• About

The Malcolm Auld Blog

~ Marketing Musings and More…

The Malcolm Auld Blog

Tag Archives: pitching

Why marketers should be wary of taxi drivers and toilets…

23 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by Malcolm Auld in Advertising, Marketing, Meetings

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

advertisng, David Ogilvy, marketing, Ogilvy, pitching

Republished with the link to the original David Ogilvy tape.

This story starts close to home in Australia. There are two brothers who work for a television network in Sydney. They are known in the industry as the “Boring Brothers” because quite simply, they are the dullest males on TV. They make airport runway tarmac positively fascinating.

This week they are in the media spotlight because of an animated conversation between themselves. It was recorded or noted, by the Uber driver who was driving one of them home. Apparently, in their conversation, they dumped quite a bit of doo-doo on their colleagues and management, while bigging themselves up as something way above their pay grade.

No sir, I’m not recording your conversation…

As a result, their competitors in the media are having a field day.

It reminded me of the lengths advertising agencies used to go to during pitches for new business. Sometimes it involved fake taxi drivers, while other times it was hidden spies in the loo.

If the pitch was at the agency, more often than not the prospective client would get a taxi to the presentation. Agencies would even fabricate lies that their car park was under repair, so clients couldn’t drive to the meeting.

Once the pitch was over, the agency would offer to call a taxi. Said taxi would either be driven by an agency person, or the taxi driver would be tasked with recording the conversation on the way from the agency back to the client’s office. The driver would be given a financial reward for their co-operation.

So, how was your meeting?

Nothing was too sacred when it came to getting inside information.

Now, unless you’re an old-time Ogilvy staffer, you wouldn’t know that David Ogilvy turned down Chester Carlson’s sales manager when he came to Ogilvy & Mather asking if the agency would advertise the company’s new invention. FYI Chester invented xerography and was the founder of the Xerox company. David arrogantly turned Hector away, because he hadn’t heard of his company or product, something he always regretted.

For a number of years the agency I ran, Ogilvy & Mather Direct, held the Xerox account in Australia. Then Xerox decided to invest in a branding campaign, so Ogilvy & Mather (the ad agency) wanted in on the pitch. Given David’s history with Xerox, the agency thought it would be a good idea to get him to record a video message of regret, encouraging Xerox to appoint O&M to the business.

This video will impress those Xeroids…

David obliged and the tape arrived by courier from his office in Paris – things were different in those days. You can view the 2-minute tape here. It was used to open the presentation and it put the agency team in a very positive mood. It was a coup to be sure, to have the great man David Ogilvy attending the meeting virtually, and apologising for his errant ways from decades earlier.

During a scheduled break in the pitch, the agency did what all agencies did, placed spies in cubicles in the toilets, to listen for any juicy insights. Two Xeroids entered the male toilet and stood at the urinal. The agency spy was poised on the loo to capture useful tidbits.

I will record every word they say…

One Xeroid asked the other, “what do you think of the presentation so far?” The other replied, “pretty good, but who was the old guy in the video tape?”

The spy couldn’t flush fast enough and get to the agency MD before the restart, to advise the horrifying news – the agency coup de grace had flopped. Everyone at O&M knew who David Ogilvy was, as it was a career-limiting move not to know. But the agency team had mistakenly assumed everyone at Xerox would know too. Of course a sales manager from Xerox wouldn’t have a clue.

I shared this story with D.O. at a meeting with him in NY a year later. He just smiled and said, “well we can’t all be worldly fellows can we.”

The agency did get the business. My final role in the pitch had something to do with wearing a turkey suit, but that’s another story.

Gotta get to a meeting. Should I call a cab?

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Tumblr

Like this:

Like Loading...

Recent Posts

  • WOW a 5-hour marketing seminar on a subject that doesn’t exist…
  • Good grief, now LinkedIn staff are sending unsolicited social selling spam…
  • Another example of social selling failure with marketing automation on LinkedIn…
  • Has COVID killed the culture cult…
  • Social selling has become the new spam…

Archives

  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • December 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • December 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • November 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012

Categories

  • Advertising
  • B2B Marketing
  • BIG DATA
  • Branding
  • Content Marketing
  • Copywriting
  • Culture
  • Customer Service
  • Digital
  • Digital marketing
  • Direct Marketing
  • Email marketing
  • Group Buying
  • Marketing
  • Marketing Automation
  • Media
  • Meetings
  • Mobile marketing
  • PPC
  • QR Codes
  • Remarketing
  • retail
  • Sales
  • Sales Promotion
  • SEM & SEO
  • small data
  • Social Media
  • social selling
  • Telemarketing
  • Thought Leadership
  • Uncategorized
  • Viral marketing

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • The Malcolm Auld Blog
    • Join 1,477 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Malcolm Auld Blog
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...
 

    %d bloggers like this: