I don't suppose you remember William Kempe. He was very famous once. Between 11 February and 11 March 1600, he morris danced all the way from London to Norwich. For a short while he was known as the Nine Days' Wonder and after that he wasn't known at all.
You don't need me to explain to you why it's difficult to compile a definitive list of things and people who've been totally forgotten – but that shouldn't lure us into believing that only the things and the people we can remember are those who have ever existed. The list of those forgotten, were it ever possible to compile, would be many millions of times as extensive as the list of those remembered. If we could only remember some of the things and people we've forgotten, we'd be able to draw extremely valuable lessons from them: not least about advertising and marketing.
It's slightly easier with people, of course. Obituaries serve the extremely useful purpose of reminding us of those we'd completely forgotten; though rather too late to do much about it. But there are no obituaries for brands – so we're never reminded of those that have gone; and that's a pity.
The first media person I ever met introduced me to the hot media debate of the time: drip versus burst. It's probably still the hot media debate of the time. It was coloured then – and perhaps still is – by a preoccupation with advertising recall rather than brand recall. But the great unanswered question was this: was a client's advertising money better spent on great big, dominant splurges or was it better spent in a more or less constant trickle?
If we take William Kempe as an example, he seems to have dominated the news for no more than thirty days. His publicity campaign was extremely intensive but short-lived. He was a burst man. And he's now been forgotten (except by me) for 409 years. Anyone investing in William Kempe as a brand would have been deeply disappointed.
I can't, I'm afraid, for reasons I've already touched on, refer you to the top 100 brands that have now been completely forgotten. Just take it from me that they exist – or more accurately, did. I can, on the other hand, remind you of one common factor of the top 100 brands that are still alive – and that is a kind of fame.
I'm not talking about instant celebrity here. These brands have never been Susan Boyle. They lurk in an apparently but deceptively permanent place in our subconscious, ready to surface when occasion demands. A name, a pack, a logo, a need ('I'm hungry,') is all that's required to release a quite astonishingly rich and complex set of associations. These brands are not just famous: they're famous for being themselves. And, by definition, uniquely so. Each is famous for being itself and nobody else.
Despite claims to the contrary, brands don't need advertising to become brands. Universities, cities, newspapers and football clubs seldom advertise but all undeniably enjoy brand values. But most product brands and service brands depend on some form of publicity to fuel their brand personalities – and, crucially, to keep them topped up.
Left unattended, all fame fades. It may not fade as quickly as that of William Kempe and other forgotten nine-day wonders but the process is inexorable and inevitable. Two months ago, I could have named, unprompted, at least a dozen Members of Parliament who seemed to have been excessively creative in the interpretation of their entitlements. The Telegraph's campaign of revelations lasted for weeks; yet today, already, I can remember only a handful. Left to itself, like a suntan, all fame fades.
For work-a-day brands in repeat purchase markets, advertising's most important role is almost certainly the maintenance of brand fame. The nature of that fame, it hardly needs to be said, has to be designer-right for each brand and each brand's users. It has to be prevented from drifting into premature middle age and continually modified in response to the mood of the times and the behaviour of competitors. It's a classic Forth Bridge exercise in maintenance: not particularly glamorous, never fully completed but utterly essential for the preservation of the structure.
A great many of today's big and profitable brands owe their profitability, at least in part, to an unbroken programme of advertising that stretches back fifty years or more. The tone, the singular voice of that advertising has left a priceless legacy – even though the individual advertisements that served as its messengers will almost certainly have been long forgotten.
There's a value to good advertising that transcends ads. It's a perfect illustration of how the whole can be greater than the sum of the parts. Our fascination with ads sometimes blinds us to this truth.
The vast majority of creative awards honour individual advertisements. Personal standing in the advertising village is largely derived from an association with individual ads. Individual ads can be screened, shown, reproduced, quoted. Individual ads can catapult people and agencies and marketing directors into dizzy new heights of fame and fortune. Once upon a time, just about the only individual advertisement that might have hoped to achieve exposure way beyond its original, paid-for appearance would have been a Guinness poster on the wall of a JCR. Today, outstanding, blockbuster ads – ads that belong more to the burst school of thought than the drip – can attract a further online audience of millions.
But not all do and not all will. Some will be like William Kempe: morris dancing all the way to Norwich. Stunts have always played a part in publicity campaigns and rightly so. But very few stunts can return as much to a brand as a well-crafted ad. Don't be misled by the column inches. Too many are nine-day wonders, soon forgotten and contributing little or nothing to that reservoir of good will that makes good brand advertising, in good times and bad, worth a great deal more than the money it costs.
None of this is to belittle great ads. I'd just like to get a campaign going that belarges great advertising.