OF CORNFLAKES, COLD MILK AND COLOURED SPOONS

You know how it is, you’ve worked on Kellogg’s.  You haven’t?  No matter.  You’ve worked on big multinational brands -- and after a point, most big brand problems are broadly the same.

Like stagnant sales.  You’ve managed to establish a foothold for the client’s missionary brand in India, where breakfast habits are very different, but now the need is to scale up.

“People should eat cornflakes in COLD MILK, that’s when they’re crisp and crunchy!”  says Denis, the country head and Kellogg’s lifer.

Denis is French and is feeling the pressure to start turning a profit.  So is his boss, another Frenchman who is the Asia Pacific head (and when the two jointly addressed the annual Indian sales conference at an exotic hotel in Goa, their catch phrase ‘growth imperative’ is delivered with strongly-accented Gallic flair as “growf eemparateef”, much to the bemusement of the salesmen).

Anyway.  Sales are static.  In vain you point out that you’ve increased the font size of instructions on the packaging, the bit where it says ‘best with cold milk.’  You repeat that in an Indian household Mom boils the milk for tea first thing in the morning, and that’s what goes into everything – including the kids’ cornflakes.  Kids are a key target.  You promise to work on a solution.

In the agency brainstorm, an idea emerges: there is a plastic which is temperature sensitive.  Place a special plastic spoon in each pack and when dipped into cold milk the white spoon magically turns blue.  You present the Magic Spoon promo and it is approved at once.  You get your team working on the 10-second promo film, the print ad and the in-store material.  The client will get the spoons made and packed with the cornflakes. 

Alas, the best laid plans of mice and admen gang aft agley.

There is a delay in procuring the spoons.  There is further delay in inserting them into the carton (it is an ‘untouched by human hands’ production line).  By the time the promo packs reach the stores, winter had set in and North India – by far the biggest market -- is in the grip of a cold wave.

Months later you meet the regional sales head and he reports, “It was freezing weather and the spoons were naturally blue.  When they were dipped in hot milk, they turned white.  The kids were delighted, and there was a small bump in sales.”

You smile and shrug.

 

I worked 18 years with J. Walter Thompson, a 142-year old ad agency which is now being merged out of existence. No part of the name will survive...

Friends, marketers, admen, lend me your ears

I come to bury Thompson, not to praise him

The campaigns that men do live after them

And good is often buried in their brands

So let it be with Thompson. Noble WPP

Hath told you Thompson lacked global scale

If it were so, it was a grievous fault

And grievously hath Thompson answered it

Bigger is better in this age, they said,

And WPP is an honourable group

Adept at mergers and the counting of beans

They speak not of culture, or nurturing of talent

The university of advertising, carelessly discarded

And WPP is an honourable group

They have oft their shareholders’ coffers filled

And they say Thompson could no longer compete

This, to the creator of planning, of media mastery

And WPP thus stabbed him, a murder most foul

I speak not to disprove what WPP spoke,

But here I am to speak what I do know.

You all did love him once, not without cause:

What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?

O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,

And WPP hath lost their reason. Bear with me;

My heart is in the coffin there with Thompson,

And I must pause till it come back to me.

 

I mourn the passing of a great ad agency, 142-year old J. Walter Thompson. It is being merged out of existence by the WPP Group.

The wound is still fresh, so permit me to emote.

Turner’s painting of ‘The Fighting Temeraire’ being towed to the ship breaker’s yard, sold for scrap after a century of service, is a perfect fit for the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes:

Aye, tear her tattered ensign down

Long has it waved on high,

And many an eye has danced to see

That banner in the sky;

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,

Where knelt the vanquished foe,

When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,

And waves were white below,

No more shall feel the victor's tread,

Or know the conquered knee;—

The harpies of the shore shall pluck

The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk

Should sink beneath the wave;

Her thunders shook the mighty deep,

And there should be her grave;

(Written about another ship, ‘Old Ironsides’, but the thought is the same)