Where’s the sausage? by David Tayor

Above: David Taylor giving his presentation. It was moderately interesting, but did not have any “Ah-ha!” moments. He had been stuck in traffic for about half an hour, so possibly was not at his best.

Dark cold night. I entered a sprawling industrial estate on the edge of a featureless New Town (or rather, the main feature of the town was its featurelessness - I’m not being flippant, I would like to do a proper study on architecture, town planning and the anonymous modern life, using this town as an example). Parking on the side of the road (hardly any other cars about) I went into the Research Suite of a very big company (the Suite was situated just outside one of their main gates, security staff watching the arrivals warily).

Inside I went along a bland white corridor and into a large room absolutely crammed with people - professional people, mostly young, mostly wearing suits. About a third of the people were women. All were members of the Chartered Institute of Marketing (as myself).

In the centre of the room was a long table set out with a buffet meal, but because of the crowd you couldn’t move around easily and had to make the best of whatever food you could reach (sandwiches push crisps more pushing cakes that tasted of nothing retrace your steps hot drinks push…).

In the midst of this slow-motion scrum I suddenly found myself facing former work colleague Adrian Taylor. I hadn’t seen him for about three years. Momentary panic as I struggled to remember his name, then relief as it came to me.

We talked for about fifteen minutes. He described his year in Australia, his new job, how he had contacted the old company we used to work for (and not got a good reception, which doesn’t surprise me). He was at the meeting with a party of CIM students.

Then I talked to someone from a local publishing company. We were jammed in a corner of the room and so it only seemed polite to introduce myself. She was vaguely familiar and after a while I realised she had interviewed me for a job some years ago (I didn’t get it).

Finally I talked to a middle-aged marketing manager. When I told him I worked for a PR and marketing agency he launched into a tedious monologue about how superfluous PR was. I think he wanted to be provocative, but I just agreed with him absently.

From the door the CIM president shouted that we should “go through” to the small lecture theatre.

The speaker, David Taylor, was very very late. He was introduced by the CIM president as “one of the country’s top fifty marketing gurus”. He has his own agency (Brandgym), his own blog, and writes a monthly column for the CIM magazine.

David Taylor was very confident, taking us through a Powerpoint presentation about his new marketing book. This talk had been advertised as “a fabulous romp through the world of branding”. As an essential quality of effective brand development is not to over-promise, David Taylor should possibly rephrase this billing.

He began with a case-study:

“I have been privileged to get into Fruit Towers, the headquarters of Innocent… Dan writes all the Innocent packs himself, one a day, two hundred a year… marketing has the image of being a bit complex, but it doesn’t have to be…”

He moved backwards and forwards across the floor of the theatre. Thin, dark-suited, black-rimmed glasses. The things he was saying were individually interesting, but they didn’t seem to fit into any overall structure.

“Everyone’s saying: forget the product, concentrate on the emotion… everyone’s laddering up so that Cosmopolitan goes from being a magazine to becoming a lifestyle brand… but the best brands are doing the reverse…”

He showed us a montage of James Bond clips that seemed gratuitous and unrelated to what he was saying (or perhaps I wasn’t paying enough attention).

“Advertising is a tax for having an unremarkable product… the way to solve most marketing problems is to follow the money… the long term is just a series of short terms…”

The formal part of the presentation came to an end. David Taylor took questions from the audience. This question and answer session was monopolised by a young marketing executive from a big company who asked question after question related to a particular problem he was having at work - in the end David Taylor just cut him off and moved on.

The talk came to an end. There was a vote of thanks. As we left two young women gave out copies of David Taylor’s new book Where’s the sausage?



Above: Where’s the sausage? by David Taylor. It’s basically a novelisation of marketing diagnostics. The text is in a sans serif typeface which makes it difficult to read.