“I’ve just had a very interesting meeting”

Saatchi’s ‘open door ideas policy’ kick-starts the social media lab. Stephen FItzpatrick conversation part four

Part four of the interview with Stephen Fitzpatrick

M: What were you supposed to be doing at Saatchi and Saatchi – was this weird stuff part of your job?

SF. My title was ‘group strategist’ in Saatchi Vision – the interactive division.

One of my jobs was to ‘sell in’ interactive media to the mainstream agency, so I was doing more conventional stuff as well.

M: Were they paying you to do all this?

SF: Well I had some luck there. There was a new CEO at Saatchi, a very dynamic Kiwi by the name of James Hall, who took a liking what I had to say as it dovetailed with some of his own interests.

He was worried that the agency didn’t have a handle on the new wave of internet phenomena like Slashdot, Amazon and Hotmail.

As far as he could see, they seemed to be conjuring brand equity out of a hat -  not spending much – if anything - on advertising.

He asked me if I’d like to look into what was happening and report back. I set up an informal research group – people I knew and was making contact with – and we would meet and talk and I would supply the booze.   

So that’s how I got backing to do the research – the project was called ‘tomorrow’. Quite appropriate really because it never came – not at Saatchi anyway.

M: So how did you meet Peter?

Well, Saatchi had a very progressive and unusual policy of giving an audience to anyone who phoned in with an idea that sounded interesting.

Some of them could be very bizarre but one day I got a call – “Can you meet this guy? We don’t understand what he’s talking about so we thought of you. Can you talk to him?”

It was Peter. He’d phoned in with a story about some research he’d conducted and an idea he called ‘Web PR’.

Anyway. Peter walked in through the door with a story.

It proved to be a long story.

Make that a verrry long story. (laughs)

The first meeting lasted four hours.

The second went on for nine hours and a hangover

M: Did anything concrete come from all this talking?

SF: Unfortunately what began to emerge from all the discussions we were having wouldn’t fit onto a powerpoint deck.

MC: Deck?

SF: Marketing jargon for powerpoint presentation

MC: Ok

So it soon became obvious that what we were looking at entailed a quite fundamental reappraisal of many of the principles upon which the agency was based and which were taken for granted.

As they were almost everywhere else at the time, it has to be said.

M: What about Cluetrain?

SF: I mean in the mainstream agencies – you would see Cluetrain on the reading lists and it would be referenced in presentations from agency planners but taking the ideas seriously, that didn’t happen. 

When I did try to talk about how some of the cluetrain principles might be implemented I was met with what seemed like deliberate brute miscomprehension

Either that or they told me I was mad. 

M: To your face?

SF: Not often. I would hear about it afterwards though (laughs).

You see, this was 2001 and the bubble had just burst so they all breathed a sigh of relief.

The internet was ‘just another channel’ again. It was business as usual.

M: Did you talk to their clients about what you were working on?

SF: Yes I did.

M: What did they say?

SF: Well, don’t forget that there was no blogosphere, no myspace, no youtube to point to then.

M: so how did they respond?

SF:  Marketing directors were usually very enthusiastic – about the principles.

But they couldn’t believe that it could work for them.

They had so little confidence – or experience – in speaking publicly in their own voices.

They would back off fast.

Part five: Virtual Donal McIntyre? Not quite.

How Donal McIntyre almost became an online environmental activist (courtesy of Saatchi and Saatchi)

Part six: Social media meets e-government

Repositioning a government department as a social media business