Adland

by Mark Tungate

  The man himself died in 1968, but his legacy lives on as George Patterson Y&R. Patterson was already 44 and had been in advertising for more than 20 years by the time he launched the agency that bears his name in 1934. He was born in South Melbourne on 24 August 1890, the fourth child and only son of a comedian and an actress (Australian Dictionary of Biography – Online Edition). When their mother died in 1905, the children were sent to stay with relatives and George quickly got a job in order to support his sisters. He started as an office boy with the machinery merchants Thomas McPherson & Sons, but his theatrical background and aptitude for selling steered him in the direction of marketing, and by 1908 he had risen to advertising manager of the firm.

  Patterson led a somewhat picaresque life and in 1912 he departed for Britain and the United States, where he worked for a while in New York. He returned to Australia with the outbreak of the First World War. After initially being rejected for enlistment on medical grounds, he eventually joined the Australian Imperial Force, serving in Egypt and on the Western Front.

  In 1920, Patterson joined forces with Norman Catts to form a Sydney advertising agency called Catts-Patterson Co Ltd. Their clients included Palmolive, Ford, Dunlop, Pepsodent and Gillette. But the two men later fell out and Patterson resigned. In 1934 he acquired an almost bankrupt agency and turned it into George Patterson Ltd. Although he had pledged not to swipe any accounts from his previous operation, Colgate-Palmolive and Gillette insisted on following him. In an unusual twist, Patterson was rewarded with a place on the boards of many of his most loyal clients – including Colgate-Palmolive and Gillette – virtually guaranteeing that his agency hung on to their business. To overcome newsprint shortages in the Second World War, Patterson’s agency became the first in Australia to set up a radio production department. It was also the first to build a national network of offices, and the first to establish a research department. It was Australia’s leading agency in billings for decades.

  In 2005, when ‘Patts’ – as it was nicknamed – became part of the WPP empire, the Australian press lamented the end of an era. ‘Just about every brand of note has at some stage in its life been handled by Patts,’ noted an article in The Australian (‘Industry benchmark bites the dust’, 25 August 2005). ‘Such was Patts’ power it could dump clients when a bigger, juicier deal came along.’ Yet the article added admiringly that when Patts won an account, the client rarely left without the agency’s permission.

  In the 1960s the agency had become part of the Ted Bates network, which turned out to be the wrong choice of international partner. Bates was weaker globally than many of its competitors and Patts remained largely reliant on local business. Having said that, it hung on to its position as Australia’s number one agency until 2002, when it was knocked off the top slot by rival Clemenger. (Started by tennis player Jack Clemenger in 1946, this powerful marketing services group is best known in adland as the Australian outpost of the BBDO network.) As the misfortunes of Bates came home to roost, the network was swallowed up by the WPP group – and Patts with it.

  But admired brands are as resistant in Australia as they are everywhere else. A little while later, George Patterson Y&R bobbed to the surface, promoting itself as ‘Australia’s newest (and oldest) agency’.

  17

  Shooting stars

  ‘We work for the directors and they work for us’

  In Paris, even the world’s most glamorous industries amount to the same thing: a warren of offices at the top of an elegantly crumbling apartment building, accessed by a narrow curving staircase or a clanking cage elevator. Partizan, the highly respected film and commercial production company, is no different.

  I’m here because I’m a fan of Michel Gondry, the mind-bendingly talented movie director who honed his skills on music videos and commercials produced by Partizan. The company’s website calls him ‘the director whose work makes other directors cry,’ and points out that he made it into the Guinness Book of Records as the director of the most award-winning commercial ever: the 1995 Levi’s ‘Drugstore’ (the last time I looked you could see it at www.partizan.com).

  But I won’t meet Gondry today. My appointment is with the man who gets the work of people like Gondry onto the screen: Georges Bermann, the executive producer of Partizan. I want to ask him about the delicate relationship between advertising agencies and production houses; or perhaps more to the point, between creative directors and film directors.

  From a public relations point of view, directing ads is the polar opposite of directing movies. Everybody knows who directs films – few people know who shoots ads. In most advertising trade magazines the client, the agency and its creative director get star billing when a new ad is launched. The director and the production house appear further down the page – if at all. As for the public, unless curiosity drives them to scour the internet, they are unlikely to learn the identities of the people who direct the extravagant sales pitches they see on their televisions every night.

  This is a great shame, because some of the most talented directors of all time have worked in advertising.

  Let’s name names. Close to the top of my personal list is Tony Kaye, whose no-holds-barred artistry for clients such as Volvo, Guinness and Sears, among others, has been making the ad break a more exciting place since the 1980s. A controversial, outspoken figure, he continues to intrigue rivals, viewers and the media. If you have to watch only one spot on his production company’s website (www.supplyanddemand.tv), make it Volvo ‘Twister’, made for AMV BBDO in 1995, in which a meteorologist drives his car into the path of a tornado – although that stark description hardly does the ad justice. My bet is that you’ll then go ahead and watch all the other spots on Kaye’s reel. In 2002, the Clios advertising festival presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award for his contribution to advertising.

  And then there’s Frank Budgen, co-founder of the London production company Gorgeous Enterprises (its receptionists chirrup, ‘Hello, Gorgeous!’ when you call them up) and director of many advertising blockbusters: remember the Sony PlayStation ad featuring the crowds who clamber on top of one another to form a giant, squirming human mountain?

  Anybody who has seen his chilling British gangster flick Sexy Beast (2000) needs no introduction to Jonathan Glazer, another admired commercials director. He shot the fantastic Guinness ‘Surfer’ spot, which first aired in 1999: a black-and-white mini-masterpiece in which the power of crashing waves was symbolized by charging white horses.

  Impossible to talk about directors without mentioning Joe Pytka, the prolific American film-maker who has been shooting commercials for more than 30 years for iconic brands such as IBM, McDonald’s and Pepsi. According to the Directors’ Guild of America, Pytka has directed more than 5,000 spots. With a background in documentary film-making in the sixties and seventies, he brought a gritty new reality to commercials.

  More than six feet tall, with a mane of white hair, Pytka is famous for telling it like it is. He first got noticed when, making ads to pay for his documentaries, he shot some spots for Iron City Beer in real taverns, with genuine customers. Recalling his debut for the DGA’s magazine, he said: ‘I had done these documentaries that were fairly emotional, but which I had to manipulate to get my point across. I wanted to get to that point in my commercial work, working with real people in real situations. At the time, no one was doing it. Commercials were real theatrical… For about two or three years in Pittsburgh, I was doing these commercials for a local brewery where we’d go somewhere with real people – and they were very successful’ (‘Joe Pytka, King of the Commercial World’, DGA Monthly, September 2002).

  On the subject of unconventionality, I’d like to put a word in here for Traktor, the Swedish collective that brought a surreal new twist to advertising with its Jukka Brothers films for MTV – the content of which can only be summarized as ‘Scandinavian redneck morons discover music television’ – followed by similarly warped material for the likes of Nike, Levi’s a
nd Miller Lite. Evil beavers, mad chickens, savage dogs and seriously bad dancing: find them all at www.traktor.com.

  Other names, such as Spike Jonze and David Fincher, are cult film-makers who have – unbeknown to the public and even to some fans of their movies – had an indelible impact on the advertising industry.

  All of which brings us back to Michel Gondry, Partizan – and Georges Bermann, ici présent.

  From pop to soda

  ‘I didn’t start out wanting to make ads,’ says Bermann, as we sip coffee in his Spartan office. On the wall is a poster for Michel Gondry’s film, The Science of Sleep, which Partizan also produced. ‘The company was founded in 1986, during the grand époque of the music video. That’s what I wanted to do and that’s what we were initially known for. Even today, if somebody asks you what you do and you say, “I produce advertising films”, they’ll probably ask you to explain what you mean. It’s not a metier most people are aware of.’

  Partizan’s success as a producer of rock videos got it noticed by the advertising community. Controversially, Bermann suggests that advertising is always a step behind other creative professions. ‘Advertising has rarely invented anything. Artistically, it recycles. It’s something I’ve noticed with videos: we’ll do something and the idea will find its way into an ad about three years later.’ He points out that this is logical, given that television advertising is mass communication. ‘A new form needs to penetrate the consciousness of the public before it can be used effectively in an ad.’

  Partizan made its first commercials in the United Kingdom in the mid 1990s, putting its roster of rock video pioneers at the disposal of brands. This turned out to be a wise decision, as the golden age of the video has passed, largely thanks to the internet. Today, Partizan makes more advertisements than it does videos, although the latter remain an important element of its offering.

  Partizan, like other large production companies, works with a stable of directors who are contractually bound to it. The production house acts as both agent and manager for its directors, promoting them to the advertising agencies and matching them with suitable film projects. ‘It’s a reciprocal engagement: we work for the directors and they work for us,’ Bermann explains. ‘It’s not just the simple fact that we introduce them to the advertising agencies. We nurture their careers. We give them the opportunity to work in France, Britain and the United States, on commercials, videos and full-length films. And the difference between ourselves and a conventional talent agency is that we take a risk – as a producer of films, we have to deliver a result.’

  For the record, Partizan has a stable of around 70 directors and offices in nine cities including Paris, London, Berlin, Beirut, Mumbai, New York and Los Angeles. ‘Michel Gondry is one of the best known to the general public because he’s made feature films,’ says Bermann, adding with a smile: ‘But don’t worry: in the narrower sphere of the industry, we are known to have access to other geniuses too.’

  He disagrees, however, with my theory that advertising is a breeding ground for talent. He considers it an applied art. ‘Occasionally it gives directors a chance to experiment and to try different things. More often, it enables them to make a living while they are waiting for a chance to make a feature film. In terms of innovation, I believe music videos are still in advance.’

  He accepts that the likes of Alan Parker and Ridley Scott emerged from the advertising industry – but the past is another country. ‘That was before the era of the music video. And it was in England, where the film industry was very small. If you were a director there, making commercials was a way of getting behind the camera. I don’t think the directors of the future will come from a purely advertising background, although the industry is certainly capable of producing arresting images.’

  How much freedom, anyway, does a director have on an advertising shoot? Some creative directors suggest that the hand-holding is almost total. For example, by using sample clips from other films, an agency can make a rough mock-up of a spot and give it to the director as a template. Not all directors are equal – I’d be very nervous about telling a Joe Pytka or a Tony Kaye to leave their creative impulses at home – but one gets the impression that the creative agency cracks the whip.

  Certainly, the production company is not encouraged to interfere. ‘In practice, we have little power. Our role is on the one hand to choose the director, and on the other to respond to the demands that are made by the agency. The skill, of course, is in suggesting the right director for the project. Afterwards, once the agency is convinced that it has the right person to interpret the script, our role is marginal. We enable the process from a technical point of view, but we keep a professional distance. In fact, it would be seen as extremely bad form if we started giving our opinion. Of course,’ he chuckles, ‘if anything goes wrong on the shoot, it’s invariably the production company’s fault.’

  And looming over the ensemble, naturally, is the client. In an interview with Boards magazine, Frank Budgen once expressed frustration at the gulf between director and client. ‘I wish the clients were involved more up-front. The way it is now, weeks of pre-pro[duction] can be canned because the client doesn’t like something… Clients see us as guns for hire, but the truth is that you do everything to a standard. I’d like the chance to say to the client, “This is the way I work, and this is what I want from this project” ’ (‘The year of Frank’, 2 December 2002). Nevertheless, Budgen admits that the work, while often frustrating and exhausting, can also be immensely satisfying.

  So how do young tyros break into the industry? Encouragingly, Georges Bermann says there is no rule about where a director comes from. They can emerge from the world’s finest film schools, or graduate from shooting experimental Super 8 (or more likely digital) films in their backyards. Former design student Michel Gondry, for example, started out making animated videos for a rock band in which he was the drummer. One of the videos was spotted on MTV by Björk.

  Bermann concurs that young directors can get exposure making TV commercials, but it rather depends on the agency. He quietly despairs at the advertising industry’s lack of willingness to take risks. ‘In the United States, it’s practically a zero risk environment,’ he says. ‘They accept that they’re not making ads to explore the possibilities of film, but to sell products. That’s why a large percentage of their advertising is based on humour, which is highly effective. But there’s not a great deal of room for manoeuvre in the comedy register. The United Kingdom is a more audacious market. Agencies are keen to engage young directors because they bring with them the latest trends. British agencies are interested in the wider culture, so their advertising reflects that.’

  He believes those who aspire to making great ads should embrace influences from art, literature, theatre, dance – but not the work of other directors. ‘The most creative advertising is inspired by everything apart from advertising. Whether creativity is necessary when your main aim is to sell things is another debate.’

  18

  Controversy in Cannes

  ‘It’s not just about fun in the sun’

  Nights in Cannes always end in the gutter. That’s to say in the Gutter Bar, a hole-in-the-wall joint opposite the delectably euro-trashy Martinez Hotel. The drill is this: you wallow in the Martinez until the bartender turns you out, and then you sashay across the road to the Gutter. The bar’s real name is 72 Croisette, but nobody ever calls it that. Its Anglo-Saxon sobriquet is descriptive rather than metaphorical: until the late hours of the morning, drinks are served through a side hatch, so you knock back your poison al fresco, standing in the street. For a journalist covering the festival the place is a key axis: hang around long enough and you’re guaranteed to either rub up against an advertising industry luminary, or hear some useful gossip about one.

  Rather like the film festival – a less glamorous and more restrained affair – the annual advertising industry gathering at Cannes is officially about handing out awards, attending seminars a
nd soaking up the best films from around the world, but some would say it’s actually about networking, necking, swigging champagne, doing recreational drugs and falling asleep on the beach. One of the finest things about socializing with advertising people is that they do it so well.

  The event takes place in mid-June and is properly called The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity: the significance of the ‘lions’ will become clear in a moment. The ‘Creativity’ tag was added in 2011, replacing the word ‘Advertising’ – either to reflect the changing nature of the business or to open the way for even more entries from a wider selection of categories, depending on your level of cynicism.

  It attracts up to 11,000 delegates a year. In competition are over 30,000 pieces of communication: films, press, outdoor, radio, interactive, direct marketing and so on. Each discipline has a team of international jurors. The hub of the occasion is the Palais des Festivals, a giant waterfront building that looks like a clump of ice-cubes swamped in concrete. Here you can pick up your accreditation, leaf through magazines, drink coffee, check out exhibitors’ stands and attend seminars in darkened theatres. If you’re committed to your work, you can watch reels of commercials in neighbouring darkened theatres.

  Alternatively, you can spend your time schmoozing with your fellow advertising types over breakfast, coffee, lunch, tea, cocktails and dinner. And after dinner, there’s always an agency party or three to attend at the beach clubs along La Croisette. Followed by drinks at the Martinez, followed by more drinks at the Gutter Bar – followed by oblivion.

  There are a number of prize-giving ceremonies throughout the week, but the hottest ticket is still the film awards bash on the last night. The winning ads are awarded Gold, Silver and Bronze Lions. The best of the Gold Lions is awarded the Grand Prix. It has become a tradition that if the audience disagrees with one of the jury’s decisions, it whistles discordantly during the screening of the winning ad. This merely proves that many advertising people are very young; and that some of them are far from polite. When the ceremony is over there is a closing party on the beach.