OPINION: Delaney deserves credit for forthright questions

By ROY WARMAN, joint chief executive of Wa, Campaign, Friday, 30 May 1997 12:00AM

Let’s get one thing clear about Tim Delaney and the Creative Directors Forum: through that vehicle he expresses views in public that many creatives and creative directors express among themselves and to us in private. When it comes to the crunch, many of them disappear back into the woodwork.

Let’s get one thing clear about Tim Delaney and the Creative

Directors Forum: through that vehicle he expresses views in public that

many creatives and creative directors express among themselves and to us

in private. When it comes to the crunch, many of them disappear back

into the woodwork.

Delaney has a history of coming off the fence and making a stand. He is

the individual who deserves some credit for confronting the ogre of

Edward Booth-Clibborn at British Design and Art Direction, and

instigating the process of renewal that so improved an organisation that

had looked desperately anachronistic. His style is abrasive, and in his

single-mindedness he can sometimes be no respecter of individual

sensibilities, but it is important to separate the message from the

method of delivery.

There are valid questions to be asked about headhunters and how much

they earn, just as there are about costs in the production industry and

- coming soon - the scandalous price of the Cannes International

Advertising Festival. All evolve from the same basic question: do

suppliers to the business regard the advertising industry as a gravy

train because the base rates they can charge are so high? If any of us

are even remotely unsure of the answer to that question then we should

support Delaney’s raising of the issues.

Whether his criticisms are constructive or destructive is another

matter, but the issues must not be allowed to be seen as personal

vendettas. That’s why it’s important Delaney’s craven peers re-emerge

from the woodwork.

And, come to that, where are all the other agency managers in this

matter?

It’s all very well for Lowes to withdraw from the CDF, but what do

managing directors and chief executives feel about the subjects the CDF

has raised?

It’s not enough to hide behind the mantra of ’but they’re our

mates’.

Everyone’s a mate in the London village - and that gravy train keeps on

chugging.

This article was first published on Campaign