Dining clubs keep exclusivity on menu

The industry’s dining clubs have strict joining rules and long waiting lists, but are they anything more than an ego trip for members? Lucy Barrett reports

Perhaps more than any other industry, marketing – and especially advertising – is socially driven. Getting your face known will help you claw your way up the career ladder, and a key place to do this is at one of the industry’s many dining clubs. Although some people regard these clubs as outmoded and elitist, senior industry figures scrabble to secure membership nonetheless.

For membership fees, which rarely exceed &£150 a year, clubs offer an opportunity for executives to prove they have finally “made it” and, in the opinion of some in the industry, for agency bosses to suck up to potential clients.

One advertising executive, who has not yet joined a dining club, but who admits that in order to further his career he probably will, says the whole dinner club culture is bizarre: “Everyone claims it’s about networking, and that’s the rational justification for joining. But I think it’s all an ego trip to make people feel good about themselves.”

Clear Channel chief executive Stevie Spring says the chance to swap ideas with people from a similar profession is what attracts her: “As [advertisers] tend to be geographically spread, it is not so easy to meet your peer group. Clubs enable you to do that.”

The Marketing Society, which has the most members, is the best known and the least elitist. It aims to give members access to the best network for exchanging leading-edge ideas through debate and informal contact at a series of nationwide dinners, conferences, seminars, workshops and lectures.

“These industry clubs are about contacts,” says Maiden Outdoor managing director David Pugh. “I’m a member of the Marketing Society because it’s more intellectually based than some of the others. I go mostly for the lectures and discussions led by serious practitioners sharing their knowledge.”

However, while the Marketing Society may boast the most members, the others – mostly dining clubs – are open only to a select few.

The main dining clubs are The Solus Club; Women in Advertising and Communications, London (WACL); The Thirty Club; and the Marketing Group of Great Britain.

The Solus Club is a men-only dining club, which meets once a month at the Dorchester for a dinner and to listen to an after-dinner speaker. Launched in 1929, it has about 100 senior industry members including Toyota commercial director Mike Moran and M&C Saatchi partner David Kershaw.

WACL, which launched in 1923 is only open to women. It has 120 full members and there is a waiting list to join. It meets about eight times a year at the Savoy, with men often invited as guests. Members include the former chief executive of COI Communications, Carol Fisher, and Stevie Spring.

The oldest club of all is The Thirty Club, which was set up in 1906. Its membership is supposed to be 30 senior industry figures, ten from the advertiser side, ten from advertising and ten from the media industry. Current membership is about 50. Until 2000 it also had a strict male-only code but, after a secret ballot, women were allowed to join the dining club which meets at Claridges.

The Marketing Group of Great Britain was set up in the mid Seventies and its 150 members include marketing directors and agency chiefs. It meets at Claridges eight times a year for a black tie dinner. Members include former BBC marketing chief Sue Farr and British Airways’ director of marketing and commercial development Martin George.

These exclusive clubs have strict rules of secrecy. Apart from the grace said before dinner, nothing that is said by anyone – including the speaker – is normally allowed to be repeated beyond the four walls.

Grey Worldwide London chief executive Garry Lace, who is a member of the Marketing Society and the Solus Club, says the rules mean that “people can speak freely without danger of anything they say being misinterpreted”.

For some, the fact that two of the clubs still have single-sex membership is a thorny issue. Women – or in the case of WACL, men – are invited to the dinners but even members say this doesn’t go far enough: “It’s just not modern. If I was in charge, I’m not sure I would let it continue,” says Lace of the Solus Club.

One member of the Marketing Society says: “I was invited to join the Solus Club and I declined. I do not have the time to spend so many evenings dining and I don’t like the idea of men-only clubs. I think the reason why men join is because they like to escape from women.”

Clear Channel’s Spring believes WACL would change if it was mixed: “We are still a long way from equality in our profession, and there are female-specific issues in the market. WACL is there to lend its support. You don’t get that from the Marketing Society, which is very discipline-focused.”

These clubs – at best informative and educational, at worst just networking with an outdated format – have long waiting lists to join. This may surprise people given that most media, marketing and advertising executives claim to have so little time on their hands.