Claire Beale On Advertising

When you're one of the world's biggest marketers, you can be sure that when you speak, adland listens carefully. In fact, you can be sure that adland listens, nicks your ideas and then plays them back to you and your fellow-advertisers as an original thought (probably with a new fee attached).

So, when Procter & Gamble's global marketing chief Jim Stengel announced last week that the traditional P&G approach to advertising is dead, and that his company has a new marketing mantra, agencies around the world were soon busy rewriting their creds presentations.

According to Stengel, "telling and selling", P&G's old advertising philosophy, is a busted flush in our new digital world. Now, it's all about two-way dialogues, a "relationship mindset". Yes, P&G wants to get up close and personal. With you. The world's mightiest advertiser wants to be your friend.

For some, the notion that an $80bn household goods giant wants to inveigle its way into our lives might have a deeply uncomfortable ring of cynicism to it. At least you know where you are with good old advertising; there's nothing subtle about the traditional sell. But this idea of selling under the guise of advising and helping, well, that's a whole other game.

Of course, all this matey-matey stuff is still about selling, about shifting soap powder and shampoo off the shelves, about making money. But instead of bashing consumers over the head with product benefits and price promotions (however prettily packaged in a 30-second ad romp), advertising communication now has to harness the power and the potential of the web to develop a more intimate relationship with its audience.

Where advertisers (though, interestingly, rarely P&G) used to earn the right to sell us stuff by entertaining us with their beautifully crafted ads, the quid pro quo is now softer. It's now about working with consumers as partners, helping them to live their lives better, offering them resources (and brands) that they can trust and rely on.

Mr Stengel has a vision of a world of "generous brands" (no retching, please) enriching our lives in return for financial transaction or customer loyalty. Like Starbucks offloading its used coffee grounds free for loyal customers to spread around their rose bushes, or Pampers telling you how to entertain a testy toddler. You get the idea.

Many big companies now see such value-added, personal-relationship drivers as part of their Corporate Social Responsibility programme, giving a little back. In truth, CSR is often about giving a little back to get a bit more back. Win, win. Anyway, building these sorts of mutually enriching, two-way relationships is vital in the new era of communications (mobile, web, experiential marketing).

Log on to P&G's website (www.pg.com) for a taste. We're told that P&G is about "touching lives, improving life": "Three billion times a day, P&G brands touch the lives of people around the world, making life a little better every day." Ahh... But go to the P&G brands' individual websites for the walk-the-walk. At pampers.co.uk, you get advice through each stage of pregnancy and early motherhood, games for toddlers, parents' own tips. These are not new additions to the P&G communications armoury but, as web usage grows and new technical enhancements become possible, the sites are getting progressively richer and stickier.

P&G is thus already investing money where Stengel's mouth is. And you can bet other advertisers will be emulating and adapting the approach of the market leader. P&G, after all, invests more heavily than most in researching and developing different marketing routes. For all this, P&G also spends more heavily than most on traditional media, well over $5bn, globally. The good old-fashioned stuff that is simply about telling and selling is still doing a pretty good job of both of those things for P&G. The smart money, though, says listen to Stengel.

TALKING OF the old marketing model being broken, Marketing magazine has just celebrated its 75th birthday in rude health by tracking all of these new developments. Its anniversary issue is a pacy romp through some of the highlights of marketing history, and picks over some of the key issues facing 21st-century marketers. Of course, like all print titles, Marketing (a sister magazine to my own Campaign) has a vibrant online presence, but seeing 75 years of history in a beautifully packaged keepsake printed magazine did make me wonder how many new website brands will have the luxury of a 75th birthday party.

IT WAS party time for some of those advertisers and agencies still doing great work in old media at the British Television Advertising Awards last week. There was plenty to celebrate, from Mother's 2006 oeuvre, which won it BTAA's Agency of the Year accolade, to Fallon's "paint" for Sony Bravia as Best TV Commercial, and Gorgeous for Production Company of the Year.

But, according to the chairman of the jury, DDB's Jeremy Craigen, the overall standard of entries left something to be desired. "What struck me was how boring some of it was," he admitted. Something that your average couch-potato could have told him. The ad industry has been enjoying a bit of telly-bashing of late: clearly, advertisers and agencies have their own TV issues to address. With ITV in an "innovation" crisis of its own, it's time that advertisers, agencies and broadcasters worked more closely together to ensure that television is a stimulating, entertaining medium, from programmes to ad breaks.

FOR ADLAND commentators like me, the news that the digital agency Glue has failed to snare the prestigious £10m Eurostar creative account is rather disappointing. Not just because Glue - or glue as it likes to be known - is a good agency with some very nice and talented people, but because it's a digital agency that is gunning for offline creative projects. If the Eurostar account had tipped its way, I would now be able to write reams on how traditional agencies are being shaken out of their complacency by the new wave of digital-centric hotshops.

In fact, I'm going to do it anyway. Because, although glue lost out to Fallon at the final round, it did beat 86 other traditional agencies to make it down to the last two. And it was, after all, only beaten by the current holder of the UK Agency of the Year title. So, no shame whatsoever in coming second.

For any above-the-line agency tempted to cry, "Back in your box!", the truth is that this will not be the last time that glue pitches for an above-the-line account. All of the best digital agencies are seeing offline work as a natural extension of their territory. And why not? The best creatives of any hue are the ones with the best big ideas and the best big ideas, by their very definition, must now be transferable across media platforms.

The real debate is whether there will even be digital agencies in, say, five years' time. The best digital agencies will be as comfortable creating work for television, press, radio as they are for the internet. And the best of the "traditional" agencies will finally get digital and integrate it as a natural part of their creative offering. And then we can all stop using ridiculous terms such as "digital agency" and "traditional agency", and just talk about the good and the bad.

Claire Beale is editor of Campaign

claire.beale@haynet.com

BEALE'S BEST IN SHOW LLOYDS TSB

It's fair to say that most bank advertising is not really very good. There have been flashes of brilliance (the early First Direct work, Bartle Bogle Hegarty's Samuel L Jackson campaign for Barclays, the old HSBC stuff from Lowe), but by and large what's on air at the moment is a pretty shabby array of amorphous banking messages. NatWest is the consistently good exception.

Now Lloyds TSB has come up with something rather different, for the banking sector at least. Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R has done a fine job with a new 3D animation approach, using the Bafta-winning animator/director Marc Craste. It shows a couple on a journey through life, travelling on a futuristic train called Black Horse (get it?). They meet, marry, have kids, retire, and Lloyds is there helping them along the way, "for the journey" (get it again?).

The financial sector knows it needs to be a bit warmer, more human (back to Jim Stengel again) and these animated spots achieve that perfectly. When was the last time you saw a bank ad and thought "ah, sweet"? Whether that's enough to put yourself through the agony of transferring your account is another matter.