Doing nothing (and doing it well)

At Saatchi’s our very intelligent and articulate Schweppes client, Keith Holloway, became notorious for wrecking newly-shot TV commercials. At the first viewing he would get stuck into the supposed inadequacies of the script, the edit, the performances, the music. Whatever was there. All rather demoralising for our terrific team.

And I came to realise that he’d done this before with previous agencies.

So my strategy for dealing with the problem became three pronged: first to tell him that he’d raised some important issues for us to consider; second to go away and do nothing; and third, at the next meeting, to show him exactly the same stuff that he’d seen previously, prefaced by: “Take a look at this, Keith. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

“Oh, that’s so much better…” would be the invariable response.

Job done.

Pitching Schweppes

We were pitching the Schweppes business against JWT and Ogilvy. The bluest of blue-chip accounts at the time. (Where are they now?)

It was the first really important new business opportunity after the merger of Saatchi & Saatchi with Garland-Compton. I was leading a mixed team from both agencies - another first.

We had some terrific creative work – and an excellent presentation. So now to get down to rehearsal.

“No,” said managing director, Tim Bell (above, now Lord Bell), he wouldn’t be able to rehearse with us. Just too busy. And he didn’t.

So on the morning of the pitch, the clients settled in the meeting room (led by the redoubtable Keith Holloway), I went to pick up Tim from his office.

“Tell me about it,” he said. I briefed him in about forty-five seconds, the time it took to walk to the meeting room. And we walked in.

The presentation went like clockwork – and Tim blew them away with his deep grasp of the strategy, his understanding of the power of the creative concepts, his empathy and his insights. We won by a country mile.

Rehearsals? Not for Tim.