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:
- The Martin Sorrell departure was assumed by some outsiders to be part of the #metoo movement. This seems to be a default setting for many now
- Headlines like the Globe & Mail that talked about Sorrell’s departure as the end of the Mad Man era. You have journalists and the sub-editors that they work with having no understanding of the industry that they cover. Martin Sorrell was a major factor in the end of the Mad Man era; moving advertising from being the closest thing in business to art, to something numeric in nature. One could argue that technology has moved the bar too far in terms of removing the craftsmanship all together, but that’s a discussion for another day about Google and Facebook rather than about WPP
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.