There a story–really a fable–that if you work in advertising long enough, you’re bound to hear:
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Once there was an island off the coast of Africa. The tourism board of the island hired an ad agency to put together an advertising campaign to help boost tourism. The Ad agency studied their situation very carefully, and after reviewing things, realized the reason there wasn’t more tourism to the island was that it was very difficult to get there. Discovering this, they told the client, “You don’t need to spend money on an ad campaign, you need to build a bridge.”
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The story is held as an example of agency excellence. A good agency doesn’t make ads, they solve business problems. What’s more, they have the wisdom to recognize when advertising isn’t the solution, when what a client really needs to do is build a bridge. They see a problem, and they find the solution. They don’t just do what the client wants—they do what the client needs.
Aside from the fact that I doubt anything like this has ever happened ever (and never, in nearly a decade working at ad agencies, did I hear an agency not recommend advertising as the solution to a problem), it’s clear why the story is so popular within the agency world. For one thing, it confirms everything people in advertising already believe about ad themselves. Namely, that they are smart and clever and able to see or discover simple truths the rest of the world cannot see (see episode one of Madmen for instance, when the clever Madman stumbles upon the “It’s Toasted” cigarette tagline, and it was all so obvious but so simple and clever, wasn’t it?). Further, it confirms what ad folks believe about their clients. Namely, that they are so incredibly stupid, so incredibly obtuse, they actually need to be told that to get people to come to an island you have to build a bridge to get them there.
And that might be why I’ve always hated the story. How arrogant must this ad agency have been to just assume the folks in the tourism department at this mythical island, who probably had been thinking about how to boost tourism for like, 50 years (so 25 years longer than the likely age of the clever Ad exec who solved their problem), had never thought of building a bridge. Maybe they can’t build a bridge because the water is too deep, or there is endangered corral. Maybe that’s why they need an ad campaign in the first place. And so they hire this real slick creative ad shop where the kids ride around on scooters and wear tennis shoes, and this dip-shit in his brand new DKNY jeans comes over and instead of coming up with an ad campaign—the job he was hired to do!—he tells them they need to build a bridge. How helpful, jackass! Here’s a shovel and some concrete. Why don’t you get to it?
I think it’s ironic, but not surprising, that while advertising is a service-based business (ad agencies serve their clients), the story held up as the pinnacle of agency virtue features an agency flat-out not doing what the client asked. I would love to see this model of excellent customer service applied elsewhere. Oh, I know you said you wanted a hamburger, but the cook is clever enough to determine that what you really want is to be full, so here is a pound of sand. Enjoy.
An besides, who would want to go to an island if it was connected to the mainland by a bridge? We go to islands to get away from the mainland. If you could take a bridge from Van Nuys to Maui, I think it would lose some of it’s appeal. Don’t you?
Tags: Madvertising