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I was creative director of McCann Manchester when I first
heard the term fmcg.
Fast moving consumer goods. It was a category separate from
financial services or pharma or retail or direct mail, all of which had their
own specialists. To me there didn’t seem anything
specialist about it. It was on a shelf at a store and my job was to get customers
to put in their carts and buy it. Simple. The implication from the person who first enlightened me, however, was that
fmcg was not what
award seeking creatives should do. Top of the list were cars with shoots in the
South of France and California. Then beer with shoots in the South of Spain and
California. And then there was fmcg with shoots in a warehouse on an industrial
estate usually somewhere grubby and freezing cold. It lacked the glamorous
perks that creatives lived for. Luckily
for me I had the great fortune of working with a managing director (as they
were called then) who saw no status with business. To him everything was a
golden opportunity to bring fame and fortune to the agency. His enthusiasm was
matched only by mine.
Fast-forward to New York and the acronym disappeared from my
vocabulary as I worked
on Coca-Cola then Gillette then L’Oreal
and then Johnson & Johnson. It only resurfaced
when a head hunter looking at my body of work said “Oh,so
you do fmc?”
A little bottle of soda, a little box of breakfast flakes, a
little box of hair color, a razor, a toothbrush, who knew these amazing brands
had so much in common. It was my job to help them sell fast and frequently. I
haven’t done car ads yet. But I think faster and more frequent
sales wouldn’t hurt them. And the same with
beer. Put it in a box and stick it on a
shelf and I’ll sell it.
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