John Farquhar, a man of fascinating contradiction

John Farquhar and Bizcommunity managing editor Simone Puterman celebrating his 83rd birthday in April 2011 at Lambrusco's in Johannesburg. Pic: Wilma de Bruin.

Farquhar, who died of cancer in Johannesburg just shy of 84, is remembered chiefly for being the editor of (the defunct) Marketplace tabloid that covered the marketing and advertising worlds and a founder of AdVantage.

He was, in the words of Bizcommunity columnist Chris Moerdyk on Farquhar's 80th birthday "opinionated, presumptuous, irascible and probably the most successful commentator and advertising personality in the country. Everybody who is anybody in the ad industry wants to meet him. Everybody desperately wants to show him what they do and how clever they are in the hope that he will give them some sort of positive nod...

"He is the epitome of what a columnist is all about. He puts a brick through a window and shoots sacred cows but doesn't hang about to discuss with the gathering crowds the mess left by the glass or the blood all over the streets. He makes his point and then goes in search of another window and another cow."

"Fearless deflator of advertising industry egos"

He was, in the words of veteran journalist Gus Silber on Twitter this weekend, a "fearless deflator of advertising industry egos. He was a joy to read, even when he got it wrong".

Sandra Gordon, the CEO of Wag the Dog publishers and who founded AdVantage with Farquhar in 1993, says that many people didn't realise that Farquhar - who grew up very poor in Cape Town - struggled to write in a way that matched his incisive mind.

"It's a great pity he wasn't better educated," she told Bizcommunity. "John would have made a perfect professor of something like sociology. He had a great sense of getting under things and understanding complex things."

Farquhar was also, says Gordon, a creature of habit who would, for instance, have a banana and a glass of milk every morning.

A loner who liked working on his own

"He was also very much a loner and liked working on his own... He'd spend hours on his own, ...especially in London [on a trip the two did together]. He'd get up at 5am, have his banana and milk and walk around London for hours before I'd even got up."

Gordon says Farquhar told her once, when he was thinking of bowing to pressure to start a Twitter account, that "none of this social media is for me. I've always been a person who preferred to be on their own and they think it's because I'm standoffish. But it's actually because I'm very shy."

Veteran journalist Jeremy Maggs, now an eNews anchor, told Bizcommunity: "When I started covering the ad industry, John was kindness personified, even though we were competing. He was willing to share information and often phoned when he liked a piece I'd written or broadcast on.

"He taught me not to be sucked in by the hype of creativity but creativity was simply a selling tool. The sharper the tool, the more product would move. He loved pulling the tails of executive creative directors just to provoke a reaction. Deep down he was an ad anorak just like me."

Supplied by Chris Moerdyk, John Farquhar in his heyday (second from left)

click to enlarge

His years in the ad industry

Farquhar spent many years in the ad industry before becoming a commentator and publisher, although it was an industry he fell into by happenstance in the austere post-War years - as this account of his own humble beginnings (in an email late last year to public relations practioner Cathy van Zyl) shows:

"After I matriculated I went job hunting. The standard procedure then, was, you registered with the labour bureau, and reported each morning and stood in a long queue to get a job ticket. Often before you got to the counter the shutters would come down and a 'no more jobs' sign would be posted. So you would return the next day. And the next, and so, earlier, and earlier to get near the front.

"Things were different in the late 1940s. Soldiers were returning from the war and they got priority. Eventually I got [a] ticket which had a vacancy for a 'Checking clerk' at PN Barrett. I had no idea what the job was. I was interviewed, and employed at a salary of 15 pounds a month.

"I soon discovered that PN Barrett (PNB) was the second largest advertising agency in the country, with branches in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and Johannesburg. The job was to collect the newspapers and make sure that the ads appeared on due date as called for by the copy instructions and that the size was correct... My desk was in the cellar of the building next to the water pump, so you can say I started at the bottom of advertising."

Moved up through the industry

Farquhar moved up through the advertising industry at a time when Cape Town was the main advertising centre in South Africa, becoming a media manager at Lindsay Smithers, media director of South African Advertising Contractors, Gilbey's marketing manager (where he was involved in launching new brands such as Smirnoff and J&B Whisky) and Van Zyl & Van Zyl's manager of its Cape Town office.

At the latter, the biggest clients were Stellenbosch Farmers' Winery and Chrysler, the carmaker that Farquhar himself netted as a client.

"The ad agencies competed for business, but when it came to have fun we frequented the same pubs," Farquhar wrote in his email to Van Zyl, who has known Farquhar since 1985 when she was also a journalist in the marketing field.

"I was then Chairman of the Advertising Club of Cape Town. We organised functions in which all the agencies participated. The most famous fancy dress balls then were the annual advertising balls. People had to dress up in costumes that were replicas of a product the agency handled. Prizes were motor cars, trip overseas etc.

"And the fun continued"

"Other events were organised during the year. Sing-Along pub crawls were popular. We would [hire] buses with a banjo players on board, sang songs and would sing them at every pub we visited when on a pub crawl. And the fun continued.

"The industry produced ads that sold product. But that was before the industry contacted the dreaded Award disease. Advertising was used as a sales tool during that era."

When Chrysler moved ira plant to Pretoria and wanted Farquhar to move to Johannesburg so that he could continue handling their account, Farquhar - now a married man with children at school - resigned so that he could stay in Cape Town and he founded Farquhar & Amis with Peter Amis. The agency built a reputation for taking losing brands and turning them into winners.

They later sold the agency to BBDO and Farquhar moved to Johannesburg, working for Nasionale Tydkrifte, Republican Publications and becoming the editor of Marketplace, a tabloid focused on advertising and marketing.

Started AdVantage at age 65

At the age of 65, he started AdVantage with Gordon. "Running AdVantage was great fun," he said in the email to Van Zyl. "I never thought advertising was work. To me it was fun. I turned it into a hobby. I was outspoken. To me bad advertising was rubbish.

"Where am I today?" wrote Farquhar about six months ago in the emailed biography. "I am editor at large. I write for Marketing Web, promoting good advertising and its value as a business tool. I can spot ads designed to win awards from a mile away. These ads undermine the value of advertising as a business tool. Sadly the quality of advertising has declined from its Hey Day during the 80s and 90s. Today it is but a faint reminder of where it was. Advertisers are no longer true entrepreneurs. They are more concerned with their stock price. There [are] very few pro's left in the business.

"So I will continue to niggle the award makers. I hope to do this until the day I die, with my boots on."

Farquhar, a fighter to the last, is survived by his four children - Denice, John, Elizabeth and Andrew - and three grandchildren, Megan, Steven and Layla.

Details of wake:

• Date: Friday 3 February
  
• Time: 12.30pm-3pm
  
• Venue: Bryanston Country Club, Bryanston Drive, Bryanston, Johannesburg

For more:

• Bizcommunity: Special tribute page for John Farquhar
  
• Bizcommunity: Chris Moerdyk pays tribute to John Farquhar, January 2011
  
• The Marketing Site: The full email account of Farquhar's life in advertising in his own words
  
• DEKAT: Hamba kahle, John!

• TheMediaOnline: A tribute to a legend

Wake details added at 9.43am on 31 January 2012.
For More list updated at 9.41am on 1 February 2012.