OBITUARY: Nigel Twidale — quintessential adman
Last week, SA’s advertising industry lost one of its gentlemen. In a ruthless world of programmatic automated advertising, Nigel Twidale was an anachronism for a gentler, better time
To meet the quintessential adman Nigel Twidale, who died last week, was to be cast back to a more genteel and forgiving time, where success hinged on kindness, manners, passion and personal relationships.Twidale was a colossus of business advertising, having headed the sales department at what was Times Media — owner of the FM, Business Day and Sunday Times — during the 1980s, before venturing out on his own to form Media Action. To the last, he remained a formidable pillar of the FM and Investors Monthly.Last week, finally, his heart — which many joked was always too large for an increasingly cutthroat and ruthless industry anyway — gave out.It was hard not to see it as signifying something more. Over the years, even as the media industry shrivelled and advertising budgets became correspondingly anaemic, Twidale never changed.It made him an anachronism: in a world where marketers wouldn’t know, or care to know, the names of everyone in a meeting, Twidale would shake every hand. Kin...
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