At the time I started to write this review, the world’s third largest holding company, Publicis, announced that they would not be entering anything in next year’s Cannes “Festival of Creativity,” nor indeed in any other awards show. The world’s ...
Read More »George Parker: why it’s not too late to award David Ogilvy the knighthood he richly deserves
Between copious amounts of Fourth Reich Potato Vodka during a non-stop snow storm last week, whilst flaneuring the “tubes” of the Internet, I came across a news item about the award of the Congressional Medal of Honor to First Lt. ...
Read More »Gerry Human of Ogilvy on awards, Cantona, David Ogilvy and the London agency’s escape from Canary Wharf
Ogilvy & Mather is on a fearsome roll at the moment, displacing BBDO as the world’s most awarded network and even helping Unilever’s Dave Lewis become the new CEO of Tesco thanks to its highly successful Dove personal care campaigns. ...
Read More »George Parker: how Thanksgiving became ‘Black Friday’
In case you missed it, today is Thanksgiving in the US, which is one of the very few days workers get the day off with pay, unless you’re in retail, but more on that in a moment. As I have ...
Read More »George Parker: the Big Dumb Holding Company mantra of Omnicom and WPP – screw up and clean up!
Back in 2011 George Parker predicted a future even more dominated by ad agency-based holding companies, a future that is coming to pass with the proposed merger of Omnicom and Publicis Groupe. Here’s his view of Omnicom and the most ...
Read More »George Parker: the truth about advertising – actually Howard Gossage got there already
Anyone with enough fortitude to endure my ramblings (This is the nineteenth bloody episode of “Confessions of a Mad Man” for crying out loud) will know that I love to quote famous dead people, particularly famous dead ad people. And, ...
Read More »George Parker: how I invaded Madison Avenue
After arriving in New York in the booze and drug fuelled Mad Men sixties, my first task was to get a job. For two weeks I trudged the concrete canyons of Manhattan lugging my oversized portfolio of samples. I soon ...
Read More »George Parker: how I met David Ogilvy – twice
When, in 1963, as a snot nosed 23 year old, I disembarked at pier 96 from the Queen Mary (the one that’s now a conference center in Long Beach), my sole objective was to get a job on Madison Avenue, ...
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