Fame?

I want to hate fame. Believe me I do.

It sounds like a dumb desire, shared by wannabe tik-tok influencers and pound-shop populist politicians. It offends my very core as a strategist. Where is the precision?

Fame amongst who? Fame for what? And fame to what end?

Being famous is the sort of thing that a pubescent teenager grunts at a careers teacher when asked what they want to be when they grow up. But it’s an idea that ill fits a credible strategist asked to offer responsible brand advice to a client. Be famous. No shit sherlock.

But forced to sit with the question I realised like it or not, fame is what we do. Because advertising is nothing without fame. To advertise oneself is to create a display of intoxicating attraction.

It’s Rory Sutherland’s peacock. It’s Paul Feldwick’s PT Barnham. It’s the whole roll up, roll up come and see the greatest show on earthiness of what we do. It’s chutzpah and effervescence and seduction and the manipulation of desire. Fame is everything to us.

Of course you don’t need fame to make a sale, otherwise people wouldn’t buy dodgy brands invented by AI that offer cut price products on Amazon when you are searching for the real thing. Direct sales have always had the power to intercept journeys and take us directly from absolutely no knowledge to purchase without passing go or collecting £200, but that’s not advertising it’s the eternal art of direct marketing.

Indeed, it is fame not media that distinguishes advertising from direct marketing. After all, by strict definition, to advertise is to make known by means of public announcement.

If fame is so important, let’s try to be a bit more forensic about it? I want to suggest that fame is good for your brands, good for your industry and good for you.

For your brand fame creates shared meaning.

If a brand is to hold meaning for people that is effective, we all need to believe roughly the same thing about it as each other. Fame is what creates that shared meaning because, fame is a collective endeavour. For something to be famous, I must know about it, you must know about it, and we must both know the other knows about it. That’s why the newspaper front page was so powerful for so long. So, while a brand is still built as an aggregate of every experience we have ever had about that organisation or product and so everyone will have a slightly different perspective on any brand, there must be experiences that are universal for true meaning to be created. At a very basic level fame is an essential part of what makes our brands work because it helps forge shared meaning.

For our industry, fame is a route off the economic naughty step.

I work for the iconic advertising agency. The name that defines advertising in broader culture. This is categorically not because of the work Saatchi & Saatchi has made over 55 years, from the Pregnant Man to England till I Died. It is because from the beginning the Saatchi brothers set out to make their agency famous and to make advertising famous. Very early on Charles Saatchi announced that his creative department was so good he had insured it for a million pounds. Yet for most of my career our industry has been silent in popular culture. We have shrunk from the limelight, content simply to do good work for our clients but actively avoiding being noticed by the public. Even the less PR shy of us are famous in our own lunchtime and not in broader culture. This has done immeasurable damage to our industry, turning our agencies into places where clients requisition content rather than famous and possibly infamous as brand advisers – people who are seen to have a mercurial ability to mould opinion and sentiment. At a push CMOs might know a few agencies or at least know someone that does, but that doesn’t hold for the rest of the C-suite. Without doubt the easiest way to elevate our standing in client organisations, and therefore our remuneration, is to be famous to people in client organisations. Lending someone from the studio to the Apprentice doesn’t count, having a powerful perspective on business, society and culture are the routes to the studio door and the front page – that is What the Fuck is Going On? was designed to do. The commodification that is killing the economics of our industry starts with making advertising famous again not just making famous advertising.

And for you, fame is a way to build resilience and altitude into your career.

It’s a hard conversation to have with a bunch of modest, introverted planners but if I were you, I would make yourself famous. Maybe not tomorrow or the next day but make yourself famous. Just as a brand’s fame makes choosing it easy on comparethemeerkat.com, your fame will give you an advantage in the market. At first inside your agency when people are deciding who to put on a pitch or an amazing new opportunity, then in the jobs market then beyond. Fame will get you a better job, it will get you a better salary, it will get you a better day rate if you freelance and it will get you out of the business if that’s what you eventually want to do. Being good is good, but being famous for being good is far better.

So, what makes brands, industries and people famous?

Well, I suspect there is a mercurial mix of ingredients that would be almost impossible to untangle but here is a thought to take away.

Fame’s greatest ally is generosity. Absolute, no strings attached, public spirited generosity.

I know it sounds weird because fame seems narcissistic and selfish. But the catalyst for all fame is generosity. To be famous you must give something away to other people.

Performers of every stripe are famous because they give joy to millions through sharing their music, acting, comedy and talent. Two historians are now amongst the most famous and best paid podcasters on earth because they chose to share their passion and expertise with the world. Even the most vacuous celebrities are only in that position for what they have given people even if its titillation or schadenfreude.

It’s the same in the brand world. Iconic brands tend to be famous because they have done something important for people like guaranteeing quality, being a vehicle for aspiration or the architects of pleasure. Why is Aldi famous? Because it put higher quality food in the reach of millions. Iconic brands are the pinnacle of brand fame because they stand for a cultural idea that people value which is fundamentally generous. That’s why we brought back Never Knowingly Undersold for John Lewis; it’s a vector for generosity.

And in the UK, why is Nigel Farage famous? Because for two decades he has given people a way to articulate their frustration and anger at the ineffectiveness of our democracy. In a weird fucked up way he is the most generous politician in Britian right now.

And bringing it a little closer to home, if there is one thing I have learned since I started adliterate 20 years ago, is you must let go of control to gain influence. In our business, fame starts by being generous with your thinking, with your time, with your expertise, with your craft and with your imagination.

And if you see it like that, fame seems a very positive thing whether for you, for us or all of us. So yes, fame is a valid strategy because fame is the fundamental strategy.

As Gordon Gekko might have said if he had been a little more generous and a little less greedy

The point is, ladies and gentlemen,
fame is good. Fame works, fame
is right. Fame clarifies, cuts
through, and captures the essence
of what we all do. Fame in all its forms.

This speech was originally given at an APG meeting in May 2025