Best of the Week: Drinking water without the drama; The WPP cuts

[View web version]( BEST OF THE WEEK And another thing... Welcome to Best of the Week, kicked off on Thursday on board QF461 to Melbourne for my last work trip of the year, and wrapped up on Friday’s QF488 back to Sydney again. Mind you, by the time you read this, I’ll be on the Hume Highway heading straight back towards Victoria once more, for an appointment with the Spirit of Tasmania. I’m taking an early mark this year, to be followed by nearly five weeks in Tassie where my only connection to the media - if I have the will power - will be the occasional stolen glance at the front page of The Advocate in the local general store. The cat-sitters are organised, the car boot contains a couple of dozen books and some great wine, and the newspaper home delivery is suspended. (Well, the News Corp deliveries are suspended. The AFR has marked its first days in Nine ownership with a broken subscriber website. Some things don’t change.) Last drinks Not that the pace of news let up as we endured (and I think that is the correct, if overly-entitled, word) Christmas party season. Our deputy editor [Josie Tutty wrote an opinion piece]( about the industry’s relationship with alcohol this week which resonated. Ours is an industry which makes it rather too difficult to choose not to drink. Almost every big agency has a bar. And many media agencies see the perks of being taken out by media owners as a justification for lower entry level salaries. And if you enjoy that, then those perks are outstanding. Most 22-year-olds in share houses don’t also get to visit hatted restaurants and drink on someone else’s tab. But until you’ve fancied a night (or indeed afternoon) off the grog, you won’t always notice just how hard it can be. Think about arriving at a typical industry function. After the photo wall (or possibly before), you’ll see a row of waiters holding trays of wine and beer. You won’t always see soft drinks or water. I have a theory about the reason for that, gleaned from the economics behind our own experiences organising events. Generally those hosting such bashes have a choice on how they cater for their guests. Sometimes the venue will charge for a package based on the number of guests, multiplied by the number of hours the event runs for. In that case, the venue is incentivised to keep the drinks coming at a slow pace, and to make lots of water and soft drinks available. That’s good for the bottom line. Can’t get your drink topped up? Your host is probably on the hourly package. But the other method of charging is “on consumption”. Your host only pays for what you drink. So the venue would like you to consume as much as possible. That’s when it can suddenly become rather too hard to get a simple glass of water. We used to host a speaker reception a couple of days before our Mumbrella360 conference in Sydney. It was a pretty high-end affair, at an iconic venue near Circular Quay. One year I asked for a glass of water. The waiter gestured disdainfully towards the bar, where I ended up pouring one from the jug for myself. It was a little insight into how difficult it was for our non-drinking guests. You can see how it’s easier to just grab a glass of wine, which will probably become a couple. And sometimes it’s only when you stray from the pack, that you really notice the experience. As Josie wrote in her piece, it’s not that easy to simply make your choice and get on with it. It will often become a topic of debate too. As she put it: Drinking orange juice (the one universally accepted non alcoholic drink provided at these things) leads to suspicious looks, and comments ranging from ‘don’t be boring’ to the classic ‘go on, one won’t hurt.’ It’s only since I strayed from the carnivorous pack and (mostly) became a vegetarian that I noticed just how much one is diverted into talking about it at formal awards events and similar. You can’t just quietly eat the cauliflower. (And it’s always fucking cauliflower or broccoli.) I realise that the person you find yourself sitting next to is simply looking for a conversational opening, and it’s an ice breaker. But on the other, it gets repetitive. I suspect that explaining a gluten intolerance every time you sit down at an industry event, must be no fun at all. On days when I don’t fancy a drink over lunch, my first instinct is still to be apologetic for being the one to bring down the mood. But I’ve got over that now, and learned that the way to avoid the debate is to avoid the apologetic, long-winded ritual. I-do-like-a-drink, but-I-was-out-last-night, and-I’ve-got-a-lot-to-do-this-afternoon, you-must-if-you-want-though-I-won-t-judge, please-don’t-let-me-stop-you. What, just have a glass if you order a bottle? Oh, go on then… Sometimes a simple lie does the job better. “I can’t, I’m driving.” Nobody wants to be the dick who encourages you to drink drive. Or even more directly, “I won’t today thanks.” And change the conversation. The danger of course, in writing a piece about how hard it is to have free booze every day, is that it can look like a first world problem. Or overly puritanical. I love wine, and some of the best wine I’ve drunk has been at industry dinners. If it wasn’t for work I’d never have drunk 75 year old brandy. (It was nice.) But there is a bit more to the issue than that. If that’s the default lifestyle of those in the industry, it contributes to the homogeneity of those working within it, and also to the problematic behaviour within it. And it’s particularly an issue for bosses who aspire to be leaders. As reader Line put it in the comment thread after Josie’s piece: I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. No drinking at work things. These people are your staff, not your mates. Stop making them drink with you. Hold the meeting (or better yet just email everyone) during work hours rather than forcing people to drink with you rather than going home to people they actually want to see. Bonus! This will also decrease the amount of sexual harassment at work… There’s a lot to unwrap there. Work shouldn’t be your main social life. We talked about it a bit more in [this week’s Mumbrellacast](. Our State of the Industry research flagged that health and wellbeing is one of the factors most on people’s minds. And there’s a point where the downside of the drinking culture can affect long term wellbeing. And it definitely plays a part in creating the sort of industry which is less friendly to those trying to achieve the work-life balance that having a family should involve. You may recall that I wrote last week’s “Best of the Week” with a hangover after Mumbrella’s tenth birthday party. I can’t say for sure that it was a weaker piece as a result, but I know it wasn’t the best piece I’ve written. And of course, alcohol isn’t the only vice within the industry. A marketer told me about turning up at his agency’s Christmas party, being greeted with a kiss on the lips from his account manager, who passed a pill into his mouth on her tongue. I’ve sat in daytime meetings with overly-aggressive, wide eyed, twitchy execs who are so clearly coked up that whatever point they were trying to make was lost. “Bloody hell, did you see his eyes?” is not necessarily the conversation you want trade journos to be having about you once you’ve left our office. And I’ve heard enough stories about the substance habits of people who I really respect as execs, to be a bit disappointed. Coke use doesn’t tend to create behaviour which engenders respect from one’s peers. As “The Ghost of Walsh Bay” puts it in the comment thread: Let’s not even start on the cocaine usage and general drug culture in this industry. Just visit any agency’s Christmas party or industry event to witness that disaster in motion. [The entire thread following Josie’s piece is a terrific](, thought-provoking conversation (along with a rather intriguing diversion into the pros and cons of Winston Churchill) about the industry and substance abuse. After reading it, the only reasonable conclusion to make it that our industry has an issue that it is not tackling. Meanwhile in adland This week saw [a significant announcement from WPP’s global HQ in London](. There actually wasn’t as much detail as one might have hoped for. Most significantly, it did not fully spell out the impact on jobs of the coming process of mergers and redundancies. Still, there was enough of a promise of cuts that the share price went up. But it did signal that WPP is the latest holding company to accept that its peak profitability is behind it. I chatted to one agency exec this week who suggested that the industry, and media agencies in particular, have been going through the five stages of grief over their previous business model. Most are somewhere on the path from denial, to anger, to bargaining, to depression, to acceptance. WPP - driven forward for so long by [the dynamic personality of its former CEO Sir Martin Sorrell who offered his own critical take this week]( - has taken longer than most to get there. Globally, WPP is doing so. Locally, it’s missing a leader, with CEO Mike Connaghan yet to be replaced. Still, at least they unveiled a new logo. As AdNews journalist Lindsay Bennett put it rather well on Twitter this week: WPP AUNZ: We have no CEO, hundreds of agencies that need consolidating and our share price continues to tank. Also WPP AUNZ: You know what we need, a new logo Among the books I’m taking with me on this trip is Ken Auletta’s Frenemies, which covers the disruption of the ad business. The title implies that Google and Facebook will be getting the blame. The ACCC issued its preliminary report in to its Digital Platforms Inquiry on Monday. [Our news editor Paul Wallbank explored it in a piece which is well worth a read](. As Paul puts it, the result could be far more regulation of the local ad industry by the ACCC, but more likely it will vanish without trace. On the road And it’s nearly time for me to vanish too. First, one last bit of housekeeping. We’re currently trying our first ever flash sale - [an annual pass (which is transferable to a colleague) to each of our ten marketing summits next year](. It’s just $1999 until next Friday, which is a saving of $4,500 on our usual prices. That’s a pretty good price, and we won’t be repeating it in 2019. Get involved... Our media writer Zoe Samios - zoe@mumbrella.com.au will be on the newsdesk over the weekend And our editor Vivienne Kelly will have the pleasure of writing next Saturday’s Best of the Week. But it’s time for me to sign off for 2018. Thanks for taking the time to read this over the last year, and to tell me what you think. I’ve always appreciated it, even when I’ve failed to reply. Have a splendid weekend. And Christmas. Toodlepip... Tim Burrowes Content director - Mumbrella Mumbrella | 46-48 Balfour Street Chippendale NSW 2008 Australia [Unsubscribe](| [Manage Subscriptions]( [Facebook]( [LinkedIn]( [Twitter](