I am reliably informed by AdScam’s Senior New York spy that my Q & A session with Ogilvy management at the AdWeek wankfest yesterday, went surprisingly well, and my “questions brought the house down!” (his words, not mine.) Hopefully, I’ll get a video of the whole thing and put it up. In the meantime, here are the questions I posed…
1: The basic prerequisite to being a BDA is that you must be owned by a BDHC… That’s a Big Dumb Holding Company. All of which are publicly traded… And where the quality of the work is secondary to the income each BDA is expected to contribute to the BDHC… So, what’s the difference between running a BDA and running a sausage factory?
2: Has it ever struck you as amusing that the majority of BDA senior managers are more than happy to sit through a so-called “working,” five hundred dollar dinner at NoBu, whilst discussing how best to sell corn flakes to an unmarried mother of three living in a trailer park in Mississippi?
3: Advil recently moved its account from old BDA, Grey, to new BDA, McGarry/Bowen. Advil has always done shitty advertising; they will always do shitty advertising. So, why the move… Do I smell money here? And speaking of money, how much did you guys blow on the Advil pitch?
4: When was the last time you read this? (I hold up a copy of David Ogilvy’s, Confessions of an advertising man.) If it’s more than a year, you should be ashamed of yourselves. However, on the last page, David is asked if advertising should be abolished. No, he replies, but it must be reformed. Don’t you think he’s currently spinning at a rapid rate as he rests under the Chateau Touffou when he sees the current state of the business?
