PERSPECTIVE: White insults ignore Nestle's orthodoxy of respect.(Chris White, Nestle Rowntree)

Since clients are such lovers of labels, I have spent the past few days trying to characterise Chris White, the new managing director of Nestle Rowntree UK.

He's clearly not one of those clients who operates as the agency's pal, the brand manager who finds the environment of an agency much more to his taste than his own modest surroundings. Nor is he the archetypal good client; reasonable, receptive and willing to accept that his agency has skills which his company does not have.

'Blunderboss', as the analysts have dubbed him, is best described as a client thug. He's the bluff, no-nonsense man of the people, too shrewd to be manipulated by those clever dicks from Knightsbridge, and seemingly completely unmoved by the normal professional impetus to deliver his bollockings in private.

The overwhelming sense is that White has been brought in to the UK to shake things up in a business which has been outmanoeuvred by Cadbury Trebor Bassett. But his approach so far has been way out of kilter with Nestle orthodoxy. This is the company which has been famously loyal to its agencies. It once clung to the commission system but has in recent years been testing two models of fee plus performance with quantifiable objectives related to growth, profitability, quality of work, strategic thinking and so on.

Introducing this concept in a Campaign interview two years ago, Nestle's top global marketer, Frank Cella, made it clear that any demands made on its agencies were made in a context of mutual respect. His view was that while Nestle agencies may not have done well in responding to the need for more media-neutral thinking, the blame rested with both client and agency.