Hey hey we're the monkeys

Ron Johnson, Sergio Zyman and Margaret Thatcher

All three of these notable people impacted my career in advertising. I take no pleasure in the public stoning of Ron Johnson. Had Steve Jobs failed in his autocratic vision then madame guillotine’s glee would not have been so raucous,but because Steve begat Ron, Ron’s fall incited the pent up jealousy and dislike we secretly harbored for Job’s success. Ha! So there! That blueprint forworld domination is flawed, Stevie baby! Your boy Ron couldn’t make it work. What I found interesting is that for a while Ron’s plans had all other mass retailers shitting themselves.  If he could have taken consumers off the promotion treadmill it would have been the equivalent of the Russian revolution and America is not ready for a Russian revolution. Back in my pimply youth I worked as a sales assistant in a British store chain and a few years later at an agency that handled their advertising. I remember asking a buyer what `recommended retail price’ was and he couldn’t tell me. For him and for everyone the year in retailing was as traditional as the Catholic Church calendar. Seasons, specials, door-busters and sales always sales Year end sales mid-year sales. Red tag sales. Mother’s day sales. January sales. And more Sales. My favorite was a three-legged bed sale. A fiction was created that the manufacturer had messed up and all beds had only three legs. Upon purchase a complimentary fourth leg was given to the overjoyed customer. I thought retailing was is and forever will be like that. Then I discovered the Apple store. The combination of amazing display and the college-like lecture theater was just beautiful and it was full not just of customers but of tribe members. We were the Apple people. The associates didn’t have to sell. We bought. And I understood in one blinding flash the reality of push versus pull marketing. And that was Ron. It just wasn’t JC Penney. When I joined Saatchi they were working for the pre-Ron Penney and doing really nice work. But the management didn’t really get it.I can only imagine how Ron blew their wigs off. And like Ron, Sergio is another one to whom history will give the big razzie award . He was the driving force behind the New Coke disaster and created a text book case study in how not to market a new product that has gone into the annals of bad thinking. When I first came to New York to work on Coke the memory of this debacle was still fresh in the minds of the creatives who had worked in the bunker on this project. From what they told me no one group or agency was given a complete story on what was up. Each worked on a fragment of the idea with the plan being that Sergio would knit it all together into a victory flag that would wave from his chariot as he entered the gates of the citadel of success. Well, shit plan shit results. Years later I was in a meeting in Atlanta trying to present ideas for Diet Coke to him. It was an unusual meeting in that we were seated at a long table and two other meetings with him were happening simultaneously. It was like watching a chess prodigy play three games at the same time. He broke off one discussion to proudly show us a new can design featuring a silhouette of the iconic coke bottle. Like the Rock God he so believes himself to be he said to us worthless beings `This work you’re showing me I could get it approved it right this instant. To get this bottle icon onto a can has taken me months’

Yes F Scott Fitzgerald, the rich are different from us.

And then there’s Margaret or `Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher’ as they chanted in my youth when this rising star in the conservative party advocated banning free milk at infant and junior schools. Without Maggie there’d be no Saatchi. So I’d never have had the chance to work at a place so good they named it twice. Maggie used agencies because she believed in advertising and power of free market forces. She would have loved the social media craziness over her death and the free market forces they unleash. I wonder who’s had the balls to sponsor any of the death parties that erupted throughout the UK. As one graffito read `Iron lady –rust in peace.’