Book Review: George Parker's "The Ubiquitous Persuaders"

Most people in advertising know George Parker as the cantankerous author of the blog Adscam. Every day, Adscam brings forth another curse-laden Parker post about the state of Big Dumb Agencies, Martin "the Poisoned Dwarf" Sorrell, and an ongoing hit-list of "douchenozzles" whom Parker has decided are charlatans or confidence men.

Before the blog, however, was a 35-year career in the agency business as a creative at Ogilvy & Mather, Y&R, JWT and the former Chiat/Day. His clients have included Qwest, the BBC, The Economist and the Irish Tourist Board. Parker is a voice from the past -- advertising's Golden Age of three-martini lunches and "fly me!" girls -- telling the present what it thinks, mostly without mercy. The blog is a bit like listening to your grandfather tell you that you'd never have made it through World War 2; annoying but true.

Parker's latest self-published* book (his second), The Ubiquitous Persuaders, is essentially a history of that Golden Age, using the 50th anniversary of the publication of Vance Packard's "The Hidden Persuaders" as a starting point, and ending with the present -- the wholesale destruction of the agency business by the internet.

Parker's thesis is that the entire 50-year effort has mostly been a waste. A waste of money, creative talent, opportunities and of resources. Parker confesses that he's wasted his fare share of the client's dime:

Whenever I check into a hotel in London, Paris, Stockholm, Rome -- or whatever exotic location I have managed to convince a client it's essential for me to visit -- the first thing I do is turn on the TV. Now and again I am pleasantly surprised and titillated by the quality and entertainment value of some of the commercials I view through my jetlagged eyes as I rapidly empty the contents of the twenty-dollars-a-pop minibar.

Between the beginning and the end we are treated to advertising's great successes and failures, with Parker's withering commentary at each step. One of the most interesting sections of the book deals with Ernst Dichter, the founder of the Institute for Motivational Research who convinced Madison Avenue in the 1950s that advertising would be more successful if it was based on psychological insights. He coined the term "focus group." Although Dichter insisted on being referred to as "doctor," Parker mentions that "there is some doubt he ever received a bachelor's degree, let alone a doctorate."

But just as we're settling in for a tale of 1950s snake-oil, Parker changes the subject and we're off on a riff about Louis Cheskin, who modernized advertising research.

This, it turns out, is the main problem with the book. It doesn't spend enough time digging in the details or describing the lives of people who took part in the business. It's a bit like reading an extended Wikipedia entry on advertising -- facts aplenty, but you don't come away with a sense that you've received any insider information.

Here's another example: There's a section of the book devoted to the rise of the giant agency networks and the sharp practices that went along with them, such as volume discount kickbacks given to agencies by media providers and printers. "In any other line of business, you would probably go to jail for that," he writes. But we don't get any more information.

We're also given a drive-by look at the Interpublic "accounting" scandal, in which the company was forced to hand $250 million back to its clients that had been diverted through a system the company termed "agency volume bonification." This, the largest fraud in advertising history and a perfect example of everything Parker is talking about, is given only a single paragraph.

Likewise, we are teased about the rise of Martin Sorrell, the founder of WPP:

Sorrell was originally the CFO to Saatchi & Saatchi in the glory days when Maurice was collecting Rolls Royce's and buying castles as places to park them, while Charlie was indulging his Damien Hirst modern art fantasies by buying dead sharks and rotting sheep floating around in giant fish tanks...

I kept hoping to read more of how Parker himself charged his own booze budget to the Hathaway shirt company or something -- the real nitty gritty. It never comes.

"The Ubiquitous Persuaders" also has its fair share of errors and typos. Leo Burnet? Deloite Touche? DD&B?

The book does occasionally shine. In the chapter on marketing to children, he lists the names of the agencies devoted to targeting kids, and by doing that you can clearly see that there is something fundamentally unfair about adults with the backing of multimillion corporate budgets trying to manipulate the desires of children.

"The Ubiquitous Persuaders" represents the difference between writing a good blog and writing a good book. A blog is the perfect medium for a quick, timely punch in the face. But it is not a story-teller's medium, nor is it easily stretched into a long-form narrative. From the hints he drops, Parker's own life is a lot more interesting than the history of mergers, campaigns and Super Bowl ads described here. I'd like to read that story instead.

* It's print-on-demand; buy the book at Amazon.com.