Thank you for downloading the Bottom Line podcast.

In this week's program, Evan Davis and his guests debate the value of consumer research and business awards.

Hello and welcome to the bottom line.

I have two advertisers with me today and a retailer, and they think they know a lot about you.

They spend their money finding out how you spend yours.

But do they learn anything useful? We'll swap thoughts on consumer research.

And with the Oscars ceremony on Sunday, we're at the end of the award season. I'll ask whether business awards serve any purpose.

Before all that, let's meet the guests. And we'll go with the retailer first. Ian Cheshire,

chief executive of the Home Improvement Retail Giant, Kingfisher. I think a lot of us will know

B&Q. What else is Kingfisher? Well, B&Q is 40% of the total group, which is about 10 billion,

and we're essentially the same business around the world, home improvement DIY. But the biggest lump of profit actually is in France, with Castorama and Brico Dipo, but we're also in Turkey, Poland, Russia, Spain, China. And so we're outside the US, the biggest chain in the world in Home Improvement. Right. We'll talk maybe a bit about home improvement later on. Meanwhile, though, let me introduce the two advertisers, Silla Snowball, who's Group Chief Executive and Chairman of Abbott Mead Vickers, BBDO, AMV group, and David Jones, who's the Global Chief Executive of Havas Worldwide, which is part of Havas, the large French advertising group. Silla, let's start with you. Just tell us some

of the clients that you're most proud of at AMV. Well, we're the largest UK advertising agency

and we work for 73 clients ranging from people like BT to Sainsbury's, Mars, Diageo,

The Economist and so on. David, you're based in New York, right? I am, yes. Which are the clients you're most proud of? All of them, of course. But in the UK, we're about the second biggest group in the UK, and the things we'd be known for here probably are the Evian dancing roller babies. It's the most downloaded piece of commercial content in history. 170 million people have now downloaded and viewed it.

So it went global, then we do other things like we created the Tesco Club Card.

And probably more recently, we worked with David Cameron, the Conservative Party,

and were the main agency for the last three and a half years for them.

Right.

Well, before we talk about consumer research, because all of your businesses are incredibly

research focused, We might as well

just talk a bit about advertising because here's a question I want to know the answer to.

Where is the centre of advertising in the world? Where is the global hub? Is it London, which I

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