Be Interesting

Darren Stevens of “Bewitched” creating “campaigns” in his den.

When I was ten years old, it looked to me like Darren Stevens had the best job in the world. Watching “Bewitched,” Darren would head to his den and draw with markers on big sketchpads, coming up with “campaigns.” The next day he’d present these to “clients.” Much praise would be heaped, and Larry Tate, the hovering, clueless, always-antsy-before-the-presentation agency owner would smile and offer bonuses. It looked good in contrast to my dad’s job at a junior high school which daily brought him face-to-face with smart-lipped teens and boxes-full of their lousy papers. Pardon me for not wanting to be a teacher. I always asked for markers and sketchpads for my birthday (and got them, too).

There’s something about advertising that’s beguiling to outsiders. When I was in my twenties I was an associate art director at the state’s largest ad agency. There were about ten or fifteen guys who worked as designers, and the company offered $300 to any of us who would grow a ponytail. The idea was that clients would come through the agency and they’d be shown “the creative department.” What we did—creativity—was mysterious and elusive to these check-writing people who kept our company in business. When clients hesitated at entering a room with beponytailed-designers at work, the AE would whisper reassuringly that these weird ones “are not like you or me, but thank goodness someone in management has figured out how to corral the wild spark and harness it to produce ‘campaigns.’” Even back then, when we had begun doing most of our work on computers, markers and sketchpads were everywhere.

The technology has changed. It’s gotten more complicated. No client thought Darren Stevens was good because he knew how to operate a sketchpad. But today, a few clients think that quality marketing means finding someone who can Twitter, who can Facebook, who can YouTube, who can blog. Wrong. Great marketing has always been about finding someone who can create things that connect with people on an emotional level—whatever the medium. As John Bell, the head of Oglivy PR’s digital influence team recently wrote: “training a great marketer in planning and using social media is easier than training a social media pundit to be a great marketer.”

The first rule of marketing still is, and always has been—“be interesting.” The people who, through their creativity, know how to make clients interesting and relevant to their customers still deserve respect, admiration, and lots of work.

STEPHEN HALES