I wanted to call this blog ‘who’s got the biggest cock’ and make some puerile schoolboy joke about chickens. Those of us who live in or near the countryside and may have a few chickens running around the farm may relate to this, and those city-dwellers who wouldn’t recognise chicken unless it was in the freezer section of Tesco probably not. But I used Coque because, if you didn’t know, it’s something you have on your head (it’s a ribbon or bow commonly found on a hat). Coque, head? The possibilities are endless.

The real point of the headline was to demonstrate how a good old knob joke always draws a crowd (you’re reading this therefore QED), low art always winning over high art because let’s face it there are more common people out there with a bawdy seaside sense of humour than posh folk with cravats and coques on their hats (and who probably also keep chickens on their landed estates).

Why? Because low art sells – red tops sell more than broadsheets, sexy ads get more recall than straight ones, Chubby Brown sells more live tickets than almost anyone after the loveable but predictable Peter Kay, and the vast majority of online content is smut. A bit of gossip, a bit of scandal, backbiting and sniping all adds to the entertainment. I mean, Saturday night TV wouldn’t be the same without some luckless hopeful getting humiliated by a sniping celebrity judge for the entertainment of a nation.

Nothing ground-breaking so far. Not meant to be. Just a realisation of the basis of our psyche. We are a nation of repressed, sniping, smutty retards. OK, maybe not all of us. I have several friends who don’t fall into this category, although plenty of others who might.

So, yes I take it back. The repressed sniping smutty retards are a sub-group. One key characteristic of this group – apart from repression, sniping etc, is the tendency to cluster and prey on soft targets. The clustering comes from their over-developed sense of insecurity – they can’t stand up for themselves and need to hide in a group. They snipe at soft targets because of cowardice (related to their lack of personal identity, jealousy of others, and their own insecurities). They prefer anonymity too – snipers like to be anonymous and fire their volleys from a distance before disappearing into the shadows.

And so I arrive at my point, which is this. Regrettably this fine instrument – THE DRUM –  that should be a mouthpiece for the great and noble efforts of our wonderful trade has been infiltrated by a cluster of repressed, sniping retards who hide behind anonymity to fire their volleys of vitriol at the soft targets that have the gumption to stand up and offer their thoughts on industry matters, trends or just whimsy. The same negative sub-group snipe at the hard work that is proudly offered for critique and observation by those who think the opinion of their peers matters, only to be barraged in the main by the same anonymous sniping.

Why does this matter? Because not everyone who reads these blogs, looks at the work and reads the news on this site is a retard. Some of them are even clients [oooh, imagine that!], who are looking at the regional agency sector and thinking ‘am I right to spend my money here?’. A good slagging-off of some decent work by Anonymous is not going to set the right impression now is it? But the retards can’t work that out. They’re just too twisted and hell-bent to work out the damage they do – not just to the sensitivities of the creators of the work or writers of the blogs who frankly should rise above it – but to the regional scene as a whole. I, for one, think therefore that the guys at the DRUM should do the right thing and publish the IP address of the anonymous bloggers beside their comments, or disallow anonymous comments altogether, or moderate the site and take an editorial decision when commenting crosses the line. They control editorial, so it follows they should control all contributions. Better still, take them outside and flog them before this site becomes nothing but a repository for all the pent-up negative sentiment from the hard-done-bys and mid-life failures that typify the sub-group in question.

For the avoidance of doubt I’m not saying that all anonymous comments are sniping. But you’ll likely find that all sniping comments are anonymous, and no doubt this piece will attract the usual treatment. But just remember Mr/Ms Anonymous – I’ve stood up to be counted. And however you look at it, that means my coque is bigger than yours.

So Subo is number 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, Cowell adds another 8 figures to his burgeoning bank balance, and once again we all succumb to the temptation to fall in love with the underdog.

When a middle aged spinster took to the stage in the BGT auditions, looking like an extra from an amdram Miss Marple that had stopped off at a Hinge & Brackett convention on the way there, we all thought she’d be another of the deluded hapless hopefuls that pepper the show and make the auditions so wonderfully watchable.

When she opened her gob and flexed her vocal chords, what came out staggered us – not for it’s musical qualities for Subo is no Catherine Jenkins, no Charlotte Church (before she found boys and booze on the same weekend and became a pet of the papps), no Montserrat Caballé.  No, it wasn’t her singing that won us over, for she’s just a better-than-average singer that could be out-done by my mum who is, in fact, a great singer. No, we were seduced by the  extraordinary paradox that was her look, our preconceptions, and the reality that the woman could actually sing like her heroine Elaine Paige.

What is it in our psyche that creates affinity with Ms Boyle and puts her ahead of more talented but less deserving candidates? Are we just suckers for a hard-luck story, do we like to see someone less fortunate than us slingshot past us at warp speed because it gives us hope that one day, it could be me? Is it lottery fever? “My chances are 1 in 14million but that means I still have a chance?”  Well whatever it is, Cowell knows it and has bottled the formula, patented it, and is now minting £50m a year on the back of it. Hats off to you Si. Smug as f*ck and I don’t deny you a penny of it.

Like most of the rest of the country, I’m glued to the telly on Sat and Sun to see me mate Dermot doing his thing and presenting the phenomenon that is X-Factor. Another Syco cash cow that pulls every heart string, every ounce of empathy, our competitive impulses, and creates community around common interest and shared experiences. Not for nothing is Si’s company called Syco, cos no-one knows audience psychology like Si. We can all learn from the Master.

Finally, and on an unrelated tangent, I watched a movie a few nights ago called Looking For Eric. A barmy plot, gratuitous use of celebrity, a script that was written by an illiterate (maybe Eric himself?), and the usual downtrodden direction from master-of-working class-misery Ken Loach. But easily the most enjoyable, funny, touching film I’ve seen in an age. I’m not a Man U fan – I come from the ‘pool and live in Leeds for Christs sake. But I was warmed, charmed and entertained in equal measure. I’d recommend it, unless you’re easily offended by Mancunian vernacular.

I want peace and harmony for all. An end to disease and war. A cure for all illness and an end to poverty. I want the Morecombe and Wise Christmas show to make a comeback, free mince pies in every store I shop in, VAT to be abolished for ever, and petrol to be 30p a gallon. On Christmas day I’d like the sun to shine on fresh, white, glistening snow as it settles on the smiling faces of carollers who sing like angels and ask for nothing in return. I want my youth back, but the experience of age to make my new youth even more fulfilling. I want to play lead guitar with ZZ Top and do backing vocals for Elvis. I want to play football for England and score the hat-trick for Liverpool that wins them the premiership. But most of all I want clients to understand that we are complex and sensitive, and sometimes need nurturing to perform at our best.

Over the years I’ve heard lots of reasons for why we were not successful in winning work – yes, I know it’s hard to believe but we don’t actually win everything we go after.

Reasons are varied and mostly sympathetic – sometimes the chemistry isn’t right, sometimes we missed the bullseye and failed to nail the brief. But yesterday I heard a genuine first. We were blown off the shortlist for a bit of public sector work because, wait for it… our website made one of the panel puke. Yep, physically sick. Projectile vom. Ker-splat.

Bit of background: We are re-jigging our site at the mo, and so thought it would be a bit of fun to put a little ‘holding’ page up that played on the stock phrase of the ad-man; “it’s all about the sizzle, not the sausage”. So we have a solo sizzling sausage sat sizzling in a saucepan (try saying that after a few s-s-s-shandies).

A bit of harmless nonsense you’d think? Might intrigue you if you hadn’t heard the sizzle cliche before, and fairly obvious if you had. However…. one panelist at a pitch presentation earlier this week was angered and outraged because our sillyness had offended her vegan sensibilities, so much in fact that the sight of a fat pork banger cooking in its own juices had turned her stomach to the extent that she retched. And on that basis, all of our twenty year history, the creds of the firm, all the awards, the expensive talent at her disposal, and the acres of brilliant work we had prepared counted for nothing. Nil. Zilch. Nada.

In the ‘Dear John’ feedback email we got after the pitch, they said they had such severe reservations about our agency because we had made the veggie panelist sick, that we were off the list. Even though the key reason they put us on the list in the first place was the ‘reputation of the agency and the excellent examples of previous work we submitted’.

The sizzling web movie had been online before the pitch process started. Am I missing something here? Should I be asking for evidence that the cause of the vom was our sausage and not a bad bout of tofu and barley wine poisoning? I’d like to see her puke stained doc martins and dungerees before I conclude, although I am minded of the wise words of Derek Smalls – ‘you can’t dust for vomit’.

We will have our latest web offering up soon enough, so time is limited to tell me whether the site makes you ill or not. I’d like to know.

www.englandagency.com

I read a report that a large number of construction firms had recently been fined huge sums of money for ganging together (presumably in secret hideaways, in the dark, and to the strains of The Godfather theme playing quietly in the background), and price-fixing pitches.  The fines ran into millions, I’m guessing because the profits they made had exceeded that by some margin.

Now whilst I fully understand why the OFT thought that this was a very bad thing, anti-competitive and compromised the customer, I do wonder why our own beloved sector fails so significantly to even share a kind word, let alone some commercial confidences, pricing, pitching, and god-forbid, working together a bit.

Don’t get me wrong here. Far be it for me to wag a finger in your direction when I’m here in my glass house throwing stones. And maybe some of you do collaborate with others for the benefit of all concerned. But there is little doubt that where pitching for new business is concerned, the power resides heavily with the buyer and the seller is at their mercy. So I get why the builders wanted to restore equilibrium by comparing notes and approaches, but they went too far. Our sector, on the other hand, mostly lingers on the wrong end of the power band but are too proud, arrogant, inert or just plain stupid to do anything about it other than complain.

Wow, my first ever Drum blog as a Drum celebrity blogger. I’m flattered, humbled, excited, and shrugging off a particularly nasty bout of writers block. So many questions keeping me awake last night. Where should I start? What should I write about? Should I court controversy for the hell of it? What will it say about me? What if people think I’m boring? Maybe I am boring? Am I allowed to swear? To you it may be only a blog for a regional rag, but to me it’s the first step on the path to my bestselling debut novel. It’s important.

After several hours of sleepless anguish and overnight TV – when I can’t sleep I turn on the telly in the bedroom – the moment of enlightenment arrived. The guys from Deadliest Catch had just caught another pot full of crab, and I was ready to pick up my laptop and get going. I would get to the heart of the matter, be incisive, demonstrate my intellect and my flair for the written word. I would pick a subject that would unite and divide, at least enough to get me a comment or two from readers determined to vehemently agree or disagree with my argument. So here goes. The first narrow-minded rant from my ivory tower. And the topic is…. Religion.

You are reading this and it is therefore a reasonable assumption that you have a vested interest in marketing. Maybe you work in an agency, for a client, or maybe are studying marketing in a venerable seat of learning.  Whichever of these is the case, chances are you have a view on where marketing sits as a business tool, some of the basic mechanics of how it works, and maybe even do a bit of it every now and again. The professional marketers amongst you will no doubt think that you are expert generalists, or expert specialists, just so long as it has the word expert in there somewhere.

So, take your vested interest out of your coat pocket for a minute and take a look at it. What does it look like, what shape is it, how big is it, and what does it tell you? Can you describe it to someone else who can’t actually see it, because it’s a metaphor? What would you say? Would you evangelise about the power of the medium, the media and the message? Crank on about how it has the power to change the world (if only the world would listen?). Try this. Record yourself explaining your vested interest on your i-thingy mp3 doo-dah, and listen back after you have read the rest of this piece.

Where was I? Oh yes. So you’re immersed in marketing, you are actively interested in it, presumably you believe it works. Hell, you know it works. You can prove it works. Well, actually no you can’t – not very often. You can insist that something happened as a direct result of something you did but this involves quite a lot of supposition and conjecture dressed up as fact. You certainly can’t prove that something will work – because that’s fortune telling and even Mystic Meg can’t master that. But you believe that marketing does work, and will work, even though many of you can’t explain well enough how or why. The reality is that your whole system of understanding, of belief in the promise that marketing will deliver, is based on faith. And a belief system based on faith is a religion.

Yes, marketing has all the hallmarks of religion – and for some it is one.  An all-around-us-but-hard-to-prove system fundamentally based on faith. Believers, followers, high priests, charlatans. Scribes, stone-throwers, and a very judgemental, subjective, majority. They’re all in the mix.

What about planning, numbers, statistics, results blah blah. Yes I can hear the grumblings. Look, there is some science in marketing, but how much of this is simply common sense masquerading as science? Segmenting audiences – science or common sense? Media strategy – science or common sense? But creative executions? Is there really science here, or just belief based on past experience, instinct, or ignorance. Come on, who the hell knows whether a gorilla on the drums will sell more chocolate bars before the campaign goes live? Or whether the focus group that said it would, would be right? And what about the hard-hitting Frank campaign trying to shock our young people out of their penchant for a bit of charlie by showing them congestive heart failure in the raw? We don’t know that this will do the trick, but whoever signed-off on it must believe it will. And if it does, who is to say that it isn’t a miracle?

And my point? My point is this…

Without belief then we have nothing and marketing requires more belief than pretty  much anything else I know other than Christianity. Belief that doing something is better than doing nothing, even if you don’t know why. Or vice versa. Belief that a particular creative idea is better than another, even though this is entirely subjective and impossible to empirically measure. Belief that if you get the right message in the right place at the right time for the right price, then you will go to marketers heaven. But whose right is right? Who do you believe?

For many it is easier to believe than to question, so we don’t ask the difficult questions. Culturally, I think this is a big issue for our sector. But what do you think?

If there is something in my argument, then many creatives, suits and planners are latter day prophets, making prophecies and hypotheses variously dressed as science, fact and guarantees, which are at best informed speculation. Does that make clients their followers, wanting and desperate to believe? We have all met the client who is biblical in their commitment to a particular idea or approach, but are they just the blind following the bland.

Some, but not many that I’ve met, actually understand that marketing is complex social science and behavioural science – but whom of you is really a social/behavioural scientist? I bet most of you don’t even know one – and before you ask, the boss isn’t a behavioural scientist just because he knows that a pay rise makes you happy (for a short time) and the lack of one makes you miserable (for a long time).

I’ll come back to this subject quite a bit over the next few weeks. Not just because I’ve only scratched the surface, but also because it is so fundamental to the whole issue of the credibility of marketing as a viable, worthy investment – particularly in times of austerity where every penny of spend is under scrutiny.

Meantime, I’ll leave you disciples to pray at the bejewelled altar and hope that divine intervention takes you to a heavenly place.