Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Audacious, BBH, Colenso, Colleagues, Comment, Confidence, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Management, Marketing, New Zealand, Provocative, Relevance, Resonance, Ridiculous, Wieden+Kennedy
I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with advertising awards.
Of course, it’s nice to have them … but for me, it’s always about who you are competing against and who the judges are who are deciding them.
Oh, and whether those who have won before, won with real work or ‘ultra-niche, ultra-limited edition’ one-offs.
Also known as scam.
You generally can tell when that shit happens because they tend to either:
1. Be a one-off from the clients normal approach to work.
2. Be a one-off from the normal output of the agency.
Fortunately, it is less than it used to be, but still more than it should.
That’s why the agencies who do it properly deserve more credit.
To win awards as a byproduct of the work you make rather than it be the focus of the work you make, is a noble cause.
There’s more of them than we often give credit for … and you can generally tell who they are by how long they’ve been able to play at that level.
A few years ago, I wrote about how W+K and BBH were brilliant examples of this.
How they proved the old adage ‘it’s easier to get to the top than to stay there’.
And it’s so true.
Because without wanting to take anything away from anyone who does well, being able to do it consistently is an even greater achievement.
I say this because I think Colenso is one of these places.
For over 50 years, we’ve consistently made work that has been recognised by the best in the world as some of the best in the world.
NZ has tended to do very well in this area … DDB, Saatchi, Special to name a few … but few have done it with the longevity and sustainability of Colenso.
And a big part of that is because of the culture it cultivates.
From our approach to the work we make to the people we hire to make it … at the heart of everything is a deep love and respect for the power of creativity.
Lots of people will say that.
Lots of agencies will say that.
But you find out who means it through the work that they consistently make.
And that is – like all the places who consistently do good stuff – one of the traits that reveal who we really are.
That doesn’t mean we’re the easiest place to work.
Because even though the place is full of good and talented creative people … it’s also a challenging, demanding, opinionated and provocative environment, because ultimately, we have 50+ years of standards and expectations to honour, live up to and try to push further.
As the picture at the top of this page – from 934843049 years ago – shows.
But what’s interesting is how we want those standards and expectations to manifest.
Because it’s not about playing to be accurate, it’s about doing the right thing in the most interesting, original and audacious ways.
Do we always get it right?
Nope.
But we always strive to get it right and that’s why we are consistently awarded at the highest level for work as varied [and effective] as turning beer into an alternative fuel for cars, creating a radio station for dogs, getting Rick and Morty to explain green energy to youth culture and making a radio campaign that doubled as an outdoor campaign that asked New Zealand to make a radio campaign … to name but a very few.
And while this post sounds unbelievably corporate toady … it’s my way of paying homage to my colleagues and, especially, my partners.
Now I could wax lyrical about Si – our CCO – because he’s not just horribly talented, he is possibly the nicest human I’ve ever worked with.
[Well, I say nice, but he has his moments of evil – but even then, he manages to deliver it with a niceness that makes every Disney character look like a bunch of pricks]
But the reality is, you’d expect the leader of Colenso to be brilliant … otherwise why the hell are they here.
Which is why who I really need to acknowledge is our MD – Ange – because she’s the Ringmaster of the whole Colenso circus.
It can’t be easy.
Not just because she has to deal with me – let alone sit next to me – she also has to work with a bunch of people thinking up ridiculous ideas that challenge and confront on every level.
Not just creatively … but in terms of time, simplicity and possibility.
Yet she manages it.
More than that, she would fight for the death to maintain it.
Which is why the thing that is often forgotten about the agencies who consistently make great work is not just the people behind it … but the people who make it possible.
The people who create the conditions for it to thrive.
From the MD’s and finance people to the IT and support staff.
But – and here is the critical thing – it’s more than them just doing their job well, it’s them doing their job through the lens of what the whole company is striving to do.
Because to paraphrase that famous story of the janitor who met President Kennedy …
They’re not working in a vacuum, immune from the needs and ambitions of everyone around them… they’re helping make the most audacious ideas get out the door.
Here’s to all of them. Every last fucking one of them.
With that, the first month of ’24 is done. And I can tell you, I’m as surprised as anyone that I decided to finish it in such an earnest, generous way.
Let’s hope February is less nice. Even I feel sick with it.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, BBH, Comment, Communication Strategy, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Innovation, Insight, Planning, R/GA, Resonance, Technology, Wieden+Kennedy
Today is a great day.
Not just because it’s a day where mischief is actively celebrated, but because throughout history, there have been a number of great things that happened on this day.
For example today is the day Dan Wieden and David Kennedy officially opened W+K.
Yep, the best communication agency in history opened on this day, which means April 1 should be a day we’re all thankful for.
Then there’s the rumour that BBH started on the same day, but having heard about some Portland ad agency starting on the same day, they decided to say theirs started on the 2nd.
Again, BBH are one of the World’s best which is another reason why we should all be thanking the calendar gods for this day.
And remember, when I say ‘best’ … I don’t mean it in the past tense. Both Wieden and BBH’s brilliance is, as I wrote here, that they have been setting standards for over 30 years. Given we’re an industry that seems to celebrate ‘hype today, gone tomorrow’, that is definitely a reason to celebrate April 1st.
But it’s not all ad agency starting … there’s the fact that today is the day I wrote one of my favourite blog posts.
The one about method planning.
The one lots of planners and industry media seemed to think was real, which not only made me very, very happy … it also proved they don’t read all the way through my posts because I admitted it’s fakeness in the very last line.
So let’s acknowledge that April 1 is epic … but the reason to celebrate it today is because it’s the day the brilliant – but evil – Amelia, launches WorldWideWeird, a compendium of where culture, tech and creativity come together in the most beautifully mad ways.
There’s a bunch of reasons for this.
One is because it’s awesome.
Another is because there’s stuff going on in the shadows that deserves a much bigger audience.
But thirdly, it’s because too many agencies still fail to understand technology is a tool of creativity and in the right hands, it allows creativity to be expressed and wielded in ways traditional creativity could only dream of.
This is certainly not meant to discredit the traditional craft of communication – of course not, that can be utterly amazing in the right hands – but the reality is there are incredible possibilities when creativity is allowed to thrive outside the usual boundaries of adland and we want to celebrate those doing it … regardless of the scale, regardless if it fails and regardless if they’re just doing it for themselves.
WorldWideWeird will come out every month, but there’s an instagram that will be updated more regularly with any weird and wonderful that catches our eye … and as Amelia is the editor of it, rather than me, you can be sure it will actually be worth reading.
I’m excited what this could do … because my hope is it won’t be just be a place where people go for dinner party fodder, but a place that both inspires and scares people to get off their arses and start pushing the boundaries of what creativity can be … because frankly, as much as I love a lot of the stuff we as an industry put out there, I get quite annoyed when agencies are credited for innovation when all they’ve really done is slightly adjust the way they make the thing they’ve always made.
Sure, there is an argument that is innovative but for me, innovation is when you do something fundamentally different … try something utterly new … fail while attempting to do something groundbreaking … and I for one would like the industry to be more associated with that than simply reframing tradition with fancy PR.
That said, today is the end of my probation period at R/GA … so depending on how my review goes, World Wide Weird might be my swansong and Amelia’s platform for even greater glory.
You can subscribe to World Wide Weird here.
Our instagram can be found here.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Advertising [Planning] School On The Web, America, Attitude & Aptitude, BBH, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Emotion, Empathy, Insight, Perspective, Planners, Planning, Point Of View, Prejudice, Relevance, Resonance
I know I said there’d be no blog posts till October because I’m busy moving countries [again]. but I thought I could use this ‘empty’ time to set a new APSOTW assignment.
Over the years we have covered all manner of subjects … from validating flag design to pitching new business to developing comms strategy to creating solutions to difficult problems.
But this time we’re going to do something different.
To be honest, it’s less about being evaluated on how you present your thinking and more an exercise on thinking.
Now the thing with thinking – especially thinking where advertising and creativity is concerned – is it rarely can be wrong.
Sure, people can have all manner of opinions on what you think… but it generally can’t be viewed as being fundamentally right or fundamentally wrong.
This is liberating – or should be – which is why I’m hoping as many people as possible will have a go at this assignment.
The actual deliverable is easy.
All you have to do is watch the below clip and tell me– based on what people are saying in the clip – what you think the brand could have said to make their audience care about shaving.
That’s right, all you have to do to take part in this assignment is watch a short film and then send me a single sentence.
That’s it. Easy eh?
OK, I’m not going to deny this is harder than it may first seem.
Part of that is because the clip is about African American men … so to succeed, you have to appreciate the context how African American men live in America.
The other challenge is you need to get your point of view into a single sentence.
That might sound super easy until you remember that single sentence has to also capture the context that makes your point of view so powerful.
[For a clue on how this could be done, click here … even though this example isn’t quite right as it’s based on having lots of additional information, which this challenge does not allow]
The reason for this challenge is 3 fold.
1. It will help your skills in reading subtext.
2. It will help you ability to write a provocative point of view.
3. It will help you make audiences want, or imagine, more from themselves.
As I said at the beginning, there’s probably no wrong answer to this assignment, but to win [and there will be a prize] you’ll need to see something in the conversations within the clip that you feel opens the door to a bigger, more intriguing, more exciting, more resonant point of view for the brand.
This is not about inventing something that isn’t there … this is about seeing something that is, but hidden in plain sight.
While the ultimate deliverable for this assignment is easy, your submission will be judged by some of the toughest, most experienced, most culturally authentic experts in their field, including – if I can convince him to publicly associate with me again – Jason White, the Global CMO of Beats.
So have a go, it will be fun and all you need to do is send me a SINGLE SENTENCE by September 30th to this address.
As I’ve said before, I believe the future of our industry will be built on developing ideas that are resonant with culture rather than trying to be relevant to them and hopefully this will help make that happen.
If you have any questions, please place them in the comments. Thank you.
Filed under: A Bit Of Inspiration, Advertising, Agency Culture, America, Attitude & Aptitude, BBH, Brilliant Marketing Ideas In History, Comment, Communication Strategy, Creative Brief, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Cynic, Din Tai Fung, Experience, Family, Food For Thought, Freddie, Honesty, Innovation, Insight, Management, Marketing, Perspective, Relevance, Research, Resonance, Standards
Many years ago I worked with a Swedish planner called Fredrik Sarnblad.
I loved him.
I loved him for many reasons …
His brain.
His humour.
His creativity.
His friendship.
His unsatisfiable appetite.
We went through all manner of trials and tribulations together … from highs of convincing work to send us to Bali for a week so we could work on the SONY pitch strategy in peace [which, thank god, we won] to lows of being in Thailand with a client who spent all their time trying to undermine us in front of their colleagues. [which we, read: me, didn’t react to very well]
And while we’ve not worked together for over 11 years, Freddie was always more than an ex-colleague, but a real friend … exemplified by the fact that when we saw each other in Boston a few weeks ago – after almost 6 years apart – it was like nothing had changed.
My relationship with Freddie is different to that of many of my other friends.
One of those reasons is I’ve never made a highly inappropriate blog about the way they dress.
The other is that I can have really personal and emotional conversations about life with him.
That’s not to say I can’t with my other mates, it’s just I rarely do … but with Freddie, we always did and do. Talking about subject many people find uncomfortable but are true for all of us.
The reason this can happen is that Freddie is both self aware and in touch with who he is.
He doesn’t shy away from the big conversations because he knows that’s where life resides … the real stuff, not the things we use to distract us from dealing with the real stuff.
One of the things we talked about recently was happiness.
Initially it was in the context of family but it quickly evolved to the job we are paid to do.
Creativity.
We talked about what makes us happy, what frustrates us and what we can do to make things better … more fun … more interesting and exciting. We even talked about how we can work together again.
Well that conversation must have had a real impact on Freddie because weeks later, he quit his job and started his own agency.
To be honest, I think that’s a bit extreme … all he had to do was say he didn’t want to work with me again … but I’m super happy and excited for him.
I’ve written many times why everyone should experience starting their own business, but in Freddie’s case it’s a little different.
Don’t get me wrong, it will be amazing for him – but the real value will come from the companies that use him because he’ll not only make them better, he’ll make them discover what they are capable of being.
So congratulations my dear Freddie, I look forward to one day being one of your shitkickers …
Knock them dead …
You can find out what he’s doing and how he’s doing it here.
Filed under: Advertising, Agency Culture, Attitude & Aptitude, Authenticity, Awards, BBH, Colenso, Comment, Creative Development, Creativity, Culture, Wieden+Kennedy
I have a funny relationship with awards.
Of course they’re wonderful to have, but too many agencies do all they can to abuse the system to get them.
Not just with scam – which are, at least, more easy to spot these days … but in the way they lobby for them.
Over the years I’ve seen some pretty big titles handed out to agencies who, quite frankly, make you wonder how-the-hell they got them.
Of course, that sounds like sour grapes … but awards are only as good as the standards they represent and when they become a symbol of ‘investment’, then they end up undermining the industry, rather than celebrating it.
Now adland is not the only place that does this.
The Oscars has a long reputation of doing this. In fact, this years best movie Oscar winner – Anora – recently admitted spending 3 times the amount on award lobbying as they did on making the actual movie.
As I said, awards are great and it’s always better to get them than not.
But to properly count, they need to be a byproduct of the work you do rather than the focus of the work or it all ends up backfiring on you.
Maybe not immediately, but eventually.
We’ve all seen people/agencies who win big then, seemingly disappear without a trace.
Of course, sometimes that is simply a byproduct of changing circumstances and situations.
Or maybe changes in the tastes and priorities of the industry as a whole.
Or just a shift in career, client or agency leadership.
There are loads of reasons, but sometimes it’s because someone deliberately played the system and then either got found out or couldn’t repeat it when forced to play under ‘real rules’ and ‘real scrutiny’.
It’s why I feel consistency is something the industry needs to respect more.
Of course, it’s exciting when the unexpected and unknown comes out of seemingly nowhere – I bloody love that – but it’s also important we acknowledge those who play to the highest standards for the longest time.
As the old maxim goes, ‘it’s easier to get to the top than to stay there’ … which is why I think Wieden don’t get as much respect as they deserve.
Sure, they get a lot of love … but to be that consistent is an incredible feat.
Something that reinforces more than just their creative credentials … but their leadership, hiring practices and clients too.
Same with Colenso.
We have so many awards, we have got to a point where we don’t even unpack them.
But the reality is Colenso has been around for 50+ years … through countless leadership teams and creative talent … and yet they still play at the top of the game.
Not just in NZ, but globally.
So, while everyone here today probably likes to think it’s all down to us, the reality is we’re just responsible for keeping Colenso’s creative ambitions moving forward … because while we undoubtedly play an important role here, Colenso has been doing it for longer than over 50% of the agency has been alive, which means our success is down to far more than who is there today, but who the place has always been.
The values, beliefs, standards and ways that creates the conditions for us to play.
Stuff set by the founders that has now morphed into something bigger than any one person, process or award.
Stuff that permeates the walls, water and air we’re exposed to each day.
That seeps into everyone and anyone who enters the building.
And while I appreciate that sounds like a load of hippy shit bollocks … the truth of it is demonstrated through the work we deliver and Colenso – like a few others – do it year after year after year.
That doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes.
That doesn’t mean ever take it for granted.
But it does mean we know who we are and what we’re expected to do.
Of course some will question that.
They’ll claim it’s all down to a particular client.
Or a specific relationship or connection.
Or how much is spent on award submissions.
I heard the same thing when I was at Wieden and I bet the same thing was said at places like BBH in their prime.
And while that approach can work, it won’t over decades. To keep doing that, you need to produce the goods … which is why in a world of big talking, I love the agencies who express their words through the work they create.
And the awards they receive.
Because at the end of the day, awards matter.
Not just to serve your ego. But to push us and the industry forward.
Other agencies. Other Clients. Young talent. Old dogs.
They help open eyes and doors to what can be achieved when you push, craft and have a bit of luck.
It’s not easy, but it’s worth it … especially when you’re an agency based on the other side of the planet, like us, because then awards help clients around the World see working with us as an act of smartness rather than stupidity.
But here’s the key thing …
Awards only count if they’re achieved the right way … for the right reasons … for the everyday clients and their needs … and achieved over decades rather than one off days. Not simply because that’s the right thing to do, but because that’s the criteria good clients use to see if you’re full of shit or not. Because where some clients can get hoodwinked by the glitz of occasional fame, the good ones judge you by the consistency of your creativity.
At a time where consistency can be seen as boring, it’s time the industry appreciate just what it takes for someone to keep being great.