GPC - Day 1

The meeting started today. Rosalie, Duncan and I got there at 7:30 and sorted out the set-up, and by 8:30 the gang had turned up from the hotel, and the room was packed to capacity with an interesting spectrum of talent from across the Burnett network. 30 participants in all, I believe, from various corners of the globe, all converging upon 1 room to learn a little bit about quality control, the perils of creative democracy, and how to best serve a client by telling the best story you possibly can. It’s quite the motley crew, this GPC gang…

Last night I had the distinct pleasure of explaining to a non-native English speaker what the slang phrase “sausage-fest” means. They were amused after I spelled out the definition: any gathering where there are 3 or more times as many men as there are women constitutes a “sausage-fest.” Although it usually refers to a party filled with about 15 somewhat socially-challenged dorks and 3 or 4 misplaced, miserable but often sympathetic women, it’s a phrase that can be used for any gathering with the same kind of gender percentages. The GPC, for all its worth, validity, and integrity, is a definitive “sausage-fest”, a quarterly congregation of egos and tongues and alpha-male posturing that rarely manages to invite any more than a handful of high-powered female creative directors from LB worldwide. It is NOT a sexist institution, the sad truth is that at the highest levels of Creative Departments throughout the ad industry, women are simply underrepresented, for any number of reasons. I won’t care to speculate why (like the infamous and legendary adman Neil French did somewhat apocryphally last year: see here for more details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_French), but it is somewhat disconcerting to see that the committee is so consistently predictable in its make-up. I’ve wondered in the past if the scores of the ads would change with a female jury, but realized that ultimately, a good ad is a good ad, regardless of who sees it, and shit is shit for all of us….

Anyhow – the first day of the GPC went well. We are way ahead of schedule, Planet Leo worked flawlessly, and the group turned out to be quite a collection of compatible characters and interesting perspectives. The work has been OK so far, I only saw a handful of ads that really jumped out at me, none of which scored particularly well, but I did see one or two pieces that made my day. From Fiat, no less. Hopefully the piece in question will be a 7 after the revote session on Tuesday, but even if it doesn’t make the cut, I doff my hat to whoever dreamed up a car commercial that spoofs the training montage made famous by Philly’s own Rocky Balboa …

Caught a few interesting critiques in the GPC comments. Every now and then the committee comes across an ad that could have been stellar, but instead of being great, it’s bogged down by 3 or 4 misguided choices the creative team made somewhere in the production process. For print ads, it’s usually using too much copy alongside a powerful image, or using a bad tagline, and for TV, well, aside from the pervasive acceptance of poor production values, certain ideas are just not executed to their potential. Not that I know anything about the compromises inherent in producing a good spot, but I do know bad decisions when I see them, only because I’ve heard the same litany at the GPC quarter after quarter, year after year. It’s predictable, really, but then so are the strategies and briefs our creative teams choose to endorse. As in any industry, it is a rare and beautiful thing to come across a truly fresh idea, or to encounter a unique methodology or aesthetic that acts in the service of communicating an authentic human quality. A few of the ads we saw today had that going for them, but you could clearly see where the artistic vision had been co-opted by client demands, and the where a fantastic idea was pruned off to fit into a particular campaign’s clothing. Such is the nature of business, the nature of working for clients you cannot control – compromise and free artistic reign go out the door when the primary concern is market viability. Agencies get paid to build business, and the businesses we build are very often not interested in pushing creative boundaries, but in turning a profit. In all honesty, I believe that motivation ultimately underlies all our actions, on both a collective and personal level…

Anyhow – the day went by fast. Finished up early, spent the early evening at the pool with most of the LB/Chicago delegation, and had a fantastic dinner at the inimitable Spice Market with Rosalie & Sarah. Duncan McIntosh departed back to Paris, after a furious 3 day trip troubleshooting our Planet Leo system, and I realized I will miss this eccentric French-speaking, Barbeque-hawking, boat-loving South African. How often do you meet an IT professional who’s been a carpenter and backpacker and beach bum on multiple continents over the course of their life? Not often, at least not in the circles I run in. Thank you Market Forward for sending such a unique and competent character to help us fix our problems. And to my Capetown connection, cheers!

Tomorrow we’ve got a few more Multinational clients and the work from the Asia region to look at. Should be a great day. I’m gonna try and catch that 6:30 am yoga class before heading to the office, so enough for now… this story’s still unfolding…