Nabs Subservient Admen

I went to the Nabs president's breakfast today. Amongst the very interesting and serious bits of the charity including supporting people in hard times in our industry, and training and professional development including FastForward which I help out on, they announced something that looked like it could be really fun.

Unsurprisingly its hard for NABs to raise funds in hard times, and the irony being this is when they need it most. Also there are relatively few people who are likely to give to Nabs - 'please give for poor ad people' isn't something that is going to sit well with the public when Martin Sorrell gives himself a £60million bonus after letting 25% of his workforce go is it.

So it's only from within our industry and the organisations and individuals that are involved that they are ever going to get £££ from. They are running a £1 a week campaign - estimating that if all 70-80,000 employed in the industry in the UK sdigned up a Direct Debit to Nabs it would help a lot. A nice thing Hamish Pringle was quoted as saying was it was a bit like an insurance policy. Anyway if you can you should.

However the thing that interested me was that Nabs are very sensibly embracing two things. Firstly creativity something the industry they represent has in abundance - and secondly a move towards digital and social media, again very wisely.


So they have run a bursary competition for young creative talent to get involved in to come up with interesting and creative fund raising opportunities and a young team from McCann won it with a campaign called - Subservient Ad Men. Clearly paying homage to CP+B seminal Burger King campaign - at some point in September the great and the good of the UK ad industry will be in front of a live web cam and at your bequest for a small or large donation literally perform or do anything you want.



The mind boggles but get thinking and watch out for it I can already see Jeremy Craigen drinking a bottle of wine that cost under £250, or Jerry Moira reciting an ode that praises women in the ad industry, Bruce Haines dressing in white, Helen Calcraft eating a Big Mac instead of the Ivy Plat du Jour - come on this is your chance to get them back - for a good cause too... your future self.