rheumatism. Someone in a Rolls-Royce stopped to speak to him. Told him to take Beecham’s Pills. Do you know who it was? The King’s Doctor!’ Down with committees Most campaigns are too complicated. They reflect a long list of objectives, and try to reconcile the divergent views of too many executives. By attempting to cover too many things, they achieve nothing. Many commercials and many advertisements look like the minutes of a committee. In my experience, committees can criticize, but they cannot create. ‘Search the parks in all your cities You’ll find no statues of committees’ Agencies have a way of creating campaigns in committees. They call it ‘team-work’. Who can argue with team-work? The process of producing advertising campaigns moves at a snail’s pace. Questions of strategy are argued by committees of the client’s brand managers and the agency’s account executives, who have a vested interest in prolonging the argument as much as possible; it is how they earn their living. The researchers take months to answer elementary questions. When the copywriters finally get down to work, they dawdle about in brain-storming sessions and other forms of wheel-spinning. If a copywriter averages an hour a week actually writing, he is exceptional. The average period of gestation is somewhere between that of hyenas (110 days) and goats (151 days). For example, storyboards for commercials are argued at level after level in the agency, and level after level in the client’s organization. If they survive, they are then produced and tested. The average copywriter gets only three commercials a year on air.