Simply not the best

George Best was undoubtedly one of the greatest footballers ever.
He had a talent like no one else, before or since.
But by 27 his career was over.
He was burned out.
He became an alcoholic, and eventually a recluse.
I once heard him interviewed about what had happened.
What he said is interesting and relevant for us.
He said that he was the first celebrity sportsman.
Sure there had been famous sportsmen before, but they were famous for their sport.
With George Best, his celebrity became bigger than his sport.
He was constantly invited on to talk shows, where he was
interviewed about everything but football.
They wanted his opinions on politics, fashion, relationships, law and order, raising children, international affairs.
Best tried to answer the questions.
But as he said, 'I didn’t know anything about all that stuff.
I was just a kid who wanted to play football.
That’s what I was really good at, that’s what I knew about.'
And George Best got very confused.
What had got him to the top was a sublime ability to
play football.
But he began to believe that it was him people were interested in,
not just his ability to play football.
And so he was seduced away from football.
He stayed up all night drinking, he missed training, he got fatter.
But that didn’t matter because TV was interested in his opinions.
Except.
As he stopped being able to play football, the TV interviews
dried up.
He became distracted from the thing he was best at.
And he became an ex-athlete.
Someone who used to be good.
In business it’s called the Peter Principle.
Otherwise known as 'promote to the first level of incompetence'.
When anyone is doing a really good job, they get promoted.
As long as they’re doing a really good job, they keep
getting promoted.
Eventually, they’ll get promoted away from the job they
can do well.
And they’re not very good at the new job.
Then they get fired.
For instance, a young man may be a really good welder.
He gets promoted to senior welder.
He does so well that he gets promoted to head of welding.
He does so well at that, he gets promoted to head of the production line.
But this involves sitting in an office and supervising.
He’s no good at that, so he gets fired.
All because a perfectly good welder was promoted away from what he was good at.
A while back I was in New York and Dave Droga asked me what happened
to UK advertising – it used to be the best in the world.
I think it’s the Peter Principle.
We used to know what our job was, to make great ads.
Make them funnier, more unusual, more memorable,
more outrageous.
Make people notice them and talk about them.
So we did.
And we got famous for doing that.
Then suddenly, everyone wanted our opinion on everything else.
'What is the future of advertising? Is it dead?'
'What are the challenges and opportunities of the new types of media?'
'Are the implications of new copyright legislation destroying
creativity?'
'What are the ethical issues about the blurring lines between
product placement and traditional advertising?'
'Are the leaders of the creative industries embracing the new
technologies sufficiently?'
Advertising people are now interviewed on all sorts of subjects that
are not to do with doing great ads.
Young people coming into the business think they have to care
about, and have an opinion on, all of these things.
And that takes precedence over doing great ads.
Like George Best, we’ve been seduced away from what our job is.
Talking about it has become more important than doing it.

Dave's article was taken from the September issue of Market Leader. Browse the archive here.