Welcome to Friday Fiascos...

A weekly look back at some of the f**k-ups and misdemeanors I've experienced and witnessed during my career...        

The two reasons our advertising couldn’t get approved…

Whenever I tell this story dear reader, I’ve been told similar stories by other agency folk. Apparently, it is a common problem in marketing departments across the planet.

Unilever, was one of Ogilvy & Mather's global clients. I still have "One quart moisturising milk, doesn't dry your skin like ordinary soap..." as an ear worm whenever I see Dove advertising or products on shelves.

We developed advertising for a number of Unilever brands but struggled to get anything approved without major changes and compromise to the idea. This caused frustration throughout the agency and friction in the client/agency relationship.

One of my art directors who moved from the Direct agency to the Advertising agency couldn't believe it took six months to get a single full-page-colour advertisement designed and approved. He'd normally get more than a dozen jobs done in that time at the Direct agency.

No matter what we created, even multiple concepts, the client committee (that’s a dead giveaway to the problem) would reject, revise and rubbish our work.

Finally, after another testy meeting, our Creative Director invited the clients to come to a workshop about what makes outstanding advertising, to which the clients agreed. Both parties were keen to resolve the creative issues.

A condition of participation was that each client had to bring an example of what they considered to be a great advertisement and a bad advertisement.

On the day of the workshop the two senior clients arrived with their video reels of the best and worst advertising. And lo and behold, both clients had brought the same two advertisements.

There was one problem though...

One client’s best advertisement was the other client’s worst and vice versa.

After a private discussion between the two clients and our Creative Director, the workshop ended quickly, as the problem had became rather clear.

The lesson is obvious:

Firstly, don’t let committees judge creative work.

Secondly, ensure your marketing team is trained or experienced enough to know what makes great advertising, especially if they are going to approve any.

As David Ogilvy famously said, "Search the parks in all your cities. You’ll find no statues of committees..."

Next week I’ll share when the whole Creative Department went on strike because of a horrid client and what happened as a result - ever heard of an industrial psychologist?

#marketingfail #advertising