Why Agencies Must Fight For The Right To Be Creative

Ten years ago, I made the decision to open a new business after watching three bad (TV) ads in a row and having a EUREKA moment:

I needed to rid the world of bad advertising.

But how?

I thought of the great campaigns I'd been involved with in my 20 years experience ("great" meaning very creative and astonishingly successful for the brand and business) and tried to isolate what made them possible.

Brave work? Tick
Brave client? Tick
Strong Relationship? Tick

Okay, good.

But what MADE those things possible?

Brave work needs to be sold. Brave work can only be sold by a team that has taken into account the possible risks the brand and business faces, and has mitigated those risks based on the strong possibility of success. This takes skill and wisdom and strategic ability. Equally, a brave marketer needs to have astute evaluation and feedback skills and the ability to hear their instinct over their fear. A strong relationship is based on trust, based on a true belief that the other person knows what they are doing. Look up the word "trust" and you get words like:

• to rely on
• to depend on
• to believe
• to expect confidently
• to rely on the integrity, strength, ability of...

This trust goes both ways. The agency has to trust the marketer as much as the other way round. You trust each other.

It's not a blind, stupid, trust. It's a trust based on cumulative experience and knowledge and track records and understanding business.

So the concept of Adtherapy was born: to help marketers and agencies work better together to get the best possible work, because it works better.

I'm not going to rehash the argument of why this is so, (if you want more, you can read my previous post here.)

Just quickly, here's a repeat of some of the cogent points:

The Case for Creativity reported on a research study commissioned by the IPA (Institute of Practitioners of Advertising) and Thinkbox in the UK and conducted by acclaimed researcher Peter Field in 2010, entitled "The Link Between Creativity and Effectiveness". Some key findings were:

• Only about 0,001% of advertising wins a creative award, yet among highly effective campaigns (in this case winners of an IPA Effectiveness award), 18% are awarded. This means that there's on "over-index of 128,500" of how likely creative campaigns are to be effective.

• In an analysis of "Excess Share of Voice" (ESOV, which correlates a brand's share of advertising with its share of market, Field found that the "Return On Investment (ROI) for a highly creative campaign is on average 11 times higher". ie... "you need to spend 11 times more on media for an uncreative production" to achieve the same result.

• And, here's the kicker: Creatively awarded campaigns are more certain to achieve a higher rate of effectiveness by a "degree of confidence of 99.9%" as opposed to to non-awarded campaigns'  degree of confidence of 87%.

www.slideshare.net/jameshurman/the-case-for-creativity

"What this implies is that less creative campaigns are not only less efficient, but also less predictable than creatively-awarded ones - something of a departure from the perceived notion that a more creative approach is a less certain one"

James Hurman, Author of the Case for Creativity

In short, creative advertising is much less risky than boring advertising.

But "things have changed in the last decade".

Digital is all pervasive. The word Advertising is a no-no. Content is King. No, Distribution is King. No, CONTEXT is King. There is constant debate about what is King, or Queen or the most important thing in communication today. They're all interesting points and all add to the ongoing evolution in this industry. But to me there is a simple point that's missing.

Luckily, today, two articles addressed this point, albeit in different ways.

Creative is King.

"COO Sheryl Sandberg and her team have been relentlessly experimenting with how to make ads more compelling despite the limitations of small screens. "Creativity’s never been so important," Sandberg says. "When TV ads [first appeared], people thought the creative was important. Then when you moved into online, what really mattered was the targeting. What we’re [now] seeing on the Facebook platform is that it’s both."

Why Facebook is one of the Most Innovative Companies of 2007 

Or this one:

"Why have modern marketers shunned what will make them stand apart and define the new century by becoming cold, calculated, and analytical to the point where creativity has been ostracized? 

In this creative age (in which) we are crossing the chasm and entering, creativity is the main differentiator."

Brand Quarterly: Curing the new Marketing Personality Disorder: Be More Human, Less Analytical

In the article quoted above, by Geoffrey Colon, he imagines the characteristics of people he would hire for his own agency, that would define the "new century marketer". They will probably not surprise you. They are:

1. Intellectually curious
2. Always listening
3. Empathetic, inclusive and ethical
4. Learns, unlearns, relearns

And these wonderful attributes will help solve the problem he raises of marketers becoming more analytical but less interesting. As he says, "machines can do analytics better than any of us will be able to do. But empathy? That’s more difficult for machine learning to mimic."

But wait. 

Agencies HAVE these types of people don't they?

So why are they not allowed to do what they're good at; creating empathetic work that differentiates the brand and connects to consumers' deepest motivations?

That's sadly an easy one to answer. Marketers often under perform in this critical area, that of unlocking the creativity of their agency partners for their own business success. Why?

• They are disconnected from their consumers.
• They lack insight.
• They are prescriptive.
• They issue terrible briefs due to all of the above.
• They are not brave. In fact, they are terrified by the stresses of shareholder delivery, Quarter-itis, and internal politics.
• They lack of evaluation and feedback skills.
• And so they lack confidence.

The effect of all this on agencies?

Complete demoralisation. Many of the best people I know in the industry feel bowed down, crushed, by their lack of "professional freedom". By which I mean, crushed by clients forcing them to do work they don't believe in, based on their considerable skills, experience and expertise.

The upshot? Good talent will leave the industry. And the industry, and its clients, will be the poorer for it. Or the good agencies will end those oppressive client relationships. Those marketers will get the advertising they deserve. And the true giants, true leaders, will continue to nurture creativity, to innovate and break barriers. And soar.

That's why agencies need to fight for the right to be creative. And when I say fight, I don't actually mean fight! I mean persuade, convince, inspire. Great agencies have to produce great creativity to keep their souls from self destructing. It's their lifeblood. But it's a win-win because it turns out that great creativity is also a key driver of brand success. 

Of course, they shouldn't have to fight. But the fight is real and fight they must.

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Adtherapy works with Marketers and Agencies to help them work better together so that they create better work. Contact Gillian Rightford on gillian@adtherapy.co.za, +(27)(0)832659099 or visit our website www.adtherapy.co.za if you want to know more.

Creative Account Management: the real deal

Account Management is a difficult job and a much maligned role. It is the interface between the marketing client (the fulcrum of all of the client's own internal politics) and the ad agency's system that produces the creative work: traffic, creative teams, strategy, production, implementation.

They are also a human punch-bag.

The client gives them a tough time because they place them in very difficult situations, and expect them to do the impossible, often. Some are downright abusive.

Inside the agency, some of the people they work with think that Account Management are "useless". 

Does your dog bite? Image by cjenjasuwan.

"They just do what the client wants".

"They don't know good work".

"They're more like the client than this client is".

"They don't push back hard enough".

I attended an Eagles breakfast many years ago when the agency CD from Mother London spoke. "We don't have account management", he said to thunderous applause.

Here's how Mother London's Stephen Ledger-Lomas explained it recently: 

"We don't have any account managers. The client can call the designer the creative strategist, they can call the chef if they want. That means there's no hiding places - they are the ones that have to explain their ideas to the client directly. there's no pass the parcel".

Personally - I love that philosophy. Cut down on the layers. Keep it responsive and flexible and accountable. Get the key people close to the client's business. 

But funnily enough, many creatives that I speak to actually don't want to take on that role. They want someone to be the 'buffer'.

So, why the disconnect? Why don't they value this person who's taking the punches for he team?

Because great Account Managers are few.

The person who can be the ideal Account Manager is multi-faceted. They are organised, numerate, diplomatic, have good people skills, are problem solvers, can project manage, are persuasive, are manipulative (in that they have to sometimes get stuff out of people that is almost humanly impossible), are motivational, are good marketers, understand media in all its facets, understand production, understand marketing and consumer behaviour, are strategic, and are creative. They aren't left brained or right brained, they are 'whole brained'.

And that's rare.

Some things have happened to the Account Management role that have worsened their lot. Not just here - globally. 

Ticking boxes isn't everything. Image by Danilo Rizutti

I once asked a colleague from Lowe in London what he thought the problem with Account Management was. He said "People have to stop promoting secretaries". Look, some of my best friends were secretaries, and sometimes that was their only way into the ad business, and they have done well. But often, secretaries get promoted into Account Management because of their organizational skills. Project management. Getting things done. Great. Tick. We need that. 

But that's not all we need.

The vast right brained chunk of what makes a great Account Manager is missing. Enter Strategists.

The strategists became the ones to fill in the gaps between what the project-manager-account-manager could and couldn't do. And great strategists are worth their weight in beluga caviar. But Account Management should not completely outsource this role. As I always say: "strategy is not a person". (As in, "let's call strategy"). It's a way of thinking, and Account Management has to lead, to direct, and contribute to this process, based on their intimate knowledge of the client and the client's business, to which strategists are only exposed every now and then.

So the Account Management role became just a glorious, glorified master of ceremony, bringing in the 'experts' to present to clients, wrapping things up at the end of the meeting and managing the project flow and deliverables.

Because of this, they became detached from the creative work - the real product that they are part of producing. They don't "speak creative". They don't consume great work; they don't read or watch what the creatives are reading or watching. If more Account Managers attended events like the Eagles Breakfast, perhaps there wouldn't be such a divide. The creative output becomes something to meet a deadline or a budget.

Inspire and lead - not manage. Image by KromKrathog

Another part of the problem is in the name. Account Management. It's boring. It says you manage an account. But you don't. You grow it. You inspire it. You inspire those who work on it. You live and breathe the success of it. The term 'Client Service' is even worse, as it implies that you simply service the client, do their bidding. Some clients want, and even demand this.  But, they will never get the best work from their creative resource as a result. 


(Read my analogy of Michael Jackson and his Doctor here to see why a client-agency relationship in which there's no respect for each other's skill-sets is doomed).

Some agencies have experimented with other titles. 'Brand Leader'. 'Communications Director'. And of course the creative eco-system, from which the account manager is banished through their own lack of organic participation, calls them names like 'Client Serpents', 'Client Surplus" or 'Client Serviettes'.

And then, equally polarising, are the terms "Creative Department", and "Creatives". Which means, by inference that other people in the agency are not creative. Which is of course what they should be to work in this business.

Part of the Account Management job is project management, part is marketing, part is strategic, part is creative and part is business, making sure that while the client's business is growing, so is the agency's.

At the end of the day a great Account Manager should live and die by great creative. As Colwyn Elder, head of strategy for Y&R said to me the other day: "it's rugby, not relay". It's as much your work if you're the Account Manager as it is the creative team's. But because the emphasis is on project management, and on handing over the relay baton, so the silos develop and become entrenched. Work, or client relationships get defined in terms like "theirs" or "your".

"My Client doesn't like your work" - accman to creative. Or "Tell creative that there are some changes to their work" - accman to traffic.

 The separateness works both ways: 

"Your client wouldn't know a good idea if it leapt from behind a bush" - creative to accman.

It's not yours, or theirs, or mine. It's ours.

In a fascinating article, Why Conformists are Key to Successful Innovation  in the Harvard Business Review, it shows the impact - good and bad - of too many "conformists" on a team of creative individuals. They are indeed necessary (and helpful) for innovation to be implemented, but they can also be idea killers.

Conformists tend to be the people who know how to get along with others. They know how the system works and they adhere to the rules. They have an eye for which ideas will be accepted by others. 

As you build your team, be careful not to overdo it on detail people, who tend to be risk-averse and uncomfortable with ambiguity. They can squelch nascent ideas. You don’t want the detail people forming a bloc. 

You might get lucky and find creative people who are also conformists. Those people do exist. In our study of 468 people, we found that 7% scored high on two of the three cognitive styles. You might even find creative people who are conformists and detail-oriented. But don’t hold your breath: Just 3% of the people we studied scored high on all three styles. 

And don’t overlook the importance of the people who are “none of the above.” I believe that people who don’t score high on any of the three styles tend to be the ones who form bridges among the creatives, the conformists, and the detail-oriented people. They foster understanding among the different types.

What to do?

An account manager that 'gets it'.
Image by KromKrathog

Seek those rare creatures who are 'whole brained'. Choose Account Managers who are strategically smart and creative and give them project management support. Do this rather than employ project managers, give them strategic support and expect them to go to war for great work. Project managers are always going to be task driven. This is a vitally important skill in an organisation in which the output is time sensitive and money sensitive. But it's not the essence of Account Management. Pure project managers are never going to grow client relationships and contribute to the creative dynamism that inspires brilliance from agencies. Not because they don't want to, they just aren't wired that way.

Find yourself the real deal. The ones that do want to. The ones that consider Creative Account Manager to be the ultimate title.



Adtherapy runs Account Management Workshop and Mentorship programmes for agencies that focus on building leadership capacity in the three most essential areas: Strategic thinking, Creative and Business. Contact Gillian if you need more info on gillian@adtherapy.co.za

All images courtesy www.freedigitalimages.net

Can you be happy, working in advertising?

Fast Company recently ran an article about the Happiest Companies in America, the result of research conducted by a recruitment company, Career Bliss.

The closest thing I can think of in SA, is the "Best Companies to work for" survey run by Deloitte. We also have something called "Best Employers".

But the notion of happiness, versus 'best employer', presents a far more holistic view.

The article lists the key factors of happiness at work as:

"... work-life balance, one’s relationship with his/her boss and co-workers, work environment, job resources, compensation, growth opportunities, company culture, company reputation, daily tasks, and job control over work performed on a daily basis".

So of course it got me thinking what the Happiness Index might be in your average ad agency. On the winners list of Best Companies to Work For and Best Employers for 2012, there is not a single ad agency. In any category. Not even a merit mention. So is it possible that people in advertising don't like where they work? Or are just generally unhappy? I spoke to Deloitte and in fact it's more likely that the agencies just don't want to pay the steep entry fee (R36,000 for company under 500 people).

But are agencies happy places to work?

In order to unpack the above-mentioned key factors in relation to the average ad agency, I thought it might be helpful to look at some pro's and con's (my own list - feel free to disagree vehemently or add yours). (And note I said 'average'. I'm sure there are many that would look quite different, and happy hallelujah to you, because then you're doing something right).

Pro's:

• Ad agencies are generally gorgeous to look at. (Tick for Work environment). There is a good chance there is a room with fake grass, you will probably have a bar fridge in your office and  a couch, there may be a statue of a cow somewhere, there'll be cool art on the walls, and a bar that takes up the whole top floor with a pool table, free beer and a view of the sunset.
• Ad agencies have great parties.
• If you work in an ad agency you get to go to cool events and conferences and indabas.
• It's a creative space in a corporate world - that's kind of fun.
• You work with amazingly interesting and sometimes strange people.
• You get under the skin of many different product categories, and work with some of the best brands in the world.
• You get to understand consumers and what rocks their world on a very much deeper level than the average Joe.
• You can wear what you like (except if you're in Account Management).
• It's a young industry, so you can move up the ladder, quickly, if you're good. (Yes to growth opportunities).
• There is very little to beat the thrill of seeing great work being produced and exposed to the world. Sometimes you win an award to, which is also good.
• There is also almost nothing to top the feeling of your work delivering astounding business results for your client.

Con's:

• Working in an ad agency is generally a high stress job: unreasonable lead-times, inexperienced clients (and agency staff), mistakes and high stakes.
• You will work more hours in a day than you knew there were hours in a day. Saturday's and Sundays are not always considered weekend days. (So a 'not so much' for work-life balance. There often is none. Especially if you also travel. That's added on to, not part of, the very long days).
• There is a good chance that you will experience massive rejection and critical self-doubt several times a day.
• Your relationship with superiors is quite possibly a bit tricky - the good ones are intolerant of mediocrity and push for the best. It's not always easy to do that in a nice way. Read the Steve Jobs book. (Strike: relationship with superiors. Not always bad, but sometimes kind of.)
• Company culture is a strange one: on the one hand, the culture will be about excellence, but also about having fun and doing good. So it will be a kind of bi-polar culture - you will love some of it (partnering with the orphanage), and you will hate some of it (win at all costs).
• Company reputation: if you're with a good agency - sure you feel fantastic. It's an ego boost. If you work for an under-the-radar one, you suffer the ignominy of people saying "Who?", when you mention where you work. Either way, the reputation is skin-deep: wait until the agency loses their biggest client and you're on the street.
• Agencies are always understaffed, or at least always think they are. They always feel if they had just one more team, just one more assistant AE, just one more junior strategist (to do the leg work), just one more art buyer... then time will miraculously materialise and the work-life balance will fall into place and everyone will live happily ever after, Except they won't. Because chances are the staff ratio is already too high, and the reason time is sucked up is because the systems and skills don't help them work more efficiently. And those new bodies would not be even noticed in a week. They would be sucked under too. (Big fat no to job resources).
• Compensation? Hold on. Let me just stop laughing because it's hard to type and cry with laughter at the same time. Some people in ad agencies earn a lot. Clients earn more. You only earn a lot if you are very, very good and probably own the company. If you had to work out what you earn, and what you do for that money, it would be a very poor trade-off. And of course Clients are squeezing fees, so the agency has less money, so that 13th cheque and increase are pretty unlikely. Some agencies do well and pay bonuses and that's great. Compare them to the average corporate salaried employee's bonus and you would weep into your designer stubble.
• And then of course the daily tasks factor. Depends what you do, but a lot of every day is about meetings about meetings. It's about admin and dotting the i's and crossing the t's and following up what people said they would do but most likely haven't. Or if you're on the creative side, your daily task may be to work on 'revert 56' for an ad that you stopped caring about on 'revert 8'. But on a good day, your daily task might take you to a photo shoot, or on a consumer immersion for a beer company; it might ask you to be creative and innovative and you might have a great meeting and get to do some really break through work. The ratio of great days like that to drag-yourself-through-mud days, is probably 6:94 (that's great = 6%; to drudge = 94%).
• And here's the real douzy: "job control over work performed on a daily basis". There is very little control over your own work. Unless you define control as 'being pecked to death by a flock of geese'. Everyone has an opinion, and your job is to listen to them all. Of course it should also be your job (because of your expertise) to thank them politely for their opinion, but explain why the option proposed by you is in fact better. Sometimes that works; a lot of times it doesn't.

The article gives us the 5 things they think that companies can do to be happier:

• Happy employees don’t stay in one role for too long. Movement and the perception of improvement create satisfaction. Status quo, on the other hand, creates burnout.
• There is a strong correlation between happiness and meaning; having a meaningful impact on the world around you is actually a better predictor of happiness than many other things you think will make you happy.
• A workplace is far likelier to be a happy place when policies are in place to ensure that people regularly get acknowledgement and praise for a job well done.
• Recognize that employees are people first, workers second, and create policies that focus on their well-being as individuals.
• Emphasize work/life integration, not necessarily "balance."

The article talks about Pfizer, one of the winners, and quotes:

"Staff achieves a balance between improvement, growth, and maintenance. Work burnout isn’t about too many hours spent on the job, it's about feelings that come from improvement, or lack thereof." It continues: "McClatchy believes a happy workplace isn’t necessarily free of conflict, either. At Pfizer, he says, management addresses conflict constructively.

Okay, so now let's add to our Con's list these factors:

• The average creative agency has inter-department disdain that would melt the skin off the less hardened. Account Managers roll their eyes and sigh when talking about the creative colleagues. Creatives sneer and sigh and pull paper clips apart when talking about their Account Management colleagues. Strategy and Production bemoan the skills of everybody in the building, but especially Account Management; Traffic would sell the whole Account Management department to the first bidder and so it goes. During one of my Account Management workshops with an agency, someone remarked on the language they used to talk about each other. He was right. Suit is not a compliment.
• Conflict is common in an agency. It's generally not managed well. Conflict can range from a difference of opinion, to the fury that you think you are entitled to one. Not everyone is equal in this space. And not everyone can handle it. 
• The work that the client in many instances wants is often radically different from what the agency wants to produce. In many instances, the client wins, and the agency produces work that pays the bills but has an enormous (downwards) impact on: resources, culture, reputation, work-life balance, client-agency relationships, intra-company relationships and so on.
• Advertising is trying to sell stuff. Let's be real. Apart from the pro-bono stuff, not a lot of it has a real Kumbaya feeling to it. The meaningful-ness quotient of the average ad is about zip.
• Most agencies are a bit slack about policies and reviews, and career growth paths and those important but not urgent things.

In spite of all this, advertising gets into your blood and under your skin. And while there may be frustrations in most agencies, you will still find a good bunch of eternal optimists who love what they do so much they put up with the niggles, consoled by their dream of having their own agency where things would be so different.


What can agencies do to be happier?

• Hire fewer, better skilled people and pay them more.
• Have fewer clients and more clients that partner with you on the work that you know works and will be inspired doing.
• Draw very clear and non-negotiable boundaries for down-time. Constantly exhausted creative people are uncreative people.
• Have fewer meetings with fewer people in them. Meetings are the Dracula of this business if time is blood.
• Reward people regularly and in ways that matter. A great book to read for every Agency MD is Daniel Pink's book on motivation called "Drive". Here's a quote from a great summary if you haven't got time to read the whole book (but you should).

"For any job that requires thought, creativity or problem-solving, Pink .. recommends.. three elements:
Autonomy: the desire to direct our own lives;
Mastery: the urge to make progress and get better at something that matters;
Purpose: the yearning to do what we do in service of something larger than ourselves."

• Encourage them to master their skills.
• Listen and encourage a culture of listening to each other, to clients. Really listening (the Steven Covey way).
• Make sure the relationships that govern your agency's day, are good and healthy and professional and constructive and inspiring.
• Give people some freedom to work how and where they want to. Why do we all have to go to a building to work everyday? Liberate them.
• Let them work on things that have real meaning (to them) for a percentage of their time. Choose a charity, or invent something - let them form task teams that try and make the world a better place, and get rewarded for it. (Lots of info on this in Drive).
• And look after the wellness and whole-ness of your people. Send them on holiday. Send them home. Let them see their children before bedtime. Mostly: let your agency be an environment where your people are seen and heard.

“The annual review is dead. Happiness is a daily journey.”

Delivering Happiness at Work’s CEO James Key Lim