An Act of Cod.

Toward my waning days at Ogilvy (and when you work for a holding company, your days are always waning) I was asked to help out on a pitch for a passel of Johnson & Johnson products. 

After centuries as J&J, J&J changed its name to Kenvue. I think they believed this would help indemnify some portions of the company from billions of  lawsuits against it talc-based business. DuPont did something similar not too long ago. Spinning off its chemical division, calling it Chemours, and hoping to shield itself from litigation around the deadly forever chemicals they made a fortune producing.

In any event, the pitch was awful. We pitched Listerine, Zyrtec and a few other brands I can't remember. 

When the work was still good, a suit from WPP came in. He "knew" the client, killed all the work and boring-ized it so we would win. We lost. Two will get you seven he's still employed and playing golf.

There were no ads at all in the pitch, or few. There was certainly no broadcast. There was also no reason to believe--from either an agency or a product point of view.

Mostly people ran around doing social strategy which, we were assured, would carry the day.

Right after Ogilvy did NOT win the business, Covid descended on all of us. My wife and I relocated (supposedly temporarily) to the Gingham Coast. 

When you buy a second home, one of the first things you do is buy again everything you haven't thought about buying for years. 

You buy aspirin, tylenol, qtips, listerine, cleaning supplies, etc etc. Basically, what happens is you go to one of the two drugstores left in amerikkka, Walgreens or CVS, and you buy everything you've always had that you don't have in your new house.

I realized something at that moment.

I hadn't seen a commercial or a print ad or anything for a FMCG (fast-moving consumer good) since I was home sick from eleventh grade and looking forward to Jane Russell in Playtex Cross-Your-Heart bra commercials.

What I realized was that for about half-a-century, I had seen no commercials with a bona-fide "reason-why." No drops of retsin. No platformate. No kills germs on contact. No lifts-and-separates.

So, when you're buying and you see the Listerine for $9.29 and CVS brand for $3.89, when you haven't been told why Listerine is "worth more," you wind up buying the store brand. There's no reason not to. Or, if there is a reason, no one's told you the reason in a memorable way. What you're left with is no reason to buy something more expensive.

Years ago, I read a great book by Tom Nichols called "The Death of Expertise." Nichols never mentioned it, but brands lost their expertise, too. As did ad agencies.

Over the past 30 years or so, since the digital emerged and TV declined, billions in brand value that brands like Listerine accrued over decades--or even centuries, disappeared in a sea of 2"x2" ads in your social feeds. Ads that said nothing and established no reason why expensive brands are more expensive. Social-first strategy was supposed to save brands billions. Of course no one added up the cost in brand-equity-deterioration. 

Over the past 30 years ago as the industry stopped doing "product advertising," and instead worked to make brands part of culture (whatever that means) billions in brand value that brands like Listerine accrued over decades--or even centuries, disappeared. 

BTW, I never really knew what making a brand a part of culture meant until the Graham Platner debacle when he was a misogynistic, nazi-tattoo'd, platitude-spouting, senatorial candidate in Maine. His viability of the candidate wasn't about him, the product, it was about how he represented Maine's ethos and culture. This is what happens when you sell everything but what's intrinsic to the actual product.

From my vantage, agencies go with the flow. There's not one that says, "sure you'll save via cheap in the short-run. But what about a month from now?"

I just saw the below from the Wall Street Journal on Sunday morning. The article is about "big food." But, I believe, the dynamic probably applies to just about every category, including agencies themselves, who no longer sell anything that isn't generic, or parity, or meh. 

According to the line graph below, private-label share of groceries has grown more than ten-percent in just four years. While Campbells and General Mills have seen the PE ratios plummet. These are signs that would scare the crap out of me if I worked for one of those companies, or the holding companies that kowtow to them.

This is a fairly easy concept.

If you don't tell people why you're worth more, people won't pay more. This is as true with real estate, friends, finding a good lobster roll, and mouthwash. 

As Yogi is reputed to have said, "If people don’t want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?"

Or even before that, some of us learned this ditty. Some of us still remember it. Some of us still take it to heart.

Everyone but clients and agencies.