The other day someone asked me: “Didn’t someone in your office once throw a Barry Manilow record at Michael Cain?” The answer was “not quite” but the memory jog was enough to nudge me out of retirement.
A long, long time ago (and also, now) advertising companies were struggling to differentiate themselves from each other. They all basically provided the same service, employed the same kinds of people and churned out the same shit so it just came down to a subtle blend of nepotism and yacht hookers as to who got the most lucrative accounts. So in a gargantuan effort to create differentiation companies tried adopting mantras, mottos and monikers to try and stand out. A fantastic example of the latter was a company that called itself “Mother” because of you know, reasons. There was also “Naked” and “Tequila” because those are also both words. Anyway, back to Mother. They fully embraced their maternal status by decorating their office like a 1950s house and having a teapot in meeting rooms so that one of them could do the “shall I be Mother?” joke, which was just brilliant, every single time. This was back in the days of business card and they each had a picture of their own mother on the back of theirs. This had the unfortunate consequence of (predominantly male) visitors in large, long and boring meetings arranging the cards they’d been given into piles of “would” and “wouldn’t”. As the meeting progressed some of the old dears were promoted which can’t have been nice for junior sat opposite to witness.
As the arms race for a plausible company personality continued some agencies experimented with the unwise weapon of the company video. These were usually bland montages of staff high fiving, feigning moments of inspiration around whiteboards and going around corners on the office scooter to “I’ve got a feeling” by the Black Eyed Peas. Our company wanted to go further and deliver some powerful messages of our company ethos (something about being mavericks – just like everyone else’s) and hired the services of a properly maverick director. We could tell he was out there because his purple dungarees were only half done up – the right-hand strap trailing behind him like a shoulder tail of nonconformity. He then spent the day convincing various people in the company to set fire to their dignity while he filmed it. There were some Top Gun volleyball scene, over and under high fives in corridors which took hours to film because no one does that but the highlight was my boss aggressively announcing to the camera that we “didn’t accept the status quo” before throwing a Status Quo record out of a fifth floor window. A tad literal but powerful none the less. Being such a slave to his craft the semi dungareed maestro had no time to consider any possible consequences of hoying Rocking All Over the World out of a top floor window and its descent on to the streets of London was left to fate. He certainly didn’t expect it to hit John Hurt who lived next door to us. Probably the most surprising thing that had happened to John since he last peered into an egg on LV426, the Knight of the Realm, Oscar winner and general class act was apparently surprised to find the sky raining three cord masterpieces and he didn’t like it (like it la la la like it).
A competitor’s more obsequious effort saw them reworking a Donna Summer classic to declare to potential clients that they “worked hard for your money” which had the unfortunate consequence of going viral in a whirl-wind of ridicule from the real world. “So you better treat her right” was replaced with “buying lots of GRPs”. For readers outside the industry – just trust me, this is horrible.
Then came the mottos. In the spirit of the “Who Dares Wins, Death or Glory” pithy delivery of adjectival inspiration came some proper horse shit. “The Freshness Company” appointed a Head of Freshness to preside over a team of “Forward Thinking Mother Fuckers” (big pile of business cards in the “would” section). These were the actual words used. A good friend of mine discovered he’d been anointed into the clairvoyant oedipuses but was pleased to discover it only meant you were expected to have a youtube channel and flick through Stuff magazine once in a while. Others were “Fueling Brand Power” which sort of made sense if you knew that Americans spell “Fuelling” differently and prioritise global consistency over the London office avoiding a one-metre-high spelling mistake above their front door. Another chose a different tack of “People first” which was bold and indeed accurate, when it came to redundancies. I imagine they are “Making People Great Again” now.
Over time advertising company brands became less and less about being any good at advertising and increasingly about how diverse their workforce was and saying “data” at every opportunity. Pitches went from ad scripts and mood boards to a live demonstration of how the new Datatron 2.0 tool could empirically prove that white men were rubbish. I’m sure Mother has since rebranded as Gestational Parent and their latest intake of Gen Zs would be horrified to learn of their company’s problematic name back in the day let alone the bleak history of an industry that thought it was ok to fling vinyl at the elephant man to showcase their lack of fucks for convention.
Word to the Mother.
Diaries Of Media 