The people love Chairman Tony

It is as true today as it was when I was first involved with the North West marketing community, back in 1993. Back then, various media pundits would buttonhole the callow youth I then was and shake their heads wistfully at the passing of a golden age and the arrival of the ubiquitous Grey Men who populate each successive generation.

However I think I did meet some real icons during my years at Adline. Some of them are still with us and some of them no longer on any terrestrial schedule. I present a selection here in no particular order save alphabetical

Barbara Gardner

Like a number of other on this list. I’d heard a lot about Barbara before I ever met her. Back in 1993 she was Mrs Manchester Media, reflecting both her personality and the stranglehold that EMAP had on the North West radio scene (largely through its iconic “Piccadilly Radio” offering – now there was a brand that was just chucked away!).

In those not-so-long-ago days advertising on radio in Manchester meant using Piccadilly Radio, one of the pioneers of commercial radio. Its garish purple on white “Piccadilly 261” stickers dominated the bedroom windows of my classmates in the 70’s just as much as Barbara dominated Manchester’s media scene in the early 90’s.

She ran Piccadilly’s sales team and had a fierce reputation as a higher and firer and also as a bit of a party animal. She was also ubiquitous at the many media events that still thrived at the time (despite the industry still being very much recession-bound).

Her seat was always assured at the top table at junkets like the MPA Christmas Bash, where she would regally scrutinize the entertainment and raffle prizes that she, through EMAP’s largesse, had made possible. In those days the top raffle prize at the MPA’s Xmas bash was an estate car – a similar festive event at the Birmingham Publicity Association had to make do with a BRMB umbrella signed in waterproof ink by Breakfast Time presenter Les Ross in (hopefully) water-proof ink.

Barbara’s star was a little on the wane in the North West by the time I got involved as she quickly scurried off to Scot FM after some shake-up or other by EMAP’s London-based overlords.
 
It was years later when I actually sat down and had lunch with her. By then she’d returned to Manchester to work for Chrysalis as head of sales. The Barbara I met then, though, was not the dragon that media lore spoke of in hushed tones, but a rather self-effacing, restrained but quite charming woman who, I think, drank mineral water throughout the lunch and was back in the office early. Her tenure at Chrysalis didn’t last long, but then there was a lot of chopping and changing in radio circles at the time. After that, I sort of lost track of her.

Brian Child

Unlike Barbara who I never met that often, Brian was somebody I came to know reasonably well. He was chief executive of McCann-Erickson Manchester, when Bonis Hall brooked no challenges for the title of the largest advertising agency outside of London.

Brian had risen from the ranks and many were dismissive of his rightful claim to the golden keys to the no doubt immaculate CEO Bonis bog. He took the top slot when other higher profile luminaries, such as Roger Murray, slid out of the picture. There were a number of contenders for the role, but Brian confounded them all by taking the post and, it must be said, making a real success of it.

With Brian and Bonis “the land and the king were one”. Brian had an understanding of direct marketing and it was this discipline above all that put bums on seats in McCann’s posh Prestbury pad. It was true then (but less so now), that although it was McCann Manchester by title, it was, in reality, much more like McCann Direct for Europe. It thrived on picking up the unsexy, but lucrative, direct response work that its counterparts in less leafy but more chic locations turned their noses up at.

It was something that Brian was proud of, but it also rankled him that his contemporaries at other agencies (most notably Manchester’s other Big Two – JWT and BDH) dismissed Bonis as not really a proper advertising agency. Whilst BDH had all the sexy accounts and even the then-floundering JWT still had the likes of Greenalls, McCann had shedloads of DM for Coca-Cola and some sound but awards un-friendly work for the likes of Magnet.

Whilst Brian would point to the agency’s success in advertising awards such as the Roses and the Cream Awards, where it frequently did well, detractors would point out that its award-winning clients, such as Blundellsands Kindergarten and the Marie Stopes Clinic hardly typified the agency’s output.

Interpublic, McCann’s parent company is seldom kind to its chief executives. A purge across the whole of its regional network five years ago saw changes in Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester – with Brian among the casualties. Officially he retired, but many who knew him felt he had gone before his time – a victim of the relentless jostling for rank that bedevils Interpublic’s regional offerings.

Post-McCann, Brian, with his enviable reputation, is still very much in demand and working as a consultant for a number of marketing communications companies – most notably in the e-media field.

Perhaps less wisely, he fronted a loose association of companies that planned to hold a series of marketing exhibitions throughout the regions. Many correctly believed it was an ill-thought out scheme and ultimately doomed to failure, as indeed it was. Such is Brian’s reputation, though, that this association will have done him little damage.

My abiding memories of Brian? Well, my first visit to Bonis, I suppose and being proudly introduced to the agency’s butler by him…

There were also the stories of how Brian would seek to tactically undermine his great rivals at the WPP-owned JWT Manchester. If he got wind of a significant win by JWT Manchester (especially if it was for an account that Bonis had also pitched for), Brian would wait until the last minute on Wednesday and then leak it to Campaign. This last minute leak would ensure that it only got a meager mention in the “briefs” section of the magazine that week, rather than a much more fulsome piece the following week. The regularity with which this would happen infuriated the denizens of Astley House, JWT”s Quay St base.

But, I think the chief memory would have to be taking a stroll around the ample grounds of Bonis during construction of a new block for the creative department. Brian stroked his chin and said thoughtfully: “Of course, Tony, my main worry now is where to put the new pool…”. “Brian, so many agency heads are worried about exactly the same thing right now…” I replied.

David Harrison

David Harrison, the eponymous Harrison of Harrison Cowley, has perhaps the weakest Mancunian credentials of the ten on this list, although his influence across all the regions did inevitably impinge upon the North West.

In advertising terms, Harrison Cowley was never the player in the North West that it was in the Midlands, the South West or Scotland, although it had an advertising office in Manchester until the mid-nineties.

I first met David Harrison in the boardroom of an agency in Birmingham. He was sat in a black leather chair with his pet securely on his lap. He swiveled round with more than a hint of Blofeld and an overdose of old English gentlemanly charm, but despite his advancing years at that point, there was still an element of cool evaluation and perhaps residual traces of the menace his reputation suggested.

It was 93 when I met him and he had long sold his empire to the Saatchis, being instrumental into their abortive foray into both Manchester and public relations. In his days of the regional network he founded with the all but eclipsed Ken Cowley, Harrison was legendary for his surprise visits – turning up unpredictably to spoil the day of his many subordinates.

For a man whose network ultimately became first PR dominated and then exclusively public relations, he was surprisingly dismissive of it as a discipline : “In the old days,” he once said, “we used to get the advertising business and then chuck in the PR for free just to clinch the deal.” David Heal (formerly head of the PR operation in Manchester, but latterly the group chief executive following a management buy-out from the Saatchi) was standing by him at the time and notably blanched at his words. “Don’t put that bit in”, Heal told me sotto voce after the interview finished.

A product of a military background, Harrison’s line in straight talking was never going to be PR-friendly. Musing on his legacy and talking of two of his protégés (Richard Davies who now runs RDP in Birmingham and Nick Bacon who now runs the mighty BCLO in Bristol), Harrison said: “Of the two, Bacon was by far the nicer man, but Richard’s redeeming feature was that, deep down, even he knew he was a bit of a shit.”

I last met David in the gallery in he now runs in Bath, where I interviewed him and Heal for a “then and now” piece about the group. Despite his advancing years, Harrison had lost none of his commercial nous and promptly tried to twist Heal’s arm into buying a painting from his gallery for the Hall Harrison Cowley boardroom. Heal uncomfortably demurred, but looked suitably sheepish for letting his old headmaster down.

Geoff Speller

Geoff was in his twilight time as chief executive of JWT Manchester when I got to meet him. His successor, Andrew Stothert, was waiting in the wings and Geoff, like Brian Child a number of years later, had the air of a man going before his time.

Speller’s reputation as an operator is probably still second to none in the region. During his tenure at JWT, the heads of rival agencies feared and resented him to a level that I never saw anyone else achieve.  His former lieutenants, such as Michael Barrington who went on to found BJL, had little love for him.

In the aftermath of his departure, his reputation hung like a long shadow over the North West marketing community. Invoking his name would trigger a reaction akin to that of troubled villagers in remote Transylvanian Villages when you refer to the “Count”, with grown men crossing themselves at the merest mention.

Post-JWT, Geoff launched his own consultancy, working from home for a number of clients and also carrying out evaluation and trouble-shooting work for his old WPP bosses at some of their overseas agencies.

I suspect this cozy post-retirement relationship came to an end when he crossed the benches and joined the then-McCann subsidiary, SBW, as chairman, working with the one former lieutenant who never turned against him, Simon Howitt, who was then its chief exec. The relationship didn’t last the acquisition of SBW by Redman Jones and I suspect that Geoff may have burnt his bridges with an almost certainly disapproving WPP.

Geoff’s departure ushered in a difficult period for JWT Manchester. He had for so long embodied and characterized the agency (and alienated a number of likely successors) that the end, when it came, was far from prepared. Andrew Stothert, son of Dick Stothert (a man with strong A G Barr connections) was ushered in and the dark ages for JWT began.

Much as I liked Andrew, he exuded un-Manchesterness. Possibly the low point of his tenure was an AAR reel featuring Andrew at Manchester Airport espousing the values of the North West in an accent and manner that was more redolent of a Surrey golf course than anything North of Watford.

Andrew was also beset with warring staff problems – with deputy chairman Jim Smith quickly defecting (with clients) to do his own thing and the headstrong, but admittedly effective Grant Mercer (the only person to ever give himself “10 out of 10” in a post-failed pitch internal JWT post-mortem) had his sights set on Andrew’s job from the off.

JWT was in the wilderness for a long while post-Speller, with only its acquisition of Cheetham Bell and unprecedented (and slightly humiliating) use of the “Cheetham Bell” identity as a prefix restoring it to the fray.

I have two regrets about Geoff. Firstly, that I never got to see him in his heyday. He sounded like a journalist’s delight – all Machiavellian schemes and powerplays. Secondly, I regretted that he resisted my many solicitations to join Adline as a regular columnist. Love him or hate him – the Geoff Speller column would have been required reading.

And finally Ian Smith

Ian Smith - “Smithy” - represented the end of the line for a certain kind of media man. Before the days of MOSAIC et al, media buying was much more of a gut feel operation – media sales guys sold themselves and their hospitality far more effectively than they sold their products. And Smithy was perhaps the most buyable of them all.

If you look up “larger than life” in any reputable dictionary, there will probably be a picture of Smithy. And a map showing the way to his house.

As the longstanding head of sales for the Mail on Sunday in Manchester, he represented a media way of life that, by the mid-nineties, was becoming so unfashionable as to face compulsory extinction by its Evian-sipping London paymasters.

I first met Ian when he was the chairman of the First Friday Club, Manchester’s premier antediluvian media lunching society. At the time the FFC was home to some of the city’s movers and shakers, as well as to some remnants of the sixties who could barely move, but more than made up for this in the shaking department.

Those that characterize the FFC as an irrelevant refuge for the inebriate and incontinent and fail to appreciate its true status as a sort of Jurassic Park, allowing interested observers a last chance to see a herd of Mcgheeanasaurususes or a Coloneltomadactyl in their natural environs (anywhere with a bar and nibbles).

They also fail to see the camaraderie and wit that the FFC demonstrates at its best and this is something that Smiffy embodied in spades. The panache that he ran the club with, coupled with his sheer enthusiasm for Manchester as a whole and its media world in particular (as well as his prodigious appetite for red wine) made him an ideal icon of The Way Business Was Done in The Good old Days. Give it a few years and they’ll have to bring a CGI-version Smiffy back as an antidote to the charisma by-pass that is now de rigueur for the aspirant media salesperson.

Tragically, Smiffy was struck down in his prime and left this green and pleasant land for a villa on the Costa Plonk, returning only for the odd United home game when the taxman was looking the other way.

I like to see Smiffy as an Arthurian figure, waiting across the water for a time when his city needs him again – a time when media haunts have long had tumbleweed blowing through them by 2pm and no space has been booked without a three hour Powerpoint presentation for more than a decade.

 Chairman Tony will present his final five icons shortly part two of this article. 

If any reader would like to contact Tony, he can be found at:

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