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Some initial thoughts... |
11th January 2007
| Marketing Week
By David Wethey
The names advertising agencies choose to bestow upon themselves are often perplexing, particularly to a nation in the grip of letters, says David Wethey.
I remember seeing an article in the FT about local agencies gaining share from the big internationals. It must have been in the newspaper itself not the online version, because we were having IT problems around that time. They mentioned VCCP, CHI, WCRS, DLKW and BMB. The Law Firm and Mother were featured too, but they scarcely count, not being initials. And KROW is a bit of an ET, because it’s ‘Work’ spelt backwards (like BSUR in Amsterdam, which stands for ‘Be as you are’!).
I had intended to abandon LT for once, and drive my GTI to the DTI for a meeting. But I’d had one too many G&T’s the night before having watched the TT races on TV, and felt almost as if I had the DT’s. Might be better to go TT for a while, particularly as I have an encounter with a CT scanner coming up. In the event I had to stay in because the guy from BT was in trying to sort out the broadband connection. Even the phone line was down, which was annoying because I was waiting for a call from MT. I heard on the QT from a journalist at MT that the IPA was going to ban initials altogether because ISBA said that clients could not cope. But that was OTT.
Mind you a pitch list containing DDFH&B (Dublin), BDH (Manchester), BDDP Fils (Paris), DDB, BBH and the former BDDH Partners might have been a bit confusing. Even spelling out the names in full doesn’t solve the problem. A few years ago the telephone operators at Havas’s #1 agency in New York were forced to greet callers with “Good morning. Messner Vetere Berger McNamee Schmetterer Euro RSCG, how can I help you?”. Not that there’s anything normal about ‘Euro RSCG’ – which was the product of a merger between bitter rivals Eurocom and Roux Segela Cayzac Goudard. We’re also pretty used to TBWA, and few stopped to muse about the strange case of the new international agency (with no HQ) formed by a Greek American Tragos, a Frenchman Bonnange, a Swiss Wiesendanger and an Italian Aroldi. It isn’t so long ago that four Delaney brothers had their names over the door at three different agencies. There is still modest confusion – particularly internationally – between Saatchi & Saatchi (who aren’t there any more) and M&C Saatchi (C’s gone now). Ron Leagas, Jim Kelly, Amanda Walsh, Gabe Massimi and Sir Frank Lowe are just five of many who left their names behind on letterheads. That can be problematic, as is the often bizarre legacy of mergers when people who had never met or companies that come from different planets are immortalised in unions with scarcely an ampersand to separate them. I can immediately think of Lowe Lintas, BMP Needham and that snappy new duo FCB Draft. But in the UK, with our obsession with initials, we have scarcely scratched the surface of ingenious agency naming – aside from the short lived boymeetsgirl. Mind you that name came from the man who called his previous agency St Luke’s after the patron saint of……advertising? Zetland Advertising has passed on now, but deserves mention as one of the few named after a pub.
Australia, home of the magnificently named Mojo, also boasts Never a Dull Moment, Bananadog and Just Add Cream. One of South Africa’s best agencies is named The Jupiter Drawing Room after the best room in a brothel from a Balzac novel. Clearly the same inspiration led to the foundation of The Cathouse Creative Assignments. South Africa also has Blue Pig, Howl at the Moon and Dogzbodys. Not that funny names are the exclusive preserve of ad agencies. Bridgnorth in Shropshire hosted for many years an estate agents called Dolittle and Dally. I still want to believe that the solicitors with the poignantl name of Mann Rodgers and Greaves were real.
But initials were where we came in, and I must admit before the brickbats arrive that my grandly named Agency Assessments International soon became AAI – first to clients and agencies, and then to ourselves! What is it about the British and initials? Maybe it has something to do with having reduced our nation itself in this the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union to the miserable two letters: UK. Never mind. Better ask my PA whether BA have any seats on tomorrow’s flight to BA. And before I go, I had better make those calls to LA, KL, PE and all those other places that the natives call by their proper names. You can’t blame the Chinese and Indians for changing the names of their cities all the time. Keeps us on our toes when we are working on that growth strategy (that also includes Russia and Brazil) called BRIC.
Anyway, TTFN.
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