Publicity hounds. Live by the sword, etc etc Part 2

By Gonzalo López Martí – Creative director, etc / LMMiami.com

“Never pass up an opportunity to have sex or appear on TV.”
Gore Vidal

• In the age of social white noise and constant chatter -aka “the conversation”-, maintaining a high profile seems to be the only way to keep careers alive.
• Measurable results?    
• Nobody cares about results, let alone attempting to measure them.
• In corporate America, particularly in the marketing world, the revolving door swirls so fast it is simply impossible to know who’s responsible for what.
• It is all about how you spin it and how you market yourself.
• Be at the right place at the right time and you could earn yourself a promotion and a big bonus.
• Or a nice kick below the tailbone.
• Marketing yourself can be hard work though: it requires lots of PR and social media stunts, a discernible personal brand and a handful of soundbite-ready POVs to partake of “the conversation”.
• It is a slippery game indeed: the risk of a silly tweet going toxic in nanoseconds is high.
• On the other hand, if you are a decision maker employed by a big marketer, you can’t go about tweeting bromides and bland conventional wisdom.
• You gotta rattle the cage every now and then.
• Precisely what Saatchi & Saatchi chairman Kevin Roberts was trying to do a few weeks back when he unleashed the latest storm in the Madison Avenue teapot.
• See, Mr. Roberts had scored big with his book Lovemarks.
• But his Lovemarks fame was starting to wear thin (he published it in 2005ish).
• At 66, he needed a hit to burnish his Madison Avenue street cred.
• So he had to go on the record with some callous, totally tone deaf comments about gender bias in the ad industry.
• To add insult to injury, he picked a fight with feisty feminist activist and savvy socialite Cindy Gallop.
• Kaput.
• He’s now in a forced “leave of absence” and his career is in life support.
• Retirement seems to be his inexorable next move (then again, he’s 66).
• Mr. Roberts suffered a case of the shock jock syndrome.
• Shock Jock as in, say, Howard Stern.
• A law of diminishing returns: the public needs higher and higher doses of shock to grace you with their attention.*
• Methinks that instead of exposing himself to be stoned and impaled on social media, Mr. Roberts should’ve stuck to what he does well: writing books.
• He should’ve penned the sequel to Lovemarks (a massive hit back in the day), and ease his career into the lecture circuit. **
• With two books and a successful tenure in the Mad Ave C-Suite, Mr. Roberts could’ve been a staple of the various annual gatherings our industry is notorious for.
• You know, the various glitzy annual rendezvous at Cannes, Advertising week, ANA, etc.
• Unfortunately for Mr. Roberts, we live in the social media age now.
• Nobody reads books anymore.
• Nobody reads period.
• People build their personal opinions based on bits and pieces they mindlessly absorb on social media.
• Nobody really took the time to read what Mr. Roberts said.
• The entire controversy is based on hearsay.
• But mobs just looove to witness royalty being beheaded.
• Plus, since everyone is selling something, every nobody and their cousin rush to “join the conversation” ipso facto every time a storm in a teapot arises.
• Mr. Roberts’s most serious unwitting mistake possibly was his barb at Cindy Gallop.
• He did her an enormous favor when he mentioned her in his surprisingly flat-footed remarks.
• Ms. Gallop, no stranger to “the conversation”, is obviously attempting to elbow her way back into the Madison Avenue C-Suite slash limelight (if I’m not wrong, she was CEO at BBH NY a while back).
• Mind you, I am NOT criticizing Cindy Gallop. ***
• Quite the opposite, she’s quite savvy at positioning herself and playing the game by the new rules of living and dying by the social media sword. ****
• If I were to give Mr. Roberts a piece of advice, I’d remind him that all publicity is good publicity.
• Exhibit A: Robert Downey Jr.
• No too long ago he was a mess, a wreck, a lost cause condemned to a life of rehab revolving doors.
• Now, in his early 50s, he’s Iron Man, the highest paid actor in Hollywood.
• Exhibit B: Donald Trump.
• A year ago he was the quintessential has-been, a burned out reality TV clown picking fights with Rosie O’Donell.
• Disclaimer: speaking of living and dying by the sword, I never denied the fact that 95% of the reason I write this weekly column is to obtain industry visibility for my ad firm.
• The remaining 5% is to exercise my rusty writing skills.
• The formula is clear in this article:
• a titillating clickbait headline with slightly off-color language.
• A controversial POV about current events in our industry
• Try it.
• It works.
• Big time.
• Just don’t do it if you don’t have a very very thick skin.
• And an apology at hand.
• Every now and then you’ll get into trouble.

* See, it is not enough for Messi to score goals these days: he needs to bleach his hair and get a new tattoo every month to keep the media, his fans and his sponsors happy. Dennis “The Worm” Rodman played this very game 20 years ago. The great Muhammad Ali did it too 50 years ago. Even in sports where performance is evident and results are manifest, it is not enough for Messi, Ali and Rodman to be among the best in their lines of business. Pete Sampras was the best, who remembers him? Muhammad Ali had no qualms at admitting he’d borrowed a lot of his publicity tactics from the world of pro wrestling, particularly from Gorgeous George (né George Wagner, 1915-1963).

** Lovemarks was a masterpiece. Not that I read it myself (I try to read real literature in my scarce spare time) but, lemme tell you, if I had a penny for every time I heard a starry eyed midlevel marketing exec talk about “lovemarks” I’d be driving a brand new Lamborghini Miura.

*** I must say that her MakeLoveNotPorn initiative is a gutsy, brilliant jiu jitsu attempt at bringing some sanity and decency to a filthy exploitative industry. I’m surprised that she’s having a hard time having it funded, when everybody knows that web pornography is a solid money maker with pretty much guaranteed ROI. Or so conventional wisdom claims.

**** Many public figures use a cause or mission as a pretext. Al Gore for instance. After he invented the internet he reinvented his persona as a vocal environmentalist. Environmental causes gave him the the shtick and megaphone he needed to stay in business, figuratively and literally. Eventually, his cover was blown and it became apparent that he was essentially a hi flyin’ lobbyist for, among others, Arab plutocrats. And I don’t mean this as a condemnation: all politicians are, to some extent, hi flyin’ lobbyists navigating the treacherous waters of specials interests. Al Gore had an agenda and eventually his ship capsized.