Jonathan Durden: Why marketing needs a hero

Those of us involved in marketing and communications often speak of regaining our place at the head table of brand management, of re-establishing ourselves at the top of the big-business food chain. We’ve heared the tales from the Eighties, when advertising agencies enjoyed access to and influence over captains of industry, international corporations and occasionally even Government policy.

So over the past decade, we’ve taken to bemoaning the decline in our fortunes at the hands of management consultancies and analysts.

According to the trade press, the issues we now face are urgent in nature, involving our very survival. And, if we are to have any future whatsoever, they demand the reinvention of our business model.

To be fair, even I have written my share of articles preaching that very message. While I believe there is much truth to that line of thinking, I believe we have also missed a key trick in uncharacteristically choosing to be coy instead of showing off.

What do I mean? Well, in a nutshell, who, in our celebrity-obsessed world, represents the magic of marketing to the star-hungry public? Who has raised their head above the industry parapet? (I obviously exclude my ignoble and stupid Big Brother episode, which set our cause back, if anything.) Nobody, that’s who.

In short, we have a missing link between what we do and how what we do is perceived and therefore valued by others. And that poses serious problems when enticing the next generation of talent into our ranks. To quote Bonnie Tyler: “We need a hero.”

Perhaps we should take a leaf out of the prevailing appetite for figureheads in other industry sectors. Property, electronics, airlines, retail, catering – the list goes on – have their leading stars. Yet for advertising, the greatest examples of iconic figureheads in the UK is the Saatchi brothers during, you guessed it, the Eighties. However, at the peak of their powers there were not the platforms to broadcast their talents to the wider population that exist today. Despite that, Charles and Maurice pierced the public consciousness and came to represent hope and success in the same way as Sir Richard Branson or Rupert Murdoch. They even came close to buying Midland Bank, which was remarkable in its audacity and ambition.

That would be unthinkable in 2008.

So where is the current crop of marketing heroes to lead us? Sir Martin Sorrell? He deserves respect and awe but is a private individual, and that is his prerogative.
In retail, Philip Green has demonstrated that it is possible to revolutionise business with City backing, achieve personal fame and go on to become a billionaire in the process.

Sir Alan Sugar is the once hated, now loved, champion of the rags-to-riches entrepreneur, as are the Dragon’s Den cartoon-like figures, albeit on a smaller scale.
Globally, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates are giants. While Simon Cowell has rewritten the rules for broadcast and music exploitation, making both Britains and Americans sit up and take notice.

Perhaps it is a lack of ambition that accounts for our failure to produce individuals of note. Trevor Beattie did have a go, and has every right to claim some of that ground, but has understandably been preoccupied with building a successful new agency.

It seems to me that our vision of progress is about broadening the range of services that we offer via ever blander, ever larger, impersonal marketing groups, rather than about demonstrating that individuals can inspire and create change. Rational expansion is all well and good but is ultimately limited, as it still fundamentally appears servile and, well, a bit wet as far as ambitions go.

Perhaps what we lack is the ability to make the mental leap from thinking of ourselves as purely a service industry to recognising that marketing skills should be backed by City funding to co-own the brands that we can transform. When pitching with a solution to a problem, why shouldn’t one option be “we will buy you”?
To publicise our success would make what we do appear more lucrative, more valued and also more attractive as a career option. Only then will the marketing and communications business be elevated and our figureheads gain public recognition and status, benefitting us all.