Ged Carroll

Martin Sorrell & other things this week

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Martin Sorrell

The Martin Sorrell departure from WPP was like an earthquake in the marketing and advertising industry. Sorrell started at Saatchi & Saatchi before building WPP as a marketing services conglomerate with global reach. I decided not to write a post on his retirement because there were more questions than answers. A couple of things saddened me:

More information on the Martin Sorrell departure from WPP
Why WPP’s Cryptic Handling of Martin Sorrell’s Resignation Is the Wrong Move | AdWeek
WPP Claims It First Learned of Martin Sorrell’s Resignation From His Own Internal Memo on Saturday Night | AdWeek
With Martin Sorrell’s resignation at WPP, the Mad Men era truly seems over | Globe & Mail – (paywall)

Wetherspoons leaves social

Wetherspoons walking away from social media. Again the whys and wherefores of this seems to have as many questions as it does answers. As an outsider, their digital strategy and execution on social channels was patchy at best. It wasn’t something that Tim Martin was that committed to anyway. It probably won’t make that much difference to their business. More related content here.

Whilst as a marketer I can point to high street brands to who do social really well (Paddy Power, Poundland or Tesco Mobile a number of years ago); there are a lot of mediocre brand accounts.  I can see the argument for going all-in, or not at all.

Music

Tim Westwood recording of De La Soul freestyle throwback – never heard before! – YouTube – this was apparently done for the Westwood Rap Show sometime in the early 1990s.

This Sould Out tune seems to bridge the gap between disco and the late 1980s / early 1990s Italian house sound popular in the North of England.

Shinsegae Food

Lastly, here’s one of them ads that never got approved by the client. Shinsegae Food is the food manufacturing arm of Samsung in Korea. Samsung is completely vertically integrated with these food products often sold in Samsung owned restaurants and Shinsegae department stores which can be paid for with a Samsung credit card. Mamee is a Malaysian manufacturer of instant noodles. The video is a satirical take on a usual Korean drama trope.