How Brett and Lee won the Olympics for McCann

A lot of people must be asking, how on earth did ill-favoured  McCann Erickson manage to beat the mighty WPP to Locog's prestigious 2012 Olympics advertising account? Not least among them, Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP's nettled chief executive.

The short answer is: Brett Gosper, McCann Worldgroup EMEA president and his secret weapon, Lee Daley.

It can be no coincidence that, weeks after McCann Worldgroup appointed the somewhat tarnished, but nevertheless clever, former Saatchi & Saatchi chief executive to the newly created role of EMEA chief strategist (reporting directly to Gosper), McCann walks away with the Olympics prize.

Another non-coincidence is Gosper's familiarity with the workings of Olympics committees. He happens to be the son of Richard Kevan Gosper. Ring a bell? Then I'll refresh your memory. Gosper senior is a former Australian athlete of some renown, and more to the point, a former IOC vice-president of 20 years standing at the venerable body which holds supreme sway over the Olympic Games.

Just for the record, Kevan – as he prefers to be called  – won an Olympics silver medal for the men's 400m relay in 1956, and managed to take in being Shell chief executive and chairman Down Under during his long and successful career. So he's not lacking influential political connections. He's practically a national hero. What you might call Gosper junior's inside track, in fact.

One other non-coincidence is Daley's own brief and colourful connection with high octane sport. Remember his four-month stint at Manchester United? He'd probably rather you didn't. But by the law of unintended consequences, it has served him well in the end.

Sorrell pipped at the post in Olympics pitch

Much consternation in Farm Street, Mayfair, as McCann-Erickson, backed by IPG, wrests the Locog advertising account from its 'rightful' owner, WPP.

From the beginning of the pitch, WPP had looked a shoo-in. It was one of a remarkably small circle of contenders that had the power and scale to handle what in effect is a piece of global business. True, the much smaller Chime beat it in the duel for the initial 1-year marketing communications package. But that was a blip. Chime (even if it is part-owned by WPP) simply didn't have the resources to win part 2   – the much bigger bit of business spanning 3 years to the Games themselves.  And it showed when it was one of two to be dropped from the frame last week, leaving McCann and WPP.

At the time, no one much rated McCann's chances of success. WPP, now the world's largest marketing services network, is a much stronger organisation than Interpublic – which has been severely weakened over the past few years. In addition, WPP's boss, Sir Martin Sorrell had invested a lot of personal energy in winning the account. The fact that he was personally present in Singapore when the British team, featuring David Magliano and Sir Keith Mills, won the bid to hold the Olympics in London gives the flavour. For WPP, it would have been a way of juxtaposing one very British success story with another – its own.

Why did it lose? The devil is in the detail. Locog's is no ordinary ad account. Though worth a notional £10m over 3 years, this £10m is in fact a benchmark figure for which competing agencies had to tender (as did other services, such as the Locog accountants, Deloitte, and the Locog solicitors, Freshfields). Agencies were invited to provide ad valorem services – such a media buying, content, creative ads, sponsorship. If Locog spent over £10m, the winning agency would be quids in, because it would be conventionally rewarded. If, on the other hand, Locog underspent, the winning agency would have to underwrite the difference, and that would mean coming up with cash. 

It can readily be seen this is an expensive but finely judged gamble, and one which will be heavily disruptive of a marketing services network's normal commercial activities. Though there is glory in winning the business – and a tier 3 sponsorship thrown in – the account could easily turn into a poison chalice. Sorrell was prepared to take that chance, but was incensed that Locog had spun off the more profitable research part of the business (worth another '£10m') as a separate account (for which, by the way, WPP is not competing).

Failure to strike a deal over this vexed issue was the main reason that WPP lost out in the final pitch. It may come not to regret that mistake in the next few years.

Paul Lawson plots Burnett breakaway

Spring and we've already had the first cuckoo in adland, with news of the Garry Lace Robert Campbell start-up  – which opens its doors on May Day.

Of more substance, if it gets off the ground, is a breakaway being hatched at Leo Burnett. This features Paul Lawson, group managing director of Burnett and Arc, plus his executive creative director Jon Burley. The aim is to set up a full service agency offering advertising, planning and buying 'solutions'.

This is hardly an original formula. Indeed, it bears an uncanny resemblance to Hurrell & Dawson, the agency set up by M&C Saatchi alumnus Nick Hurrell and former TBWA\London chairman Neil Dawson in 2006. Despite its distinguished pedigree and a name-change, the new agency has not exactly covered itself in glory.

There are some reasons for believing the foul-mouthed but capable Lawson may be more successful, however. Lawson's attachment to media has more to it than a strategic conviction that agencies must, once again, put the 'full' back into 'service' by reuniting creativity and media under one roof. He was once a media planner himself, at Allen Brady & Marsh, before deciding, like many before him such as Tim Bell and Rick Bendel, that account management was a better route to the top.

The immediate reason for the breakaway seems to be growing disenchantment with Burnett grupenfuhrer Andrew Edwards. Lawson lost out to Australian outsider Edwards in the duel for the top job after Bruce Haines left 18 months ago. Edwards, it seems, is strong on 'below-the-line' but not much else; and the personal chemistry isn't great either.

So what's holding Lawson and Burley back? Absence of a planner – a professional one, that is. Edwards Groom Saunders might have fitted the bill perfectly. It had talent, in the form of Jez Groom, Peter Edwards and Will Saunders, but lacked traction as an independent communications agency. Unluckily for Lawson, it was snapped up by Engine in February.

Mind you, there's always Mark Cranmer, the former Starcom MediaVest EMEA ceo, currently consulting at Aegis. He's said to be looking for a new challenge. More of that soon...

Has the sun set on Dawn Airey's ITV ambitions?

The question, now that Michael Grade has been dislodged as ITV chief executive, is: will Dawn Airey want the job anyway?

In the dream-team line-up of a year ago Airey – very much a Grade protegée at that time – looked by far the strongest internal candidate as his successor. John Cresswell, chief operating officer, is too faceless; Rupert Howell, commercial director, has certainly got the personality but lacks a serious track-record in top-level TV management. The other internal candidate, head of programmes Peter Fincham, had only just joined as Airey left, after facing the music over the BBC's "Crowngate" fiasco (an improbable saga of Her Majesty spitting tin tacks backwards). At any event, he would be unlikely to present Airey with serious competition if she were to throw her hat in the ring.

But will she? Airey quit as ITV's head of production, essentially, because Grade broke his word. He had given everyone to believe that he would step down as chief executive in 2009. But such was the gravity of ITV's crisis, and the extent of his vanity, that when his much-touted programme-led recovery failed to materialize on schedule, he decided to extend his tenure by another year. Result: Airey lost patience and jumped aboard the nearest sea-worthy vessel, Five, as chief executive. Irony number one: had Airey stayed, given her strong previous record as managing director of Sky Television and her ruthless boardroom skills, she would now be contemplating becoming chief executive of ITV a year earlier.

Irony number two. Five has its problems. As a johnny-come-lately terrestrial channel, its audience is too small, and too ill-defined, for it to survive long term in the era of digital multichannel TV. Indeed, a merger has already been proposed with Channel 4 as a solution to their collective troubles, though this seems to have gained little traction with the industry or the regulator, Ofcom. On the other hand, Five is wholly owned by RTL (and eventually Bertelsman, the biggest media owner in Europe). Should break-up, or takeover, of ITV ever emerge as the preferred solution to its intractable problems, then RTL would have to be in the frame. For Airey, would it be better to bid for the present ITV job or bide her time?

If offered the ITV job, it might well be because ITV shareholders see her as a handy exit strategy. Who better to manage the handover of the company to RTL? In which case, she would not hold the job for very long, though she would be a great deal richer at the conclusion of business. If, on the other hand, she stays on at Five, the merger might never happen. In which case, she will have passed by a great opportunity, perhaps her only opportunity, to be chief executive of a significant broadcast media company.

Of course, Airey is not the only external candidate to be fancied for the job. Tony Ball, former chief executive of BSkyB, and Stephen Carter, currently communications minister (but for how much longer?), must be considered formidable alternatives. Carter came close to being offered the ITV job last time round, after a half-way decent stint as coo at stricken cable company NTL, but lost interest after it emerged that Grade was going to be not the non-executive but the executive chairman.

Right now, Grade is merely a lingering embarrassment – a chairman stripped of his executive powers. Any of the external candidates would make his instant dismissal a precondition of taking the job. All that he is doing by staying is blighting the chances of the internal candidates.

Ash in the mouth for Fallon

What goes around, comes around. The BBC has recently recruited Ash Makkar, a former Teletext marketer, to oversee the marketing of BBC2, BBC4 and BBC Knowledge. One of Makkar's principal concerns over the next few years will be to deflate the division's bloated budget. So it will be no surprise to find, in due course, his eagle eye fastening upon the advertising agency roster. One agency in particular may feel a little vulnerable: Fallon London, which once fired him.

Sainsbury's will move to BBH – and pigs have wings

Where do these rumours come from? The latest one circulating the ad industry is that the £50m Sainsbury account, starring superchef Jamie Oliver, is about to move – without a pitch – to Bartle Bogle Hegarty. No one would be more surprised than AMV.BBDO, the incumbent for donkey's years, or indeed BBH – if it were so lucky as to win the business.

The rumour almost certainly originates in Claire Harrison-Church. Not from Harrison-Church herself, I hasten to add, but in what she has done, and where she has come from.

Earlier this year, H-C replaced Helen Buck as brand communications director of Sainsbury's. In other words she now has hands-on (though not exclusive) responsibility for the ad account. Looking more closely at H-C's track record, we notice an uncannily close association with BBH over the years. She was once brand director for Lynx at Unilever and later marketing director of fried chicken retailer KFC. It is also said that BBH helped her, in some unspecifiable way, to get her last job at Boots.

All that does not mean, I'm afraid, that BBH is about to receive a handsome return on its investment. Marketing directors aren't that grateful or, in Sainsbury's case, that powerful.

Sly play with media regulation

I'm not sure I fully understand the logic of Sly Bailey's position, outlined at the Digital Britain summit, although her ulterior motive for adopting it is clear enough.

The chief executive of Daily Mirror-owner Trinity Mirror hit out at "gargantuan national newspaper websites designed to harness users by the tens of millions" which, "by performing well on search engines like Google, ... have eroded the value of news." Step forward, presumably, the Sun, The Guardian and the Mail as villains of the piece.

Bailey's ultimate target is the dotcom news aggregators, such as Google News, which she roundly condemns for first pirating other people's news, then commoditizing it around search optimization.

"A consumer is now as likely to discover newspaper content on Google, visit our sites, then flit away before even discovering that it was the Daily Mirror or the Telegraph that created the content in the first place," she said. "Or worse, they may visit an aggregator like Google News, browse a digital deli of expensive-to-produce news from around the world, and then click on an ad served up to them by Google."

In other words, everyone – consumers, dotcom portals, and advertisers on them – is getting a free ride except the publishers who actually pay for the content in the first place. No wonder the media is in crisis and experienced journalists are being discarded like autumn leaves by our major newspapers and free-to-air broadcasters.

Bailey is quite right, of course. But she goes on to suggest the newspapers have exacerbated the trend by building mega-news sites with the explicit intention of performing well in organic search. Her solution is to loosen the regulatory straitjacket, at present preventing newspapers from merging, in order to confront the challenge of the internet.

"Any merger regime which does not take Google, Yahoo, Rightmove and Monster into account simply isn't fit for purpose," she said. She's presumably banking on Lord Carter's Digital Britain report to come up trumps at the end of June.

Personally, I wouldn't put too much money on it. First of all, I'm not sure how making the newspaper industry still more concentrated is going to help combat the challenge of the internet. If anything, concentration would accelerate the trend that Bailey is decrying. Secondly, the suggestion is politically naive.

If politicians took a strictly utilitarian approach to media, they might just agree with Bailey. But they don't. Their main concern is to ensure that the newspaper barons, and specifically the house of Murdoch, do not become any more powerful than they already are. For God's sake, these media dynasts can influence the outcome of elections and put you into the political wilderness for years!

However, Bailey speaks with the conviction of desperation. The way her company is going, it will soon disappear of its own accord if it is not allowed to merge with something more powerful. And I don't mean by that Johnston Press.

Teufel! The car in front is a Toyota

Gloom everywhere in the car industry. Chrysler is going for a song to Fiat... and GM is going, well, bust  – in a carefully managed, politically sensitive sort of way. And it's not much better in Europe. Sales of new cars across Europe fell by 9% in March 2009 compared with a year ago, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association.

But wait, what's this? In Germany, Europe's largest car market, sales are actually up – and by an astonishing 40% last month. The reason for this anomaly is not hard to fathom. It's called scrappage, which means the state doles out cash (€2,500 in Germany) if you exchange your old banger for a new, or near-new, vehicle. Wunderbar! Let's all have more of it. Even at this moment Alistair Darling is preparing a parallel scheme for the Budget, and Gordon Brown has as usual gone overboard by promising to save the consumer – if not the world – £5,000 on the cost of a new electric car. Never mind that these vehicles are, to date, technically inadequate for most daily usage.

Before getting over-excited let's take a closer look at the German scheme, for all is not what it seems. Yes, car sales have soared. But have the German car marques – BMW, Mercedes, Porsche, Audi and VW – been the main beneficiaries? No they have not. Not many of their models, even in nearly new condition, are priced under €10,000. The cars in front are foreign-owned Toyota, Nissan and Honda. So much for propping up the German car-manufacturing sector.

It's no wonder Sarko thinks German chancellor Angela Merkel "doesn't get it".

Campbell Lace – the Beta version

Goodness me. After some last minute shenanigans, the rumour really has born fruit. Lace Campbell is shortly to be an established fact. Actually, the new agency is going to be called Campbell Lace Beta. Who is Beta – the planner perhaps? No it's an idea borrowed from the internet, presumably meaning work in progress. The agency launches in May. This last detail can be inferred from its icon, a maypole – which is also, they tell us, a symbol of riotous pagan creativity. Can we be sure you're not leading us a bit of a dance, Garry? 

Innocent until proved guilty

To listen to the media backlash, you'd think Innocent, the smoothie maker, had just signed a pact with the devil – media-friendly founder Richard Reed being cast in the improbable role of Dr Faustus.

Successful businesses don't continue to be successful by standing still. For quite some time now, Innocent has been underpowered, both in its product range and geographical spread. As Reed tried to explain to a hectoring Eddie Mair on Radio 4, if Innocent doesn't grasp the smoothie opportunity in other, virgin, European markets then the big battalions will rip off their ideas and do it themselves. 

But where do they get the money to do it? Would anyone have objected to a bank about a year ago? Would that have been an unacceptable compromise of Innocent's wholesome ethical brand stance? I don't think so, because Innocent managed to secure a £32m credit line from HBOS (yes, HBOS) without anyone raising so much as a squeak of dissent.

But substitute Coca-Cola for HBOS and what do you get? Universal vilification: accusations which range from naivety to downright cynical hypocrisy.

Lighten up. Innocent is a business not a charity. Where else, in this climate, is the money going to come from –  a private equity house? Don't make me laugh. And, by the way, what's so bad about Coke holding a fairly small minority stake, maybe 15%? 

Ah, you say, this is where you're being naive. It's all part of a carefully premeditated plan... you wait, in 5 years' time the Innocent founders will be on their way, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, leaving behind the husk of an ethical food company which has been sucked dry by the parasites at Coca-Cola.

Come on. Just as McDonald's did to Pret A Manger, which bought back their 33% stake last year?

Why NatMags prefers French dressing

C'est tellement curieux. The magazine publishing business is puzzled by the decision to appoint an unknown Frenchman, Arnaud de Puyfontaine, as the new UK chief executive of the National Magazine Company. Not the least reason for their confusion was a widespread perception that the present incumbent, Duncan Edwards – now moving upstairs to president and chief executive of Hearst Magazines International – had been grooming his managing director Jessica Burley to take over.

Edwards and Burley were – managerially speaking – soul mates, sharing among other things a passion for spreadsheet analysis. That may reek of dullness, but it seemed to work for NatMags, so why look overseas for an alternative?

Well, there's no doubt that M. de Puyfontaine brings with him a genuine exoticism. Born in 1964, he's a graduate of the école supérieure de commerce, so very much a part of the French intellectual and business elite. Over the years he has, in typical haute école manner, put high-level contacts to good use in leveraging his way up the French establishment. He started  as a journalist on Le Figaro, but soon spotted the superior attractions of magazine publishing.

The British connection-in-waiting was Emap, or rather its French subsidiary, where he launched Emap Star and in July 1998 took over as chief executive from Kevin Hand – who at that point had been called back to London to be group ceo. When in 2006 a seriously weakened Emap was compelled to relinquish its French subsidiary, it was de Puyfontaine who handled the negotiations. The upshot was Emap France became a subsidiary of Mondadori, the Italian publishing house, but only after de Puyfontaine had parlayed his way onto the Mondadori board, as chief executive of the group's digital activities. But then, mid last year, he mysteriously quit  – settling instead for "senior advisor" to the head of Mondadori France.

The role of consigliere obviously becomes him, because in next to no time he was also head of a special committee looking into the future of the French newspaper industry, appointed on the personal say-so of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy. It was the pay-off for a carefully cultivated friendship which dated back to the eighties when Sarkozy was the relatively unknown mayor of Neuilly. Never underestimate "le piston".

So, the question people are asking is why has such a big fish in France settled for such a small pond here in the UK?  Yes, all right: he will be in charge of such national treasures as Good Housekeeping, Cosmo, Harper's Bazaar and, er, Men's Health. Even so, it looks suspiciously as if there's another shoe waiting to drop. Perhaps NatMags' head of Europe in due course?

Who's fooling whom, BMW?

Spot on. BMW advertising is such a finely tuned piece of engineering after WCRS' 30-year tenure of the account that even the car company's April Fool's Day jokes resonate the brand. In The Guardian today, The Ultimate Driving Machine boasts of its new "Magnetic Tow Technology - For once we're happy to be behind the competition". The idea being that BMW-patented super magnets allow the driver to lock on to the car in front, so saving fuel bills. "Why burn your fuel, when you can burn someone else's?" says the copy. Post-modern irony, or an unconscious revelation of the self-centred one-upmanship at the core of BMW's image?

No crock of gold at end of Red Brick's rainbow

When was the last time you heard anything about Frank Lowe-inspired Red Brick Road - you know, the Tesco agency? I thought so: when it lost its only other account of note, the global Heineken business, to BBH a few months back.

Red Brick Road's inability to win new business after such a spectacular start back in 2006 means it is badly in need of an exit strategy. Which may well account for the following rumour. There's going to be a merger with WPP's JWT some time in the summer. The only real casualty will be JWT's B&Q account. There, that's it.

It's quite an attractive rumour in its way. JWT, which has experienced a "recovery of sorts" following managing director Alison Burns' departure is still weak on top management, the problem being the idiosyncratic personality of JWT Europe executive chairman Toby Hoare. Who better to up the ante than one of London's best managers? Yes, step forward Red Brick Road ceo Paul Hammersley. Add to that the prize of Tesco, which JWT narrowly failed to lure a few years back when it was looking promiscuous at Lowe, and the idea seems juicier still.

There's only one problem. The rumour isn't true. What is true is that 20% stakeholder Sir Frank would like to get out and that he has held intermittent talks with WPP's Sir Martin Sorrell. These talks have considered several scenarios. One was to poach the Tesco media account from Initiative and place it in a WPP-sponsored outlet, probably MindShare. That at least was the WPP angle. Sir Frank had other ideas, such as a joint media venture with WPP in which Red Brick Road would hold a 50% stake. No dice with Sir Martin, it seems. And when finally  the Initiative account did come up for review last year, well it just stayed put. There have also been whispers of  'doing something' with Johnny Hornby's CHI, already part-owned by WPP, but this one was stillborn on the drawing board.

WPP now seems to have given up on any kind of a deal. But that doesn't meant Red Brick Road's strategic problem has gone away. Nor has it prevented the agency's executives from spinning imaginative fantasies about solving it.

Admen rally to the cause of cutting unwanted teenage pregnancies

Finally, something to cheer up adland: the hunting season is about to reopen. The advertising regulator has just announced it is seeking to abolish 9pm watershed restrictions on TV condom advertising; and may also permit pro-abortion ads for the first time.

Result: hysterical consternation among Catholic and anti-abortion groups. But what do admen care about that? This new development can only mean one thing:  some frenzied pitching – at last! – all in the worthy cause of cutting teenage pregnancies. 

The controversy has been stirred by an outline proposal from the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) and the Broadcast Committee of Advertising Practice (BCAP), which have decided to review the current advertising rules. We can now expect almost round-the-clock condom advertising – the exception being when programmes are aimed at children under 10. So not during Horrid Henry but straight after GMTV. It's all part of a review of advertising codes which is being put out for public consultation. The scrutiny closes on July 19th.

Currently condoms cannot be advertised on Channel 4 before 7pm and on other channels before 9pm. But the soaring growth of teenage pregnancies has prompted calls for change. (Hands up, by the way, anyone who can remember a condom ad on telly, even after the watershed? I thought so: the manufacturers clearly don't see TV advertising as the way forward.)

Not surprisingly, there has been more outraged opposition than support for these controversial proposals. More particularly for the one that would allow abortion clinics to advertise on TV. The ever-entertaining Tory MP and blogger Nadine Dorries has already registered her disgust. It's  "just plain sick", she says.

"I am quite sure that any adverts will depict smiling pretty nurses, gleaming reception areas and leafy car parks," she writes in her blog. She goes on to complain that the ads will not highlight the risks involved. She's pretty ill-informed on the technicalities, as it happens.

Opening up new categories to advertising might, however, do something to restore confidence in an industry trussed by new legislation and battered by lobby groups calling for ever more stringent curbs. Worthy cause or not.

When will Sugar turn sour?

Maybe it's just reverse psychology. That harassed, careworn fisog is so traced with the parchment lines of gloomy cynicism that, in a curious way, its every appearance on the box acts like an antidote to depression (or rather, since we're talking business here, Depression). Search me for any other convincing reason that explains the charmed life of The Apprentice. 

But success it has been. Sir Alan Sugar's return to BBC1 attracted 8.1 million viewers and a 33% share in the 9pm hour, according to unofficial overnight figures.

Let me offer a heretical opinion: its success won't last. That's not simply because it's a long way through its natural programme cycle as it embarks on a fifth series. But because the format is now too much at variance with reality.

Now, I know what you're going to say. It never was a realistic depiction of any known business environment in the first place. Nor has Sir Alan been a particularly successful entrepreneur, and therefore credible role model. All right, he did make £800m at one point in his career (enough to keep most of us in M&S socks for the rest of our lives) but most of that was in property – wasn't it? – so it doesn't count. In short, the only thing that's ever been real about The Apprentice are the first four letters in 'reality TV'; it's pure entertainment. And, on that level, still pretty funny.

But is it? There comes a point where the camping up no longer hits the spot, or captures the zeitgeist. That point is where the producers fail to realize that they themselves are part of the parody: we've reached it now. The yahoo capitalist culture seeded in Thatcher's eighties, of which Sir Alan is such an eminent example, is curdling in a deepening dyspepsia of public disapproval.  

At the head of the list of emerging anti-heroes is, of course, Sir Fred Goodwin – the supreme demon of unrepentant greed. But where bankers lead, lesser acolytes of the creed are sure to follow. As the 'L' of the Nasty Noughties Depression elongates, so contempt for capitalism's cruder, more benighted evangelists will become commonplace. Just this week the European heads of seriously over-bonused AIG have quit because they can't take the heat any longer and even Ken Clarke is getting flak over his unhealthy interest in offshore "investment". Indeed, (I am indebted to the FT's Lombard for this little gem) we are not far from parliamentary committees beginning their investigation with the following question: "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the financial services sector?"

That's not good news for wannabe capitalist attack dogs in search of 15 minutes of fame. And, give it another year, it won't be good news for TV ratings either.

Who rules, suits or creatives? Garry Lace explains

Who really calls the shots at a successful advertising agency, the top suits or the creative supremo? It's a tired old saw which received new stimulus earlier this year at an IPA Client Services debate featuring Robert Senior, ceo SSF Group, and Ed Morris, recently departed executive creative director at Lowe.

The result was a foregone conclusion. Senior flattered to deceive by exalting creative excellence as "the fuel without which the bus goes nowhere." Leaving Morris, cast as patsy, to argue the lame pedestrian virtues of the account man as "grand orchestrator between creativity and commerce." The vote? Er, 44 to 6 in Senior's favour.

But wait just a moment. Doesn't history tell us something entirely different, and isn't Mr Senior the living embodiment of this alternative truth?

I call to witness none other than Garry Lace, one of London's most consummate suits. Lace it was who first highlighted an increasingly bizarre phenomenon in creative agencies: the wilful decision to dispense with chief executives and entrust agency management to the precarious hands of creatives, planners and the like.

For Lace, of course, this unfortunate trend has the poignancy of a parable – with himself cast in the role of Jesus Christ. Look what happened to Lowe after I left, he might say: a creative (Morris) and a planner (Rebecca Morgan) have presided over its ruin. And now just a planner...

Strictly speaking, that's being a bit economical with the truth. Lace's flamboyance was his own undoing; and besides, there was Amanda Walsh in between.

But in a wider sense, he has a point. Euro RSCG, which has recently dispensed with the services of its chief executive, Mark Cadman, seems embarked on the same path of self-destruction – led by a planner (Russ Lidstone) and a creative (Mark Hunter).

Self-serving though these words of Lace may partly be, I feel I ought to quote them in full. "I've always worked on the assumption that companies need a leader" he says. "That person for whom people will work harder and care more because they are able to construct a vision for the business based on experience and instinct and articulate it in a powerful and motivating way. That person who proves to be a magnet for talent and clients alike and for whom nothing is impossible."

Lace may yet get an opportunity to prove his point. He has been languishing recently as managing director and part-owner of Admedia the "out-of-home" (read toilet advertising) specialist. But rumour is the strangest thing. It has thrown him into a start-up venture with Robert Campbell, former creative powerhouse of RKCR and current co-founder with ex-Times man Toby Constantine of tgi50, a website portal aimed at the 'just over' 50s.

Even stranger is another rumour: the one that links Mark Cadman with ... Ed Morris, in a similar venture. If either of these ventures gets going, maybe we'll be a little closer to the truth. Who really does rule at an ad agency, the suit, or the creative?

Lefroy girds his loins for Advertising Association job

So, Tim Lefroy is to be the next chief executive of the Advertising Association. Tim who? you may say. But don't dismiss him so easily. Lefroy has an interesting track record.

Yes, he is a former, eighties, adman: not necessarily the best qualification for the job in the era of Big Tent, holistic marcoms inclusiveness. He was once the managing director of Young & Rubicam London (remember Tell Sid?), and also chief executive of Yellowhammer. This last, though famous in its day, went spectacularly bust in 1990 owing the Telegraph – among others – millions of pounds. It should be stressed that Lefroy had little or nothing to do with Yellowhammer's unfortunate demise, the finger of blame eventually pointing at wayward founder Jon Summerill.

But back to the point. It's what Lefroy did subsequently that's interesting. He set up a consultancy called Radical, which he still heads, specialising in 'corporate positioning and transformation'. Among his clients has been the Association of Investment Trust Companies, which hired him to reflate the reputation of what had become a tired and discredited financial instrument. Channel 4 and GSK followed as clients. Also, and more importantly, the Government. Lefroy was given the task of, discreetly, helping to privatise the research and technology arm of the Ministry of Defence, which he did very successfully; it is now known as QinetiQ. He's also a prominent member of the Pensions Reform Group – dedicated to ameliorating people's old age – of which Frank Field MP is the founder. His knowledge of public affairs, politics and personal savings is not, therefore, to be doubted.

All will stand him in good stead in his new position. His predecessor, Baroness Peta Buscombe, departed early in slightly mysterious circumstances. Ostensibly the Press Complaints Council position being vacated by ex-top-flight diplomat Sir Christopher Meyer was too good an opportunity to turn down. And it is true the post of PCC chairman is better paid. Yet, that's not the whole story.

Buscombe was favourably regarded in her role at the AA. She was a breath of fresh air after Andrew Brown's 13-year reign of dullness. Peta's problem was she was just too dynamic. A former politician herself, she immediately saw the problem: that the only way forward for a marcoms industry under constant assault from politicians and lobbyists was to rally its multitudinous trade bodies behind a single banner – her own at the AA as it happened.

But, as with many things in life, it all came down to money. The AA is dependent for its rather meagre budget upon these self-same multitudinous bodies – most of whom are in a state of constant low-key warfare over the issue of precedence. The direct marketing crowd look down on the sales promotion crowd, who in turn bitterly complain that the AA is really just a cover for old-style television advertising (the IPA). No one likes, or understands, the uppity digital folk (the IAB). And then there's the advertisers' trade body, ISBA, which reckons (maybe rightly) that it's superior to all of them. It's certainly the biggest contributor to the AA's coffers.

So a falling out between the AA and ISBA would not be good news for the AA. And all the less so if its chief were to find she lacked the financial wherewithal to complete her mission without a supplementary levy on ISBA members. Which seems to have been roughly the situation when Buscombe suddenly discovered the superior merits of a senior post at the PCC.

Into this den of lions the more circumspect Lefroy must now step, like some latter-day Daniel. We wish him luck. His track-record in effecting successful corporate change suggests he deserves nothing less.

We can drink to forget – it's official

Phew! The drinks industry and the supermarkets can breathe a sigh of relief – for the moment. Gordon Brown has cracked down sharply on the suggestion made by his influential chief medical officer, Sir Liam Donaldson, that any alcoholic drink should cost a minimum of 50p.

Now that pubs are in terminal decline, cut-price lager and cider promotions in the supermarkets are pretty much all that is propping up the breweries. Certainly branding isn't doing the trick any more, as the sorry demise of the once "reassuringly expensive" Stella has demonstrated with crushing effect.

For a while it looked as if the Scottish National Party's dalliance with a similar low-price ban was merely a test-market for the real thing, in England and Wales.  A little like the smoking in public places ban (another of Sir Liam's pet schemes) being trialled in Ireland before implementation here.

But Gordon has left us in no doubt it won't be happening (this side of a general election at any rate). Apparently, we need to take into account the wider economic impact of a ban in our present straitened circumstances - why should a feckless minority spoil it for the rest of us when all we want to do is drink and forget?

Don't be deceived, however. The nanny state – aided and abetted by Alcohol Concern and the British Medical Association – will be back for more.

Clearly, Portman Group, the UK drinks industry's main ginger group, is not being duped for a moment. Suspicious of further interference (a pre-9pm watershed ban, for example, on television advertising), it is preparing a major campaign to turn the tide of opinion back in favour of tippling freely.

Called Project 10 in the trade, it will be launched with the catchline Why Let Good Times Go Bad? and focus heavily on persuading people to exercise personal responsibility when consuming alcohol.

Self-regulation's the best regulation, eh? No doubt the financial services community would whole-heartedly agree.

WPP flicks V-sign at BBH

Oh frabjous day, calloo, callay, he chortled in his joy. As well the knight of Farm Street might when he received news that WPP had wrested back Vodafone's strategic creative account, which had embarrassingly eluded his clutches for the past 3 years.

The account is "strategic" in several respects. First, it is worth a great deal of money – £50m a year in the UK alone. It also gives WPP control of the commanding heights of the Vodafone marketing services business: mastery of the Big Idea, from which all else in due course flows. Finally, it provides further eloquent testimony, in the wake of HSBC and Dell, that an integrated agency specifically built around a client's global needs, and known as the WPP Team model, actually works. (No one mention Samsung in this context, by the way.)

Most piquant of all, however, will be the knowledge that Sir Martin has managed to deliver a body blow to the nether regions of rival agency group BBH. BBH comes from a different place on the agency spectrum to conglomerate WPP. It's a creative micro-network, with limited international distribution. The idea being that it can seed a great creative concept capable of playing globally even though others may be left to distribute, and adapt it, to local markets. BBH, long one of the UK's most accomplished creative agencies, has had considerable success with the micro-network mantra. Which helped it, for example, to win British Airways.

Worryingly, it had begun to peck at WPP's entrails by winning the really big accounts from which, in the pre-digital age, it would have been precluded by its smaller scale. The loss of substantial Unilever business was a particular sore point.

And then, of course, there was Vodafone. In 2002 WPP looked as if it had got the Vodafone business all wrapped up when its leading brand agency, JWT, won the international account. Not for long. BBH was appointed to the telecoms giant's roster in 2004 without a pitch and from then on began to prise open JWT's grip on the account. To this day, BBH handles the UK strategic account, while JWT is left with the more boring product stuff.

So the act of seeing off BBH as well as McCann Erickson in a 3-way pitch for the global strategic business will have been balm indeed for WPP's nettled leader. We can only presume that the UK bit of the business retained by BBH will soon be on notice...if Sir Martin has anything to do with it.

Hooper swoops on Intelligent Marketing

How to make money in a recession. Suave, Stowe-educated Matthew Hooper is back in town, after an entrepreneurial odyssey which has seen most of his business interest focused on China these past 5 years. Hooper has just taken a sizeable stake (said to be 20%) in up-and-coming integrated agency Intelligent Marketing and got himself appointed executive chairman at the same time.

At first sight, Hooper looks out of place in the rough-hewn world of mail-shots, on-pack promotions, shelf-wobblers and BOGOFs: he's about as inconspicuous as a choirboy in a boy band. Contrary to appearances, however, he's a seasoned operator with remarkable business acumen. And for many years was also chairman of the sales promotion industry's top trade body, the MCCA.

He first set up diversified marketing services group Interfocus (himself as chairman) in the late 80s, with Omnicom as a financial backer. Then bought out their stake; then sold the business to Interpublic; then bought it back; then sold it again (for the last time) in 2003. Quite the wheeler-dealer, since he made a tidy profit at every turn.

What made him stage a comeback now, in the Nasty Noughties Depression? I can't do better than quote him: "When the economy is distressed, it throws up opportunities, and good agencies come out stronger." Exactly.

Advertisers think Google is evil

The ISBA conference, an annual jamboree for advertisers and media folk, was  – until lunch-time – a more lively affair than you might imagine. Good, visionary speeches from Richard Eyre, chairman of the IAB, and Stephen Carter, communications minister; and some long-overdue clarification on such recondite industry matters as CRR (contract rights renewal) and BT (behavioural targeting) from the regulator, Ofcom ceo Ed Richards. (One will be relaxed, by the way; and the other is OK, so long as it is 'transparent' and in the consumer interest, whatever that may mean.)

But the highlight came just before the luncheon bell, as Google was put in the public stocks and pelted with rotten tomatoes. For that we have puckish Simon Thompson to thank. Thompson, European md of Lastminute.com, was called upon to chair a panel of industry experts which included the hapless Matt Brittin, UK country director of Google. Thompson immediately rounded upon his helpless victim by instigating a spot poll of his audience. 

"Google", he said, "believes it should do no evil. Which of you believe it is now evil?" A majority of hands shot up in the affirmative. He then turned to the panel: "And which of you?" Blank faces from Nick Milligan, md of Sky Media, Adrian Sayliss (or should that be 'say less'?), head of Publicis-owned Vivaki (a key Google ally) and Andrew Walmsley, founder of i-Level, all sitting uncomfortably close to Brittin. Only maverick former lawyer Mike Kassan was prepared to say he agreed with the motion, mainly because he had spent the last half-hour depicting Google as a manipulative, monopolistic monster that needs to be brought to book. The panel's craven majority verdict would seem to prove him right.

Arena – what men really don't want

Not so much of a bang as a whimper greeted Bauer's announcement this week that it is folding the whiskery old Grandaddy of men's style magazines, Arena, after two decades.

The amazing thing is it lasted so long. This is a sector euthanized by the increasing apathy of both readers and advertisers. The unseemly scramble down market by publishers keen to ensure their male readers get the requisite ration of tits and bums merely underlines how desperate and intellectually bankrupt they have become.

Of course, dignifying a basic human urge with a cerebral top-dressing is as old as, well, Penthouse and Playboy. It was the penetrating articles you always wanted to talk about if you got caught reading one, not the pictures. Yeah, yeah.

Then along came the publisher of Vogue, Condé Nast, and gave birth to the chic porn lad's mag sector with a revitalised version of moribund Gentleman's Quarterly. Arena's mortifying role was to play mid-wife.

The fact that GQ was neither gentlemanly nor quarterly should not detain us; it certainly didn't detain Condé Nast, nor the enthusiastic male audience which took it up – not to mention its successively smuttier counterparts such as Esquire and later FHM, Loaded and Men's Health. Along the road there were momentary segmental diversions, such as the short-lived Jack – for older men. Inevitably the path led downhill with increasing momentum: near the bottom we meet the men's weeklies, Nuts and Zoo. Even these are now failing. Increasingly forlorn efforts to turn them into online earners have been met with indifference by an audience that's currently more interested in freesheets such as Shortlist and Sport.

So what do men want? God knows; publishers certainly don't.

Universally challenged BBC

Jeremy Paxman: And now Corpus Delicti, your starter for ten. How many major PR cock-ups have there been at the BBC in the past two years? Gail Trimble: Five. Paxman: Correct. Name 3 of them. Trimble: Er, the Blue Peter Cat, Carol Thatcher's Golliwog and the Gaza Emergency Disaster Fund appeal. Paxman: Correct. I'll give you a bonus of 30 if you can name another 3. Yes, 3 - Wake up Corpus. Trimble: Oh, er, I see what you mean. The Queen being backward in coming forward, Jonathan Ross'  reinstatement after the Sachsgate affair and now us not winning University Challenge. 

Paxman: At last. You're getting the hang of it. What's the common thread running through them? Sam Kaye: the BBC is either too fast or too slow at responding to crises. Paxman: No, too vague. I can't allow that I'm afraid; Manchester? Matthew Yeo: It's incompetent or it's corrupt. Paxman: Make up your mind. Yeo: Well, it's both. Blue Peter was corruption and... Paxman: You're missing the point. Corpus?

Trimble: It lacks common sense. Paxman: Can you be a bit more specific? Trimble: Well, it's all the responsibility of the director-general, really. He's been so frightened by the repercussions of the Hutton report, which resulted in the sacking of one of his predecessors, that he's been paralysed by political correctness. Paxman: Sorry Corpus, I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say there. He's desperate to be seen as right-thinking, but most people think he keeps getting it wrong? Trimble: Exactly. But he's much cleverer than people give him credit for, because underneath all the fumbling PC hypocrisy, he's adroitly pursuing a populist, commercially motivated strategy that's diametrically opposed to the BBC's Reithian foundation principles of...

Paxman: Mm, fascinating. I'll have to stop you there, Corpus. We've run out of time and so have you.

Sage advice from a dumb prophet

And so to this week's Sunday Times business supplement. Amid all the predictable drivel about the banks and the state of Sir Fred's nice little earner, this curious piece – 'Buffett: I was dumb in 2008'.

The article comes across as a mea culpa from the Sage of Omaha for mistiming the price of oil last year when he bought into Conoco Phillips at the top of the market. He also dived into a couple of Irish banks that looked cheap at the time - but weren't. Result, some serious losses for his investment vehicle, Berkshire Hathaway. Even so, Berkshire beat the Standard & Poor 500 index by a handsome margin last year. So perhaps we can forgive Homer for nodding on this occasion, exceptional as it has been.

One of the strongest elements of Buffett's investment strategy over the years has been his fondness for big, reliable brand names, such as Coca-Cola, American Express, and more recently Tesco. They have their ups and downs of course, but over the long term, they always turn up trumps.

The same can be said of Warren. He may not get it right moment to moment, but he has an uncanny habit of summing up the zeitgeist accurately. Sample: "Only when the tide goes out do we discover who's been swimming naked" – an apt metaphor for most of the financial community currently. But it's more than a way with words. In the long run, he's invariably proved correct. His prognosis: no quick recovery but "America's best days lie ahead". 

Let's hope so, for the rest of our sakes.

The end of history for IPG

Interpublic's Q4 figures just out. Profits down 4.?% yawn, yawn, yawn. Here's an extract, if you'd like something with fewer harmful side-effects than Mogadon:

"The latter part of the fourth quarter and early part of 2009 have begun to show the negative effect that the broader economic situation is having on the marketing services sector," said Michael Roth, chairman and chief executive of Interpublic. 

But wait, what's this? "Our long-standing conservative approach to financial and balance sheet management has us well positioned for these volatile times." Would that be the self-same "conservative approach", Michael, that your company was forced to adopt after an accountancy scandal which gave a new meaning to "double entry" book-keeping? Which resulted in several senior people in the McCann Erickson network being fired? Oh, and which precipitated a six-year long investigation by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, poleaxing IPG's share-price all the while? And, and, and...culminated in a $12m fine last year?

As it happens, I think Roth has got quite a few corporate talents, in his dull, lawerly way. And keeping the basket-case that was IPG from ruin, or the depredations of Vincent Bolloré and Sir Martin Sorrell, have shown them to good effect over the decade. One quality I hadn't attributed to him, though, was irony. How unamerican of him.

A blues paper not a newspaper

Fresh cracks in the House of Usher... I mean Rothermere. First there was the fire sale of The Evening Standard for £1 to a former KGB agent, an act of impiety that would have made the late earl turn in his grave.

Now news of something much worse. The government has decided to put down that mangy old bulldog, Paul Dacre. It's official, according to Cabinet Office minister Liam Byrne – who told the Commons public administration committee this week that the days of the Daily Mail setting government agenda are definitely over.

So what does set the governmental pulse racing these days, Liam? Well not the tabloid newspapers any more, which sell 22m fewer copies than in 1997. And not the TV news channels, whose viewers "have collapsed" (does he mean they're now so old they need zimmer frames, I wonder?).

No, these days it's all about Facebook, YouTube and freesheets. But he did draw the line at cultivating Twitter. Apparently, ministers are far too busy saving the world/fending off inquiries into their illegitimate expenses to be tweeting.

For someone who's got a Harvard MBA, Liam is acting incredibly dumb. He doesn't seem to have noticed that none of his preferred media vehicles is capable of making money. Give the Noughties Depression another 12 months and the government may well have to rethink its 'new' media strategy rather quickly.