Named in honour of Bill Bernbach’s famed jacket pocket card, we invite our challengers into the octagon of debate for a verbal slugfest, whilst being mindful and welcoming to the opinions of others.

 

This week’s motion is ‘Client-side or agency-side; a proper marketer could do both?’

 

And our challengers are:

 

Lee Grunnell. The top marketing director whose tweet sparked all this off, Lee is obsessed with applying the latest thinking from marketing leaders like Binet, Field, and Sharp to professional services.

Gillian Rightford. Creativity champion and industry agony aunt, Gillian is Founder of Adtherapy, a management, skills development, and communication consultancy.

 

Tom Lewis. A Commercial Performance Improvement advisor to businesses, Tom, is ex-adland and now cuts his teeth in law and Private Equity.

 

It’s a judge's decision and YOU are the judge. Vote for the winner (or a split decision).

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Here’s the Twitter spat that kicked it all off

And the piece Lee wrote up to summarise it all; I’ll be Your Mirror (or What you Should Know if you’re Thinking About Joining an Agency) 

Check out Gillian’s new offering to grow marketing & advertising talent, together; The School of Thought 

Tom wants to share a couple of summaries of Michael Farmer’s book: 

Agencies don't know what they are selling and don't know how to price it

Madison Avenue Manslaughter

And here’s the WFA talent research Gillian mentions 

(01:56) - Reminder of today’s motion 

(02:18) - Opening statements 

(06:10) - Royal Rumble 

(06:42) - Agencies stifled by their own operating model 

(08:10) - Fun things in ad land squeezed out by lack of commerciality 

(12:06) - Lack of commercial skills underpins everything 

(14:18) - Clients turning off the creative tap 

(15:18) - The system is dysfunctional

(21:15) - Making the briefs better

(23:58) - Specialists vs generalists 

(28:00) - Closing statements

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