Return to Lanzerac Manor

In April of 1999 (Almost exactly a year before I left Ogilvy Advertising Group), I was invited by the then chief-creative of the London office to speak at a training project organised by the South African branch of the company. My subject was one I knew almost nothing about, however that was substantially more than most people claiming expertise at the time: “Viral Marketing”

These days, almost nobody uses the term Viral Marketing, as it is the sort of trendy corporate nonsense that reminds us of how wrong we all were at the high-point of the dot-com boom. The phrase been stricken from the lexicon of credible business in favour of more sober plain language, however the central idea is a simple truth: It is better for a message to charm its way into offices and living rooms rather than to rely on the more costly, hypnotic brute force of repeated messages and big media.

I was never originally intended to be a speaker at this event; the person whose suite I ended up occupying was none other than the worldwide head of interactive. At the height of the dot-com boom his talents were judged to be more profitably used elsewhere. The opportunity fell to me because everybody else considered themselves too important or too busy and of course thanks to the generosity of the creative director who nominated me.

My speaking venue and hotel was none other than this place where I write this letter: The Lanzerac vineyard and guest-house. A resort dedicated to fine wine and food in the sleepy university town of Stellenbosh approximately 45km from Cape Town. This colonial style manor house has remained architecturally unchanged since it was built in the early 17th centaury.

Wearing a t-shirt that read “Viral Marketing does not work- tell all your friends”, I gave a presentation cobbled together during the 11 hour flight, on a borrowed laptop. I was frequently interrupted by the creative director who seemed to speak almost as much as I did. At the time I remember feeling frustrated with his interjections after all, wasn’t this supposed to be the Sal show? In hindsight it was his enthusiasm more than my speech that convinced the audience.

Later I was shown around the cape-town and the local agency. The treats included a helicopter ride from the Lanzerac to the Cape-town waterfront. How much more flattery can a 25 year old take without becoming insufferably big-headed?

After a build up, the realities of being a “Viral Marketing consultant” could only be a crash. The sad truth was in 1999 viral marketing could only work under circumstances most improbable in a major advertising agency, it was a particularly hard sell amongst blue-chip clients who at the same time were burning money on equally absurd sounding dot-com schemes:

Very few major brands have the endearing values that might naturally lead to an easy viral ad. Fewer still brand-managers are willing to give up the control they have come to depend upon; Far better to invest in traditional forms of advertising - it might be dull, but affable predictability is the most common brand-value and the blue-chip brand manager’s zone of safety.

Hence it should not be very surprising that I did not get very far telling IBM to be more like Nintendo, or that my skate-punk image did not resonate strongly enough with American Express or Diaggio to make them invest in my ideas.

It is not without irony, that the book I am reading on my return to the Lanzerac is “How Mumbo Jumbo Conquored the World” by Frances Wheen. A collection of articles in which the author investigates moments of mass cultural madness. The book’s topics range from the events that brought theocracy to Iran to the hysterical gushing of grief caused by the death of Princess Dianna. Perhaps the greatest madness of the past decade was the dot-com bubble. A mania in which large groups of people began to believe that anything done on the Internet had unlimited financial potential.

This madness was the cause of my own mini-celebrity and the reason I found myself in one of South Africa’s finest resorts approximately five years ago. I was convinced that if only people accept the obvious truth of the dot-com revolution and the self-evident superiority of my techniques then we would all be cooler, better and wealthier.

The book, shows the dot-com bubble in the context of many other bubbles which in their own time were believed to be “unstoppable” and “paradigm shifting”. Eventually all bubbles burst, and some normality is temporarily restored. As a graduate of computing (and not History or Economics), I can perhaps be forgiven for not showing any scepticism at the time.

Five years later I have the wealth to return to this most beautiful place, however I have found myself in a queasy melancholy. This place now reminds me in an embarrassing sort of way about things I used to believe in.

My last visit here was such an ego-trip, and as a result I have grown it in my mind. Seen with the eyes of a 25 year old who could barely afford to pay the rent on his flat, this place is an unatainable paradise. Five years on, a degree of financial stability achieved and many fine meals later this kind of luxury has dulled and I find it slightly embarrassing; I am glad to say I will be leaving tomorrow.

I think this story illustrates a principle that I believe to be true, but have never applied rigorously: One should look backwards but never actually go there. Things are always more exciting when viewed with new eyes and the second time around, things are never as sweet.