More goody goodies from Coke, cherchez le Francois (Hollande) and is psychology the answer to pitching?
***Here’s another happy-slappy ad from Coke, this time for Coke Zero from Publicis Conseil. But actually it does it with a bit of wit and irony, which is much needed these days.
Who’s the girl?
I don’t know if ex-Mother man Jonathan Mildenhall, now something high up at Coke, is behind all this stuff. But maybe Jonathan might consider doing good on a bigger stage, like being the CMO of the United Nations, or maybe NATO. At least they don’t have added sugar.
***On the subject of Les Francais – which we sort of were as the campaign metioned at the start is by Publicis Conseil – you couldn’t miss Francois Hollande’s latest embarrassment about his supposed affair with a rather fetching French actress. The French economy might be in a bit of a mess but bespectacled Francois, who looks a bit like a civil servant, clearly has something in common with D’Artagnan. Just don’t stop him on his scooter thinking you can order a pizza.
***Went to the president’s do at the IPA, the UK agency trade body last night, which was fine but mobbed. So I ended up talking to a load of old hacks, which was also fine if not quite why I went there. Someone (a rival) told me that The Drum, the upwardly-mobile rival to Campaign, now has in-house account executives negotiating with journalists about which native ads – advertorials – get into the paper/website. As if journalists didn’t have enough hassles.
It all seems a bit strong. We all do these things but there are limits…anyway, MAA’s better than both of them, of course – but you know that already.
***Also at the IPA, new president Ian Priest, of all-conquering London agency VCCP, gave a rather long but interesting address about the trade body’s attempt to bring some sense into the always vexed business of agency/client relationships and, in particular, the relentless round of pitches.
The IPA is running a campaign/programme called ADAPT to try to bring all the parties together, which is all fine and good. But in the document we were given there was all this psychobabble about, well, the psychology of these things. From psychologists.
Isn’t that what account men (and women) are supposed to handle?
***Wonder what ex-Havas CEO David Jones is up to? Is his new social media/corporate responsibility company a real thing (he’d do it very well) or just one of these corporate smokescreens? So far we’ve learned that he’ll give some of the profits (profits from day one?) to charity – and not much else. Anyway, Dave should be kept in the business despite my friend George Parker’s, undeniably amusing, attempt to confine him to Davy Jones’s Locker.
Lots of leavings this week. Goodnight.
