THERE IS GREATNESS IN UNITY.
Before I even start, I would like to credit a young outlier within our business, an intern named Eugene (we now call him Eugenius) for our new Joe Public value, Unity. I would also like to thank one of our young writers for unpacking this value into what I am now also using as the headline to this article. I find both the value and our meaning for it not a strategic solution for our agency, but it may just be a pointer for our industry at large.
Let me expand my point.
A recent report by McKinsey, based on the analysis of 16 years of data drawn from Cannes, showed that 67% of organizations in the top quartile of winning Lions recorded above average revenue growth, and that 70% of these elite players logged record returns for shareholders. In fact, double to that of their lowest scoring competitors. In short, creativity equals effectivity.
And yet, how many board members and business leaders of our industryferociously drives for a better product every day? Somehow, this responsibility has remained squarely on the shoulders of the persons labelled ‘creative’.
To me, it makes sense. Because advertising is one of the few industries where there are two people at the head of the business. The business leader. And the creative leader. And right there, within this construct, lies the first mistake we make. Because we instantly, through language, make a distinction between business and creativity. We put them in opposing camps.
Compound this underlying conditioning of the business leaders of most agenciesby the corporate whip of an offshore holding company who is more concerned with a cracking bottom line than a disruptive headline, and you end with an industry with hardly any focus on its product.
We have done the very same inverse positioning with our two major local awardsshows. In the creative camp, we have the Loeries. Until recently excluding an effectivity quotient, we’ve awarded ideas mostly for their creative caliber. In the other camp, we have the APEX Awards, where the numbers are the number one criteria. And again, by the one being for effectivity and the other for creativity, wedeem creativity ineffective.
To exacerbate our lack of creative focus, we have created a well-used, ironic term for really bad work. We call it ‘hard-working’ work. These are the campaigns that are weighed down by logic, not an ounce of magic in sight. They shout so-called selling propositions through voice and titles from first second to last, ticking every box except the most important one: did the consumer actually take notice? But we deem these campaigns ‘hard-working’ and in doing so, judge creative campaigns as working less.
So, to maintain a creative profile for our businesses, we run side shows that targets national and international award shows. These not only cost our industry billions of Rands in time, but factually, hundreds of millions of Rands off our bottom lines. We call these our ‘pro-active’ campaigns. The work we subsidizeourselves, that are created through the sheer resilience of our creative departments, with little to no input from any other area of our businesses. And our CEO’s are very happy to allow this. Because in doing so they make their agencies top of mind through the massive PR generated by the caliber of these winning ideas, on minuscule budgets.
And we are so caught within the madness that we don’t even see the magnificent truth within the previous line, because we have forgotten what we are all about. So, let me say it again. “The massive PR generated by the caliber of these winning ideas, on minuscule budgets.”
Imagine we unleashed this level of creative thinking on proper budgets.
“Our clients don’t buy proper work!”, we whine, as the victims of our own construction. But has any business leader ever taken the time to put up a fight for creativity? Step into creative leadership and be the Steve Jobs of our industry? Over the past twenty years I have seen creative leaders beating their drums to death advocating the power of creativity. But for as long as we don’t sing off the same song sheet – business leaders, strategic leaders and creative leaders alike – the argument for creativity will continue to fall on deaf ears.
Our lack of a collective passion for our product, replaced by an obsession with systems and process, today sees agencies billing at an hourly rate rather than charging for powerful ideas and thinking. And our business leaders, having forgotten that we are a product industry and not a service industry, miss the most important point of all. So, let me point it out: By charging an hourly rate, we are incentivized to be slower. And the more laborious our process, the more we can justify our fees.
Equally, no-one seems to question the fact that we will charge the very same hourly rate for a strategy that shoots the lights out as we do for the laborious paper pushing and admin that keeps the lights on until all hours of each night.
We charge that same hourly rate for an idea that emotionally connect and could change the course of their brand, as we would for a contact report that states: “Client approved budget of R5000.
Such has been the demise of our collective focus on the product of our industry.
Towards a measured solution.
I remain resolute in my approach to life. That the worst thing that can happen is always the best thing that can happen. And that the dire state of our product as an industry is maybe what is needed to pull the two opposing camps of our industry into one.
At the start of 2016, we started a journey from good to great. A creative pilgrimage that that has culmanated in the majority of our product (our real work) to increase from wallpaper to good. With some signs of greatness starting to show. A systematic plan that has further resulted, without us even noticing, in a revenue growth of 30% over the past thirty weeks. Yes, your bottom line has a knack in doing just that when you shift your focus to your product.
Here are three key learning:
2) There is no success without measure, so face the brutal truth about your actual product. Stop hiding behind your proactive work being the greatness of your agency. We started to measure our real work against a set criteria two years ago. Was it highly disruptive? Was it best work in category? Was it relevant to the brand? Did it get people talking? The result?
On television alone, only 2 out of 27 pieces produced that year were deemed as very good, based on the above set criteria. Incidently, those two pieces (Nedbank Reins and Dial Direct Notebook) were both recognised at the Loerie Awards that year. 4 out of 27 advertisements were okay. And 21 out of 27 were judged and sentenced. As wallpaper. That’s a lot of media money wasted on rubbish communication for an agency that raises money annually in order to help two township schools. It was a wake-up call, one I highly recommend. It motivated a massive change in our approach, which resulted in wallpaper being halved over the next twelve months. We are in our third cycle currently. No bad ad goes out. Period.
3) If there is to be greatness in unity, then this united force has to include our clients. I simply don’t believe that our clients wake up in the morning to do the worst for their brands. I have spoken to some CMOs, and I don’t think we often get to see the pressure that they operate under within the confounds of the corporate world. We can however alleviate this pressure by giving them great work. And if they are not ready for that, then start investing time to prime their minds. I ran a workshop with a client of ours last week. Turns out that they are as good at judging the good against the bad, as we are. And they are hungry for better work, because there’s more and more evidence of it working better than any other work. All we need to do – creative leaders, strategic leaders AND business leaders alike – is to work harder at our collective efforts towards getting them firmly into our camp.
There’s only one way forward from here if we as an industry is to become a proper global player, and that is through unity. Who cares what ‘divided’ brings.
It simply is not an option. United we stand. United we grow.