It's a Funny Old Agency Life

The latest post from the Ad Contrarian about success and reacting to post-success dips got me thinking about much like football management working with bad clients can be.

Take Roman Abramovich. He has hired and fired 5 managers in about 7 years trying to achieve his aim of winning the Champions League. Yet I have no doubt whatsoever that had he kept manager number 2 (Jose Mourinho) he would have won it at least once by now.

Does that sound familiar? An agency doing good work and heading in the right direction, only to be fired or chucked into a re-pitch for no good reason? A new marketing director taking over and wanting to stamp their authority? Either way the work gets changed, the ideas diverted, the strategy altered and instead of building up a long term result they get stuck with short term spikes and no loyalty.

Mind you. At least there is a reason for those sackings. You could be like poor Chris Hughton, doing an excellent job in difficult circumstances and let go on a whim by the shambling management team that you just dug out of a Championship sized hole. As thanks for the good work you get treated like an inconvenience and kicked out halfway through a campaign where you were doing well.

Of course it would be bad if like poor Everton fans, you had to put up with all your best players being sold, and then no money being spent on new ones. Imagine having your budget cut in half and then being expected to get the same results. How bad must it be to be trying your best to make communications work, but there is never enough budget to actually achieve anything. I wonder who will be the one to get fired?

Still, it could be worse. Abramovich is reported to constantly meddle in the team affairs, undermining the manager and making decisions for him. Wouldn't it be terrible if bad clients did that to ag...oh. Next time you get given a gigantic chunk of bad copy or a list of features, or are given some bad art direction you can't refuse, that's what we call a Torres.

Thank goodness very few clients are like this though. When you think about who you could be working for, it makes you better appreciate those you already are.

Disclaimer: I am West Ham fan who lives near Old Trafford.

P.S.: I also have sympathy for the poor client that hired what they thought was a good agency and ended up with Steve McLaren (Sorry Rob C)

The TV Fan and The Football Fan

Gordon's Gin clearly know how to make an ad that appeals to me. Take an actor from probably the best show on British TV in the last decade, add some funny lines, and sprinkle with some words from a legend of football.

The idea is nice too, and apart from feeling a little overdone they come across well.

I haven't had gin in about 12 years though, going to be a fair job to sell it to me...

Annoyingly though, Campaign are now paywalled, Visit4info won't let you embed, and YouTube don't have it... so here it is.

In Defence of Footballer Tweets

I've heard a lot of people talk about how footballers should stop posting on twitter, but I find this an odd reaction.

We complain that football players are overpaid, that they don't understand the game or the fans, they only care about money and cars; yet when they spent chunks of their free time talking directly to fans we act as if they are doing something wrong.

Why is it right for Stephen Fry to use twitter and not Robbie Savage? Is it just down to presumed intelligence? Your idea of talent versus someone elses? Stop being so pretentious, twitter isn't yours to dictate who joins. Just because you presume a footballer is stupid or full of ego doesn't mean it is so. who made you king of the internets?

The best footballer on twitter (in more ways than one perhaps) is definitely Rio Ferdinand, one of the biggest names at the biggest club in the world; finds the time to invite questions and discuss things with the twitter community. That's the sort of commitment and engagement that we can learn from, and should be encouraging more of. I would hazard he is contributing more to twitter than most of the people who criticise him for being there.

Next time we talk to clients about putting air freshner brands or bathroom cleaner brands or weed killer brands (etc etc) onto social spaces, let's try and remember not to be hypocritical in criticising others...

Hurry Up 'Arry

I'm by no means a Spurs supporter (Hammer by birth, United by home) but I totally agree with Harry Redknapps decision to stop giving interviews if he is charged with misconduct following the weekend's bizarre goal.

Firstly I think it was a goal, the ref didn't blow the whistle therefore no foul had been given. Presuming a foul was every bit as presumptuous as Nani had been in grabbing the ball.

However, and this is the big issue for me. What is the point in having interviews when the managers are unable to speak their minds? I'm not saying they should be able to abuse referees, but to not be allowed to criticise them is ludicrous. I don't want robots after a game, I want to see managers talking honestly about the game and the performance of all involved. How would we feel if managers were no longer allowed to criticise players?

There is a lot of talk about respecting the game and respecting the ref, yet it always feels as if the refs have no respect for the teams or supporters. (Obviously they do, but we never get to see it) They are immune from criticism and never have to justify their decisions. By locking them away as untouchable it just drives the resentment felt by supporters.

We understand that everyone has bad days, players, managers, referees alike. There would be so much more respect for the refs if they just came out for 5 minutes and explained their decisions. We would even understand fully if they came out and admitted their mistakes, we don't expect them to be perfect, but when a bad decision costs a team 3 points or a place in the next round of a cup; a simple apology might go a long way towards healing the wounds.

England in the World Cup 2010 - A Planning Review

Anyone who watched the England v Germany game today will have seen a terrible result. One that should rightly shake the nation into sorting out it's football team. We have been in trouble for a long time, and it's clear that our good qualifying performance was just papering over the cracks.

Why Fabio Capello Got It All Wrong - A Planning Guide

1. Failure of Research

Fabio clearly missed some major issues during his research. He saw the players in their league games, he had friendlies to test them out; and yet he seemed to blatantly miss the key points of the debrief. In fact, it has to be questioned whether his methodology was right, because even though he got some good debrief pointers (Gerrard is wasted on the wing. Heskey doesn't score. Crouch is a legend. Joe Cole might actually make us do something) Etc... he seemed to believe they weren't the key issues.

Even when the debrief was presented to him, he clearly wanted to take the bad client road and ignore it through stubborness. Which brings us on to point two.

2. There Is NO One Rule Fits All

His policy of only telling the team who is playing as they get on the coach is clearly not working, you could see that there was no togetherness in the play, no real confidence in themselves. Fabio made the mistake of thinking that what works over a season in club football could work in the World Cup. From a planning point of view, he failed to heed the warnings, and ignored the valuable insights at his disposal to the difference between club and national games.

Perhaps worst of all, he seemed to show a lack of market understanding in placing players in positions where they weren't strong, seeing the warning signs and still letting the competition take the dominant ground. He took initial campaign success and saw that as a sign that the team could take on the market leaders without any new strategies.

3. Understanding the Customer

In doing the above, Fabio managed to completely alienate the team's best customers. He got some good initial results, but when the team started to flag he failed to turn it around. Though the customer doesn't always know what they want, there were more than enough opportunities for Fabio to test and try out the tactics that loyal customers were calling for.

The team exhibited all the features that put customers off, that damage both the England and the Fabio brand significantly; and he could not fix them or rebrand successfully.

If England were a brand, they would be holding a pitch.
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