More Money, Less Madness: The Ad People Are Flying

Michael Hedges March 5, 2012 Follow on Twitter

A giant outdoor ad campaign for the coming new season of the hot and trendy Mad Men TV drama shows, simply, an image of the lead character falling through the air. It’s controversial in New York City, evoking gristly images, though the producers call it a metaphor for “a man whose life is in turmoil.” Mad Men portrays the highly charged, brutally competitive and enormously creative world of Madison Avenue of the early 1960’s. The advertising world is still the same…but not.

Advertising is, arguably, the sincerest form of free-market capitalism. The point is to sell stuff. Doing that requires putting messages in front of people. Media – all of it – became a huge, wealthy business creating venues – like Mad Men – for those messages.

The world’s biggest advertising agency holding company is WPP, originally – and figuratively – a shopping basket manufacturer. It didn’t exist in the time tunnel of Mad Men. Over the last quarter-century it’s CEO and guiding force Martin Sorrell has gathered many legendary advertising and related firms in that basket – J. Walter Thompson, Ogilvy & Mather, Young & Rubicam, and Grey plus PR giants Hill & Knowlton and Burson-Marsteller.

Sir Martin, amidst announcing another highly profitable year, turned his attention to the opportunities and challenges of social media, Facebook in particular, in an interview with CNBC (March 1). “The point is that Facebook is a social medium, not an advertising one, like search or display,” he said. “It certainly is one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful branding medium. It is, however, a word of mouth or PR medium. You interrupt social conversations with commercial messages at your peril. Is it as potent as search or indeed as display or indeed as mobile? I don’t think so.” He also said WPP agencies would place US$400 million with Facebook this year, double 2011, significantly less that the US$2 billion to be spent with Google.

His other news was that WPP’s legal address would return to London from Dublin “as soon as possible” now that the UK Parliament is about to fix that unfortunate tax law. “We are delighted to say the last remaining issues have been removed and once the relevant legislation is passed,” he crowed, “we will move back, subject to shareholder approval.” WPP moved its tax domicile to Ireland in 2008.

Perhaps, too, Sir Martin is counting on a bit of revenue boost from WPP’s client News International (NI). Media buyer Mindshare, owned by WPP, reportedly handled ad placement for NI’s roll-out of the Sun tabloid Sunday edition. Several WPP-owned companies provide both creative and buying services for NI’s Times and Sunday Times worth about GBP 30 million, which is ho-hum compared to the annual GBP 220 million for media buying services to BSkyB, 39% owned by News Corporation.

Last summer the Cannes International Advertising Festival honored legendary UK ad man John Herarty, founder of Bartle Bogle Hegarty, now part of WPP rival Publicis. Accepting the Lion of St. Mark from today’s Mad Men, Sir John reminded those assembled of their roots. “Mad Men actually illustrates my point perfectly,” he said, quoted by the Guardian (June 13, 2011). “What we have lacked over the past ten years is a road map. We used to say 'Big TV ad, do some posters to back it up, little bit of press'. That all blew apart. The old medium is still brilliant but you've got to use it in a much more imaginative and daring way.”

Sir Martin, by contrast, talks long – and often – about finance and, with significant aplomb, economics and politics. Europe’s debt “crisis” is pushing advertisers to the cheaper digital ad spaces, he said. “It is just possible that Europe will muddle through the current crisis without a catastrophic failure.”

WPP reported 2011 pre-tax profits at GBP 1 billion (about US$1.55 billion) on GBP 10 billion revenue (about US$16 billion). Seeing the Man Men ad campaign billboard as a metaphor for the ad business, our hero isn’t jumping out of a building, he believes he can fly.

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