Chief Creative Officer
Wing

Renata Florio is breaking multiple molds: the first being a departure from the Brazilian advertising industry for America and the second, joining U.S. Hispanic shop Wing as a its first female CCO. Renata is a successful Brazilian creative superstar, having won not one, but eight Gold Lions, as well as One Show awards over her 20-year career that has spanned top shops such as AlmapBBDO, F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, DM9DDB, Publicis and Peralta StrawberryFrog. Her experience crosses categories from fast food, beverage and financial services to packaged goods, automotive and household appliances, with brands like Unilever, Nestle, General Motors, Volkswagen, Toyota, Citibank and Whirlpool. Her next step is to conquer the U.S. market, bringing a unique and informed Latin American and Brazilian point of view and global experience. After spending some time chatting with her, just one month after she arrived in the U.S., the best thing about Renata is her friendly, down-to-earth joie de vivre. She is humble, appreciating the opportunities that she has earned, yet acknowledging that without dedicated hard work on her part and the part of her new team at Wing, the experience will be for nothing.

IHAVEANIDEA:  Since you’ve very recently relocated to New York to lead the creative team at Wing, what motivated you to leave Brazil?

Renata: There are three very important things. The first one is the challenge of working with the U.S.-Hispanic market. I’ve been working in this business for twenty years and I’ve been through many challenges, but this mixing of cultural and economical facts in the new America attracted my attention. It feels like I’m a part of the new period of history. It’s not only about advertising itself, but also about how the world is changing and how we are all becoming more global, even if we are fond of the good old Madison Ave. times.  The Grey Group was beckoning, so it’s not only being a part of the new U.S. age, but it’s being also part of a bigger structure.

The second thing is that Brazil has very good advertising products, but I don’t think we are always as exposed to what’s going on in the business around the world. It feels like I’m getting more knowledge and in touch with more things in the industry here in New York than I would have if I had stayed in Brazil.
The third reason is that I’ve worked a lot with Latin America and this is a chance to mix the culture again. So it’s about culture, including the culture of the business, and I am going to be able to bring my experience as a Brazilian and Latin American and bring something fresh to the business.

It’s about culture, including the culture of the business, and I am going to be able to bring my experience as a Brazilian and Latin American and bring something fresh to the business.

IHAVEANIDEA: What lured you into the business in the first place?

Renata: Well, I used to be a language teacher, a Portuguese teacher.  I used to teach in high school and then I started teaching writing for advertising agencies and also for advertising universities. I got very interested in the subject myself so I started studying how it would work. Since it was so new and interesting to me, I started as an intern although I was already 25 years old.  I kept two jobs, teaching some days and working part-time as a copywriter. Eventually I just gave up teaching and kept on the route of being a copywriter.

IHAVEANIDEA: Can you tell me some highlights of your experience in Brazil?

Renata: I started my career at AlmapBBDO and also worked for F/Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi in Sao Paolo. In fact, I usually say that though I didn’t study advertising, I graduated in the advertising business through my experience at Saatchi & Saatchi, which is one of the most creative agencies in Brazil and in the world. I learned a lot there. I was Head of Creative for Latin America and Brazil at DM9DDB and had a great experience there, as well. I was at Peralta StrawberryFrog before I came to Wing, where they have this very interesting cultural movement perspective and I learned a lot there about the way you think. Instead of thinking of advertising as a single idea, they create a cultural movement. It’s more about the people and less about the product, more about what they expect and want to do with your brand than about the brand. Of course for this cultural movement and all of this challenging positioning, it requires a strong client and a strong brand.  You cannot do that with a product that won’t work.

IHAVEANIDEA: What is your number one goal for this transition and what you want to bring to Wing?

Renata: It’s definitely to improve the creative work, to provide clients and the market with better creative work. At the moment, the very first goal is to sit down, take a look at the work, see how we can make it better, then see how we can make it much better.  I think it’s very exciting (laughs).

At the moment, the very first goal is to sit down, take a look at the work, see how we can make it better, then see how we can make it much better.

IHAVEANIDEA: You’ve won many, many, many awards throughout your career. Is that something that you also intend to bring to Wing?

Renata: Yes, yes. Brazil has a good culture of winning awards and I think this is very important and I do care about it. Whereas people say awards are not important, I think that they are. It is about self-esteem and saying that you’re proud of the work you do. It’s nice when you’re recognized and we need people to evaluate our work, because otherwise—well, we are already a very self-centered, egomaniac culture—so if you don’t have someone else to weigh in, you’re going to go crazy. You’re going to believe you’re either the very best one, or the worst and you’ll feel depressed. Of course people sometimes tend to overvalue these prizes, but I think that if you do it in the right dose it’s very good for your self-esteem and for the agency’s self-esteem.

What am I bringing from an award culture? I know that I have to work hard, concentrate and build those relationships. Of course I’ll always have the team to help me, and I’ve already met people on my team that are very talented and I can just boost them and their great ideas, because they have many of them. I’m not promising anything because it’s very hard, but it’s a goal, it’s a serious goal, its part of our business plan to at least be there with very good work worth judging.

IHAVEANIDEA: What inspires you and how do you let that trickle down and inspire the creative teams that you’re leading?

Renata: The inspiration for me is that there’s always another chance, or a good chance, to get a good idea.  So every brief, every job, is a door that opens to a possible chance that maybe this is the one you’ve been waiting for.  And I tell the team the same thing: if you are in this business, it’s because you like creative work. It’s always about that, a chance to be creative, a chance to do something new and fresh.  It’s not complicated.

The inspiration for me is that there’s always another chance, or a good chance, to get a good idea.  So every brief, every job, is a door that opens to a possible chance that maybe this is the one you’ve been waiting for.

IHAVEANIDEA: What is the most rewarding part of your job?

Renata: When you see people talking about your work and they have nothing to do with advertising. When you’re in the subway and you overhear a teenager saying to another teenager, “Have you seen that thing on Facebook that they’re doing right now?” Or even if your kids come to you and say “Did you do that?”

IHAVEANIDEA: What is your take on the U.S. Hispanic market?

Renata: So far I’ve been getting acquainted with the target, but my research to date has brought me to the conclusion that it’s much like the market in Brazil that we call “Class C.” In Brazil, the “Class C” has grown hugely because of our extraordinary economical development. As advertisers, we had to learn how to talk to people who were not used to having money, but all of a sudden thanks to God or economic policies, they are more able to spend.

I see the Hispanic market here more or less like that. The Hispanic population is now moving in to the second or third generation of people living in the U.S. Their ancestors may have been striving to buy food and pay rent, but now they are going to school, buying cars, televisions and apartments. They’re spending money but they want to be connected with something that makes sense to them. They don’t want to be addressed as “normal American people.” They want to be seen as part of the American culture and they want to belong because they’ve done it, their parents and grandparents have strived for that, but it’s different. I think it will take more time and it requires more research and knowledge to talk to them properly, but to me it’s pretty much about being honest.

IHAVEANIDEA: What will you miss most about Brazil?  And what are you most excited about experiencing in the U.S.?

Renata: I’m not missing anything so far because now with the global ability to connect with people wherever they are. I’ve been talking to my old colleagues and checking the advertising sites of Brazil, so I haven’t had time to miss anything. The obvious thing that most excites me about New York?  Well wow, it’s New York, New York!  I still work as much as I used to work in Brazil, I have as many responsibilities as I used to have, but then when I open the office door it’s New York outside! My God, there is so much to learn, so much to do, all of the industries are here. It’s really overwhelming, it’s great.

IHAVEANIDEA: What is the one thing in the world that you cannot live without?

Renata: My family. I’ve proved it, I have tried. I lived here for 40 days before my family joined me here. I can tell you that if they didn’t join me, although there are all of these beautiful things and all of this excitement, I wouldn’t be as happy as I am. So they’re the ones.

IHAVEANIDEA: They’re your core.

Renata: Yes (laughs).

Brianna Graves
Operations Manager, Writer
IHAVEANIDEA

David&Goliath

Shuffling Party Rock hamsters? Yeah, Colin Jeffery is behind that. But both Colin and David&Goliath, where he is Executive Creative Director and Managing Partner, are much bigger than just the hamsters. Bigger than the cultural movement they instigated, and the turbo-jet speed at which they’ve propelled Kia into the forefront of the car market. Colin Jeffery is a worldly creative leader. His journey began in his native South Africa, where he learned from the some of the greats at TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris and helped build King James in Cape Town. Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore was next before heading for the States. Colin produced a long list of award-winning work for Volkswagen at Arnold Boston, and then began nurturing brave creatives and even braver work at David&Goliath. He has done more cool things than can fit in one interview, including writing The Check Up, a film that premiered at Sundance and was selected for the LA Film Festival, and he has also won the full gamut of accolades, including Cannes Lions, D&AD, Clios, One Show and Effies, to name a few.  He was cranking on 2012 Super Bowl work when IHAVEANIDEA caught up with him, and we’re thankful he paused to share some of his time and bring you some of his wisdom.

IHAVEANIDEA: Tell me about growing up in South Africa and Cape Town. It’s such an inspiring, creative place.

Colin: Yeah, absolutely, I think it is inspiring. South Africa is a giant mixing pot of color, culture, art, music and beliefs. While it has an incredibly complicated history, there’s something very simple, optimistic and soulful about it. Growing up I spent a lot of time outdoors, in the mountains, on boats and in the bush, it’s hard to describe, just vast and beautiful, really. I’ve always had a love and respect for the local art and music scene. As a student I was fascinated by township art and music, that’s truly inspired creativity. Sam Nhlengethwa is still my favorite artist; we have some of his work hanging in our home here in LA.

As a young kid I was fascinated by brands and marketing, largely due to the fact that we had limited exposure to international brands and the latest “cool” products. I still remember the first ad that really resonated with me; it was a Nike print ad that must have been in an overseas publication. It was just a young boy sitting on a basketball looking into camera, and underneath it simply read, “Someday.” It was such a powerful message, it made we want to be a famous athlete, wear Nike and be creative. Not sure who produced it, but “thank you.” I actually tore it out of the magazine and put it in one of my boxes of childhood memorabilia, and I still have it somewhere in my folk’s house in South Africa.

Even though art was something that I loved, I wasn’t entirely sure how to make a career out of it. Art Direction and Graphic design were not career choices that our teachers discussed at high school. Creative was still this kind of weird uncharted territory. Luckily for me, Brian Searle-Tripp and Allan Raaff (South African ad industry veterans and all-round great guys) had recently opened the Red and Yellow School and the program focused purely on advertising creative. I signed up and got to work.

IHAVEANIDEA: How did that go?

Colin: I struggled for the first year trying to get my head around concepts and problem solving. After the first year, Brian, called me in and said “I’m not sure if advertising is for you.” That kind of pissed me off and motivated me at the same time. So I spent the next year basically working day and night trying to improve my skills. At the end of my second year I actually won the top student award in South Africa at the Loeries (the South African advertising awards). At the time, there was only one student award, the student gold for best campaign in the country.

IHAVEANIDEA: What were some highlights of those early years in the industry in South Africa?

Colin: Well, that challenge taught me a lot, it pushed me to dig deeper and try harder, and it allowed me to get into TBWA\Hunt\Lascaris in Johannesburg. I packed up my old Toyota Corolla and headed across the country armed with a bag of clothes and my Power Mac 5200. Hunts is a legendary shop, I was lucky enough to work with some of the greats like John Hunt and Tony Granger, who were leading the charge creatively. That place is built on pure passion and takes craft very seriously. It was exciting to be a part of the magic. I worked around the clock on any brief I could get my hands on, just trying to get noticed and make it happen. I touched a wide range of clients including BMW, Land Rover, Nando’s Chicken, Mica Hardware and South African Airways.

Then I joined King James in Cape Town, a new creative shop at the time. Alistair King was really focused on building something special. I’ve always liked the idea of being part of building something, much like we’re doing at David&Goliath. So I jumped in and spent the next 2 years there. I got a lot of great work out of it, and it’s been wonderful watching them expand. They’ve become a major player back home.

Even though art was something that I loved, I wasn’t entirely sure how to make a career out of it.

IHAVEANIDEA: And from South Africa, where did you go?

Colin: Saatchi & Saatchi Singapore. My partner and I got an offer to go across as a senior team. Saatchi Singapore was one of the top creative shops, so it was an opportunity we couldn’t pass up. I was ready for an adventure and new challenges. I worked on Lexus, Toyota, Singapore Navy, Burger King and Hewlett Packard. I produced a bunch of award-winning work and managed a number of significant car campaigns in various countries across Asia. I was also head of art on the Hewlett Packard account, helping oversee creative from 16 countries in the region. That was my first taste of what it’s like to manage pieces of business, which I liked and I wanted more of.

IHAVEANIDEA: But the U.S. came calling?

Colin: I got a call from Arnold in Boston to come over and help manage the VW account in America. I was a big fan of the “Drivers Wanted” campaign and jumped at the opportunity to be a part of it. The VW group at Arnold was very close-knit, everybody understood the voice and personality of the brand. There was this humanity and soul at the heart of it that resulted in consistently great work. It really felt like we were build a movement rather than a brand or campaign. Those days were definitely a career highlight.

I spent the next year basically working day and night trying to improve my skills. At the end of my second year I actually won the top student award in South Africa at the Loeries.

IHAVEANIDEA: What are you most proud of from that time?

Colin: The launch of the new Passat in 2006. We created the “Feature Films” campaign. It was hugely ambitious and ended up being one of the most awarded campaigns in the world at the time. We basically developed 120 films for the web each one inspired by a specific car feature, and it all lived on one big site. We worked with production companies, directors, designers and VFX artists from all over the world, US, Europe, Asia and South America. No one had ever done anything remotely like this and it was kind of a nightmare. (laughs) A lot of it was discovery, trying new things, working with eight or nine different production companies all at the same time, maybe more. That was just the web component, we also created a bunch of TV spots, print and outdoor that made up the campaign.

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IHAVEANIDEA:  What inspired the leap from Boston to the West Coast?

Colin: At that point in my career I’d worked in large and small agencies around the world. There were pros and cons to both structures, and some markets made it easier to produce great work. For the most part big shops have big clients with healthy budgets, but also complicated approval processes and plenty of politics. Smaller shops, on the other hand, typically have smaller clients with limited budgets, but are able to move quicker and are more inclined to do breakthrough work.

I was in search of a creative shop that was the perfect blend of both.

I flew to LA and met with David Angelo. We sat down and talked about David&Goliath and where he wanted to take it. It very quickly occurred to me that this was what I’d been looking for; an independent agency with a great creative track record, a solid client list, but plenty of room for growth. David is a creative himself and passionate about producing innovative work. He was focused on building a different kind of shop, so I decided I would help him do it.

It very quickly occurred to me that this was what I’d been looking for; an independent agency with a great creative track record, a solid client list, but plenty of room for growth.

IHAVEANIDEA: So you decided to be Brave. Tell me about this philosophy.

Colin: Brave is our company mantra. It comes out of our name David&Goliath, but also our work ethic and approach to creativity. We are a challenger brand with challenger clients. We also have ambitious goals. Brave is a constant reminder to do things differently, to step out of our comfort zone, to innovate and evolve. It requires us to work a little harder, be a little smarter, quicker, and more ambitious than the big guys. It’s not some PR bullshit we threw out once and forgot about. It’s at the heart of our company and used on a daily basis.

IHAVEANIDEA: Do you think that inspires your staff in a unique way, because they can subscribe to Brave inside and the outside of the agency?

Colin: Absolutely, it was designed to be inspirational. “Brave” is a simple filter for us, it requires everyone to be open minded and willing to push the boundaries. We even have a “Wall of Goliaths,” which is an entire wall covered in framed images of our staff’s personal fears. Having them hang in the hallway is a constant reminder to be Brave.

IHAVEANIDEA: Do your junior teams have a chance to attack the bigger, braver work?

Colin: Awesome question. One of our junior art directors just sold a 60-second Super Bowl commercial. It’s his first commercial ever. I’m pretty sure that’s never happened in the history of the Super Bowl. Most people spend their career hoping to get a crack at the big time, and this kid nailed it straight out of school.

IHAVEANIDEA: What work are you most proud of at David&Goliath?

Colin: A few things come to mind. Firstly I’m really proud of the work we’ve done on the David&Goliath brand. Very few agencies seem to take the time to work on their own brand. Creating a distinct look, voice and clear goals for the agency has help us be more successful. This year we were named Ad Age “Small Agency of the Year,” won a bunch of new business including Carl’s Jr. and the California State Lottery, won Nielson “Automotive Ad of the Year” for the second year in a row, a Gold Effie, as well as a bunch of creative awards. Momentum is a good thing.

Here are a few of my favorite recent creative pieces.

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IHAVEANIDEA: What is the one thing you are not brave enough to live without?

Colin: On a serious note, it’s my family. My wife and my kids. They give me balance. I love working, I love creativity and I find it almost impossible to step away.  Without them I think I’d run myself into the ground. They remind me that there’s more to life than just working. To continually be creative, you need to get out there, enjoy the world, be inspired and see stuff.

On a lighter note, I really miss is biltong, South African dried meat. Kind of like jerky, but way better.

IHAVEANIDEA: I’ve had biltong, so I can say that I understand that one.

Brianna Graves
Operations Manager, Writer
IHAVEANIDEA

Venables Bell & Partners

Never underestimate the potential of the up-and-comer answering the telephones at a small agency in New York City. Who knows, they may go on to become a talented copywriter or to co-lead the creative department at Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. They might even have the entrepreneurial drive to launch their own agency in San Francisco, one that is motivated by the intention to do right by its staff and its clients. Clients like Microsoft and Audi, Intel and Barclays, HBO and PG&E. They might also find themselves recognized ten years later by their peers at the Greater San Francisco Ad Club with the honor of “Ad Person of the Year.”

They might be Paul Venables. IHAVEANIDEA caught up with Paul just after Venables Bell & Partners celebrated its tenth anniversary, to learn more about the highlights and challenges of the past ten years and the top priority for the next ten.

IHAVEANIDEA: What were the early motivations for you to jump into this business and how did those early days shape your career?

Paul: Well, it’s funny. I was at the University of Connecticut in the School of Business program and I wasn’t really inspired. I was taking a lot of classes like journalism on the side, and then I stumbled into an advertising class, and the professor described advertising as the Rock ‘n’ Roll of the corporate world. So I got a “B.S.” (I love that) in marketing. I got very interested in the creative side of advertising and knew I wanted to be a writer, so I made this makeshift book and headed down to New York, where I was completely and utterly rejected by every agency in town.

Finally there was an opening at a small agency, but it was just a pure reception job, not some sort of training program or anything. I took it and it was actually an excellent experience. I was there for a full two years and I got to see all aspects of the business, interact with all departments and get a much better understanding of how an agency works. I worked very closely with the President of the agency and got to see firsthand how they ran things. It was a really valuable experience.

One day they came to me and said, “We know you want to be a writer, but we don’t have a writer job. But we also know you want to get off the phones and we have an account coordinator job. Do you want it?” I took it. So I started on the account side, but by the time I left that first job I had been doing media work, a bunch of new business, as well as overseeing creative and working as a writer, writing marketing plans and competitive reviews … I was wearing all of the hats at the agency.

IHAVEANIDEA: From there it seems like you had a path in mind and materialized that path. Can you tell me about the years post-account coordinator until you started your own agency?

Paul: My dad offered me some wisdom as I pursued my career. He was a machinist — he worked in factories that worked with metal — but in every job he ever had, he was always thinking about his boss’ job … how was he going to get the next job? No matter where or when I was hired, I’ve always had the same mentality of how do I get the next job? My perspective was that everything was a means to an end, in a healthy way. When you realize you’re going somewhere, or you want to go somewhere, you become really good at taking something from the bad parts of it. You take solace in the fact that you’re collecting skills along the way that you need, even if it’s not the perfect job, because it’s not going to be your last job. I don’t know why I always knew I wanted my own agency, but I did in fact start out thinking, “Someday I want my own agency.” Knowing that the experiences that I was exposed to and the skills that I collected along the way, even in difficult or less-than-ideal situations, were all going to come along together and help me someday. I think it’s really positive when you have that kind of perspective.

IHAVEANIDEA: Was it San Francisco, the city, that lured you west or was it Goodby?

Paul: That’s an interesting story because it’s a little bit of both. I was in New York doing some real nice work at a place called Korey Kay & Partners. I was associate creative director but it was time to move, and I remember my wife and I specifically talked about all the agencies in the country, all of the places we could possibly live in, and we narrowed it down. We ruled out places like Minneapolis, Portland and Boston, and we said either we stay in New York or give San Francisco a shot. She said, “If you don’t send your book to Goodby, you’ll never know. Why don’t you just send it to them and see what happens? If you don’t get in there, we’ll stay in New York and make a great life and career here.”

No matter where or when I was hired, I’ve always had the same mentality of how do I get the next job?

I had my book gathered, with the big old FedEx stickers slapped on the side of it, sitting in my living room, when Jeff Goodby called me. Completely separate and unrelated. He called and had seen some TV spots that I had done for Comedy Central and really loved them. He thought that we should talk and meet; and next thing you know they flew me out; then they flew out both my wife and me for a long weekend to make sure that we were digging the city; and shortly thereafter I was working there.

IHAVEANIDEA: Wow, if that’s not a sign… that’s too funny.  Did you tell him “Well, actually…”

Paul: Yeah, it definitely came out. It was pretty wild.

IHAVEANIDEA: Did your time with Goodby solidify your final path toward starting your agency?

Paul: I had bounced around in New York a little bit, and New York’s a very different place to work, so when I came to the West Coast, California, San Francisco— Goodby specifically— it was like scales fell from my eyes. I could see the way it’s supposed to be done. Coming to San Francisco to a purely creative agency with a fantastic strategic take on things, and learning firsthand how they did what they did was a complete education. Everything from crafting (they value so highly the craft of what we do), how they talk to clients, how they’re unafraid to say “I don’t know” or “we’ll get back to you” and how they pitch business, how they recruited and hired people from all over with all different kinds of personalities, skill sets, backgrounds, and how they valued the eclectic mix of people and the culture they established. I just learned so much and I may have stayed there forever (laughs).

IHAVEANIDEA: (laughs) It was that good, eh?

Paul: There were a couple of little factors that kept the idea of having my own agency alive, but I think that window started to slowly close because I was so darned content and happy at Goodby. I had full autonomy and the agency was on an absolute roll. We were Agency of the Year doing award-winning work, working with wonderful people that I respected and liked in the wonderful, beautiful city of San Francisco. It was pretty heavenly at the time. But then I had an opportunity with a longstanding client who approached me and was dissatisfied with the agencies she was working with. The conversation got started, those entrepreneurial fires were rekindled and off I went to conquer the world with my own agency.

IHAVEANIDEA: Why did you decide to stay and launch Venables Bell & Partners in San Francisco?

Paul: I can’t imagine anyone ever coming to San Francisco, establishing a life—both professionally and personally—and then choosing to leave San Francisco and the surrounding area. It’s hard to imagine and I am an East Coaster, I was in New York for about eight years living in Manhattan, but I can’t imagine people that turn and leave San Francisco. There are just too many things; the lifestyle, the culture, the kind of city, the kind of progressive thinking that goes on here, the kind of art and design and photography and film, a more generally sophisticated California with wine country here, and Tahoe there, the beaches here, everything is reasonably close, the beautiful architecture of the city and the rolling hills, the weather. It’s an amazing place and it’s a creative place, and that’s a big part of it. It’s not just a beautiful place to live, it’s a hotbed of creativity, it’s a crucible of interesting thinking, of people, we have Silicon Valley on our doorstep, and all of the technology in the world coming right from this part of the country, you’ve got the movie industry just down the way, down the coast. It’s a pretty unique place and I’m a believer in San Francisco and the creative culture here.

IHAVEANIDEA: So tell me a bit about the type of shop that you set out to set up at Venables Bell & Partners. What was your vision?

Paul: In complete candor, you don’t set up the agency initially going “What kind of agency do we want?” You kind of know the environment you like working in. You know you want it to be creatively driven. You know you wanted it to be founded on strong strategy and smart insights, but you haven’t really painted the whole picture, because you have a responsibility to this new account. It was a sizeable piece of Microsoft business, somewhere in the neighborhood of $40-50 million that I had to take care of. So you immediately shift gears from “What’s the agency like?” to “How are we going to launch this thing, get it off the ground, keep this client happy, be successful and do great work?”
We immediately had to recruit people and ask the right questions about the kind of person that we hire. Do they have passion and energy? Are they honest and decent people? Are they good human beings? You take all of these decisions, from the receptionist, to creative departments, to strategy and account groups, and you shape the way you want it to work. I had worked at enough agencies to know what I liked and what I did not like. You get a chance to right all the wrongs that you’ve seen along the way, and adapt and employ all of the good, neat things you’ve seen along the way.

We try to do right by people, we try to do right by clients, and doing right by clients absolutely means not trying to sell them the wackiest creative idea…

IHAVEANIDEA: Can you tell me a bit about your mantra “Our Intentions Are Good?”

Paul: It’s funny because you look around the agency landscape and see agencies trying to sell themselves through their mantras, philosophies and all of these promises to their clients. We really took a long hard look at our business, at who we were as a people, when we were successful and when we were not successful, and what kind of culture we wanted to cultivate here. We realized that it completely comes down to doing right. Doing right by our clients and doing right by our employees. And I like the idea that we have this philosophy, “Our Intentions Are Good,” and it doesn’t promise a damn thing. It doesn’t even promise that we’re going to be successful. It’s about intentions, those aren’t even actions, those aren’t even results … that’s two steps removed from results.

I think this place is really human, we try to do right by people, we try to do right by clients, and doing right by clients absolutely means not trying to sell them the wackiest creative idea because you want it in your book or you want to get an award. It’s doing something responsible —I t still has to be creative — but it has to be appropriate for the business. It’s telling clients you don’t know the answer when you don’t know the answer; or “You know what? A different company can do that better or cheaper than we can;” or “Maybe we should take the money out of the big ad budget and put it in over here in customer service because that will better serve your brand in the long run.” It’s trying to make sure you’re just doing right by that company, by that brand, as it tries to operate in the marketplace.

IHAVEANIDEA:  What is the most rewarding part of your work?

Paul: I enjoy the most rewarding moment you could possibly enjoy every morning when I step off the elevator, to walk into the halls of my agency where people are engaged and motivated and happy and doing great work. It is an amazing feeling, this culture that you shape and influence and nurture, and then also let other people add to it and contribute to it in ways you couldn’t even imagine. It’s so damn rewarding. I’m not extrinsically motivated, I think hardware and prizes and industry awards are nice, but they are by-products. The first and most important thing is that we need to do work that pleases us (meaning the people that work here and our clients) and once we do that, and when that group is satisfied, great. If the rest of the world stands up and recognizes and applauds our work, fantastic. If they don’t, I’m not going to worry about it too much.

I still get excited by doing it, I still get excited by seeing it, work that we’re doing that I had nothing to do with excites the hell out of me, knowing that people are out there doing great things on our behalf. Watching people grow, watching people develop, and watching the junior team hit it out of the park on a big assignment. There are a lot of places for gratification in the halls here for me, and I am a very, very, very lucky blessed man, and I realize that.

I’m obsessed with that, that’s my challenge…

IHAVEANIDEA: You very recently celebrated the tenth birthday of VB&P.  That’s very exciting!  Are you able to identify a pinnacle moment over the past ten years?

Paul: A pinnacle moment, I don’t think we’ve reached our pinnacle moment yet. Our best days are still ahead of us; I believe that whole-heartedly, 100%. There have been some critical moments, a lot of pretty important client and staff moments along the way, and it’s hard to ignore any of them. Now, all of these many individual little moments add up to a successful agency.

IHAVEANIDEA: Conversely, what would you say has been your biggest challenge over the past ten years?

Paul: The biggest challenge has changed. When we started out, it was all about the ads, every single ad; I don’t care if it was the size of a postage stamp. Every single ad was our calling card into the world and whether it was good or bad said what kind of agency we were. We absolutely obsessed over every piece of creative—as well as we should—but as we got along, we realized we needed to add some key people that could do amazing work. We shifted our focus a little bit, obviously still focusing on the quality of the work, but also on recruitment, and attracting and retaining the right people.

Even further along I gained more of a perspective on managing and cultivating our culture to reach its full potential. Right now, I’m obsessed with that, that’s my challenge, that’s the thing I want to make sure that we deliver. Through that, we’re going to keep clients happy, retain the right creatives and the right talent in the building, and we’re going to have the right people doing the work. I think that they all evolve as you evolve, whatever those challenges might be.

IHAVEANIDEA: Looking ahead as you strive to grow to the next level, what is your priority?

Paul: You know, it’s an exciting thing because here we are, a West Coast creatively driven agency that is absolutely grounded in intelligent strategy, completely independent and can do whatever it wants. So that’s exciting to me. We have critical mass with ten years of success under our belt. We can move into other regions if we want, we can move in other capabilities, we can start things and experiment, we can bring people in for the sole purpose of exploring an idea, an option or a place to play that we currently don’t. I get real excited by that because when you do those kinds of things, it brings in new opportunities for people, it brings in new challenges, it excites and energizes people and people can grow. Ultimately, retaining talent means giving people a place and a chance to grow. We have the world at our feet in terms of what we can do next and we’re figuring that out. There are fun conversations yet to be had.

IHAVEANIDEA: So the last question I have for you is what is the one thing on the planet that you cannot live without?

Paul: That’s a toss-up between my family and cheeseburgers (laughs).

Brianna Graves
Operations Manager, Writer
IHAVEANIDEA

Chief Creative Officer
TBWA\Chiat\Day Los Angeles

Speaking with Rob Schwartz is like overdosing on passion for the advertising industry. His love, not only for the business but for TBWA\Chiat\Day in particular, is infectious and he is a living example of pursuing one’s dream with wild abandon. Well, perhaps not wild abandon. Perhaps more like laser focus and undying persistence. Either way, Rob has made a huge dent in the TBWA\Chiat\Day network, both in creative product and in bottom line, and he isn’t done yet. Rob has won nearly every advertising award out there, including Adweek’s “Best of the Decade,” and helped TBWA\Chiat\Day to win Adweek’s Agency of the Year and “Most Awarded Agency in the World,” according to the Gunn Report. Rob has also served as a judge at the One Show Interactive and International ANDY Awards. In short, he has just about done it all. Not unlike IHAVEANIDEA’s own Ignacio Oreamuno, Rob is a constant traveler, speaking, presenting and collaborating with peers around the world, and actively bringing that knowledge back to his creative teams in Los Angeles. We were fortunate enough to catch up with Rob between travels, and he offered IHAVEANIDEA a glimpse into the past, what he is working on at present, and what he sees for the future, including life after Lee.

IHAVEANIDEA: Why don’t we start by bringing it way back to your start in the biz. Was it your childhood dream to be in advertising? What drew you in?

Rob: (laughs) It wasn’t my childhood dream to be in advertising, but it was my childhood dream to be a writer. I used to walk to work (in the late 80’s) from my apartment from the East Side, over to the West Side and one day I saw this amazing poster on a bus side. It was this bull on a white scene, and the bull was upside down. I got kind of obsessed with it and for two weeks there was this inscrutable bull on my way to work that I was attracted to. Finally, it was revealed that it was for the phone book, for the NYNEX Yellow Pages. The idea was “Bulldozing.” I said “Wow, not only do I want to do that for a living (because I had also started taking advertising classes), but I want to do it at the agency that did the NYNEX Campaign.”

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I came to find out (all pre-internet) that it was done by this company called Chiat\Day, and I said, “that’s the agency I want to work at.” I made it my mission to get to Chiat\Day and in 1998, I got a call from the agency. I was living in LA at the time. They let me in the door, and I’ve been loath to leave ever since.

IHAVEANIDEA: What caught their attention and inspired them to bring you in?

Rob: I’m sure it was a combination of my work and my zeal for the agency. It was at a tenuous time for the agency. A number of clients were on the ropes, Nissan was going through monstrous reorganizations and they had a lot of issues. I said to the team here at the time, “Nissan is an amazing brand. If we can just do a couple of things right, a couple of things to get them over the hump, I think we’ll be good.” I think that my belief in the agency, and my belief in the largest brand that was having the most trouble, sealed the deal. I had done some clever things on Lexus previously, and Chiat\Day liked that. I was really hungry and I still am, and that was a big part of it.

“I think that my belief in the agency, and my belief in the largest brand that was having the most trouble, sealed the deal. I had done some clever things on Lexus previously, and Chiat\Day liked that. I was really hungry and I still am, and that was a big part of it.”

IHAVEANIDEA: Your work with Nissan really propelled you to where you are now, right?

Rob: Yeah, people always ask me, “How could you work so long on a single brand?” but Nissan is an amazing company that does a lot of great things. It’s a dynamic company. I was also fortunate to work on some other great brands, too. I was the Global Creative Director on Visa when we pitched the global business, so it hasn’t been all Nissan. Now I’m working very closely with Pepsi, and there have been a lot of brands throughout my time here that I was fortunate enough to influence.

IHAVEANIDEA: Out of all those brands and all of your work, is there a pinnacle moment that you can identify?

Rob: I think that there are a few pinnacle moments. I think that certainly for Nissan, not only leading the team on the Emmy-nominated Polar Bear spot, but working on the world’s first electric car and the whole electric car effort, to be at the epicenter of that and leading so much of that work…that was really a great moment.

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I think winning the Visa Global pitch with the whole “More People Go with Visa” idea, and seeing that work in all parts of the world, that was really gratifying. I love going to places and seeing the work. I was just in Sao Paolo, and saw the Go Campaign in the airport—that feels really good.

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I think that the third pinnacle moment was getting to work with Pepsi, and doing something groundbreaking with the Pepsi Refresh Project. It was just one of those things that had never been done before, it was a massive scale, to so bravely—I give Pepsi a lot of credit for this—they just bravely believed in us that social media could be a big force, and to pull them off the Super Bowl after 23 years, that was a big moment. Something that is a landmark in our business. We won’t be able to talk about advertising without saying, “Well, there was that moment when Pepsi came off the Super Bowl and made that leap into social media.”

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Those are the three big ones.

IHAVEANIDEA: How do you work to inspire your team? Whether it’s in the digital realm, or just in general?

Rob: I have about 58 blogs that they’re all welcome to read. (laughs) No, there are a few things. The first big piece of inspiration is to be an example. People see me not only in the halls of the agency, but they see me on Twitter, on Facebook, in the world where these things are happening and they see that I live this stuff.

The second thing is that I started doing this blog: Metal Potential. It was originally done because I really wanted to get into the ANDY Jury, the first and only crowd-sourced jury. Then I transferred it from “Andy Potential” to “Metal Potential.” I’m agnostic, I don’t care if it’s TBWA work, I just pick the best stuff that I think is not only going to win awards, but is adding to our lives and is an example of cool stuff. My teams can see that, so that’s a really a second great way to inspire people.

The third thing is that I try to bring in whatever I learn. I travel quite a bit, and I try to bring it to life, we just had a meeting in LA after I had a meeting in Sao Paolo. We got all the creatives together and did a download of “Hey, this is what the work in our network looks like.”

IHAVEANIDEA: You have big flip-flops to fill in Lee Clow. Can you imagine that day? Will it be like when Steve Jobs left Apple, and are you all prepared for that moment?

Rob: I think the network’s been preparing for it for the better part of three years. I think that if you look around, Lee is certainly a monstrous part of our identity and our standards but the execution over the last five years has been a number of different people, so we have a machine not dissimilar to Apple. Tim Cook is going to lead an amazing machine for Apple and I think that we have that too. I look at John Hunt globally, Patrick O’Neill here in LA, John Merrifield in Asia, Dede in London now, Andy Blood in New Zealand, Dave Bowman and Matty Burton in Australia, Eric Holden and Remi Noel in Paris, Duncan Milner at Media Arts Lab and Mark Figuilio in New York… there’s just a group of creative people who have pretty much assumed the mantle. I don’t think that one person can ever replace Lee; I think it’s going to be a company, it’s going to be a band of brothers and sisters that assume the mantle, and I think that’s just the way the world is today. There are very few iconic single leaders. It’s become a much more team-oriented business.

“I don’t think that one person can ever replace Lee; I think it’s going to be a company, it’s going to be a band of brothers and sisters that assume the mantle, and I think that’s just the way the world is today. There are very few iconic single leaders. It’s become a much more team-oriented business.”

IHAVEANIDEA: Right, and the world becomes more connected every day, so it’s important to have people around the world, and not just in one spot, all carrying the same torch.

Rob: Yeah, exactly, and torch is a good analogy.  I think that we had a single torch and everyone just picked up a stick and everybody’s taken a piece of the fire.

IHAVEANIDEA: Well, that’s a good place to be.

Rob: Yeah, especially with hot dogs and marshmallows.

IHAVEANIDEA: (laughs) What is your number one goal in the next three hundred and sixty five days?

Rob: I’ll give it to you in terms of how I operate: put the brands first, put the agency second and put your individual agenda third.
I think for our brands, Nissan is overtaking Honda globally, but I want the perception that Nissan deserves, which is to be seen as they are, as the most innovative car company on the planet. So we’re going to do a lot innovative work and you’ve been seeing a nice run that’s been leading up to this, and we’re just going to explode with that. One goal for Nissan is to be the most innovative car brand on the planet and to have the creative that demonstrates that. For Visa, I want us to be the most social, and be perceived as having the best creative at the Olympics. Pepsi, I think we’re starting to make some big moves on Pepsi, and I think they’re getting their rightful place back as being the king of pop culture, here and abroad. Those are some key big goals for the brands.

I think that for the agency, we have done some amazing non-traditional engagement ideas and content ideas, and I just want people to recognize us for the contribution we’re making to the world in terms of new creative thinking. If you look at Gatorade’s Replay, that got us some press and quite a bit of metal, but we’ve done a ton more. We’re doing stuff for Nissan, for GT Academy, that’s amazing. It’s this programming that’s running on the Speed Channel now, its content that’s really innovative. The Grammys is also really innovative, we’ve got more stuff coming this year.  We just did a really nice documentary film for Nissan, and we’re building stuff all of the time, so I want our non-traditional work to get as much recognition as what we get for our traditional media creative.

“I think that for the agency, we have done some amazing non-traditional engagement ideas and content ideas, and I just want people to recognize us for the contribution we’re making to the world in terms of new creative thinking.”

Then personally, I just want to bring in an unfair share of the most talented people in our business. I’m just on a mission to really get the best people doing the best work of their careers for the best clients.

IHAVEANIDEA: Sounds like you have a lot of amazing work ahead of you. So, I have one final question: what is the number one thing that you cannot live without?

Rob: The one thing that I can’t live without—it’s my wife.  She’s just there for me, whether I’m coming up with an idea, or trying to validate an idea, or just to keep me going.

IHAVEANIDEA: That’s awesome. Make sure you show her this interview. Bonus points for you.

Brianna Graves
Operations Manager, Writer
IHAVEANIDEA

“I thought I told you that we won’t stop, I thought I told you that we won’t stop.”

This popular line from four out of five Puff Daddy songs is not just a catchy refrain, it could also serve as a personal motto to Louis Marino, ECD at New York’s experiential advertising shop MKTG (and former creative director in Puffy’s Bad Boy empire). Louis has had over twenty years of experience in hovering over a Venn diagram with circles marked “Advertising” “Design” and “Music”, worlds that are both vastly different, and yet more similar than you’d realize.

We at IHAVEANIDEA had a chance to chat with Louis about his career,  from KISS to Kanye West, and how an adolescent dream of designing album covers not only came true, but also paved the way for Madison Avenue.

IHAVEANIDEA: How did this whole crazy ride through music and advertising begin for you? When did you first get that inkling that your life was going to head in that direction?

Louis: I keep looking back and see the different things that I did as a kid and in doing so, there was clearly an indication of what I wanted to be as I grew up.  I started getting interested in interior design when I was a child.  I used to watch TV shows like Family Affair and The Brady Bunch, and I was more interested in the mid-century modern houses and apartments that they had lived in. I was looking at the stairs and the paintings on Bewitched.  It was funny because I was so into the mood and vibe of the environments that sometimes I would not even pay attention to the stories.

Once I started getting old enough to buy records, I became extraordinarily interested in album art and the people that designed it.  My first big record that I bought was probably Asia’s self-titled album. Asia was this 80s super-group, but I was more interested in the album art which was done by Roger Dean. From there, I started listening to the group Yes for the same reason, because Roger Dean had done many of their album covers.

While I was into Yes covers, I picked up their album Going for the One. That album cover was designed by Hipgnosis and Storm Thorgerson, who were famous for doing a lot of Pink Floyd covers. That got me into looking at more of Pink Floyd. So basically I was really interested in album artwork, trying to replicate it and stuff like that.

This love of album art carried on into high school, John P. Stevens High School in Edison, NJ. The school had a really great art program, and going to art class really helped me find applications for all of the things that I was doing. I started getting into car design, sketching out my own cars. I also had a little side business where I would trick out people’s sneakers with electrical tape, I would put logos on things, as well as adorning different things that students would give me with album art and stuff like that.

My art teachers really turned me on to all sorts of things, including logo design. They also told me about different institutions to consider after high school. There was the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, which had a really great auto design program.  There were also all of the major art schools in New York City, such as Parsons, Cooper Union, and the Fashion Institute of Technology. I went with FIT.

IHAVEANIDEA: What drew you to FIT over all of these others?

Louis: What I liked about the school was that they had a really good approach to teaching. They felt that in order for a student to really get the most out of the profession they were going into, they had to see the art in terms of commercial arts, as a real career. They were very keen on getting their students to land jobs in the field that they were studying.  And again, being a senior out of high school I’m thinking “What would be a great way for me to learn the ropes about how a company works so I’m not just learning about how to hone my creativity?”

What I ultimately got out of FIT was the education: the teachers that taught there all had current experience, they were all active professionals in their field, they brought us to their places of work, it really was kind of a de facto internship.  It’s like being in an ad agency or a design shop.

I also took a lot of classes outside of FIT. I took a night course in ad concepting, I spent a semester abroad in London at Middlesex Polytechnic, learning about Public Relations and Communications. It’s funny, I look back and it’s kind of amazing how at that age I was touching upon things that would really serve me well when I did graduate. It made me more than just a creative guy, but a strategic guy and somebody who can blend the line between art and commerce.

IHAVEANIDEA: Clearly it wasn’t just about drawing pretty pictures for you. So what was it like to first step into the great big world after graduation? Did you have your heart set on a particular job, or were you just seeing what stepping stone you should take next?

Louis: Graduation was pretty huge. It was 1991, we were in the middle of a recession, and everybody was scared about graduating because there were no jobs out there.  My senior class was a very proactive bunch, and we decided to hold a senior show.  Other schools were already doing this, but for some reason FIT did one show for all the grades.  We wanted to hold a show just for the senior class, to invite the industry and showcase what we were capable of.

At the time I had landed an internship at Kirshenbaum & Bond, who was right in the middle of doing their famous Kenneth Cole ads at the time.  At that point I was really, really interested into getting into advertising and becoming an art director at an ad agency. I had interned there for probably a year before graduation, leading up to the senior show. It was here that met Jeff Weiss of Margeotes Fertitta & Weiss. Jeff saw my work and asked if I would be interested in working with him for the summer. That was my first paying job in advertising.

I worked for Jeff until the fall when I landed a job at J. Walter Thompson. This is where both Jeff and Richard Kirshenbaum worked before they started at their own agencies, so I figured I would retrace their steps in hopes that I’d find a similar sort of success.

IHAVEANIDEA: It’s interesting how you went from loving album covers to pursuing a career in advertising, and after finally breaking into the ad world, you switch over to the music business to do album covers. How did that come about? I suppose you couldn’t get it out of your system!

Louis: (laughs) That’s right.  Well, breaking into the music industry was the ultimate thing for me after advertising. Those covers had such an emotive quality to me and really resonated with me.

At the time I had already left JWT and started working at Donna Karan in their in-house creative department. From there I just kept trying to get into that bubble that existed in the music business. It was one of those deals that you sort of had to know somebody to get in, to get a meeting. I finally got a call from somebody that referred me.  I got a call from the woman who ran the creative department at Mercury, and she asked if I would come in for an interview, and if I was looking for a job. I was like “Yeah, I’d totally love to meet with you!”

I met with her, and we really hit it off. She had a position for me and I took the job.  It was pretty great.  It was one of those things where it was another dream come true. I wanted to work in the music business, I wanted to know what that was about, I wanted to actually experience what it was like to design album covers and music packaging and work with artists.

IHAVEANIDEA: Was it all that you imagined as a kid?

Louis: And more! The first big project I worked on was with the band the Mighty Mighty Bosstones. They were coming out with a new album and my boss wanted me to meet them and get to know them.  We went from there and I was able to create the packaging.

“I immediately went back to when I was a kid, where my babysitter’s boyfriend introduced me to KISS via his eight-track player in his Camaro …”

We also got word that the original members of KISS were reforming and putting their makeup back on.  This was in 1996 and my boss asked me if I would be interested in doing this project. I immediately went back to when I was a kid, where my babysitter’s boyfriend introduced me to KISS via his eight-track player in his Camaro and I was like “Whoaaa!”

It was really thrilling experience working with Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley, on the packaging, the artwork, the photo shoot, all of that stuff.  As a child, I thought KISS was awesome, but as an adult, I had a different appreciation for them.  I had kind of grown out of one aspect the music, but I learned what the music really meant to them.

I’ve worked with a lot of different artists, like Kanye West, Mariah Carey, Jay-Z, The Killers, all levels and genres of music. Some of the genres I was really into and some of the genres I really wasn’t. But what I found was that-and it was something that I applied later in my career-was that you find your passions and your alliances with the artists in different ways.  In the case of Mariah Carey, I’m not a huge fan of R&B but I appreciated her talent and I learned a lot about her and her background.  It was very similar to how about you need to know about a brand when you’re doing what we do today. We need to understand a brand’s DNA, and I needed to know the same with the artists.  I needed to know why’s Mariah’s doing what she’s doing. That’s the part that I thought was brilliant, and it actually made you like the music at the end of the day. You’re really getting an understanding of what that album meant to that artist: the artwork, photo-shoot, the imaging, the branding.

Every artist has the same type of dreams: they’ve all made an album cover of themselves, and no matter how famous they were or how famous they would become, they always would look back on that and they consider an important and enjoyable part of the process.

IHAVEANIDEA: You left the music world for a bit after all of the big label mega-mergers of the late 90s, and went on to dabble a bit at G2 and The New Yorker… only to find eventually  find yourself at Island Def Jam, into which Mercury had been folded. I’m beginning to think of that Michael Corleone line: “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

Louis: (laughs) Well It was the kind of an offer I couldn’t refuse.

I came back to the music world at a very interesting time. When I had first entered this world, the industry was going through a very sober phase. Kurt Cobain had killed himself, and there was a lot of introspective awareness in the business as a result of this.

But here we were, a number of years later. Island Def Jam’s hip-hop acts, such as DMX, Ja Rule and Jay-Z, were on a monumental rise. The culture of the company had changed for the better, and financially they were just swimming in cash. Artist after artist was selling a million records or more. It was unbelievable.

One of the things that I noticed during this time – other than seeing the industry drop the digital music ball post-Napster – was that a lot of these artists started realizing that the music record labels were not a winning proposition for them. Some of them, some big names but mainly smaller ones, started turning to brands to broaden their base.

“Bands are essentially brands, and they’re building equity with their consumers.  Now that sounds a lot more clinical than “I have a fan base,” but it’s the same thing.”

One particularly interesting combination of artists and brands I worked on was with the band Hoobastank, who was releasing an EP to be sold exclusively at Target. They were not “selling out, ” they were creating a really interesting and cool relationship with a brand that would enable them both to profit. That was the first time I started thinking about taking what I knew from the music business and its creative and strategic process, and seeing how I could transfer that to brands.  Bands are essentially brands, and they’re building equity with their consumers.  Now that sounds a lot more clinical than “I have a fan base,” but it’s the same thing.

IHAVEANIDEA: I suppose it’s this line of thinking that drew you to your next gig…

Louis: Yes, I thought I’d try my hand at working with an artist that had a large brand, that had a brand umbrella to work with, and that was Sean Combs, “P. Diddy”.  He had a music career, a hugely successful clothing line that he started from scratch, he had a huge licensing deal with several companies, most of them were associated with Sean John, he had a lucrative deal with Estée Lauder for Sean John fragrances, and so many other things.

A mutual friend had introduced us and he had asked if I would be interested in taking a meeting, as he was looking for somebody to be the steward of his brand. I met with Puff, we hit it off really well, and within a two year period we launched two fragrances together, we launched Ciroc vodka, we did a few seasons of Sean John, we did fashion shows, I shot a Burger King commercial, I shot commercials based on the fragrance. It was a whirlwind, but he’s the type of guy that really gets the whole idea of how one person can be representative of so many different brands.

IHAVEANIDEA: And from there you brought your branding experience back to the ad world, to MKTG, where you are today. What was it like to return? I mean, much like differences you found between a post-Cobain music biz and a Jay-Z world, I’m sure you’ve noticed the ad world of today is not like your early days at JWT.

Louis: I feel like I’m at the right part of my career to be at an agency like this doing the kind of work that I’m doing… if that makes sense. (laughs) It’s interesting, when I look back I feel like I made some very smart moves in terms of being able to evolve my talents, my skill set, my ability to talk to clients and handle pressure. I love getting into character when working with brands and people because you really do have to get into a whole different persona depending on your client.

But you’re right, this is a very different agency and a very different time. We find ourselves in competition with the big companies.  They have a lot more resources. We’re facing the same kind of challenges as any other independent agency would. But I think that we have a tremendous and very immediate human connection from a physical point of view, we have networks of people that we hire that interact with the brand and consumers every day.  We don’t have to do focus group stuff because we are the focus group. It’s what we live, you know right away whether or not something is going to work or resonate and I think that’s a really good place to be, where you’re on the ground.

That all said, in getting back into the ad world at the time that I did, I was very fortunate that I haven’t had to deal with some of the harder things that I’m sure some other people in my industry had to deal with. There are some clients where it’s like “How do you get emotion out of something that is not emotive…at all? How do you create that when there’s nothing there?” We’re very lucky here, we work with great brands who understand how the media landscape has changed and how talking to consumers has evolved.

I don’t forget for a minute that I’m very fortunate to have worked with great, great people, both here at MKTG and over the years. Through that I have been able to really elevate the way I do things, where I think that if I did have the opportunity to do something where I have nothing at all in common with a brand, I’ll be able to figure it out because of all of the different things that I’ve known throughout the years, and the businesses I’ve been in and the industries I’ve worked in. Solving a problem won’t be completely luck. I feel like I’ve really gone through a really good learning curve, how to work with brands and people.

IHAVEANIDEA: Did any one artist say or do anything that really shaped how you think about your job today?

Louis: I can remember the very first conversation I had with Kanye West. It wasn’t even about music, it was about art, it was about Hipgnosis, Storm Ferguson and Roger Dean. It turned out that all of those great iconic album covers had resonated with him too, and he was very adamant about “I don’t want to be on the cover. I want this to be about the sound, I want this to have an emotion and I want this to resonate with people on a level that a photograph of me is just not going to cut it.” That to me was a great experience, because I started to learn that artists were very much the same when it came to the way they saw themselves in the world, and brands are no different. Brands have a perception of what they think they are.

IHAVEANIDEA: So, looking back on your whole career, is there anything you would have done differently, or is it one of those things that you look back and say that all of the planets were just aligned?

Louis: Well looking back, I think my career has been a little bit of talent and luck and a lot of effort and hard work. If I didn’t have meeting after meeting after meeting with my school administration about putting on a show with the rest of my colleagues, we wouldn’t have had that student show.

It’s the drive, it’s the intensity, it’s the willingness to do what it takes to evolve and to never rest. I think it’s one of those things where I have a little bit of a creative ADD. I like to work on a variety of different things, and the music industry offered me that because of all the music genres that I was exposed to.  But there are commonalities within them too, same thing with brands, they want the same thing: they want people to buy their shit.

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Interview by:

Brett McKenzie
Chief Writer, SBN2
IHAVEANIDEA

Chief Creative Officer
Euro RSCG Chicago

Not too many of us in the ad world are brought into an agency specifically to make a mark, to get your fingerprints all over the place, to make it yours and set it on an upwards trajectory. But that’s exactly what happened when the Chicago office of Euro RSCG brought in Jason Peterson as the new Chief Creative Officer late last year.

Jason has a storied career, primarily working alongside ad legends Andy Berlin and Ewan Cameron. With 20+ years in the business, Jason has done notable work for brands such as Reebok , McDonald’s and State Farm (“can I get a hot tub?”) and played a major part behind Coca-Cola’s “Real” campaign. And in a move that is certainly off the beaten path for most ad people, Jason served as Co-President and ECD at Translation, the agency founded by hip-hop moguls Jay-Z and Steve Stoute.

ihaveanidea chats with Jason about his punk rock past, his big plans for Euro, and what it’s like to have a rap star signing your paychecks.

ihaveanidea: As I often say in these interviews, very few kids grow up wanting to be copywriters and art directors. There’s just no store-bought Halloween costume for those professions. So how did get to the point where you were interested in this crazy business?

Jason: Well I was born in Cleveland, and I moved to Phoenix when I was about fifteen. Around that time I was really getting into music, specifically the American hardcore punk rock scene. I started writing for music magazines, alternative press, all these small fanzines. I started playing in bands, and I always had a skill and passion for art, so I would be designing the flyers for the shows and whatnot.

In the summer of 1989, my band went on tour across the US and Canada, playing 45 different shows. When I came back home, I realized that this wasn’t a career for me. I knew that music biz was pretty nasty, and I didn’t wanna be poor, playing punk rock for kids. But I still loved the design aspect of things I was doing. Fortunately I had an older sister who was a designer on the fringe of the ad world, and she steered me towards advertising.

I started putting together a portfolio of spec ads and trying to get into a school. Art Center on the west coast was a big school at the time, but also very expensive. Nevertheless I applied to go there. I wasn’t accepted into their advertising program, but rather their graphic design program. I was just about to head out there when somebody told me I should check out the Portfolio Center in Atlanta, so I went out to visit the school. At the time it was this tiny little shack at the end of a dead-end street, but it had the most amazing advertising hung up on the walls. I fell in love with it.

So I sold everything that I had and moved to Atlanta to go to the school. It was incredible, the real communal spirit of all of these kids working together to create the best advertising possible. I took extra classes, I worked with everyone I could, and I made a good portfolio.

ihaveanidea: Now that you were fresh out of school, where did you go?

Jason: I was unsure of where I really wanted to go, but I ended up going to Portland, freelancing at Wieden + Kennedy, Cole & Weber, and others in town. My first actual fulltime job was at a small Chicago agency called Arian, Lowe & Travis, where I had worked for about a year and a half.

“… I said to myself ‘these are the guys I want to work for!’ … for the next seventeen years I worked with Andy and Ewan in some sort of fashion.”

While in Chicago, I met a lot of people in the city’s advertising community, and among them was Scott Burns, perhaps the biggest freelance writer in the country at the time. Scott was very good friends with Andy Berlin, who had recently left Goodby, Berlin & Silverstein. Andy was in New York, getting ready to start a new agency called Berlin Wright Cameron. I flew out to the Big Apple and met Andy and Ewan Cameron and the others. After meeting them I said to myself “these are the guys I want to work for!” So I left Chicago, and for the next seventeen years I worked with Andy and Ewan in some sort of fashion.

ihaveanidea: Some people move on after seventeen months, never mind seventeen years! What were those years like?

Jason: It was pretty phenomenal. They made me head of art on Volkswagen, and in the first year I couldn’t tell you how many TV commercials we did, some crazy amount. We continued like this for a few years, but then the agency lost VW, along with a number of other accounts. Almost everybody got let go, and it appeared that the agency might close. We avoided that by striking a deal with Fallon McElligott and forming Fallon McElligott Berlin.

At that time, we started doing a lot of project work for Coca-Cola, and I ended up working quite a bit on Coca-Cola Japan. But after about two years we hit a stopping point with Fallon. We wanted to buy ourselves out of our arrangement, and they wouldn’t sell, so we quit. The very next day we started Berlin Cameron. I was a founding partner at the age of 27.

ihaveanidea: Not too shabby. What were the goals and challenges of this new agency, especially now that, as a partner, these were your challenges?

Jason: Well our mission from the vary beginning was to be really smart senior level creatives and strategists with very low overhead. Our goal was to target great big agencies that we thought weren’t servicing their clients with the best strategies and creativity.

And so, with this goal, we built the agency up from five people in a little room to a staff of about 200 at its peak. We won the Coca-Cola account, taking it from McCann Erickson, who had had it since WWII. We won Heineken, we won Reebok, and we launched Boost Mobile nationally, which at that time was a cell phone company in southern California.

In 2001, we sold Berlin Cameron to WPP, who merged us with some other agencies to form this small global network. Andy went off to run this network, leaving Ewan and I behind to take care of the New York operation.

Things continued going smoothly until the economy started to teeter around 2007 and 2008. I decided to leave Berlin Cameron and take a few months off to think about things. It was at this time that I was approached by Steve Stoute to join Translation, where I came aboard as Co-President and Executive Creative Director.

ihaveanidea: Now that right there seems like a massive jump, to join an agency/branding company run by the likes of Steve Stoute and Jay-Z. How different was it? How easy was it to adjust to this, as someone from a traditional agency background?

Jason: While there are some similarities, there are also some big differences. Both obviously want to create advertising in and around big, blue-chip brands, but they do it in different ways. Traditionally, ad agencies think about how great and creative a particular piece of communication is. There’s nothing wrong with this, but Jay-Z and Steve Stoute don’t value, say a TV spot in the same way. What I took from them is that first and foremost, they care about cultural relevance. What is going on within the brand that can fit and meld within the culture you are talking about? How do you convert a brand into an icon, into a piece of culture? It could be a T-shirt, it could be designing new uniforms for McDonald’s employees, it could be a jingle for a gum commercial that is released as a hit song. It could also be a TV spot, but most of the time it probably isn’t.

As far as adjusting, it wasn’t difficult at all. I think it’s because I came from that music background, more specifically a music background where you are judged on whether or not you fit in.

All of my favorite work that I’ve done throughout my career, it’s not work that would necessarily do well at the One Show or D&AD. Not to knock those shows, because I love them, but I always judge the success of my work by how it fits within the culture or how it is reflected by the culture. For instance, when I did Boost Mobile, we created this anthem using Kanye West, Ludicris and The Game before most people knew of them. The tagline “Where You At?” was a part of the culture. I’m really into street basketball, and I’d be hanging out at courts around New York City, and to hear kids on the court using the tagline or referencing the commercials, that was like my own award show. So adjusting to Translation’s way of thinking made total sense to me.

ihaveanidea: Any crazy, blinged out stories from your time at Translation?

Jason: (laughs) Nothing really. I just loved it there. I know that Steve Stoute has a bit of a bad reputation for being some crazy asshole, but he’s one of the smartest strategists I’ve ever worked with.

I guess the craziest thing would simply be the difference. In the ad world, you have a chance to run into a legend like Pat Fallon or Jay Chiat in the halls. At Translation you had a chance to run into Lady Gaga or Rhianna.

ihaveanidea: Last November you were tapped to become Chief Creative Officer of Euro RSCG Chicago. What attracted you to this new role?

Jason: I think I was at a point in my career where I wanted the challenge of running a big shop. In the past I’ve usually been the quiet creative who’d want to let the work do all the talking, but now I wanted to see if I could make my mark in a different way. I wanted to take on a role where I could spend the next five or ten years creating a place where people would say “oh shit, I didn’t expect that!”

What really sold me on Euro is that I feel that I have become much less focused on television. True, just about every agency is going that route, upping their digital and social media work, but I really like Euro’s model. They want to have the best of everything under one roof, the best of traditional advertising, digital, media, design, all working together to solve the client’s problems. Throughout most of my career I’ve worked in small to medium sized agencies that would do work in partnership with other companies, where we’d do the traditional work, somebody else would do digital and so on. I’m not sure if I agree with that model anymore. No matter how collaborative the companies are, people are going to be more loyal to the company they represent than to the client’s problems.

“The reality of the business is that there is no more time or money to do things the old way…”

Because Euro’s model attempts to keep everything under one roof, we can get at a business problem with whatever medium is best. I can’t say that Euro has always lived up to that model, but since I arrived, we’ve been focused on communal problem solving. On every assignment, even if it winds up being a very traditional one, everybody from all disciplines sit around a big table and we all solve it together. There’s no more art directors and copywriters getting the brief from the planner and locking themselves in a room until they present some great idea. The reality of the business is that there is no more time or money to do things the old way, and I was glad to see that Euro is thinking this way.

ihaveanidea: What sorts of changes do you have in store for the agency?

Jason: One thing I needed to get used to was the size of the place. Euro RSCG Chicago has nearly 500 people working here, with almost 125 in the creative department. alone. I’m used to being in creative departments of fifteen or sixteen people. But rather than that be a daunting number, I feel it can be a strength. I intend to truly employ that communal problem solving I mentioned earlier, so that everybody is involved with all of our clients and part of the process.

By no means am I naïve to the task at hand in implementing these changes. Euro RSCG Chicago doesn’t have the reputation of being a creative powerhouse. The agency has done some amazing, smart things, but it’s been suffering from the stigma of everyone thinking they’re a direct mail agency. But I know in my heart that it can be done, that we can be not just a great agency, but the best creative company in the city.

“I love playing the role of that educational bridge between old and new.”

ihaveanidea: Who are the greatest influencers and inspirations over your career?

Jason: On my wall I have photos of Malcolm McLaren, George Lois, Helmut Krone and Tibor Kalman. I had this sign outside my door that said “What would Tibor do?” and I was blown away by half of the creative department asking “who’s Tibor?” I was shocked, asking how could they not know who Tibor Kalman or M&Co. were. I went out and bought a bunch of copies of his book and left them stacked by the elevator, telling everyone to take one. Tibor, Helmut, all those old guys are my influences, and I love playing the role of that educational bridge between old and new.

ihaveanidea: The advertising industry in Chicago seems to be going through a bit of a Renaissance lately. What is your take on the Chicago scene, as someone who is returning after a lifetime in New York City?

Jason: (laughs) I’m still adjusting, but I love Chicago, and I love Chicago advertising. The heritage of places like Leo Burnett is the reason why so many people want to get into the business, and I am humbled by some of the work from this city. Coming from New York, I do sense a bit of a “second city” mentality, like the city is a beautiful woman who has been told she’s ugly her whole life. But I am starting to see a little of New York’s confidence here.

Outside of the ad industry, Chicago is phenomenal. In the short time I’ve been back I’ve seen lots of incredible street art exhibits and fantastic music shows that really reflect a creative culture in this city. Companies like Groupon and Threadless are based here, and if you go into their offices you see lots of young, creative people working together to come up with cool stuff. So it’s not just the ad agencies with this vibe. In fact, I think the agencies could use a little more of this vibe to shake up the old guard.

Interview by:

Brett McKenzie
Chief Writer, SBN2
ihaveanidea

Executive Creative Director
CPB Canada

Here at ihaveanidea, it’s one thing to interview all sorts of creative superstars, but it’s another thing to interview a creative superstar who you knew before he was a superstar.

Such is the case with Aaron Starkman, Executive Creative Director of the Canadian office of the legendary ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky. I’ve known Aaron since the days of me shopping my fresh out of school portfolio around and he becoming a fast rising copywriter at Zig (CPB Canada’s previous incarnation.) Over the years we’ve had countless conversations and consumed numerous beverages — from a raucous night eating “Fu King fried rice” in Chinatown to a surprisingly quiet evening in Cannes sipping beers on a balcony. Somewhere along the way Aaron morphed into a prestigious CD, but I don’t think I’ve ever really asked him about that journey (or about the spiky hair in this new press photo — you’re a dad, for crying out loud!)

Of course, that all changes now, with this interview.

ihaveanidea: Very few kids wanna be ad people when they grow up, so when did advertising become your calling?

Aaron: When I was a kid, I watched Who’s the Boss? with Tony Danza all of the time. I thought that Angela Bower had the craziest job in the world. She got to come up with ads, how fucking amazing was that? So I always had that in the back of my head, especially when I was in university studying psychology. I thought I would be into that too, but psychology is basically about finding what’s wrong with you and your parents! In the end, I just wasn’t into it, but I still found what I learned to eventually be useful in this profession. Anyway, after I got the degree, I went into the advertising program at Seneca College, run by Anthony Kalumut, who was and still is awesome.

ihaveanidea: So I’ve heard. Was Zig your first foray into the business?

Aaron: There’s a cardinal rule in advertising: you should never take a job for the money. But when I was 26, I had been dating my girlfriend for nine years. I wanted to propose to her, but I had no money to buy an engagement ring. I was totally broke. So I did what you’re not supposed to, I took a gig just so I could afford an engagement ring. It happened to be at a place where ideas were unfortunately not in the DNA of the company. But I was there for a reason, and after a few months into the gig, I had enough saved for the ring.

There’s a cardinal rule in advertising: you should never take a job for the money.

Just around that time, I received a call from Elspeth Lynn, one of the founders of Zig. I was already a huge fan of her and her work. I thought “Cam Breast Exam” was the funniest thing I had seen in my life. So I left that other agency and I started at Zig a little while later as a junior copywriter.

ihaveanidea: It must’ve been a refreshing change. How were your early days at Zig?

Aaron: It was amazing. About a month into the job I was partnered with Stephen Leps, and we discovered that we really just clicked. It was kinda funny, because we were the exact opposites of each other. I’m this nerdy, bookish writer guy, and Stephen is this crazy, outgoing, rock star Ken doll model. But we really liked each other and going out drinking together, and we just clicked and had great chemistry.

ihaveanidea: Only a couple short years after the two of you teamed up, you were onstage at Cannes, picking up your first Gold Lion. What was that experience like?

Aaron: Leps and I had went to Cannes for the Young Creatives Competition the year before. We were just completely blown away by the work, the people, and the whole vibe of the place. So the next year we decided to go again. We paid for the trip ourselves, and shared a tiny un-air conditioned room,but truthfully, we were just happy to be there rooting on the all the Canadian entries.

We were at the Canadian delegate party a few nights before the big show where they announce the Film Lions. At the party, they had a copy of the just released shortlist. We were looking through it, and we were a little bit bummed out when we didn’t see our PSA spot for bullying on the list. It won a Gold at the Bessies, the Canadian award show, a few weeks before, so we thought who knows, maybe it had a shot at a shortlist. The spot we had created for Vim wasn’t on the shortlist, and we really didn’t expect it to be.

Shortly afterwards, we learned from the judges that the spot was just shy of winning the Grand Prix.

So later on in the festival, Leps and I were having a drink on the beach with some other Canadians when we got a call. It was Elspeth on the other line. She told us we needed to buy jackets. We didn’t get it. Then she told us that not only was our Vim spot actually on the shortlist, but we won a Gold Lion for it and we had to go up on stage. We freaked out and hugged each other right there on the beach. It was just such a cool moment in our careers.

Shortly afterwards, we learned from the judges that the spot was just shy of winning the Grand Prix. To be honest, we were just so blown away by what was going on that when we heard about that, it didn’t matter to us. We were just stoked with winning a Gold Lion, especially because it was for a cleaning product that we weren’t expecting to get anything for.

ihaveanidea: After you won your first Gold Lion, did you feel the pressure to get back on the stage?

Aaron: Well, the last thing we wanted to be thought of was a one hit wonder. So on the very next brief after Cannes, we had in the back of our heads “let’s kill this thing, let’s make the client famous with crazy business results, and have work that truly stands out.” And we were fortunate enough to get back on stage in Cannes. I guess the cool thing was the that other Cannes Gold Lions we won were for different clients, in different categories, and in mediums other than TV.

ihaveanidea: When Canada wins at Cannes, the winners become sources of pride for the entire industry – you don’t see anyone chanting USA! USA! when Wieden or Goodby win. What’s your take on this?

Aaron: At Canadian award shows like The Marketing Awards and the Bessies, we’re all trying to kick each other asses. For some reason when Canadians get together in Cannes though, it’s like we are all part of Team Canada. It’s weird -in a really good way. Part of it is, as Canadians in general, we look for recognition outside of our country. We’re proud when our comics like Jim Carrey and John Candy become famous. The same kind of attitude is displayed when a Canadian ad does well in Cannes. It’s very much a brotherhood. And it’s really awesome.

ihaveanidea: One of the major milestones in your career and in the history of Zig was winning the iconic Molson Canadian beer account back in 2004. People and pundits seemed surprised with that win, giving voice to a perception that Zig was a “chick agency”, a shop founded and staffed by women and a roster of clients that primarily targeted women. Reality is different than perception here, but did you ever find ourself having to combat it all?

Aaron: I think we were definitely seen as underdogs in that pitch, and part of the reason may have been because the founders of the agency were women. But Elspeth and Lorraine Tao were so valuable in that they had done the successful “Out of the Blue” campaign for Labatt a few years before. Leps and I were the lead team on the pitch, which was a true honour, and we really became sponges around Elspeth and Lorraine, soaking up their vast beer advertising knowledge and experience.

Still, we were a bit concerned that we might be perceived in a certain way. At one moment in the pitch, Elspeth flat out asked Molson “Would you feel comfortable going to an agency founded by a couple of chicks?” It wasn’t a big deal to them at all. It was all about the work, which of course is how it should be.

Later, when I became the CD on Molson Canadian, I actually tried to mix it up as much as I could in terms of male and female teams. I’m a firm believer that women can do kick-ass work on traditional male accounts and that guys can do kick-ass work on traditional female accounts. Look at Leps and I on Vim! And a funny aside on that project, we actually got the assignment because a female team didn’t want it.

I’m a firm believer that women can do kick-ass work on traditional male accounts and that guys can do kick-ass work on traditional female accounts.

ihaveanidea: You were at Zig for a lot of major transitions, namely the merger with ACLC a few years back, and last year in becoming Crispin Porter + Bogusky Canada. Describe what big transitions like these are like for you in an agency.

Aaron: When ACLC merged with Zig, the thing that changed was our size. We suddenly had a lot more people and lots of new names to learn,  but the vibe was very much the same. As a CD and someone who was at Zig for many years, it was essentially my responsibility to make sure the culture remained true. So what we had established with Zig, I tried to share and have the new people buy into. The cool thing is that they did. From as long as I can remember, people hung out and had lunch together at a big table. We ended up buying a bigger table. But having lunch together and hanging out is very much a part of who we are. This agency has always had a family vibe to it. And it still does. It’s a big part of who we are. Our family is just a little bigger these days.

In terms of the transition to CPB, it’s been really seamless and amazing. As Zig, we shared many of the same creative beliefs with CPB. That’s a big reason why we jumped at the chance to be part of it.

ihaveanidea: What’s been the biggest change for you in becoming CPB Canada?

Aaron: Well, one really amazing change in becoming CPB Canada is that we’re now part of something bigger, a kick-ass global team. There are new ways of leaning and a shared set of values and beliefs. It’s great having access to really great minds around the world, in places like London, Sweden, and The US, and we’ve been fully communicating with them and jamming on the Polycom.

Another really awesome thing is we’ve mimicked the management model in Boulder. I went down there and saw the way Rob Reilly, Andrew Keller and Jeff Benjamin work together. It was really inspiring and I loved the fact that there’d be a meeting going on with Rob, but Jeff was within earshot and he could make a comment or suggestion to help the work get better. That’s what we’ve started doing in Canada. We’ve hired Darren Richardson, a digital Creative Director from 180 in Amsterdam, and we both work with Michael Murray who’s amazing and has been with us several years. And just like Rob, Andrew and Jeff, we share an office and it’s been just awesome working with people I have a lot of trust and respect for. Plus I happen to really like them as dudes. Which is a huge thing.

ihaveanidea: How often do you get your hands dirty these days, throwing down on creative?

Aaron: Whenever I can, I try to do get out and do a working lunch with whoever’s around. I’m a little bit embarrassed to admit it, but I am in fact the Foursquare mayor of the Jack Astor’s across the street from CP+B, beating out the restaurant’s own chef. Whenever I walk in, they kind of treat me like Norm from Cheers. I know every waiter’s name. It’s weird, I know, what can I say.

ihaveanidea: How would you describe yourself as a CD?

Aaron: Well, the truth is I’m still learning new things everyday. I’m still a relatively new Creative Director and I’m loving every day of it.  One of the things that I have learned is that different people respond to different things. Some teams may need a little bit of a kick in the ass here and there. Other teams respond better with a warm and fuzzy hug. But no matter who it is, or what the assignment is, I want people to bring their own values, life experience, and personality into the work. I want to get a sense of who they are otherwise we’ll get a bunch of stuff that is all very similar to each other.

ihaveanidea: What do you think the future holds for Canada on the global advertising scene, and for CP+B Canada specifically?

Aaron: As an industry, Canada has a track record of creating big ideas and using cost effective ways to bring them to market. This will help us in both the short term and long term. In Canada, we are less constrained by our legacy. We’re seeing that innovation is coming from startups and rebels like CPB, like places like Taxi and others. As ‘nice’ as we are in Canada, we’ve always had to have that mindset. If we didn’t, all we would be doing is picking up work from the US and UK.

The future of CPB in Canada? Well, there really isn’t a CPB Canada. What I mean by that is we have a whole bunch of passionate people who happen to live in places like Toronto, Sweden, Miami and Boulder. We just pitched a US client with a planner from Boulder, content management and a social media expert from Miami, and the entire creative product coming out of Toronto. It is really is one agency. We’re getting opportunities that we didn’t have before and we’re totally loving that.

ihaveanidea: I’ve known you since before you were a CD, before you were a big boss, before you were a dad with family responsibilities. What drives you today that differs from what drove you all those years ago?

Aaron: To be honest, what drives me hasn’t changed at all. I used to not be married and not have kids, and now I’m married with three kids, but when it comes to work, it’s the same now as it was back then. I want to be a part of something special. I want to make clients famous and achieve results, I want to do work that gets recognized by the mainstream press, not just the ad industry press, I want to be involved in something cool. I haven’t changed a bit.

ihaveanidea: Your hair has.

Aaron: “…”

Interview by:

Brett McKenzie
Chief Writer, SBN2
ihaveanidea

____________

Prior to my recent visit to Austin, TX based LatinWorks, I had never really experienced in depth the American phenomenon known as a “multicultural agency.” As a native Costa Rican, I’m sure I could speak the lingo, but I wanted to know more about what made them tick. Fortunately I had no better guide for the journey than the agency’s President and Chief Creative Officer, Sergio Alcocer.

A copywriter by trade, Sergio has honed his craft all over Latin America at agencies such as Leo Burnett and Y&R, but it’s his more than a decade as a driving force at LatinWorks that has earned him the respect of not just the US Hispanic advertising world, but the global ad industry as a whole.

Under Sergio’s guidance, LatinWorks has scored numerous accolades, both industry — Cannes Lions among other mantle metal, and Multicultural Agency of the Year by both AdWeek and Ad Age — and mainstream — having the most replayed spot on Super Bowl XLI, and from the sounds of things, they’re just getting started.

Join me as I kick back with LatinWorks’ creative guru and chat about his career, his advice for newcomers to the business, and just where his agency sits, both in the city it calls home and in the strange and evolving world of Hispanic advertising.

ihaveanidea: Your career has taken you to places like Mexico, Venezuela and New York City, but I hear you started in the Dominican Republic, a place not exactly known on the global ad scene. What was that like?

Sergio: I started my career as a copywriter in the Dominican Republic back in 1986. Now the Dominican Republic is a lovely country.  It’s very difficult market, especially in those days. It was very underdeveloped, creativity was rudimentary, and it was very tough trying to do a good idea with those conditions.

One of the interesting things that happened to me there was that, living in the Dominican Republic at that time, there would be no electricity for twenty hours a day. I worked for four years as an advertising guy without electricity. I would be writing at night by candlelight, at the point in your career where you are working 24 hours a day! The candles give off heat, but if you open the window to let a bit of air, the room becomes infested with mosquitoes.

Now imagine what would be like to have to do final art for a publication, and you need to go to the photo-mechanic to create it. That process required electricity, but when there’s no electricity and you have a deadline for a printout tomorrow, what do you do? Well in order to write the headline, I’d have to cut the letters out of old ads in the file and create the words with the letters that were available! I learned to write depending on the letters that I had. I needed to have a cool ad on strategy, but I didn’t happen have the letter “D” (laughs)

Of course this forced me to be even more resourceful.  I’m very lucky that I started my career working in these conditions because it forced me to think outside of the box, not to be clever but for mere survival.

ihaveanidea: That all must seem like a million miles away and a million years ago! Here you are, President and CCO of one of America’s top multicultural agencies! But I have to ask you, what does it mean in 2011 to be a multicultural agency, a Hispanic agency? Not so long ago we separated digital agencies from traditional ones, and today it seems like those disciplines are merging. Will we even need Hispanic agencies five or ten years from now?

Sergio: That is a very good question, and it’s certainly one that keeps me up at night, as they say. For many years, people have talked about the general market in the United States in reference to the mainstream big market, but this “general market” has become greatly fragmented. You have realize that the concept of the mainstream mass market was based on things from the 1950s, the 60s, the 70s, even the 80s, when you could talk to everybody at once through a single point of media. You could put a TV spot on ABC or NBC and reach everyone back then, but the “general market” doesn’t exist anymore, in terms of reach.

It’s also interesting to note that the Hispanic marketing industry in the United States has always been very based on the use of the Spanish language, and that is unfortunate. When you use the Spanish language to communicate with people, you may not realize this but you are alienating a large number of Hispanics by talking to foreign-born Latinos, who are the ones that consume Spanish language media in vast amounts. And this group is becoming smaller because the growth of the Latino population in the US is primarily by birth, not by immigration. Spanish is frankly becoming an obstacle to communicating with people because more and more Latinos are either bilingual or prefer English. I believe is that language needs to stop being the definition of the Hispanic market. It needs to become a tactic and not a strategy. For example, nowadays talking to a Latino teen in Spanish is virtually impossible because Latino teens by definition are going to school in English. They probably have parents who speak Spanish, but all of their friends are American so they watch American media. They’re not watching Univision. So how do you talk to a Latino teen in Spanish? You can’t. You need to talk to him as teen first and Latino second.

I believe is that language needs to stop being the definition of the Hispanic market. It needs to become a tactic and not a strategy.

The big challenge is when the Hispanic advertising industry loses the Spanish language as its sole purpose and the communication becomes in English. Then the general market traditional agencies and its clients are going to say “Well, we don’t need you anymore if you’re not going to talk in Spanish.” So, that is what makes the Hispanic industry very nervous. Now, how do you overcome that? The agency needs to transform into an agency that adds value to clients. We need to be a good agency first, and an ethnic specialist second. We need to understand and be masters in this specific niche, but before that we need to do great work, be great marketers and all of that. I think that if we have the balance of those things, we’re going to have an interesting business proposition. We’re working on doing that transition. For me again, the secret is to evolve the industry beyond language and then be ready to fight with the big guys because now the fight is over ideas.

ihaveanidea: So there’s room for the non-Hispanic creative here at LatinWorks! Could a gringo from Vermont who cut his creative teeth in the Manhattan multinationals fit into the culture you are trying to create?

Sergio: (laughs) We try to mix it up here, not because I want to transform into an Anglo-agency, but because I think that ideas come first. I believe that in advertising, human truths are more important than Latino insight. There are not as many Latino insights as you might think, and some of them are invented in order for clients to feel better (laughs)

Ideally, I want to have the best talent possible, the best talent I can afford, the best talent I can bring to the agency. I think that there’s enough Hispanic knowledge within the company to help a brilliant Japanese creative to succeed, because what we’re looking is for inspiration and human truth. That said, I don’t lose sleep over wanting to recruit people from other agencies or big shops. I want people that see the potential coolness of the Hispanic market.

Not too long ago, the US Hispanic market was perceived as a “lesser” market, and sometimes rightly so — there are as many really bad Hispanic agencies as there are good ones, and there’s some really ugly Hispanic work. Even in Latin America, the US Hispanic market used to seen as lesser than the Argentines or the Mexicans or Brazilians or whatever. So the US Hispanic market has always been seen as a little dumb.

When we started the agency, we had a Swedish client, and the president, if you can imagine him, he had that Swedish look, super fashionable, young, entrepreneurial, cool, chic, a very interesting guy. And once when I was talking to him, I explained to him the Hispanic market, “Well you see, there’s forty million Latinos in the United States, there’s media” and so on, and when I was finished, he told me “that’s the most modern thing I’ve heard in a long time.” So his perception was that it was cool that there’s almost a country inside of a country, and it was cool that there’s all of these people that you can talk to in their own language, even as they live inside of “other” country called the US. He thought this microcosm was absolutely cool, modern and brilliant, and if you look at it that way, it’s true! And that’s the perspective I want to have. The perspective I want to have is not “Oh, we’re a lesser market,” the perspective I want to have is that this is a very interesting experiment. There’s no other place in the world that has it, there’s no other country in the world that has a minority of the multicultural market as developed as this, so let’s have some fun with it!

A collection of Sergio’s ads from all his years at LatinWorks

ihaveanidea: How does a president, someone with all of the responsibilities you have in that role, stay on top of all the change that is happening in this industry, and how do you keep your agency updated?

Sergio: It’s not easy. I fell in love with academia, and I think you need to keep on studying long after you graduate from school. I attended the Berlin School of Creative Leadership recently, spending two years doing my Masters. I did the Hyper Island Master Class last October. I go to all of the conferences I can, and I’m a very avid reader.

Still, I need to be aware that age is a factor. I’m not a kid anymore, I’m 48 years old, and to stay fresh you need to surround yourself with young blood and drink it like a vampire (laughs) I constantly bring in fresh young talent and let them work and put them in charge of things.

…you need to surround yourself with young blood and drink it like a vampire…

ihaveanidea: LatinWorks is a well respected and admired agency, but which agencies do you personally admire?

Sergio: Here in the U.S, Goodby and Wieden are my favorite agencies. Outside of the US, I love Almap BBDO. It’s phenomenal how they keep on doing all the work they do. I absolutely love Scholz & Friends in Germany. I admire their humbleness and  the amount of brilliant work they consistently do. Of course shops like Mother and BBH. I mean I wish I was John Hegarty, I think he’s a brilliant man.

I’m very conscious of who we are and where we are amongst all of these incredible agencies.  I know that there are a lot of things for us to do, and I’m never satisfied.  But I’m happy that little by little, at least in Latin America, the agency is known, we’re doing well in the eyes of AdWeek and Ad Age, we are doing cool stuff in Cannes each year, and this year I’ll be a judge.  It’s just fun, being a little Hispanic agency in Austin, getting known outside of the U.S.

ihaveanidea: Talk to us about the city of Austin, and how it has grown as an advertising city. Or is it even an advertising city the way some other places are?

Sergio: I think Austin is a little oasis for me. It’s very unique and rare for a place in Texas, and little by little it’s becoming very rare for the United States as well. I’m sure you’re very familiar with the work of Richard Florida, the guy that wrote The Rise of the Creative Class. Richard says that in order to create creative cities, there needs to be the characteristics of talent, tolerance and technology. There needs to be social tolerance to allow artists, the creative types to move into a city without being worried about censorship or police. There is a gay tolerance, a drug tolerance, tolerance — not acceptance, just tolerance, so that you don’t go to jail for the rest of your life if you have a joint. There needs to be technology to allow the artists to get around and live affordably. Look at what’s happening to New York! Brooklyn is booming creatively in the music industry and everything because they cannot afford to pay the New York rent, so everybody is going to Brooklyn! So now all of a sudden all of the cool bands are from Brooklyn, because that’s where these guys live. Austin has the three T’s: the technology, the tolerance and the talent. It attracts a lot of talent.

I also think is that there’s a certain amount of Austin pride. Even though a lot of people here come from elsewhere, there’s this almost civic duty to keep the city cool, celebrating the vibrancy of the music scene and growing the film industry. I think the city planning really good, and that the local government understands that the creative talent that lives here is what keeps the city alive.

In terms of the advertising industry here, I think that there are a number of interesting agencies, but that’s only because that lifestyle is here, not necessarily the market. We can do business all over the country from here, and in fact only one of our clients is in Austin. So if the Austin advertising community is growing, it’s not due to local clients, but a fresh and vibrant lifestyle.

ihaveanidea: it’s always interesting to look back on a career and see how you would’ve done things differently or how you did things exactly the right way. Reflecting on your own career, if you had to give three pieces of advice, three tips to a junior about this industry, what would they be?

Sergio: One thing I would stress is the importance of finding a mentor when you’re starting your career. Somebody who is not selfish, who doesn’t feel threatened, who knows how to tolerate mistakes and gives you the chance to experiment. You need to work for somebody that is going to give you wings to soar, and if you don’t find that in your first agency or first boss, leave and find someone else. Remember, creative directors aren’t just choosing to hire you, but you are also choosing to work for them, so have a good eye for these people. I was incredibly lucky that my first boss was somebody like that, and I can just imagine what would’ve happened if he wouldn’t have been my boss.

Secondly, I’d remind people that there is a tremendous difference between being a creative and being a creative director. It’s a totally different world, and not a lot of people make the switch gracefully. This business is very strange in that you grow in position and in power based on creative merit, but then you grow so much that they don’t allow you to keep doing what you were good at! Learning how to switch from being a creative to a Creative Director is key, because if don’t then you cannot grow financially.

As for any advice on making that change, the really difficult part is learning to judge work on its own merit, and not as a creative that has just become a Creative Director. You can’t look at work in terms of how you would have done it, but rather appreciate the work even if it’s totally different than what you would have done. Resist the temptation to change everything, even if you knew that there’s a better way, because that’s going to make people not want to work with you, it’s going to make people feel that you’re competing with them. When you’re Creative Director, the art of letting people work and stay out of their way is very difficult to achieve. Even I’m still working on that!

Finally, this is a job that requires so many hours and so much unnecessary stress that you need to be incredibly passionate to do it, and to do it right. I don’t know any creative of any significance that has a separate personal life, not because he or she can’t go home at a decent hour, but because creativity is something you cannot stop thinking about. It becomes a way of thinking, a way of behaving, a philosophy of life. It’s not something you let go of at 5 PM. So you either have that absolute, and family and friends to support you in your passion, or you’re always going to be somewhere in the middle.

A collection of Sergio’s ads from all his years at LatinWorks

Interview by:

Ignacio Oreamuno
El Presidente
ihaveanidea

It’s not every day that you’re brought in take the creative reins of one of the most respected agencies in the US, reins that have been guided for many years by a living legend. So when former Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam ECD John Norman had the opportunity to take on the role of Chief Creative Officer of The Martin Agency in February of last year, it wasn’t one he could pass up.

A designer by trade and a self-described visual storyteller, John served as a graphic designer for Nike and design director for Benetton before crossing over to the advertising world. His efforts at W+K and Goodby Silverstein & Partners have brought him much acclaim, leaving a mark on such brands as Coca-Cola, Electronic Arts and Hewlett-Packard. John was brought into The Martin Agency to work alongside the legendary Mike Hughes for one year, after which he’d be the sole CCO.

It’s been a year now, so let’s see what John has taken to the challenge.

IHAVEANIDEA: Agencies as big as the Martin Agency are like massive ships. How responsive are the controls at the captain’s helm? Does the steering wheel respond like you want it to?

(laughs) Well I can’t speak about huge global agencies because I think that’s pretty daunting, but what’s pretty amazing is what’s been allowed to happen in this last year here. We’ve changed the way we work, we’ve changed the way the work is done, we’ve changed people, and we’ve changed the process.

The inertia and tradition is the hardest thing to break.  In any case, the person or people coming in to break things up,  whether it’s with a sledge hammer or the tiny little tack hammer are “Change agents”.

You’ve just got to be sensitive of the tradition that already exists because changing it is the hardest thing. I believe I made it past the one year mark, and I didn’t know if I would, because I initially thought “Ok, this is too much change.” There’s a little bit of “we can take time to do it” here at The Martin Agency.

But then I thought I’d better do it quickly or not at all, either I’d make changes now, or I’ve missed your chance to do it completely. So yes, there’s a big steering wheel required to enact change, but there’s also a little steering wheel inside the big steering wheel too. It has to be parallel steering, like a Swiss watch.

IHAVEANIDEA: Do you have to do these changes twice?  Once internally, and then again with the clients, simultaneously?

John: Actually, the clients are easier and more adaptive to change sometimes. I’ll put it this way: I’ve been in situations at The Martin Agency where clients have actually been the best asset to change our culture. This is what they either want or what we’ve sold them on, and I say “Ok, well, I respect that, but let’s try to do this a different way.” They’ve actually been the biggest advocates of changing the way we make the work.

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IHAVEANIDEA: So when you’ve said that you’ve changed the way that the work is made, what does that really mean?

John: I think it’s more about getting into technology and the way it’s absorbed and baked into a kind of creative product.

I’ve often made the analogy that it’s like an assembly line in Detroit, where the brief would come in, the clients would go to the planners, the planners would look it over, then go to the creative directors, then the creative directors would do their thing, and somewhere down the line there would be digital, and so on and so on down the line. At that point, you’re creating cars, you’re making them quickly and in great numbers, but it’s like you’re creating Ford Tauruses.

The model we’re looking at now is where the brand is in the middle of the room and we’re surrounding it and going “Hey, what if we get Dolce & Gabbana to do our seats? What would that look like?” We’re asking more questions and giving more expertise up front so the people think bigger earlier on before it gets funneled down. So it’s surrounding the car like the German or the Japanese car model as opposed to the Detroit car makers… not to slag off Detroit, of course.

IHAVEANIDEA: What about creative teams, do you still employ that system in your new model?

John: There are still art directors and copywriters., but we don’t have teams that say “Well, this is my partner and I’ll only be with them.” We’re breaking that up on purpose. We’re pulling a lot of interactive designers with writers, we’re pulling in social media people, even an interactive producer who is very creative might work with a writer, if we needed to. That changes every day, and it’s getting better all the time. We’re becoming a lot more agnostic about our approach, and it’s getting to be a lot more fun.

IHAVEANIDEA: What do you think has changed in the past five years in how you, as a Creative Director, do your job well? What has changed as a job requirement?

John: Because I come from the design world; I don’t feel like all the change that is happening is unorthodox for me. I like it. The reason that I went into design is that, I could always draw really well, I liked graphic design, I liked typography, I liked photography, I liked illustration, and I liked it all. I like where things are going right now because it revolves around social media and technology. The whole landscape has changed and there’s a lot more room to play.

Yes, it’s going to get fucked up, and it’s going to get messy, and it’s going to get crazy, but as long as everyone’s positive, something amazing will come out of it.

I think creative directors need to be more accountable and own the creative product more. They can’t get lost into a process or a system and they can’t get lost into the way things were done before. They have to be just completely open and accountable. Yes, it’s going to get fucked up, and it’s going to get messy, and it’s going to get crazy, but as long as everyone’s positive, something amazing will come out of it. And nine times out of ten that is the case, if people have the energy and are open minded about it, something great will come out of it. Even if it’s just one little thing, one little component of something, its worth all that crap, to go through all that pain for.

IHAVEANIDEA:  What lessons did you learn as a Creative Director at Wieden + Kennedy that are still with you to this day, as if they were tattooed into the way you do things?

John: I think the biggest thing that I learned is that the respect for the work really comes first. With that respect at the center, you can get mad, you can get angry, you can get as happy about the work as you can, and as long as it’s about the work, it’s not personal. I think that 100% respect of the work is the biggest thing.

IHAVEANIDEA: The Martin Agency is located in Richmond, Virginia, which isn’t exactly huge, cosmopolitan city. In what ways is the city an ally of the agency, and in what ways is it an enemy?

John: It’s easy for me to draw upon my past to answer this one. I went to East Texas State University, which was a cow town, literally nothing there but cows. It allowed me to think because there were no distractions, just unadulterated, free-floating imagination and curiosity. All I could think is “there’s something else out there” and something else is going on, and I could get enough reference through books and everything else.

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If you look at some of the great shops, Crispin, Wieden, Fallon, even the ones in Amsterdam, they all breathe independence. I think it makes you a bit more curious, and if the curiosity is fed by being from a small city or being the underdog there’s something that breathes that in you. The only drawback to being in a place like Richmond is some of the logistical aspects. There isn’t a big freelance market on hand.

One of my biggest challenges and goals is to make this a place where people want to come to do the work. We’ve had a few of those recently, we’ve had a few people come that I thought wouldn’t come to a city like Richmond, and they came because they said that they wanted to become a part of what’s going on here. (laughs) Now, once they have their book filled up with amazing work, we’ll have to keep them here.

IHAVEANIDEA: Getting back to change, do you think the agency personality has changed in the last year or two?

John: I know that’s true by just the way the whole second floor is arranged, the creative floor, where everyone is sitting around the work. There are media specialists, there are interactive designers, technologists, coders, even some account people, but it is like a hub.

I’m waiting for the day when somebody draws a penis on it, which would have shown up at Wieden rather quickly, for sure.

The walls are meant to be a living breathing organic art show. The work should be always going up. I want to take one wall and do a time-lapse over it, and see what it looks like at the end of the year. People draw all over it. I’m waiting for the day when somebody draws a penis on it, which would have shown up at Wieden rather quickly, for sure. All of this has changed the culture and personality.

For some people it hasn’t been easy to adapt, but overall it has been professionally good for them. Being able to see how that’s changing the personality of the place is going to be really cool. It’s pretty remarkable how many people have been open to change. I mean really, really open to it and wanted it to happen.

IHAVEANIDEA: What part of The Martin Agency DNA will always be there, the part that won’t, or can’t be changed?

John: One thing that absolutely has to stay is that the people at The Martin Agency are nice people, and they’re nice to people. I mean, they are really genuine and they believe and behave that way all the time and I think it’s a good thing. I don’t want to say it’s Southern hospitality; I just think that they’re nice people.

Of course being nice doesn’t mean that we can’t be completely brave about the work and have a lot of courage about what we believe in. I think over the years this has probably gone too far; the nice, nice, nice, nice, to a point where maybe it’s affected how we make the work and what we believe about the work. We have to be a lot braver and have a lot more courage.

IHAVEANIDEA: When you’re having that drink with your kids when they’re older and you tell them a story about your years in advertising, what would your story be like? “In my days, when I was an advertising man…”

John: Man, that’s a tricky one. It truly just feels like I’ve been playing all of this time, and that’s a good feeling. One of the most memorable moments was meeting Stan Williams from HP. He helped invent nanotechnology, and he was up for the Nobel Prize. I knew that things were going to change so fast in our industry with what he had developed. His whole premise was that in a certain year, 2050, there was going to be no more room left on chips. So he said “Let’s go the other way.” And he invented nanowires, which would one day allow for all of the information in the Library of Congress, which is the world’s biggest library, to live inside my watch some day. Meeting this guy just changed my entire view of technology and it has a much bigger role in what we’re doing, bigger than I can fathom, and I see it now every day. I mean, just like that, I’ll see something that I never thought of, didn’t think could happen.

I know you wanted to hear a great big giant crazy story. I remember one time we flew a plane that…no, I won’t say that…the pilot had to wear masks because there was so much weed in the plane, it was a charter jet. Fun times.

IHAVEANIDEA: If you were speaking to a group of juniors and telling them your story about breaking into the business, how would you advise them?

…you just have to stay curious the whole time. If you don’t, then you’re dead. If you ever think you have it figured out or if there’s a formula to making a piece of communication, you’re dead.

John: Oh, well, I hated advertising. I’m not all things advertising in this place, I was a designer, I am a designer, and I still look at the world like that. I always hated advertising. I remember when I used to work in Nike Designs and think “I hate how these advertisements work. I don’t want to be in advertising. They’re sellouts.” And now, it’s what I do. The hardest thing is that I think you just have to stay curious the whole time. If you don’t, then you’re dead. If you ever think you have it figured out or if there’s a formula to making a piece of communication, you’re dead. I also think you have to be confident. You have to believe in your ideas but have to be curious at the same time, so it’s kind of a Jekyll and Hyde thing.

IHAVEANIDEA: What is the one big lesson you’ve learnt from Mike Hughes since you joined The Martin Agency? I can only imagine his are mighty big shoes to fill.

John: Yeah, very big shoes. I keep telling him “Why do you worry about that? Your name is on the building!” I think he has a resilient passion about trying to make work. I think one of the biggest things is that he respects people before anything else. I have it too, but he has it from a different way. It’s definitely Mike’s voice in the company, but he’s a gentle giant. He never scares people. I think that sometimes I can scare people around the workplace, but he never scares people. He’s a magnet to people.

Mike has been running this place for almost 30 years, and in that time they’ve had some of the best writers and storytellers, arguably one of the top three agencies in this category. That is still here, but for me, if I see uranium and plutonium, if we can make that work, it’s an atom bomb. It’s like the technology in the middle of all of that can make it all happen. It’s a stupid analogy but it’s a real simple one to get my head around. A lot of the people that I was able to recruit are from that world.

As a boss or as the head of creative, I’ve learned from Mike that it’s always important to look at work and find something in there that you wish you would have done. Always do that, even if it’s a student book or whatever, I just want one thing in there that I go “Man, I wish I would have done that.”

IHAVEANIDEA: How about your creative process, do you have a specific method?

John: I wanted to do a few things so that I could lead by example. Mike was a big advocate of that; he said “Get some things in quickly.” I did that and it was really successful. The creative process for me can come from anywhere and it should be very chaotic up front. I think it should be messy up front. We reserve the right to change the work at any stage to make it better. I think that’s the biggest thing to get their head around, because they think “Well, they already bought it. They’ve already signed off on this.” ‘That’s great’, but you know in production or music, they can make it better at any stage. I’m used to pushing it until it goes to press, or until a site launches or the TV has to air.

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Interview by:

Ignacio Oreamuno
El Presidente
ihaveanidea

Executive Creative Director
Agency Republic

You know how it seems all advertising creatives want to quit the industry one day to direct music videos?

Well, we’ve found someone who’s been the opposite direction. After directing music videos for several years, Gavin and wife Gemma worked at numerous traditional ad agencies before ‘digitising’ into glue London and later Agency Republic where they eventually became joint Creative Directors, and led the agency to many international awards and Agency of the Year accolades. Maybe there is something about that whole grass being always greener on the other side of the fence business after all.

Now do you know what else all advertising creatives want?

That’s right, winning a Tomorrow Awards trophy. Gavin’s been there and done that. And is one of the Monster Judges for the Winter 2011 edition, so if you’ve done work you think could impress him and teach the whole industry a thing or two, you have until February 16th 2011 to enter it.

ihaveanidea: How did you make the jump from the exciting world of directing music videos to the ad world? It seems like most creatives aspire to the former, but you went backwards…

Gavin: We got a lot of those comments when Gemma (my partner, we’ve always been a creative team) and I were first shopping our book around. Creatives usually start directing music videos as a way out of advertising. At that time, we were using my music videos show reel and Gemma’s illustration and fine art portfolios as a secret little test that we used on the ad agencies that we were going to see. All the agencies that weren’t really interested in those sorts of things and said “We only want to see your ad book” were the ones that didn’t really impress us very much. They turned us off immediately.  It was an interesting exercise for us to be going into creative places and actually find out how open to different sorts of creativity they were.

Why did we start doing it?

It’s sort of a long story.  I’d always been freelancing in advertising on and off, even whilst making music videos.  It started off as a way to pay the bills, since music videos certainly didn’t used to pay very much—and even less today.  You do it for the love of it. Because you love music and film making and you want to make cool stuff and experiment and have fun with the bands and all of that. It’s brilliant, I did it for a few years, but you can’t really survive doing that. Not unless you become Michel Gondry within a year or two. I directed music videos with larger and larger budgets over time, but it still wasn’t a reliable way to make a living.  So that’s why we got more and more into advertising and started freelancing for bigger above the line places in London.

I think the future modern agency will be struggling almost to not define itself

ihaveanidea:  All right, so after spending more time than is healthy stalking you on Linkedln, I saw that you spent many years freelancing after your first job in advertising. Was it a bad time to get full time gigs or just that much of a great time to be a freelancer?

Gavin: It was a bit of all sorts of things. My CV does look a bit jumbled up, but some of those freelance gigs would be for three or six months.  It was a mixture of short and long-term contracts, while we just hadn’t necessarily found the right place for us. We went to see some of the best agencies, although through luck or bad-timing, or simply not being good enough, we just couldn’t get into some those places at that time.  I’m a big believer in the fact that things don’t happen for certain reasons.  Perhaps our entire career and the fact that we even ended up getting into digital and specializing in it for the past nine years or whatever, wouldn’t have happened if we’d gotten a job at some of the places we were pestering like Mother for example.

We would have loved to get a permanent job at Mother back then, but it just didn’t happen to come off.  With hindsight, you kind of look back and go “maybe it was a good thing  we didn’t because we ended up with this different career, skills and specializations”.  It worked out for the best.

Mercedes-Benz - ‘a-to-s’

ihaveanidea:  Did you end up getting the lion share of the digital briefs when you were freelancing because the in-house teams preferred the TV briefs?

Gavin: No, not especially.  We got the odd digital brief from freelancing, but most were traditional briefs.  It wasn’t until 2002 when we joined Glue London that we really started getting into digital because at the time they were exclusively a digital agency.  That’s why it was a bit of a was a bit of a leap of faith for us, and it turned out to be was a great place where we learned a lot. 2002 was right about that time when digital started to move forward and started to become much more of a serious commodity and a serious media for clients as well.  It was kind of lucky timing for us, it’s not like we had some kind of master plan or anything.  It just turned out that way. (laughs)

ihaveanidea: Speaking of which, do you think it’s still important to make the distinction between digital and traditional agencies, or has it become irrelevant?

Gavin: I think it’s a really interesting time in regards to all of that.  Traditional agencies – at least the forward thinking ones – have been trying to work out what their plans are for the past few years, and as one of the leading digital agencies, we’ve had hundreds of discussions about where it’s all going and what’s our plan of attack going forward.  So there are loads of discussions going on, and ultimately, the way I see it all going is that all these different areas are merging together. Even digital as a term is becoming more and more meaningless because all agencies should be able to do digital work and to think digitally going forward. That’s the way everything is going, like it or not.

ihaveanidea: That notion isn’t limited to advertising, it’s also extending to real life, so to speak.

Gavin: Exactly. Consumers don’t think of it like that, so why should agencies?  They’ll see an ad on the tele that says “Join the campaign on Facebook.” without trying to fit it into the right category. They don’t think of digital as a channel, they just think of it as another place to be, to connect with friends, or whatever.

But back to your question (laughs)… I think the future modern agency will be struggling almost to not define itself. They’ll try to come up with some sort of term that says “We do amazing creative stuff for our clients, and it doesn’t matter where we do it or what channel we use.”

You’re starting to see some companies saying these things already. New York’s Co: being one of them. There’s also a new one in London called 101, started by one of Fallon’s founders, that’s also talking about similar stuff.  It’s an interesting and exciting time for sure.

BBC Radio 1 - ‘Musicubes’ (no longer live)

ihaveanidea: It seems like you need to be in an extremely privileged position, where you’d spent years dealing with very senior clients to do that adopt that sort of model though, no?

Gavin: I suppose, but they worked hard in the previous years to get into that position.  Maybe it’s similar with 101 in London.  One of the founding partners used to be a client, so it’s an agency with a client almost built into it if you like.

There’s a lot of evolution going on, and that’s the point.  Traditional agencies will get in trouble if they don’t open up. There’s been a lot of talk recently about digital agencies being the new dinosaurs, because obviously in the past digital agencies have been calling the above the line agencies dinosaurs.  But I think you still need specialists.  That’s the ultimate point, you’ll always do and I don’t think that’s going to change.

ihaveanidea:  Do you guys at Agency Republic even try pitching for digital assignments, or do you still focus exclusively on digital?

Gavin: We try when it makes sense in regards to the client or the project. Our focus always has been and will remain digital.  Let me explain; we have delivered global integrated work for the likes of EA Games for instance.  In that case it kind of made sense for us to pitch for it, because EA Games is intrinsically a digital company and that company’s audience is pretty much online all the time or is at least very digitally savvy. The best way to speak to that audience is through digital media, and it made sense to go for that because it was a real brief with digital at the heart of it.

So if some of the ideas we come up with end up becoming a TV ad or press ad as they did for the job we did for EA Games, that’s fine, we’re up for it.  We’ll go to specialist production companies to execute those pieces of the campaign, just as a traditional agency would. We try to judge everything on whether or not we think the clients or the project have got digital at the heart of it, because that’s where we see our focus remaining.

….you can’t really survive doing that. Not unless you become Michel Gondry within a year or two.

ihaveanidea:  Lots of agencies especially digital ones seem to be obsessed with innovation, yourselves included. Which kind of make sense for you since you’re a Tomorrow Awards Monster Judge.  So what kind of things do you do to maintain an atmosphere of innovation in your department?  To make sure your creatives, or anybody else working for you always remains on their toes and doesn’t settle for the “Hey, let’s just do a banner ad.” route…not that there’s anything wrong with banner ads of course! (laughs)

Gavin: That’s a good caveat you added there at the last minute (laughs). On that point actually, one of the things I’ve always said that, even if the brief is just asking for a banner ad, there’s still the chance to make the best fucking banner ad you’ve ever made. You can still win a Cannes Gold Lion for a banner ad.

ihaveanidea: Well, they do say it’s the easiest category to win gold in because banners tend to suck, right?

Gavin: It is! (laughs). Lean Mean won interactive agency of the year a couple of years ago thanks to a lot of banner ads.  It was an amazing job by those guys and I think they’re brilliant, but there wasn’t an awful lot of innovation going on in those ads.  They were just nicely, well done banner ads.  But back to the question about innovation:  I think it’s really important to foster innovation in any kind of digital agency. It’s really important for me personally.  We’ve always pushed for doing new stuff, innovative stuff, because it’s more exciting apart from anything else.  And if you tend to surround yourself with like-minded people, they’ll get thirsty for it too, especially when the leadership for the agency is excited about it. It fosters an atmosphere where everyone constantly wants to work with the newest latest stuff.  That’s not just for our own satisfaction, especially in the world of digital, it’s the kind of stuff that makes a splash more easily.  In some regards, digital gets a bit of bad press from more traditional creative for pursuing whatever’s the newest thing as opposed to executing stuff in the best possible way and focusing on the craft, which is what their expertise is all about. But TV essentially hasn’t changed in 100 years, and print hasn’t changed in however hundreds years, so there’s very little innovation for them to pursue.

It was an interesting exercise for us to be going into creative places and actually find out how open to different sorts of creativity they were.

ihaveanidea:  Well, don’t they have a bit of a point in that if you keep chasing innovation all of the time, you’ll never get to perfect whatever you came up with, and you’ll just end up with a lot of beta versions? It’s kind of hard to draw the line.

Gavin: Yeah, that’s true, and the challenge for me or someone in my position in any agency is to try and marry those two up.  My background is more from the perfection of filmmaking and above the line work, but I’m equally excited about innovation and possibilities, and combining new services and platforms together to make who knows what. There’s nothing more exciting than setting out on a project where the client doesn’t know what the hell you’re doing and you don’t really know what the hell you’re doing or whether or not it’s going to work.  That’s the most creative exciting atmosphere you can be in.  But as long as everyone’s up for it, and we’re going to try and make something really brilliant, then that’s great.  My focus is that we need to make sure that we can deliver that and that it’s also well presented, the copy is beautiful, and that we have the whole package.   Not just a kind of new flashy whiz-bang thing, which does something new but is not really representative of the brand. I think that’s another thing that gets lost quite often in digital work. This kind of skill, or a sense of appreciation rather for the brand, telling its story and keeping true to the brand’s tone of voice.  All of the things that are far more crafted and thought about in above the line work, usually.

EA Games – Battlefield Bad Company 2

PlayStation – Killzone 2 Webgame

ihaveanidea:  So how do you apply all that in your department?

Gavin: Well, that part of your question I didn’t actually answer, did I? I’ve instigated this ongoing R&D program here at Republic that we’ve had running for a couple of years now. There’re dedicated tech resources and creatives and designers can get dedicated time to spend on R&D ideas.  All the concepts – that anyone in the agency can come up with, not just creatives – for innovative projects get presented and those ideas can be taken on.  We can have dedicated time in-house spent to developing those things.

Obviously, it’s tough because you need to make money as well, you know we’re not an art collection; we’re not a start-up with massive backing from a Google co-founder or whatever. So it’s a question of trying to balance cash between your existing clients and pitching and pushing forwards. Because sometimes clients aren’t asking for a crazy innovation, so you need to get on with that yourself. I think that’s one of the ways that we encourage it.

The other thing is sharing. Sharing knowledge, which is essentially the foundation of the internet. If you think about it, that’s what it’s all about.  We have very open culture here where we share everything.  So if someone spots something cool on their Twitter feed or whatever, within a minute it will be emailed around the agency. We have different groups and resources for the whole agency to access whenever they want so that they can see where the latest cool things are happening.  It’s an incredible and extremely valuable resource.  I haven’t worked for another agency in six years, so I don’t know how much it happens in other agencies, but it’s something really valuable here.

We went to see some of the best agencies, although through luck or bad-timing, or simply not being good enough, we just couldn’t get into some those places at that time

ihaveanidea: Last question: Since you briefly mentioned your wife also being your creative partner for the best part of your career, was there ever such a thing as leaving the work at work when you got home?  If so, how did you manage it?

Gavin: Well, sometimes we didn’t manage it very easily (laughs).  We had worked together before we began working in advertising; we first worked together at the Edinburgh National Film Festival sticking up posters.  After that, when I started directing the music videos, Gems was Art Directing and she was helping to build the sets, and even doing the storyboards for some of my bigger music videos.  And, as we started to get into advertising more and more, it started to seem like a natural extension of that.

We were already getting used to talking about work without letting it take over our life.  When you know someone really really well, and when you spend a lot of time with someone—which you do if you live and work together— you quite frankly get to a kind of flow where you instinctively know when it’s okay or not to talk about work stuff. The other more important thing is that we have two kids. And you don’t’ have time to talk about work at home with two kids.

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Interview by:

Rafik Belmesk
Operations, AKOS
ihaveanidea