earnings per share up 14pc; BMW – sales up 10pc, share price up 16pc; Sony – record sales of the Playstation; Honda Europe – share price high and UK sales increase of 28pc; Adidas – record market capitalisation. In his words, the data linking creativity and commercial success is “bullet-proof”.
That did the trick. And since he moved to Atlanta, Mildenhall has presided over a creative revolution that has transformed Coca-Cola’s advertising. You may not like its products, but there’s no denying that a once leaden-footed, blunderbuss-bearing marketing giant – touting one-size-fits-all, top-down, generated ideas – is now producing responsive, innovative and relevant communications.
The pay-off isn’t just in its Cannes Creative Marketer of the Year award this year, but more pertinently a share price that, allowing for a stock split, is 130pc higher than seven years ago.
Take a look at winners since 1999 and you’ll see that there are a few yawning gaps: no banks, no financial services companies, no telecoms, no software or hardware brands, and no media or entertainment providers.
Looking at the dross they (mostly) produce, and it’s hardly a surprise. But you wonder why they don’t, or are unable to, take the lessons of Coca-Cola and other creative marketers on board.
Zenith/Walker Media: expensive Elastoplast
I was as surprised as the next person by last Thursday’s news that Zenith is planning to buy Walker Media.
But not shocked. This year has turned out to be annus horribilis for Zenith UK, as I detailed here last week: the loss of two blue-chip, signature bits of business in BA and L’Oreal and, with the departure of CEO Tim Hipperson, meant it looked like an entity bereft of leadership and, more importantly, a route to the future.
Zenith needed something dramatic, and the quicker the better.
Clearly the deal with Walker has been in the offing for some time – probably around the time of the BA loss and Hipperson’s resignation a few months ago.
And it makes sense, even if it smacks of expensive Elastoplast. In one swoop, Zenith gets to replace the BA or L’Oreal business with Walker’s £295 million billings, which will allow it continue to play the game of bulk and muscle with which all media agencies are obsessed (although, ironically, it doesn’t seem to have held Walker back).
More importantly, however, Zenith gets an experienced, proven, management team in Walker’s Phil Georgiadis (who learned his trade at Ray Morgan and Partners, the entity that became Zenith) and CEO Simon Davies.
Georgiadis has many qualities, but the ones that Zenith most needs are his leadership, his authority, and his strategic nous.
There is, however, a sense of panic around the deal, not least in the way it has been publicised before being agreed.
Why, for example, did Publicis allow it to go public now? Did it fear a meltdown at Zenith unless it was seen to be doing something?
Issues are also confused by the suggestion that Walker in the UK will remain a separate entity. Again, why has this not been sorted out?
Running the two separately sounds, quite frankly, mad and a complete waste (notwithstanding any conflict issues). Otherwise it looks as though they’re just buying Walker’s billings for show and giving Georgiadis a platform to go international.
So I don’t see it as anything other than, effectively, a reverse takeover. Which is what needs to happen.
But the longer the deal is unclear, the sillier Publicis looks and the more desperate Zenith appears to be.