ON THE CAMPAIGN COUCH ... WITH JB.(important changes in ad industry; keeping key players)(Brief Article)

Q I once heard someone say the most profound change in the advertising industry was the split of full-service agencies into media and creative specialisms, a change more fundamental than the introduction of account planning. What do you think have been the most important changes?

There was once a bunch of creative people who were being more than usually bolshie about how tyrannical briefs crippled creativity and how they were being drowned in data and all that. So we plonked a can of engine oil down in front of them and told them to start writing a campaign for it. There were a few minutes of stunned silence and then they all started bleating: "But what's in it, why is it better, who buys it, what's the competition, what does it do, how much does it cost, how can we be expected to ...?" By the time all their questions had been answered, they'd completed the necessary first steps in account planning.

You can't make advertising without planning. What the formal introduction of account planning did was give that fact new emphasis and its best practitioners new authority and better training.

A far bigger change was the introduction of commercial TV in 1955 (see last week). The bigger agencies, and a surprising number of clients, soon came to believe that advertising and television advertising were synonymous; a conviction which only now, after nearly 50 years, is beginning to fray a little. Without this myopic misconception, the split of agencies into media and creative specialisms would never have taken place.

Q My star creative team keeps getting job offers from other agencies. How can I keep them when we have implemented a pay freeze?

Are they really a star creative team? I ask because not all star creative teams are. Some of them achieve star status through a combination of plagiarism, scruffiness, unreliability, belligerence and relentless self-promotion. Their failure to get a single script on air in a full year is presented as final evidence of their sublime gifts: certainly by them and, occasionally (and more mysteriously), by their executive creative director. So ...