To quote Dennis Miller, “Now, I don’t want to rant, but…”

In my former company, I was part of an executive committee set up to oversee all the commercial aspects of the enterprise. It was my practice to show the group our various marketing campaigns while they were still in the design phase. I also showed how our corporate strategic intent and marketing program specifics were perfectly aligned and how all aspects of the various campaigns were fully integrated.

And that was the last time they would see or hear anything until I was good and ready to show it. Good and ready meant that the ad or the brochure was produced and looked fantastic and there was a competitive equivalent that did not. It meant that we had evidence customers were happily cabbaging onto our material with documented results. It meant we had won an award or, better still, two. My colleagues were apparently happy with this approach, partially because they trusted me and mostly because they felt it was more important for them to focus on customer issues, like impending threats and looming opportunities.

This made it easy to be late and safe to produce the odd stinker. Which we, respectively, occasionally were and sometimes did. It helped a great deal that our marketing was at least reputed to be among the industry’s best (not difficult) and that, at the end of the day, we were never over budget (difficult indeed). My withholding strategy was, thus, not a tactic to get away with something, but one merely to keep a reasonable distance between us and the abacus crew (i.e., accounting) until we could put our programs in place.

In the hurly burly of everyday, it is possible for oversight to be manipulated rather than managed. Without proper structures and processes in place, campaigns can become inconsistent or run off on some tangent that has nothing to do with the long-term well-being of the enterprise. Happy numbers get presented that mask return on investment.

What we sometimes see is a gap between concept and execution. That gap may be caused by poor guidance or simply poor taste. As a result, some adverts smell like a prickly durian melon. (Never tried one? You can’t begin to imagine what you’re not missing.)

If you need an example or two, check out the continuous outpouring of putrid creative being produced for Pedigree’s Whiskas cat food line. The silly putty or, worse, silly potty humor of the ‘only cats can be cats’ ads are tasteless to the extreme and can’t possibly be enticing for anyone…least of all cat lovers. You want to strangle the loathsome Hubert and bury the lazy and listless Boris alive. The Temptations ads, with cats repeatedly crashing through walls ostensibly because they would hear someone shaking a bag of treats, are simply stupid. Which is clearly how Whiskas sees its customer base. That said, I suppose some will be drawn to the Whiskas Wet Food Challenge. Who dreams this stuff up? Who, on the client side approves? Is this an agency problem or a management one? There are those that will argue that several of the Whiskas ads have gone viral. Certainly the parody ads have. Is this a plus?

The test of pleasure is the memory it leaves behind. Are the whiskas ads ones you will remember or ones which you will do your best to forget. Do these ads ’stick’ or are they just…well… just sticky?