One direct marketing ad executive claims he is so fed up with the way some clients treat agencies that he is willing to risk a heart attack to draw attention to their misbehavior.
Strict dieter and exerciser Robert Rosenthal has declared himself on a “reverse hunger strike” during which he will eat “anything and everything that is bad for you” in order to draw attention to how badly some clients behave.
“I’ve been on a low saturated fat, low cholesterol diet for years,” said the 48-year-old, 5’- 10”, 177-pound Rosenthal. “For breakfast, I typically have oatmeal with soy milk and a banana. When I drink milk, it’s always skim. Even the cream in my coffee is soy creamer.”
However, all that is set to change as of today. Rosenthal posted a movie on ReverseHungerStirke.com in which he explains his motives.
“I’m going to eat the worst possible sh*t imaginable, just to call attention to problems in the advertising industry,” he said.
Among the top problems he cites in the way some clients treat agencies: a lack of respect, a lack of understanding of what the agency contributes, and a lack of loyalty.
“We’ve got a lot of people who encountered snake oil salesmen during the dot-com days,” he said. “They think that everybody is like that. [But] use a romance analogy. So you go on a date with a loser. Are you going to go through the rest of your life thinking that everybody’s a loser?”
One of Rosenthal’s top complaints: spec creative, where companies ask multiple agencies to compete for the account by creating ad campaigns with no promise of being paid.
“It really ought to be called free creative,” said Rosenthal. “In order to have the privilege of potentially winning the clients business, you participate in this mini lottery. Everyone has to solve the client’s marketing problems for free. Might be a one in five chance. But that’s how the game goes.”
Among his top bad-behavior anecdotes is a client who declared his control package off limits for testing. “This thing was drawing a one in 1,000 response rate,” he said.
Rosenthal has published a white paper on ReverseHungerStrike.com explaining “How to be an Awesome Client.”
The white paper contends that clients have at least as much to gain from changing their behavior as agencies. “It’s been said that an agency will walk through fire for a great client,” it says. “In an industry where one idea can be worth a fortune, it clearly pays to keep staffers pumped up.”
Rosenthal said his clients don’t engage in the type of bad behavior he describes, but so many businesses do that it is hard to get new good clients.
He also intends to maintain a blog on his progress—or regress as the case may be.
Rosenthal’s publicity stunt is also aimed at getting press coverage of the changing of his small Maynard, MA-based direct response ad agency’s name from Passaic Parc to Mothers of Invention. The new name is, among other things, a reference to the band behind late rock legend Frank Zappa.
Rosenthal—a Zappa fan—said his lawyers have checked copyright law and that Zappa’s estate has no claim on the Mothers of Invention name outside of music. “It’s a tribute,” said Rosenthal. “We certainly don’t want to make Zappa’s people mad.”
The agency’s new URL is TheMothersOfInvention.com.
Meanwhile, Rosenthal’s doctor has written him a letter—available online at ReverseHungerStrike.com—imploring him to abandon his plan.
“You’ve indicated that your father, grandfather, aunt, and brother all experienced heart attacks,” wrote Richard Dupee, M.D. “Your total cholesterol went from a high of 237 to a low of 166 within three years, entirely as a result of diet and exercise. Your blood pressure reading at your last physical exam was nearly perfect and your weight was right about where I wanted to see it. I’m sure you can find another way to call attention to problems that presently exist in the advertising industry without putting your health at risk.”
Rosenthal apparently disagrees.
