Visionaries, digital leadership, creative gold standard - Sir Martin Sorrell reveals the UK's five key contributions to the global ad industry
As Advertising Week Europe gets off to a flying start WPP founder and CEO Sir Martin Sorrell has revealed the five things the UK has given to the global ad industry via a LinkedIn post.
The first thing the UK has gifted the global ad industry with is pioneers says Sorrell, citing “visionaries like David Ogilvy, the Brit who, alongside American giants like Bill Bernbach, helped to defined the 20th-century US advertising industry”.
Science is second on Sorrell’s list as “there is a great deal of art in advertising, but much of the credit for the science that underpins its effectiveness goes to two British executives: Stanley Pollitt of Boase Massimi Pollitt and Stephen King of J Walter Thompson”.
Sorrell writes that between them Pollitt and King “invented one of the UK ad industry’s most influential exports: the role of the account planner”.
“Account of brand planning involves rigorous analysis of a brand and its market. It brings the consumer into the strategic and creative process through the intelligent application of research, data and insight. Today it is the foundation of every creative brief,” he writes.
Digital leadership is the UK’s third contribution to the global ad industry as “technology entrepreneurs are not only grown in Silicon Valley”.
Work experience is listed at number four, with Sorrell reflecting on his relationship with World Cup-winning footballer Ronaldo.
“Ronaldo is, believe it or not, currently spending time in the UK, in part to learn more about the marketing services business. The Daily Mail said he was here to be our intern, but he’s not exactly making the tea,” he explains.
“The serious point is that of all the places in the world Ronaldo could have chosen to go to study our business (and believe me, he could have chosen anywhere), he chose London. And that applies to the industry in general – the UK continues to be one of the prime destinations for talented people as they develop a career in advertising.”
The fifth and final contribution is the “creative gold standard”, “we can argue convincingly that Britain had played a significant role in setting the bar for creativity in advertising”.
The iconic Hovis ‘Boy on Bike’ ad by Collett Dickenson Pearce forms part of Sorrell’s reasoning, “…filmed in 1973 by Ridley Scott, a few years before he directed the first Alien film. Scott was part of a generation of exceptional British creatives who shook up the industry on both sides of the Atlantic – Scott’s contemporaries were people like Alan Parker, David Puttnam and Hugh Hudson.
“They showed that ads could not only match the TV shows they appeared between, but even surpass them.
“And their legacy can be seen in the quality and ambition of much of today’s advertising, all around the world,” he concludes.
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