Murray Walker – Commentator and Ad-man

By profession I may be a marketer but at heart I am a motorsport loving petrolhead and saddened to hear about the death of Murray Walker – to me he was the voice of motorsport.

But I have to relate a tale from his autobiography to show that he was more than just a commentator. His day job was advertising and he worked on many accounts, sometimes credited with the slogan “A Mars a day helps you work, rest and play” which wasn’t his although he worked at the agency at the time. The story I love, however, relates to Trill budgie seed – at the time they had over 90% market share but wanted to grow, they couldn’t buy their competitors so the only way to sell more was to find a way to increase the population of budgies so he used the idea of promoting the belief that “an only budgie is a lonely budgie” – encouraging people to get a second bird and therefore need twice as much seed. If you’ve got 90% market share it doesn’t matter if your competitor benefits from your promotion as long as you maintain share!

RIP Murray Walker