Advertising Find Its Mad Road Map

Michael Hedges June 17, 2011 Follow on Twitter

Advertising luminaries will be packing their finest soon for the annual trek to the French Rivera for the 58th Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It begins next week. Skies will be sunny and everything just hot, hot, hot. Already more ad people have registered and there have been more award entries than ever, ever, ever.

By all indications, this years’ buzz at Cannes will be its roots. The basics of advertising are back, big pitches, big campaigns, big ideas. And the advertising industry’s grandees will be offering their wisdom to the adoring throngs. The Mad Men era is back. Tradition rules.

Ubiquitous WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell and ageless Publicis CEO Maurice Lévy will, again, anoint winners and pronounce losers at Cannes. Both have been given near lifetime guarantees by their respective boards of directors. Mandatory retirement at 70 for Lévy, now 69, has been raised to 75 and Sir Martin, now 66, will just be around forever. Not only is the Mad Men era back, the same guys are in charge. There’s a reason.

Honored this year with a special award - Cannes organizers come up with new special awards every year – legendary British ad man John Hegarty will receive The Lion of St. Mark. Sir John, it will be remembered, founded BBH in 1982, of which he remains worldwide creative director. BBH created the famous Levi’s “Black Sheep” campaign. He fired the client last year because “we just felt that our agendas had differed,” he told the Guardian (June 13). “Sacking sounds dramatic.”

Sir John, now 67, loves television. “Mad Men actually illustrates my point perfectly,” he explained in the same interview. “It's one of the shows everybody talks about and it proves that, suddenly, TV is the place. Five, six years ago we were that voice in the wilderness. Now X Factor has an audience of 19 million. That's as big as Morecambe and Wise. Then Downton Abbey, suddenly everyone is going 'Shit! People are watching TV!'”

“What we have lacked over the past 10 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,” he continued. “The old medium is still brilliant but you've got to use it in a much more imaginative and daring way.”

This year’s Cannes Lions Festival will be doubly steeped in tradition. At the heart – literally and figuratively – will be the 100th birthday celebration for über-legend David Ogilvy. There will be a red carpet.

David Ogilvy championed the “big idea” advertising era. And the man, who passed over in 1999, could turn a phrase. “Unless you advertising contains a big idea, it will pass like a ship in the night,” he offered. “The consumer isn’t a moron, she is your wife.”

Certainly most of the ad people attending this year’s Cannes Lions Festival weren’t yet born, let alone creating anything, when John Hegarty and David Ogilvy were writing the rules of advertising. Thirty years old and you’re over the hill, or something. And the culture has changed. After the United States, most Lions award nominees this year are from Brazil. South Africa, Australia and India have produced big winners in recent years.

But advertising’s basics are back in vogue. Yeah, sure, social media is an interesting tool. The most basic is the people. Ogilvy talked about hiring people “bigger than we are” to create “giants.”

The tag line for the famous Levi’s ad was “When the world zigs, zag.” We don’t need to know much more.

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