The Decline & Fall of – well whatever

Aurora (September 2009)

At one of those never-ending ‘Iftaar’ GTs that break out like a bad rash every Ramadhan, it was amazing that amongst a crowd of over 250 ‘advertising professionals’ I didn’t know a soul. They were all fairly young so that could explain it; self being well past the geriatric stage, but there was something rather odd about them. They simply didn’t look like the kind of guys – and there were three gals as well, that would fit in with one’s generally maintained notion of what ad. people are supposed to look like. I hasten to add that ad. people are not distinguishable by the two horns that might stick out of their forehands or two rather large fangs that stick out from their lower jaws, but there is an air about those who belong to this misguided community – these people at the GT sure did not look like they belonged to the ‘community’.

However I hasten to add before being accused of snobbery, that it was not a social-class thing that might have triggered off my thinking accosted as I was with greasy ‘pakoras,’ even greasier drumsticks and oil drenched savories, that the faithful attack with the zeal of the demented Taliban. They were a perfectly reasonable bunch of young folks and my puzzlement could well have been my own creation. Elucidation came from another old hand who heard me and said that what you are seeing here are two kinds of agencies. There are the regular ones, a class that is fast dwindling and then there are the investor agencies that are rising fast. The latter, he added, tossing a ‘pakora’ back are on the rise and are funded by investors who see this as another business like a CNG pump, a flour dealership or a spare parts shop. They sniff out lucrative contracts and pump the right hands, agree on side deals, commissions and graft and collect the work. This, he added is largely government work and since quality has never been a worrying factor here, no one questions the merit of the work or its relevance and impact. Those who are sitting on the huge funds are in a hurry to spend them so that the monkey pole already well-greased can be smoother than silk as the monkeys travel up and down, carrying the goods by the sackful. Not a very flattering picture for those who are still doing SWOTs, USPs and what have you? Our hosts, one of the country’s largest media groups, added that all these were agencies that were billing upwards of Rs.100 m annually. ‘What are the products they handle?’ I asked. ‘None,’ he replied. ‘Tender notices, various campaigns politically motivated and essentially to reward party supporters and so on.’ ‘That’s not strictly advertising, is it?’ I asked. ‘Who cares?’ he replied. ‘It’s the money that matters.’

As if my friend was gazing at a crystal ball, a few days later I got a taste of what the new advertising business is all about. Someone I did not know from Adam popped up with a ‘proposition.’ This gent arrived at my office at the fag end of Ramadhan. I offered him coffee or tea in case he was not fasting but he cast his eyes heavenwards and said this month was ‘dedicated’ to a higher cause. Five minutes later, he patted his jacket pocket and said that he had five ministers all sealed up. The ‘project’ was to stage an event, the cost of which was a mere Rs.10m if we spent money recklessly. The quote that would be approved was for Rs.220m. I fell off my chair. ‘What happens to the rest?’ I asked a little foolishly. ‘One Civic 1500cc, two Cultus cars, one job for Rs.100, 000 for a year, a gift for the PA worth at least Rs.50, 000’ – the list was fairly exhaustive. ‘And what do we get?’ ‘Rs.30m. Cash. Boss this is the tip of the iceberg,’ he added. ‘It’s a goldmine.’ It took another four meetings after which I declined (another mistake I suppose). The punters walked away shaking their heads in disbelief. Before they had gone, I did ask, ‘Why us?’ The punter looked me straight in the eye. ‘The Minister,’ he replied, ‘said get a company with a good repute. You have a good repute.’ ‘Which is why we have no money,’ I told him. ‘Now you can,’ he said. I thought I had stumbled upon a scoop but when I mentioned it to more seasoned hands they said it was just the done thing. ‘This is the new face of advertising,’ one of them said. ‘Oh it’s as old as the hills, but it has now become quite the rage with the ministers’ eager to make a quick killing. Payments are delayed but a little grease smoothens things out incredibly quickly. And when you consider that the government is the largest advertiser, it all makes sense.’ His friend added, ‘and you can produce crap work and get away with it because who cares?’

Long afterwards I kept thinking about how we, like most agencies, struggled throughout the year to make a fraction of what these punters were doing in routine. So were people like us getting extinct? And did that explain those strange advertising professionals who looked anything but that? Or was it that we, the ‘full service agency protagonists’ were finding ourselves in the same position that ancient dodos did and were perplexed when they were snuffed out? Like in every age, things must change and so they do, leaving someone to quip that the only thing that does change is change itself but what we are replacing are shoddy goods, half literate men and women, at best semi-baked in a layer of current buzz words and adept at cutting a deal faster than you can blink an eye lid. A couple of years ago a good agency with commendable work done for a client – and rare letters from the client actually thanking the agency for having done a great job, were shocked to receive a ‘thank you’ letter two days after the commendation. No one was prepared to reveal what had happened but in a few weeks time, the truth emerged. The ‘agency’ for want of a better word, marched into the client’s offices for a – well let us call it a ‘presentation’ except that instead of strategy, concepts and executions they had three girls in jeans that could only have been pulled up while lying on a bed. The top buttons had vanished miraculously and all three seemed to specialize in leaning forward. All three also for reasons not hard to fathom were suffering from some kind of itch that provoked rapid opening and closing of three pairs of legs. To add to the atmosphere, all three chain smoked non stop and blew smoke rings at the client who had already had half a dozen cardiac failures. The account melted away into their hip pockets and it was all over within half a pack of cigarettes. Such tactics are not uncommon but there used to be a certain manner to doing things like being discreet. It seems that is no longer in fashion. It is more ‘in your face’ and it is more literal than metaphorical.

I would be happy if all this, hang the morality or lack of it, were to produce some great and innovative advertising that truly launched brands, improved the bottom line and sent production lines into a tizzy, but what we are witnessing is an alarming decline in advertising standards, poor concepts, stereo type imaging, predictable dialogues, poor actors and poor production values. I dare say that the advertising of the 70s and 80s is head and shoulders (oops) above what you see today. Ask Javed Jabbar, Shahnoor Ahmed, Khalid Rauf, Tahir Khan, Ahmed Kapadia, Abdul Sattar, Sajjad Gul and many others. Ask the new breed that has brains, background, good sense and a genuine desire to be original and you will find consensus between the old and the new school. Do I see a print ad here in Pakistan that I saw in India, with three guys wearing underwear facing the viewer and the priceless line, ‘Every Tom,       and Harry wear our brand.’ Not in a million years the way things are.