DIARY
ROBIN WIGHT Icame back from New York to find Richard Branson's libel victory splashed across the front page of my Guardian. It took me back to May 1994 when I sat beside a fax machine with members of the Rank-led consortium waiting to discover who had won the National Lottery licence. Right on time came the fax from Peter Davis, the Lottery Regulator, telling the world that Camelot, with GTech, had hit the jackpot. We all knew that if it was decided that GTech was a 'fit and proper' company, their experience in running 80 per cent of the world's lotteries would Probably be decisive. There were plenty of suggestions at the time of insalubrious GTech dealings, but Richard Branson is the first person to make any of these allega- tions stick. I was very surprised that GTech's boss, Guy Snowden, should have tried to nobble Branson, as none of us thought he had a chance, despite his bril- liant publicity (remember Desert Orchid trotting along with Richard Branson and Lord Young to deliver their tender?). There is something about the Branson bid which I don't think the newspapers ever published. It is that the National Audit report that reviewed the whole bidding pro- cess reveals that Branson's UK Lottery Foundation came fourth or fifth out of Seven entrants. Had Snowden's behaviour been known at the time, this would surely have eliminated GTech (and Camelot) for not being 'fit and proper', and there would have been another winner. According to the National Audit report, it would have left Rank and its team in first place: we was robbed! Quite a bit of compensation seems to be due from this unfortunate event, not the least to our little advertising agency, who would have landed the £50 million National Lottery account. But Richard Branson, even before the libel verdict, sure- lyemerged as the unofficial winner. He skilfully used the episode to promote his brand aura as the ultimate good guy by offering National Lottery profits to charity. 1 have been lost in admiration for his image-building skills since 30 years ago, when an unbearded Branson, then running a student magazine, asked me to help pro- Mote his student advisory centre. I pro- duced a circular poster with a picture of an aspirin tablet surrounded by the words Give us your headaches'. Within days, the Poster had spread like a measles rash over the whole of the London Underground. He hasn't lost his touch since.
Ihad hoped to go on Wednesday to the House of Commons to see how William Hague (in the blue corner) performed against Tony Blair (in the other blue cor- ner). Alas, I had to make do with the Hansard report to judge the results. The week before, I had judged that Blair got the better of the encounter, as he managed to sweep Robin Cook's failures of woman management under the carpet of a resounding 'pathetic' that dominated the soundbites. This week, William Hague landed some better punches as he floored the Prime Minister with questions that couldn't be dismissed as 'trivia'. How much had farm incomes fallen over the past year? Few people will know that the Prime Minis- ter didn't have the right answer (46 per cent) or that he got his follow-up statistics wrong. Most won't even be aware of the encounter a week or so previously when Hague had the upper hand on the single- parent saga. For all his consummate skill on the small screen (I must recognise he is the most powerful political brand since Churchill), Blair is often outperformed by Hague in the House. Perhaps the best way to generate the much needed Tory recovery is somehow to arrange for those parliamen- tary encounters to be broadcast on peak- time television. Now that the BBC has been officially dubbed 'pathetic' by the Labour party we can expect such an encouraging initiative.
Iwas lucky enough to get a table for lunch at the Ivy to meet Sir Derek Hornby, currently struggling to keep his London & Continental bid to build the Eurostar link on the rails. (Foodie warning: the Ivy has no mid-evening tables free until April. Aubergine, that other gastronomic heaven, is even worse: the earliest table I could get was 16 July.) Eurostar is a sad saga as far as the advertising industry is concerned. It needed to attract at least eight million pas- sengers a year in order to generate suffi- cient funds for the money men to give the go-ahead for the new high-speed link between Paddington and the Chunnel. In fact, it never carried more than six million a year. Clearly the fire in the Chunnel wasn't a brilliant promotional device, but the pro- motional devices that it did use weren't that brilliant either. In particular, five different advertising campaigns in two years (includ- ing a television performance by Eric Can- tona that makes his worst days at Manch- ester United look brilliant) is hardly the way to launch a powerful new transporta- tion concept. Normally a client can change agencies, lick his expensive wounds and move on. But not in the case of London & Continental: they had a very narrow win- dow of opportunity before the options ran out and their train set was taken back by the government. All one can hope now, if it is to be renationalised, is that Peter Man- delson can take control of the project: a man who can make a success of the Dome (as I believe he will) can certainly relaunch a slightly used train set.
The great American advertising man Jerry Della Femina once said that advertis- ing is the most fun you can have with your clothes on. It is a maxim I remembered this week as I joined in the interviews of the lucky souls we were screening for our grad- uate intake. For some reason, we had set them a project to launch a new range of unisex nappies, so these clever young peo- ple had to show their mastery of the prob- lems of 'heavy wetting' and 'leakage'. They threw themselves into the nappy project with remarkable enthusiasm. Like most agencies of our size we get about a thou- sand applicants a year for the four or five places we offer. Yet advertising graduates earn less than those who sign on for Sains- bury's and almost half the salary my eldest son got when he signed up as a fledgling management consultant. So I am seriously impressed by the efforts they make to impress us. My favourite this year was a young lady from Cambridge who said, 'I believe that I will be your only applicant who has actually trained herself to raise her left eyebrow. It's a crippling snub and per- fect party trick all in one.' Naturally we hired her on the spot. She could be our new secret weapon to win clients from our neighbour in Golden Square, the ever- growing M&C Saatchi.
Robin Wight is the chairman of the advertis- ing agency WCRS.
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