An Offer to Refuse?

A date these days is dinner, a movie, perhaps a quiet night at home binge-drinking with your beloved. But in the last century, say the early '70s, a guy's best bet was to take his date to a civil disturbance. That may sound cynical, I know. Yeah, the country was in chaos, but I was never the most political kid. Mostly, I was just there to get girls. Naturally, then, I took a coed with me to a demonstration at the midtown Manhattan headquarters of ITT, which I think made Twinkies and cluster bombs. The date went smoothly until the protesters started throwing rocks, which kind of compromised their whole nonviolent argument as far as I was concerned. So we snuck off for beers and $1.49 steaks at Tad's. After the ITT uproar, the co-ed was less than thrilled with the idea of protest dating. "You need a date consigliere," she declared. Now, I only look Italian, and The Godfather hadn't come out yet. I didn't know what a consigliere was. "It's a person who keeps you from screwing up," she said. Today, people are still talking to me about consiglieri, but of the media-agency variety—consultants who would be hired to keep media companies from screwing up in this climate of consolidation. Advertisers need outside counsel, the thinking goes, because they no longer have multiple agencies to play against each other and so cannot evaluate the strength of the strategy they get from their media-service provider. We're not just talking about individuals. Already we see a rising tide of smaller entities posing as consiglieri, declaring themselves strategists who leave that messy buying business to someone else. Well, OK, maybe I've been hit by one too many rocks, but the idea that the world's largest advertisers are too stupid to pick smart shops seems a stretch. Second, these advisers already exist—Ephron, Zeltner, Anderson, et al. These worthies are pretty smart, but while they may run reviews or give compensation advice, none of them is used as a consigliere. At least not in the Mario Puzo, "I'm gonna make him an avail he can't refuse" sense. And the "media boutiques" that promise to deliver more personalized service and strategy than the giant networks? They probably can't. Smart thinking (via deeper resources) is commonly offered as a rationale for bigness. And service depends on the people doing the servicing, not the size of the company that signs the paycheck. I've had fun playing with the idea of bigness in this column before. Nevertheless, I'm pretty confident that MagnaMindShareMediaCom OmnicomInitiativeMediaPlanning -EdgeZoptimedia probably has, deep within its cavernous bowels, just about anything a client is liable to ask for—including wise counsel. That's why, while media consig lieri and/or boutiques may well be the next wave of the media world, I don't know that they're a good idea whose time has come. In fact, the whole concept could be, as one of my more poetic media agency friends puts it, "the best smoke-and-mirrors bullshit ever." Unless, of course, it helps me get girls.

Brand Marketing

An Offer to Refuse?

Jack Feuer

About

Subscriptions

Events

Publications

WORK SMARTER - LEARN, GROW AND BE INSPIRED.

Subscribe today!

Jack Feuer