Live Local, Think Global

7/27/2019 Live Local, Think Global

1/44

zwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwj j

zwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwj jzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyz

wxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzw

xyzwxyzwxyzwx

yzwxyzw

zwxyzwx

yzwxyzwxyzwxy

zwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzwxyz

wxyzwxyzwxyzwxyzw

Karin Gottschalk

Live Local,Think Global

Regional AdvertisingWithout

Regional Limitation

EnGsA


2/44

ii

Copyright Karin Angelika Gottschalk 2003.0424 723 280

[email protected]

Vin Nm: 1.0Da: 29 April 2003

Contents

1. INtroDuctIoN 31.1 About This Document 31.2 An Evolution in Communication 31.3 The Implications for Advertising 41.4 Remembering the Market 5

2. ADVertIsINg AND Its crItIcs 63. Me & ADVertIsINg 7

3.1 What Do I Want? 73.2 Change & Evolution 8

4. LocAtIoN, LocAtIoN 84.1 Edge Cultures 9

4.2 The Kiwi Edge 94.3 American Regionalism 104.4 Perth & The Tyranny of Distance 124.5 PerthThe Edge of the Edge 13

5. cLIeNts greAt AND sMALL 145.1 Great Clients, Great Agency 145.2 Great Suits, Great Work 155.3 Great Work on the Box 17

6. the VIsIoN thINg 186.1 Vision & Creativity 196.2 Vision & Ideas 19

6.2 Art & Commerce 256.3 Commercial Progenitors 276.4 Choose Your People Well 306.5 Provide The Right Resources 316.6 No Time Like The Present 34

7. ADVertIsINg Is More thAN ADs 367.1 Strategy 367.1 Brand & Branding 377.2 Love & Lovemarks 377.3 Consultancy & Production 387.4 Integration & Coordination 38

8. the IDeAL regIoNAL AgeNcy 399. reereNces 42


3/44

1. IntroduCtIon

This document began lie as a list and some notes, and then it grewand grew.

I had been thinking about some o the lessons I have learned whenworking at several excellent advertising agencies, and the negative andpositive experiences I have had there.

I care just as much about great advertising as I did then, even moreso in act. But now I have had time to think about what worked andwhat did not, and how things can be done better.

The eld o advertising has changed, due to the state o theglobal economy, wars and recent events, and the changing nature ocommunications and what people expect o it. This is now a worldwhere customers want to enter an active dialog with companies ratherthan passively accepting impersonal messages rom them. The meansor real dialog are in place with the Internet and the Web.

Some advertising agencies have begun changing to adapt andtake advantage o new conditions. The majority have not, and are

foundering, and predicting ongoing doom and gloom beore anuncertain recovery that is always just somewhere around the corner.

Rather than becoming the victims o ate, I believe it is imperativethat we rethink what it is we are doing, and how we are doing it, andbegin leading rather than ollowing.

1.1 About thIs DocuMeNt

Print is traditionally linear.You start reading atthe beginning and then ollow a straight path until you get

to the end. Digital documents are by nature lateral. You readpart, then you go to another part linked to that one, and thenyou jump all over the place ollowing the interconnections.

Digital documents grew out o the theories o Vannevar Bush andTed Nelson about how we think and how the human brain works.

Essentially, all our thoughts orm a cloud o billions o smallerunits o thought, interconnected by many threads. Some o thosesmaller thoughts coalesce into clumps called memes.

I recommend you start at the table o contents and then jump tothe section that most interests you, to begin with. Each listing in thetable is a link. Clicking will take you to the relevant page.

1.2 AN eVoLutIoN IN coMMuNIcAtIoN

The accuracy o Bush and Nelsons observations explains the suddenenormous popularity o the World Wide Web. The Web is built out opetext, text documents with multiple connections inside and out,analogous to the way the mind works. On the Web, ideas gain a orcethat turns them into something like living entitiesmemes.

This document is a PDF, a hybrid between print and digitaldocuments. It is part hypertext, with a hypertextual structureunderneath, and part linearly structured print. It contains internal

Live Local,

Think Global


4/44

links, and external links to websites. You can read it straight throughlike print, laterally like the Web, or both.

Documents are in a state o transition. They are becoming a bettert or how people really think. They are becoming more hypertextualand increasingly multimedia, refecting the way our brains receiveinput and make connections.

Our society is in a period o transition, especially in terms o how

we communicate with each other. There are major implications in thator advertising, especially.

1.3 the IMpLIcAtIoNs or ADVertIsINg

Once upon a time marketing theorists posited that there was a thingout there called theMass Maket, inhabited by masses o people withpretty much the same tastes and needs and desires, whom you couldaddress e masse, in a thing they namedMass Maketithat, despite itsname, somehow managed to communicate with each such individualon a one-to-one basis.

I used to have a bookcase ull o books on the subject puttingorward the same e-t-e et i te mass theory. I chucked them outin the end. Those marketing theoreticians must have seemed prettydamned convincing once upon a time, because there is a undamentalcontradiction in what they are saying.

Christopher Locke,Fiacia Times top 50 world business thinkerand author o 2 Amazon.com bestsellers, is one writer on marketingwhose books I still have in my collection.

Busiess ceate mass makets tu bacast aetisi, tesame stetia ice cmma-a-ct it use wkes,

but i tis case appie t te maketpace. Sut up a watue t is t tat muc ieet m sut up a bu upuct.

Te sut up pat was buit i t bacast, as tee was eea back-caeee a wa t ask questis.1

Mass marketing has applied its methods and theories to all kindso media besides TVcinema advertising, print ads, billboards andposters, and radio. When advertising came to the Web in 1994, massmarketers leapt to the rescue with banner ads. Those old theories omass marketing are still at work today in traditional public relations

rms and marketing communications departmentsmarcomms.

mass marketing is in troubleand its practitioners know it.

Lets have an interlude to ask a really obvious question o those oldtime marketing theoreticians. How is a billboard one-to-one? Or a TVcommercial? Do you really expect people to walk past one or watchone and have a dialogue with it? How are you going to talk back?

Today, mass marketing is in trouble and its practitioners know it.They are foundering, and are blaming everyone and everythingthewar, epidemics, consumer sentiment, market sentiment. They are

Live Local,

Think Global


5/44

doing everything except what they should be doingrethinking theircommitment to a manner o marketing whose time has passed.

The Web and the Internet work because they really are one-to-one.They are a return to the market in its original sense. Lets listen againto Christopher Locke.

I ma was, te Iteet me esembes a aciet bazaata it ts te busiess mes cmpaies t t impse up it.

Miis ae fcke t te et i a iceib st time,because it seeme t e sme itaibe quait missi iacti m me ie. te Iteet cecte pepe t eacte a pie a space i wic te uma ice wu beapi eiscee.

Having got a taste or the individual human voice at work, by thehundreds o millions in an incredibly short time, people are now doingwhat they have always done when presented with a new and moreattractive paradigm. They are looking or old media and old marketingorms to take on the characteristics o the new.

1.4 reMeMberINg the MArket

It is worth considering what the word maketoriginally meant, andstill does in some parts o the world, beore the era o supermarketsand mass communications.

A market was a gathering in public o people wishing to buy andsell goods and services, communicating with each other one-to-oneabout the nature and benets o those goods and services. Marketsare regular aairs, held in the same place on the same days, and

ongoing communication between individuals is what helps establish acondition o trust.

A market was a gathering in publicof people wishing to buy and sell

With regular communication comes storytelling and mythmaking,as well as the pleasantries and courtesies o real human contact.

Whenever I hear the word market, my memories o the marketin the little eastern French town o Ferney come to vivid lie. Thetown is ormally named Ferney-Voltaire ater the Enlightenment

poet, philosopher and tragedian who was exiled there. Voltaire wroteCaie in his villa on the heights just above the town centre.

Whatever the season, it was always sunny at Ferney market. Itsodours wated past your nose even beore you had arrived, hittingsomewhere on the road rom Cessy at least a kilometre away. Thesmells were intensely seductive, a mingling o spit-roasting meat o allkinds with reshly harvested herbs, ruit, nuts and vegetables warmingin the sunlight and gently releasing their odours into an almostinvisible cloud hovering low above the square.

Arrive early and an extra smell would be added to the mixthelast o the previous nights sourdough bread made by the towns bestartisan baker cooling on grey galvanized zinc wire racks outside thestore opening onto the market square.

Live Local,

Think Global


6/44

Winter or summer, cold or warm, every stallholder had a smile anda kind word to bestow on every passer-by. The smiles and enthusiasmwere inectious. Arrive on a stern mission to grab just a ew essentialsin the shortest possible time, and ater a greeting and a smile or twoyour pace slowed, your cares seemed less urgent, and you were temptedto stroll about that little square or hours, chatting in racturedFrench and English, sampling the wares, and gazing at every little

vignette bathing in the intense mountain sunlight and the reshmountain air.

I only every other market was like that one. Ater my rst visit toFerney, I could never go back to the market at Bermondsey.

2. AdvertIsIng And Its CrItICs

C

reativity always has its CritiCs. Sergio Zyman,ormer Coca-Cola worldwide marketing director, is one othem.

In his book Te E Aetisi As We Kw It2, Zymanwrites: Simply put, the goal o advertising is to sell more stu to morepeople, more oten or more money. Fair enough, and perectly true.

But then Zyman hurls abuse at advertising agencies. Ad agenciesand ad execs lure companies in with promises that theyll come upwith the best ad campaigns anyone has ever seen. They collect bigees, and whenever anyone questions what they do, these creatives actoended and basically say the same thing that the Emperors con mendid: Advertising is an art, and only artists and creative people get it.

Zymans outlook is that o a certain kind o sel-described hard-nosed businessman. Zyman sets himsel up in opposition to creativity

and the people who practise it. Avoiding clear research and reasoning,he releases emotional diatribes against the people whom he sees as hispolar opposites.

He paints what they do and say as deception and lies. He puts wordsin their mouths. But he has no new ideas and no real solutions. Evenworse is that he seems unable to cope with the truth.

The truth is that creative advertising works. Numerous advertisingeectiveness awards and studies by industry bodies like BritainsInstitute o Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) indicate that creative adsare also the most eective. Eectiveness is what sells more stu tomore people, more oten or more money.

effectiveness awards and studiesindicate that creative ads are also the most

effective.

The acts are that the public responds positively to great advertising.The public does indeed get it.The public even enjoys great ads, especially television commercials.

The evidence is in the enthusiasm with which many o my non-industry riends collect and swap commercials, the way my Englishriends would chat about some great new ad on the TV, and thepopularity o websites like Adcritic.com. Adcritic.com and its imitatorshad to begin charging, or shut down, due to the expensive bandwidththat enthusiastic members o the public were eating up.

Live Local,

Think Global


7/44

The reality is that great advertising is always in short supply. Theother salient truth is that advertising alone is tenough.

By the way, ater Zyman published Te E Aetisi As We KwItCoca-Cola red him.

3. Me & AdvertIsIng

ilove advertisinG, despite great advertising constantly beingin short supply.

I am passionate about ideas, and excellence in communication,and I believe that creativity is the essential nature o mankind.

I think a great deal about all these things, and I have had the goodortune to work at several o the best advertising agencies in the world,with some o the most innovative people in their elds.

I came to advertising later in lie, ater lecturing in art and design,exhibiting photographs in art galleries, working or most o Australiasbiggest publishers, and conceiving, co-ounding and being EuropeanContributing Editor orBack+Wite 3 magazine.

During a break rom advertising, I worked with one o the oremostnew media designers in the worldMalcolm Garrett 4, and was creativedirector o an immensely successul, albeit short-lived, Web magazinethat pioneered new methods o advertising on the Web.

I learned about advertising by working closely with some o the greatcreativesTim Delaney5, Warren Eakins 6, and John Bevins 7. I havemet and spent time with several othersIndra Sinha, Jim Aitchison8 and Hugh Mackay9. I consulted or Saatchi & Saatchi 10 when theywere reorming themselves into an ideas company. I worked on anumber o award-winning ads with the younger generation o rising

stars, or clients including Adidas, Harrods and Pepe Jeans.I am a ormer industry outsider, with plenty o experience o othercreative areas. As I did not come up through the system, I perceive it asa system, and eel ree to question holy writ.

Jim Aitchison, in one o the best in-depth books on advertising,Cutti Ee Aetisi, also supports the need to question rules.

Kevin Roberts 11, worldwide CEO o Saatchi & Saatchi, speaksconstantly to industry and academic organizations around the worldabout the need to question and rethink all our assumptions. (Hisspeeches are archived on his personal website.)

Despite what antagonists o creativity such as Sergio Zyman

appear to believe, shouting very loudly and thumping on a tub whilepresenting a clear proposition about the product does not persuadepeople to buy. I it did, every store would have a tub-thumper bangingaway out ront. Coca-Cola signalled Zymans need to re-think hisassumptions by sacking him.

3.1 WhAt Do I WANt?

Having experienced a ew good agencies, and seeing shortcomingsin each, I have been rethinking what I want out o advertising andadvertising agencies.

I want to re-enter advertising on more eective terms. I want to doit at an agency that is as close as possible to my ideal, or at least onethat wishes to make progress in that direction.

Live Local,

Think Global


8/44

The last couple o years have been a dicult time or advertising asa whole. Many agencies have been questioning how they do business.Innovators like Saatchi & Saatchi, Euro RSCG 15, St Lukes, Mother,HHCL and some o the best small regionally-based North Americanagencies have already shown how to successully re-think yoursel.

Some o these agencies were ounded in the previous advertisingrecession. Others reormulated their methods when the Web proved

that communication really is a two-way process, and that the massaudience and mass marketing is a myth. Some o them rethinkthemselves on an ongoing basis.

There are many lessons to be learnt rom all o them. There are alsoew thoughts awaiting expression.

3.2 chANge & eVoLutIoN

This document is the product o my rethinking and ongoingquestioning, about advertising, creativity and ideas.

It will continue to evolve as my thinking evolves, and I will release itin many versions, in the new tradition o regular updates establishedby the Web and digital publishing.

4. LoCAtIon, LoCAtIon

Agood loCATIon IS EvEryThIng, as the saying goes. Butwhat does that ea mean?

I have lived nearby three major trunk roads in threedierent cities. In London it was the New Kings Road. In

Sydney, Parramatta Road. In Perth, Beauort Street.

Both Beauort Street and Parramatta Road have long sectionspopulated by many empty stores. New business owners arrive, set upin ull optimism, and then go broke shortly aterwards. Then someoneelse comes along.

I am sure the agents representing those properties all use the samephrase on their placards:Pet passi tae. The trade passes by, andnever stops. Unless your store is surrounded by carpark tarmac, peoplejust do not get out o their cars.

But those stores that have made the right provisions do very wellindeed, and you would think new store owners on both roads wouldhave learned their lesson by now.

location is relative.

I raised the New Kings Road because it too is a road that peoplepass through on, instead o stopping in. There is one exception. Myormer account director on Adidas , Tim Little 12, set up his new shoestore on one o the least likely parts o it. People stop there, but onlyi they are diehard ans o beautiul handmade shoes in the ne oldEnglish tradition.

Tim does not need to rely on passing trade. He learned his lessonrom Adidas. Adidas two main oces are based in two extremely outo the way placesHerzogenaurach, Germany and Portland, Oregon.

Adidas is a global brand, available everywhere.

Live Local,

Think Global


9/44

Tim sells his shoes in all the biggest and best department stores in theworldSelridges, Barneys, Nordstrom and the like, all over the world.

Tim Little lives above the store in peace and quiet, and travels tomeet his clients and customers when he needs to. Tim loves travelling.He rarely got out o the oce when he worked or Leagas Delaney.Now you cant keep him out o airplanes.

The lesson is that location is relative. The acts are that there are

such things as air travel, telephones, e-mail and the Internet, andbusiness knows no borders.

4.1 eDge cuLtures

In his website Te new Zeaa Ee 13, Kevin Roberts puts orward theargument that edge cultures have the edge over the competition.

Roberts cites New Zealand as a prime edge culture. He denes edgecultures as those that are ar away rom the centre. Their primary

virtues, he says, are an ability to see and think clearly and unshackledby unquestioned assumptions.

Te new Zeaa Ee contains news items about New Zealanderssuch asl te ris director Peter Jackson or war heroine NancyWake. There are biographies emphasizing the achievements o NewZealanders through the nations history, and there are some realrevelations about innovators who turn out to be Kiwis. The sitecontains many cogent arguments in avour o edge cultures.

Kevin Roberts chose to live and work in Auckland, New Zealand,ater a stellar career in marketing and corporate management inLondon, South Arica and Canada or world amous brands includingMary Quant, Procter & Gamble, Lion Nathan and so on. With his

track record, he could have chosen to live anywhere. Instead he pickedAuckland. And soon enough, Saatchi & Saatchi picked him, to be theirworldwide CEO.

Roberts personal website, SaatciKei, contains ample evidencethat he spends much o his time addressing industry groups andeducational institutions all over the world. He jets around the Saatchi& Saatchi oces, is ocially located in New York, and maintainshome base and amily in Auckland.

4.2 the kIWI eDge

The Wellington oce o Saatchi & Saatchi, despite being one othe smallest, is the most awarded. It has been eatured in severaladvertising books, oten the only Saatchi & Saatchi oce so chosen.Its budgets are mostly tiny, yet its results are impressive.

There is no doubt the quality o the Wellington oces work is aidedby the presence there o Len Cheeseman, one o the greatest advertisingtypographers ever. (I am a type reakI notice these things!)

Cheeseman worked in London at Collett Dickenson Pearce (CDP)during its glory days with writers like Tony Brignull and Indra Sinha,and art directors such as Neil Godrey. Then Cheeseman vanished, to

mysteriously reappear in New Zealand.

Live Local,

Think Global


10/44

10

Such talents aside, there is another actor at work, one commonto many New Zealand advertising agencies. I experienced it rst handwhen I few in to Auckland to do jobs or DDB Needham in the late1980s. The agencys clients awarded them with a respect and a creativereedom that was unknown in Australia, the other edge culture in theregion, at the time. Essentially we could do whatever we elt woulddo the job or the campaign, and the client trusted our judgement

enough to accept that. None o the work was rejected.

a respect and a creative freedom thatwas unknown in Australia

New Zealand agencies oten eature in international awards, havebegun winning Australian clients, and their ads have run in thiscountry. Their agencys Australian branches have sometimes takenNew Zealand ideas and developed them urther.

Other analysts credit distance and lack o intererence as a actor.As the New Zealand market is so small and the budgets are so tiny,the belie is that global marketing directors pay no attention to theadvertising being done there. But that does not explain why nationalmarketing people permit such creative reedom.

Another strain o thought is that the quality o Kiwi televisionprogramming is so bad that advertisers eel compelled to oeraudiences decent ads in compensation.

4.2.1 M ta n kiwi ed

My belie is that Kiwi agencies and their clients ully understand the

benets o creativity and have established a condition o mutual trust.I do not buy the low budget argument, that they are so tiny nobodycares what is done with them. To a small national division, even lowbudgets seem like a lot, and there is as much pressure on spending thatmoney wisely as head oce eels when presented with enormous gures.

4.3 AMerIcAN regIoNALIsM

Madison Avenue is the traditional home o advertising in the UnitedStates. All national advertising campaigns originate rom there, excepti they come rom Chicago. That is the classical myth.

I New York and Chicago are North Americas Sydney andMelbourne, then every other city is the equivalent o Perth or Adelaide.State capitals, but not natural centres o industry on a national scale.

Even Los Angeles, global home town o the movie industry, hardlycounts itsel as the center o the universe in any other creative eld.Silicon Valley may be nominal home to high tech, but no creativeindustry there registers on the national radar. And as or the Midwestor the Southeast, well,ueabuit.

Yet, some o the most creative advertising agencies are locatedwell outside New York and Chicago, and those agencies oten holdnational and international accounts the envy o Madison Avenue.

Live Local,

Think Global


11/44

11

4.3.1 cal, N Viinia

Lf km MnjI Cutti Ee Aetisi, Jim Aitchison quotes Jim Loefer ongeography, ate and sel-belie.

It beis wit se-impse staas a iscipies. ha Jacbsi ricm, r Aese a Tm McEitt i Mieapis,

Sta ricas i daas, da Wiee i Pta, a beieest i temsees.

A ae pe its t wee u bs at, its wee ueas at.

Loefer also shared his insight into the importance o a positiveenvironment outside o work.

A eimet is ee b a me ta te ce. Mabetats w me u pepe ta, sti passiate abut wk,wat a ie utsie te ce. F sme its t Te Bi Appe. Itsmutais, akes a ut aetue just utsie tei ce

wiws.

4.3.2 rimnd, Viinia

t Main AnThe little agency that could. The Agency was ounded July 7, 1965, inRichmond with one account and a lot o ambition, according to TheMartin Agency website.

Now their national accounts include United Parcel Service, Hanes,Vanilla Coke, Olympus America, Inc., Seiko Corporation and Olympus

Cameras, as well as a number o Federal government departments andinstrumentalities.

4.3.3 pland, on

Widn & knndDan Wieden built his agency with the aid o his rst major client Nike,which also has its world headquarters in Portland. Wieden & Kennedysubsequently expanded into Amsterdam and London.

Several notable creatives come rom Portland, oten having startedout at W+K, such as Warren Eakins.

Eakins worked or W+K on the Nike account in Portland andAmsterdam, then was lured to Leagas Delaney to work with TimDelaney on Adidas. I worked with Warren on many such projects, or

Adidas US oce, or Adidas UK, and jointly or all the EuropeanAdidas marketing directors.

Warren maintained home base in Malibu, Caliornia, fying in orextended work sessions in London. Now that he has moved toMinneapolis agency Fallon, Warren continues to base himsel at home,now in Santa Monica, renaming his home oce Fallon West Wing.

Live Local,

Think Global


12/44

12

Laa DlanAdidas North American operations are headquartered in Portland.Leagas Delaney set up an oce across the road.

The oce consisted o an account manager rom the UK, and a PA.We did all creative and production work or Adidas USA rom Londonand routed it through the Portland oce.

Later, when the agency acquired other American clients and sta, it

opened a ully fedged branch in San Francisco. However, I continueddoing work or the new US creatives rom London until they acquiredtheir own inrastructure and support sta.

While Adidas was in the process o restructuring itsel into aconventional corporation rom a quirky amily rm that had licensedo regional and product line rights to other entities, its newlyappointed CEO moved between Adidas Portland oce and the newglobal HQ in the obscure southern German village o Herzogenaurach.

Multinational advertising campaigns were becoming the norm orAdidas, and just like an American regional agency with national andinternational clients we learned to communicate successully with ourclient at long distance.

Commissioning and production had always been a long distanceaair or the London oce. Athletes signed to Adidas are apt to beavailable or photo shoots and TV commercials at short notice and inar-fung locations. We were accustomed to sending photographers andcrews anywhere in the world and running the shoot by wire and courier.

4.3.4 Minnali, Minna

alln Melli

Now better known as Fallon, the agency has opened up other regionaloces and recently recruited creatives o the stature o Warren Eakins.National clients include Jim Beam,Ftue, Nikon, Miller Lite,

BMW, Porsche,ri Ste, Hush Puppies, Lee Jeans, and Time.

4.3.5 san ani, calinia

gd, silvin & panSan Francisco is a big city in most peoples terms and the epitome ocountercultural cool, but it is small beer when it comes to advertising.

What chairman Je Goodby is tis small or narrow-minded. He

refects on the role o un in the home o hedonism.Tees a eemet u ee, wic we eep beiee i.Cta t a t Weste tiki tuut ist, we ttik tis cme as a esut pai, itspecti attue. Stu istea u eem a exubeace eac a.

4.4 perth & the tyrANNy o DIstANce

I remember it well rom the rst time I heard it:Pet cu s easi

be a eat eia cit aetisi, just ike Pta. Or Minneapolisor Dallas or Richmond or Charlotte. Name your avourite small tomedium-sized North American city containing great ad agencies.

Live Local,

Think Global


13/44

1

That was some time in the 1980s, when I was getting around thePerth advertising agencies on behal oCampai Bie. I have heard itand read it again a ew times since.

There is another saying some Perth people are ond o trotting out:Pet is te mst isate capita cit te paet. Big deal. Compare thedistance between Perth and Sydney to that between London and HongKong, or example. Get over it.

The acts, as amply illustrated by some o the examples above, arethat agencies in many locations around the world have been doingbusiness with non-local clients or decades. I did exactly that at LeagasDelaney just beore everyone acquired computers and e-mail accounts,and while it was sometimes dicult then, it was not impossible. Howthe world has changed since.

There is ap itte me strain in Perth culture, whereby itsproponents see themselves as the victims o distance, separation, theWise Men rom the East, or just unnameable outside orces. Te wtet me be ceatie. Te wt ie me te beaks. They, they, they.

And lets be honest, there is a strong streak o conservatism and anti-creativity amongst some members o the business community here.

Just like there is in Minneapolis, Portland, Richmond, Dallas and youname it. As well as London, New York, Hamburg and wherever elsegreat creativity also nds a home.

We are responsiblefor making things better.

Sergio Zyman penned his cynical comments in Atlanta, Georgia.Or he might have rst aired them in uptown New York. I have come

across a number o Zymans in miniature in Perth, Brisbane andSydney. And London. There will always be such people in the world.We are responsible or making things better. We cannot orever

dream o some paradise, and then run away to something that looksvaguely like it. I everyone did that, the world would be a ar worseplace, nothing but a desert surrounding a handul o appallinglycongested mega-cities.Bae ruerevisited.

The acts are that Perth provides many advantages. It is a human-sized city that is not too hard to live in. It usually rates high in globalsurveys o livability. The weather is great, and the landscapes areinspiring. Air fights are not as expensive as they used to be. Foreign

currency converts well. There is this thing called the Internet.There is time to think, and space to dream in.Room to be involved in other aspects o lie than just wk, wk,

wk.All creativity, and especially advertising creativity, needs to drawon inspirations outside o itsel.

4.5 perththe eDge o the eDge

I New Zealand is The Edge, in Kevin Roberts terminology, then Perthis The Edge o The Edge. Australia is also a nation perched on the edgeo the rest o the world. Western Australia, as the westernmost statewith its capital perched on its ar west coast, is on the edge o the edge.

Live Local,

Think Global


14/44

1

I edgeness qualies you or greatness through long vision, arsight, and a lack o received or perceived mental barriers to progressand innovation, then we have edgeness doubly in Western Australiacompared to New Zealand.

We have a bigger economy than the Kiwis do, an equally highpercentage o citizens in diaspora in the other states and scatteredthroughout the rest o the world, and a large percentage o Perth

people are rom other countries or have lived elsewhere. Suchexperience o other cultures and other lives contributes to the qualityo lie here.

Edgeness alone is not enough, however. As Jim Loefer implies, weneed to do what Harry Jacobs, Ron Andersen, Tom McEllligott, StanRichards, Dan Wieden and Jim Loefer himsel did, and believe rstin ourselves.

We need to go in search o several other essentials too.

5. CLIents greAt And sMALL

the size of the Client is not what countsit isthe nature o your relationship with them, the degreeo condence they have in themselves, and their aith increativity. Relationships are mutual. So is respect. Beore

respect comes sel respect.

5.1 greAt cLIeNts, greAt AgeNcy

There is no doubt that great clients make great advertising easier toaccomplish. Large budgets coupled with high expectations ensure

advertising creatives more oten successully leap to the challenge.Multinational accounts with global corporations are everyonesdream. It is why I ound it so easy to persuade the busiest and mostamous photographers (and directors) to work on Adidas projects,even or pitiul budgets.

The British advertising industry oten compares the budgets itreceives with those o its American counterparts, even or the sameproducts and rom the same clients, and complains at what a raw dealit is getting. Yet it manages to get on with the job nevertheless.

British advertising agencies learned long ago that, i you cannotthrow a wad o cash at a project, then you must apply your brain

power to it. That means ideas assume prime importance. Ideas are whyBritish advertising is so creative, so successul and so imitated.

Leagas Delaney had a mix o great clients and good ones. Oneo them was, in most agencies denition, the worst kind o clientyou can have. Pepe Jeans rarely paid their bills, and their marketingmanager was, to put it mildly, eccentric and untrustworthy.

Not so great.Great clients is

subject to interpretation.

Yet despite that the agency was prepared to take a punt and use theopportunities Pepe, its product line and its prole oered to do

Live Local,

Think Global


15/44

1

innovative and edgy advertising. Our Pepe Jeans work contributed tothe agencys high prole as te creative boutique or quite some time.

geat ciets is a term subject to interpretation.All except one creative team at Leagas Delaney subsequently moved

on to a succession o agencies in search o the next great client thatwould allow them to do great work. I have been surprised at how manyo them have moved so oten. Keeping track has not been an easy job.

First thing you should do on arriving at a new agency is take stocko the clients it currently has, and the opportunities each permits todo good work. Prole the client, its products, its marketing directorand its CEO. Let your account service people in on what you are doing.The quality o their enthusiasm will tell you whether they will be alliesin your quest or not.

Then do all you can to win over the client and to do that great workyou dream o.

Australian advertising creatives tend to be more sedentary in theirways than their British counterparts. I have only known a handul whohave moved in search o specic creative opportunities in the British way,usually at agencies with accounts in completely new product categories.

So the onus is on us to seek opportunities where we are.

5.1.1 Q m Ma

Whether an agency currently has great clients, has good ones that canbe persuaded to become great, or needs to go ater new ones altogether,is a vexing question. There are, ater all, only going to be so many greatclients to go around.

Some o the stories circulating about Frank Lowe are about how he

has the ability to persuade good clients into greatness. I am not surejust how he does that. Maybe that should be the subject o anotherbook by Jim Aitchison.

But in the meantime here are some more quotes rom Cutti EeAetision the subject o agencies and their clients.

J gd, gd, silvin & pan, san ani:We k smat ciets w wat t bi tei best t tispcess as we.

Ian ba, ba Ad, sina:

Its eat ciets w make eat aecies, t te eese. Teet t take te isk, tee t t bu te stu a u wit it.

I u k au e te ast twet eas, a k beite eat aetisi, u a eat cmpa. A beite eat cmpa wi be a eat ma. I u ca tse usea , ue stuck .

5.2 greAt suIts, greAt Work

At Leagas Delaney I worked with one o the best suits in the business,Bruce Haines. I also worked with some good ones, some average ones,and one mediocre ones, tats utsie m emit, he would always besaying in response to some perectly reasonable request.

Live Local,

Think Global


16/44

1

Great account service people have always been rare, but I believegood ones can be made instead o being born that way. Good accountservice is an attitude, an acquired skill, and lessons learned, not someaccident o birth.

Bruce Haines let Leagas Delaney to head Leo Burnetts Londonoce and take up chairmanship o the IPA. He is rom the Welshworking class valleys, went to Uxbridge, and became deeply interested

in the arts. He is oten quoted in the trade press as saying that ceatiitis eeti i aetisi, and that the best thing an account manageror agency director can do is support his creatives in every way possible.

I worked with him on a couple o new business initiatives andexperienced that kind o trust and respect rsthand. It worked becausepeople willingly gave ar more than they had to.

good suitscan be madethat way.

The IPA chairmanship allows Bruce Haines to urther promotewhat he preaches and practices. He has established the BOB Awardsthe Best o the Best. He has commissioned several eectiveness studieswhich have proven that the most creative advertising is the mosteective. He has presided over many other important education andtraining initiatives.

Frank Lowe is another example o a super suit. I never met Frank,even though my partner had worked or him during the years he livedin his amous house in Glebe Place, Chelsea. My predecessor at LeagasDelaney had gone to work with Frank at Lowe Howard Spink inBowater House, as had legendary ormer Leagas Delaney art director

Steve Dunn.Lowe had been in account service at CDP beore starting up his ownworldwide network o agencies. He has been a legend or years. Hisriends, colleagues and employees oten tell stories about him, andmany suits in the business try to model themselves on him. He waseven known about in Perth during myCampai Bieyears.

I dont know precisely what makes Frank Lowe such an epitome oaccount service, but there is a clue in what one o his colleagues oncesaid about him to me. Frank Lowe is, apparently, a ceatie suit. In otherwords an account director who thinks like a creative.

Another similarly creative thinker was the account service guy who

recruited me in to the John Bevins agency. He proved his worth as aninnovative thinker by doing so. My appointment there allowed meto help the agency win back millions o dollars o lost business, andgained a substantial amount o new business as well as a higher prolein the area o Internet and interactive TV advertising.

The responsibility lies with everyoneagencies and clients.

John Bevins recognized this individuals innate creativity by oeringto make him a creative. He declined. He knew his own nature, and hehad eyes set other goals. Unortunately he let soon ater, when his

Live Local,

Think Global


17/44

1

desire or more responsibility was denied by the other partners. Hewent on to join Siimon Reynolds new rm, and one day, no doubt,will emerge as a orce to be reckoned with.

The last word goes to someone else who has proven to be yetanother very creative individual, Tim Bullock. Tim is an accountdirector at Saatchi & Saatchi, Sydney. He won Tropest this year withhis short lmBuie, and was a nalist in two previous years.

Tim taught himsel lmmaking during his eight years at Saatchis,and is now about to leave to become a TV commercials and video clipdirector, with plans to make eature lms urther down the track.

Here is what Tim Bullock says on the current condition oadvertising creativity in Australia.

Tees a t m impemet. Te espsibiit ies witeeeaecies a ciets. Its a matte keepi eeeime wee te ceatie becmaks ie ee a esewee ite w.

5.3 greAt Work oN the box

It is not as i we do not see enough highly creative award-winning adsrom elsewhere in the world. Next time you turn on the televisionset, take note o how most o the automobile ads have a line o textin them mentioning that the model depicted may not be available in

Australia. They are made by British or American agencies.Watch cosmetics and beauty products ads closely and you will

notice the Australian-accented voice over is just so very slightly out osync with the models lips. Ditto with ads or some global brands oood products.

What about those TV shows o TV commercials ronted by ailed

comedians or one o the Dandos? They may be used as ller whenprogrammers run out o regular programming, but people watchthem nonetheless.

And it is surprising how oten they turn up at primetime. Friends omine watch them, even the re-runs, and discuss their avourites withenthusiasm. Each re-run is like being greeted by old riends.

5.3.1. A Ln m bd

Remember how popular the Bud Lite Wassup? commercials were? Assoon as they were digitized into QuickTime movies they were spread

around the world by e-mail, clogging up corporate intranets andslowing down Internet access as people went mad or them.

Everyone had copies on their hard drives. Everybody quoted themand re-enacted them. Everyone became a salesman or Budweiser.

5.3.2 An eimn wi ga Ad

As an experiment, I once tried showing marketing directors at a majorAustralian client examples o great ads in several media. Especially adso the kind that were appropriate to their own product category and thebest aspects o which could easily be duplicated and even improved on.

Live Local,

Think Global


18/44

1

The marketing directors were uniormly receptive and enthusiasticwhen they responded immediately and emotionally. When they beganapplying their minds to the ads, the whole exercise ell apart. Fear andanticipation began clouding their judgement.

They began trying to think and eel on behal o other people. Well,Iunderstand and appreciate this, but Im not so sure about everyoneese. Maybe theywtget it? Maybe wed better not consider doing

anything new.Suddenly there was amutai mabes as the marketing people

tried to imagine themselves into the shoes o other people, anddecided that other people were wanting when it came to wits andimagination. They had decided that it was a case oUs and Tem.

I did not have a great suit with me at the timethe account directorwho had been looking ater the client was no longer working ulltime,and was in the process o training her successor, who was good buthad a way to go to achieve greatness. (In the end she upped and quit.)

There is no doubt in my mind that i her predecessor had been therethen she would have simply used her understanding and rapport withthe clients to persuade them to see sense.

5.3.3 t Anal Adviin

I have a saying about trying to second guess other people, one o myTe Aaects Aetisi16.

Tee ca be me Us a Tem. yu custmes ae at east asiteiet, peceptie a witt as u.

There are a ew more (almost 200 analects), including these two that

also apply to the question o suits and consumers.

Csumes ise t expectatis, i u speak t tem wit espect.Tak w t tem a te epat i es.

Te best accut iects ae at east as ceatie as te ceatieste wk wit. geat accut iects act as te aets Ceatiit as muc as te aec tat emps tem.

6. the vIsIon thIng

GeorGe Bush seniorwas known to wonder out loudwhat tis isi tiwas. Evidently he wasnt too amiliarwith it. His son also has shortcomings in that area. Weawait Bush juniors vision o how the US economy will

actually rebound soon. More welare or the rich is a childish solution.Vision is the trait that allows you to see that there are other ways o

being, other ways o doing things, and then to visualize how to makethem real.

Vision requires imagination, a aculty we all share but that is tooeasily repressed. Exercising the imagination and ollowing ones visionleads to economic success. Vision and imagination are as essential toadvertising as they are to successully running any business.

Live Local,

Think Global


19/44

1

Imagination is a facultywe all share,

Great entertainment actively engages its audiences imaginations.Entertainment is not the opiate its detractors claim it is. Inormationcoupled with entertainment makes or eective communication. Addan appeal to the imagination, and to desire, and you have a winning

combination.Ex-marketing director and sel-appointed advertising pundit Sergio

Zyman seems to be against entertainment as well as advertising assuch, however. He demands that Cokes advertising agencies stopentertaining people and start selling Coke.

What would he have them do? Show people a bottle o Coke andthen just tell them to go out and buy it?

6.1 VIsIoN & creAtIVIty

To be creative means having ideas. It is more than possessing nelydeveloped crat skills. While there are ew completely original ideaslet to discover in the world o advertising, or art and design or thatmatter, there is plenty o mileage in having a new take on old ideas.

Many new ideas are evolutions o older ideas, applied with wit andimagination.

tim bll, saai & saai, sdn:I ike te busiess aspect aetisi as we as te ceatie.Its w Ie stae ee eit eas. Saatcis pisp iseee is a ieas pes, a te ie up t it.

Saatchi & Saatchis very public conversion to an ideas company hasdone them no harm whatsoever, even coupled with a policy o beingpaid on results by one o their largest global clients, Procter & Gamble.

6.2 VIsIoN & IDeAs

Myths abound about ideas and the creative process. According toone o these myths, some people have ideas, and others do not. Thetheory possess a limitless supply o ideas, that pop out o the air at theslightest stimulation. Just like in those 1940s screwball comedies set in

Madison Avenue, or in TV shows rom the 60s.In reality, everyone has ideas. Everyone is creative. I you are religious,

then you most likely believe that we are made in the image o God andthat God is creativity without limits. The evidence is in the universe.

Just look at it. Massive, endless, constantly expanding, ull o limitlesslie and variety o orms, even when we narrow our ocus down to theEarth. A meteorite or asteroid strikes, a massive extinction o speciesoccurs, and a massive explosion in varieties o new species ollows.

We are taught to suppress our ideas and our creativity. We mustliberate this pent-up creativity, and thus ourselves. We must not place

limits around ourselves, which are limits on who we are allowed to beand what we are permitted to do.

Live Local,

Think Global


20/44

20

Jn ha, bbh, Lndn:nee be aai ai ieas. Tee te mst weu tisi te w.

i 1: caiv a l ain andi ain l. w l n j n mi and i ali.

6.2.1 Ida & caivi

Creative individuals cannot help but generate ideas. Constantly. It isour way o being in the world. To see and to question and to imagineother and better ways.

We do it all the time, whether we are asked to or not. We do it whenwe go to the stores, and observe the way the store is laid out, and studythe products on the shelves, and the way people behave in the aisles, andthe way people and sta interact, and the patterns underneath it all.

Then we imagine other ways it could be, better ways, and betterproducts, and better and more un experiences. I know that I do.

And then we leave all that inside the shop when we exit the door,and go back home or to work to apply the same powers o acute

observation and imagination to what we have become convinced is ourreal job.

I we are in advertising, we return to work believing our real job isthe business o making advertisements. A client expresses a need andour automatic response is to begin generating ideas about the ads wewill make. Ideas about what they will say, and what they will look like,and what their strategy will be, and how their execution will come out,and who we will get to collaborate with us on making them.

Somehow, we have allen into the habit o being advertisingtaesme instead otikes working in advertising. We make ads, andtat is it.

we have fallen into the habitof being advertising tradesmen

RIGHTBRAIN:

Images

Emotions

Creativity

Co-ordination

LEFTBRAIN:

Logic

Reason

Writing

Reading

Language

Mathematics

Live Local,

Think Global


21/44

21

But what i it isnt? What i we rethought what we do rom havingideas about ads to having ideas about business? It isnt such a big leap.We do it anyway. I always have.

Except that, in the past, when I have visited a client and toured theiroce and had a spin through the actory and ficked through theirstacks o existing print material and chatted with a ew o the workersand the bosses and then dropped in to a stockist on the way back to

my oce to check out their point o sale, I have had so many greatideas about how they could be better presented, or about how theycould present themselves to their customers, or the public in general,or the new products they could make, or the exciting stories theycould tell about themselves, that I can barely contain mysel.

But then I get back and close the ront door and sit down to thinkabout it all and even begin to make notes, and at a certain point,especially ater discussing what I have seen and imagined with acolleague, I stop, and say to mysel, Nah! What the hell am I doing?I dont know anything about all this stu! Im not a PR guru and amarketing whiz kid and a business analyst and a point o sale designer!What do I know? Stick to my speciality. Stay with what I do know.

y can D ta!I had become a victim to the propaganda that i you are creative thenyou can only practice one kind o creativity at any one time.

That i you write then you cannot paint.That i you act then you cannot write.Or even that i you design then you surely cannot also make

photographs or lms.And heaven orbid that you should step outside creativity altogether

and try to have an opinion on anything non-artistic.It is amazing just how all-pervasive this nonsensical belie actuallyis. I was at a party here a couple o months ago, and I introducedmysel to a guy who turned out to be an architect. His wie wasan interior designer. I had just had some minor success with anexhibition in a gallery in the east, so I introduced mysel as an artist.

And a writer. And also mentioned that I work in advertising.You should have seen the look on their aces! Sheer horror and

indignation! But, but, the guy blurted, You cant do that! You cantwrite and be visual at the same time! You just cant!

His equally appalled wie then oered her advice. Youve got to

give one o them up, she said. Just choose one, and let the other go.And as or advertising, you cant be in art acommerce.

You cant write andbe visual at the same time!

I asked a couple o graduate art student riends, younger oneswho have been raised on stories o pioneering multimedia artists likeMarcel Duchamp and Robert Rauschenberg, and whose own practicebridges many media at the same time, just the same as any number osuccessul contemporary artists, whether they had come across thisattitude themselves.

Live Local,

Think Global


22/44

22

All the time! one o them replied. We even get it rom ourlecturers. Theyre always trying to tell us that were never going tosucceed i we want to make art awrite about art, or even i we justwant to make two dierent kinds o art at the same time.

W D I t olvThese attitudes are not conned to the ne arts. They are just as

strong in advertising.I came across it in Sydney, with a client who ran the national

branch o a rm that makes, sells and installs plant and spare parts toarchitects, builders and homemakers.

They had a real problem, a biggie. They had struck dicultiesrunning their business eciently across all the state territories in

Australia, not to mention in all its various levelsretail, wholesale,direct, to agents, through department stores, as packages, as units, ascomplete systems or a whole building, or built to custom order.

They had created an unwieldy system that ran on axes, andtelephone calls, and pagers, and a bunch o guys running around in

vans ull o catalogs, equipped with mobile phones and a satellitephone i they were out in the country. That was pretty much the way itwas done in the rms homeland. It worked OK or them, but it was adisaster or the Australian branch. They had enormous potential, butmuch o it was unrealized.

we came across unexploitedopportunities in other markets.

We oered to help. We could see it was essentially a cataloging, data-

handling and communications problem. Not too dicult to solvewith the smart application o digital technology. We had come acrossa similar situation with our own systems. In the course o solving ourown problems, we had learned who the best vendors were and how toget them to work well together. Essentially a production managementsituation. Cordination. The kind o thing an agency does in TV allthe time.

We made our case, backed it up with the evidence, and ater a longeort won the client over.

In the course o the consultation process we came across a numbero unexploited opportunities in side markets. Better ways o presenting

the rms products. Revelations about the remarkable things the rmsJapanese parent was doing in other technologies. Amazing stories thatcould be made into great advertisements. Or that we could tell in otherways. Our client certainly had the need and the budget.

And their head oce was watching them and encouraging them tocreate a positive example that all the other territories could learn rom.

Adviin M ba o I baiWe ailed to pursue most o those opportunities because we did notbelieve in ourselves strongly enough. We had the ideas, in abundance.We were gaining valuable experience in how to implement them, withother clients. We could have pulled it o, and we would have startedbeing a very dierent kind o advertising agency.

Live Local,

Think Global


23/44

2

But our lack o sel-condence came rom the top. The support therest o us needed just wasnt coming. Our directors were undersellingus, and we were hearing the amiliar oldu cat tatrerain.

An Inviaiv Jnalim IdaOne very big thing I learned rom that experience is that the bestthing you can do is conduct real in-depth research on your clients. It

is amazing what you will discover. You will begin to know them betterthan they know themselves.

You have the benet o being an outsider who is interested enoughto explore every lead, ollow every trail. You will become excited aboutthings the sta simply pooh-pooh, but that are going to be equallyexciting to their customers.

Have you ever visited riends or relatives who live in a oreign city,and discovered that they barely know their own hometown?

That theyve never been to those great museums and galleries?Have never attended a perormance by any o those amazing

orchestras or groups whose hometown it also is?Couldnt be bothered dropping in to one o those quaint little

bars the other end o town where they serve the most amazing ood atdamned good prices and the beer is brewed on the premises and waybetter than that chemical crap the big breweries make?

to make amazing discoveries,and to have incredible ideas.

Then you know how most employees regard their own rms andtheir own products. How too easily we turn the remarkable into

the humdrum.In advertising, we have the opportunities to make amazingdiscoveries, and to have incredible, creative ideas.

I get more excited the more I think about this, because I amremembering some o the situations I have been in mysel. Situationsthat were squandered because I, or someone else, stopped and thoughtto ourselves You cant do that.

Traditional marketing, and traditional approaches to advertising,are ailing. The world and its people are dierent now. They havewoken up to traditional advertising. Media Studies became a subjectin high school curricula a generation ago. Everyone over a certain age

already knows all the tricks. They do not want to be conned, but theydo want to be told the truth, be amazed, be inormed, be inspired, beentertained and above all be respected. And the means to do that lieswithin you, your clients and their products.

These kinds o thoughts are not new. John Bevins put a new spinon the term iestiatie juaism when he rst described how he cameacross a painting by Rembrandt van Rijn namedBatseba at he Batand noticed something unny about her breasts. The rest o the storyis in Te Cp Bk.

In Cutti Ee AetisiTim Delaney told Jim Aitchison howhe would encourage every agency creative to go out and investigatethe client and the product in depth. Tim certainly does that himsel.

Live Local,

Think Global


24/44

2

Except that in my time with him whenever we wanted the creatives toget out o the building we had to wait until Tim was not there, andthen sneak them out. Very odd.

t i ra and t i ResearchIn virtually every presentation Hugh Mackay makes on behal o the

John Bevins agency, Hugh makes a point o dening how he does

research, as opposed to how the advertising industry believes researchmust be done. He has very strong opinions about the subject.

Hugh is an enemy o ocus groups. He will tell you everything thatis wrong them, to the last detail. And he is right. Because researchhas become dened as ocus groups and little else, most advertisingcreatives tend to reject research in principle.

Branding specialist Marty Neumeier 17 attests to this observation. auiece eseac as tte a ba ap m te ceatiecmmuit. Suc iews ae cmti t te ceatie cwbecause te ca abse es espsibiit t eeti butes w atistic su. As a ceatie pes, I ca bea witess tte seuctie quaities tese ati-eseac aumets.

As Neumeier implies, there are many other ways o doing research,including audience research just as there are a number o ways odoing primary research on the company and their products.

N, YourpdSomething else I also believe passionately in is really knowing yourproduct.

The idea o using a clients products seems patently obvious, but

I have always been amazed at how reluctant account directors havebeen to make the eort to obtain them. A handul arrive at the agency,and they vanish immediately. That event is used as an excuse or notobtaining any more.Pepe wi take tem.

Well o course they will. We want to know what it is that we areworking to promote. The creatives need to understand the product.What better way than to have them wear the clothes, use the shoes, orlather up with the soap every night?

6.2.2 clivain ga Ida

It is not that hard to have great ideas, despite the mystication somepeople in advertising seem be spreading about it.

Here is one oTe Aaects Aetisi.

hoW To hAvE grEAT IdEAS.Absb te bie.Tu eseac te ciet.Immese use i te puct.hae a te acts at a.Becme te csume.daeam, actie a eep.Put ee iea w pape immeiate.

Live Local,

Think Global


25/44

2

As many people outside advertising will attest, having new ideas andgreat ideas is no guarantee they will be immediately accepted by yourpeers. Every eld is populated by people who come to work every day,ollow the routine, serve their time, earn their money and do their bestto avoid creating waves.

But i you want your work to evolve instead o stagnate, and youwant to do work you are proud o, then you have to be prepared to

take a little fak.The great copywriter and now novelist Indra Sinha spoke to Jim

Aitchison about his own experiences breaking new ground inadvertising.

i u wat t smeti tat es ee see bee, teue t t be pepae tat te iust wi t ep u,because its u exteme cseatie pepe w kw tewa its bee e sice te ea t.

Indra goes on to add a positive note, though.te pepe w w tei w isticts, a t tem,a peai, tee te pepe w beak ew u a eup setti te ew staas a swi te ew wa wa.

te be te ueeas te utue.

Indra Sinha should know. His writing or ads has encompassedstyles and genres ormerly unknown outside advertising. Hisinnovations were rejected at rst, then awarded and certied assomething to aspire to.

The truth is that acreative elds, not just advertising, aredominated by very conservative people who are rightened by the new

until it is amiliar enough to become acceptable, even mundane. Andthen the cycle begins all over again with the next generation.That routine is something I can attest to in my personal work, where

I was simply doing something that had been done by others since atleast the 1960s. To me, it seemed right and natural. However, a numbero infuential critics and curators ound the work so outrageous, sounacceptable, that it was rejected or a decade and a hal.

And then, suddenly, the critics determined that my work had beenperectly OK ater all. Wp-e-.

6.2.3 Wa pli tin

It is essential to remember that the public does not share the sameconservatism as your conservative co-workers and clients.

The public sees advertising as an opportunity to discoversomething new, to be inormed in an entertaining way, and to havetheir imaginations appealed to. They have no guilt about it, nor dothey believe that all advertising is bunk.

The public does, however, eel that bad and mediocre advertising isintrusive and a waste o their time. They eel that constant repetitiono such advertisements is even worse. And they are right.

Live Local,

Think Global


26/44

2

6.2 Art & coMMerce

Te i aetisi is tat it as taitia bee acseatie meium, ai bei aaces i te meiaike m, ptap, teeisi a ee te spke a wittew. Tats ki si, csiei aetisis e is t staut m te cw. T te it siks it back it it.

Here is another oTe Aaects Aetisi.Uti ecet, eat wites sut eue i Aetisi beecaci te ucetai w Pubisi. Pepe ike PeteCae, Bce Cute, Sama rusie, Ia Sia, a

Fa We spet eas witi cp bee becmi eists.Aetisi must ctiue attacti eat wites it its i itis t appea t its auiece, a ee.

There is a creative talent agency in New York named Art &Commerce. It represents many o the most amous creative people otheir generation, including photographers like Annie Leibovitz andSteven Meisel.

These people work as much on photographing and directingadvertising as magazine editorial assignments. They are not averse tostaging gallery shows and producing books o their work, and theirimages are in many major museum collections. Their work is theperect usion o art and commerce, hence the name o their agent.

The world we live in demands that most creative people undtheir own work. State-unded grants are available only to a select ew.Good teaching jobs are rarer now than ever beore, and the romantic

Victorian notion o the artist starving in a garret or his or her art isbeginning to be recognized as the myth it always was.

That notion as well as the equally silly and romantic Mills & Boonmythologizing that sprang up around gures like Vincent van Goghhave encouraged a belie by some that art is or wimps or weirdos.

Creativity comes dangerously close to art, according to those belies,and entertainment ollows close behind. There is a Calvinism in thisattitude, a commonality with the attitudes o the Taliban. They stemrom an archaic doctrine that has crept into many religions, calledManichism, that believes the world, mankind and all its works areevil and only the aterlie is good.

Advertising is a necessary businessthat is necessary to business,

Too many people in advertising eel the need to make guilty excusesabout why they do it. I have heard it done so many times. There isnothing to be ashamed o. Advertising is a necessary business that isnecessary to business, and can be a noble proession i practiced in theright way or the right reasons. There is no need to dismiss it or beingneither brain surgery nor an aid to the third worlds poor.

I you are going to head in that direction, then you may as well eelguilty every time you go and buy something at the shop. Tear your hairout and wear sackcloth and ashes.

Live Local,

Think Global


27/44

2

And the notion that being a starving artist instead is somehow pureand noble and good is pure bullshit.

Here are some other peoples insights into art and commerce.

J gd, gd, silvin & pan, san ani:A t aetisi pepe ae aai t ee tik abut at, cuse. Tee pu t sa tee t ti t wit it. I

u case, wee, at is w wee ee. We state te aec,ak, because we beiee aetisi cu be a iteesticjucti betwee at a cmmece. We tut at cu

see busiess i a pweu wa.

tim bll, saai & saai, sdn:Te eat ti abut aetisi is tat its wee at meetscmmece. lts pepe e t be ie i te ceatie pcessa t stae. Aetisi is a ewai pcess.

6.3 coMMercIAL progeNItors

There have been several periods in human history when a number othe creatively-inclined banded together into movements that rejectedcommonly accepted notions about ideas, creativity, art and commerce.

It happened during times o great change in society, and the eectshave lived on long aterwards. We eel their eects now, so much sothat their revolutionary ideas inltrated into mainstream society.

The two such periods I am most interested in are those o theBauhaus, and the Renaissance. I think it is time to reconsider theirlegacy. There are some surprises there, and certainly some great lessons.

6.3.1 t baa

The Bauhaus as an institution attained legendary status, and has cometo stand in or many things to many people.

Myth has come to obscure reality.The reality about the Bauhauste mst successu a a-eaci

sc esi 1 and its many innovations is that it radicallychanged all orms o design, advertising and printed communicationthroughout the last century. It did not just create waves in architecture,as its name suggests. (Bau = building.)

The Bauhaus eects ar outlived the short period o its rst threeincarnations 1919 to 1933. Its masters and students went on toteach at and ound other infuential schools, and then into industry aspractitioners whose work helped shape new movements in commercialdesign. The Swiss graphic design movement, so admired here in Perth,would have been impossible without the Bauhaus.

it radically changed all forms of design,advertising and printed communication

The Bauhaus was the child o an age that elt itsel to berevolutionary, writes Andreas Haus in Bauaus. In contrast, the

Live Local,

Think Global


28/44

2

current age is one that does not eel it is in any way revolutionary, butthat actually is. Francis Fukuyama named our period Te E o hist.

By that Fukuyama means an end to the struggle o ideologies,especially o the totalitarian kind. Totalitarianism is now only tobe ound in obscure backwaters like North Korea and amongst theMaoist guerillas o the third world.

ourevolution is one o networked communications, and the

revolutionary ervour vanished almost overnight when the dotcombubble burst. Yet the revolution continues, regardless. It is simply notpopularly acceptable to express enthusiasm or it just now.

t Lad baaI am interested in those Bauhaus teachers and students who intimatelyaected design or communication and especially advertising, andor the lessons to be drawn rom their examples. (The Bauhausinnovations in work and living spaces, and sthetically pleasingunctional urniture and product design, also still have much to teachus.)

J Al Painter, teacher, typographerAlbers spread theBauhaus philosophies in the New World when he took up postsas Rector o Black Mountain College and Director o YalesDepartment o Design. Albershmae t te Squae series opaintings infuenced the Op and Colour Field artists, and hisdiscoveries in colour ound their way into all areas o design andadvertising.

t ballmGraphic designer, photographer, teacher,typographerBallmers poster designs rom the 20s and 30s wereinfuential in the ormation o the Swiss graphic design movement.

A number o ormer Bauhaus people moved to Switzerland whenthe Nazis came to power.h baArt director, graphic designer, typographer,exhibition architect, painter, photographer, teacherBayer becameart director o German vue ater leaving the Bauhaus, then wasdirector o the Dorland advertising agency in Berlin until he let orthe United States, where he worked as an art director and graphicdesigner or major corporations and magazines such ashapes

Bazaa.Ma bill Architect, art director, graphic designer, painter, politician,publisher, sculptor, teacher, typographerBill put a new spin on

the wordpmat. He returned to Switzerland beore the war.Jann InArtist, teacherItten spent a lietime teaching artistsand designers in all media throughout Germany and Switzerland,and wrote some o the most important books on colour theory.Lazl Ml-NaPainter, designer, photographer, publisher,sculptor, teacher, typographerMoholy-Nagy ounded the NewBauhaus in Chicago, then ounded and ran the Institute o Designin the same city. The Institute had an important eect on theChicago school o advertising, many o whose members it trained.J smidArt director, cartographer, graphic designer, painter,teacher, typographerOne o the three great Bauhaus typographersalong with Moholy-Nagy and Bayer, Schmidt taught advertisingthere or many years.

Live Local,

Think Global


29/44

2

t Ln baaLooking back, some o the Bauhaus work in advertising and graphicdesign does sometimes look like it is straining ater eect. But whenpeople are inventing new ways in art and design their initial results caappear odd at rst. They oten ae oddits the primitivism o the new.

The Bauhaus designers were working in a time when the foridVictorian Arts and Crats Movement dominated public taste. The

Arte Nouveau and Secessionist movements were outgrowths o Artsand Crats, centred around the philosophies o stheticism andindividualism. So, essentially, was Expressionism.

an individual properly trained in art anddesign could apply themselves in whatever

field they chose.

In sharp contrast, the Bauhaus was about accepting the realitieso the machine age and embracing industrial production as amedium or bringing quality design to everyone, not simply thosewho could aord cratsman-made products. It believed in acceptingnew conditions and adapting its understanding o orm, colour andstructure to t, instead o imposing the styles and attitudes o the pastonto the new.

Also important was the belie that an individual properly trainedin art and design, in a coperative workshop situation modelled onRenaissance studios, could apply themselves in whatever eld theychose. Hence someone like Herbert Bayer, who was equally at ease incommercial and ne art, advertising and painting. Bayer was invited towork orhapes by Alexei Brodovitch, another artist turned designer.

vues Alex Liberman issued the same kind o invitation to painter/typographer/photographer William Klein when he returned to NewYork rom studying with Leger in Paris ater the War.

6.3.2 t rnaian

The Renaissance came about when the State began claiming temporalpower back rom the Church, when classical learning was rediscovered,when Greek and Roman authors were made available in the originaland in translation, and moveable type made mass production anddissemination o books possible.

Masters o handwritingcalligraphytook up designing romanand italic typeaces or printers and publishers. Artists turned theirattention to the new medium o the print. Rulers demanded thatartists take time out rom working or the Church in order to work orthe State. Painters, architects and sculptors were awarded the status ointellectuals, i they demonstrated intellectuality. The days when artwas regarded as simply yet another crat vanished almost overnight.

Yet despite that, the medieval workshop tradition and trainingstructure persisted and continued to prove its worth. Many artistscontinued to run large workshops staed by apprentices and

journeymen, and took on commissions rom the Church, the Stateand members o the middle classes.

Live Local,

Think Global


30/44

0

The same artist who might be asked to paint a series o rescoes ina cathedral one day may be asked to decorate the ront o a weddingcassechestthe next. Members o the workshop were as likely topaint backgrounds or a lie-sized portrait painting as prepare platesor a new series o engravings or a publisher their master had justcontracted to.

Renaissance artists were the commercial artists o their day. They

marketed hope and belie or the Church, strength and power orthe State, and advertised the benets o trade and wealth or themiddle classes when they painted signs or their business and paintedportraits or guilds and individuals.

So much or the notion o the lone artist acing a canvas in a bareand lonely room, struggling to express some essence o the inner sel.

The Bauhaus revived the traditions o the Renaissance and theMiddle Ages, considering itsel not as a school or an academy but as agroup o closely related workshops, each with two mastersthe ormmaster and the crat masterand the students, who essentially wereawarded journeyman status. The ancient and the modern. Art andcommerce.

t Lnd rnaianHere are several o the most signicant polymath artists o the period.

Milanl bnaiArchitect, painter, poet, sculptorMichelangelo was known as the greatest Italian poet o his age, latein lie, but it is as a visual artist that we best know him today.Lnad da Vini Anatomist, engineer, painter, scientist,sculptorWas he an engineer and scientist who was also an artist,

or the reverse? Thats a question posed in many a recent book bycontemporary art writers. They are missing the pointhe wasequally at home doing either, and saw no dierence between eithereld o enquiry, because that was simply what art was to him.Al DAuthor, painter, printmaker, publisher,typographerDrer was the greatest artist o his age to turn hisattentions to serial art orms that could be made en masse anddistributed all over Europewoodcuts, engravings, and etchings.He apprenticed as a goldsmith, then studied painting, and wrote aseries o books on type design, anatomy and the human gure, andperspective and drawing.

6.4 choose your peopLe WeLL

There is a saying that I might have rst read in a book by businessmanagement guru Tom Peters. It has been repeated by many otherauthors on the subject since.Awas ie pepe w ae me taete ta u.

I want to add something to that statement. We u suuuse b suc pepe, u sie i tei it. There is no need toear talent. Acknowledging that you do not know everything is animportant step on the path to personal growth.

Another saying that rings true is Taet kws wat it ees t tie.

Live Local,

Think Global


31/44

1

J gd, gd, silvin & pan, san ani:Te ke is t ie iceib iteiet pepe a ceate aeimet i wic te teat eac te, a eac tes ieas,wit espect. Pepe ae t ee ee a secue t be as smat aste ca be. Te est is just pceue.

6.5 proVIDe the rIght resources

Ideas do not come out o the air. Insight does not come withoutresearch. Inspiration does not come rom staring at the pages oadvertising awards annuals.

An important part o my job at Leagas Delaney was to provideinormative and inspirational materials to the creatives. Especiallyimportant considering policy was against them exiting the oceduring daylight hours.

6.5.1 Liai

A good reerence library is essential to any creative organization. It issurprising how quite a ew do not have one at all. Or how what is thereis oten private property belonging to individuals, and not or loan toeveryone who needs it.

A good advertising agency library should certainly consist o books,CDs, DVDs, brochures, picture library catalogs, posters, awardsannuals and the like.

But dont pass on the chance to grab anything else you ancy andadd it to the collection. It was amazing how a ew call girl cards oundin telephone boxes inspired some o the racier double page spreads or

Pepe Jeans!

ba Dland, LndnAter Leagas Delaney went through a period o tearing itsel apart,people began scattering to the winds. Or more properly to other agencies.

I oten visited ormer colleagues at new workplaces and got agood look at how other agencies work. Bates Dorland in particularhas a very good library, and the room was equipped with computersconnected to the Internet at a time when most other agencies did nothave computers or creative sta or net access. (Although art directorsin Australia have done their work in QuarkXPress or some years, that

was not the case in London.)

Laa Dlan, LndnWhen I arrived at Leagas Delaney there were hardly any books orreerence materials o any kind. The previous incumbent, an agency co-ounder, had taken everything with her.

So I started rom scratch, scooping up anything and everything Icame across that was ree and might be inspirational, as well as buyingbooks, magazines and other material when I could deduct the pricerom a project budget.

I added ling cabinets, bookshelves and databases. My assistanttold me she knew many people in the music business, so we placed ourname on record company new release lists, to receive new CD albums

Live Local,

Think Global


32/44

2

and singles. We installed a video editing suite, and I asked the guy incharge to begin collecting videos and lms, rom the Web and othersources, and to place them on le.

The library was available or use by anyone, but mostly it was usedby the creatives. A couple were in there all the time, almost taking upresidence. None o the creatives had computers at the time, althoughone o them, a ormer science researcher turned art director, asked or

advice in choosing one or his home oce.He began to learn graphics programs, and that in combination with

his training in scientic inquiry and the librarys resources spurredhim to explore the nexus between design and advertising, with someintriguing graphics-intensive ads or an electronic games companythat have since been eatured in advertising books.

6.5.3 givin y b

I once sneaked in to George Patterson new oce building in Sydneyon a quest to work out why all the agencies were moving rom thenorth side. I ound mysel in a huge room urnished with long bencheslled with the latest Macs and the biggest LCD monitors available atthe time. Every machine was networked and had broadband net access.People were working away in various corners, coming and going. Theroom was a-buzz. It elt great to be there.

You do not need the very best and the very latest, but giving themwhat they need without asking them to beg is a sign o respect. Andsmarts. I have been at other agencies where the equipment is alwaysbreaking down, and the sta grumble, complain and eel let down bymanagement.

Ask or the best rom your people and give them the best in return.

6.5.4 givin n o

Leagas Delaney was desperately short o meeting spaces, and there wasa problem with the building being heritage-listed. Only certain foorscould be renovated and the creaky old elevator could not be touched.

Someone hit on the brilliant notion o turning the ground foorarea behind Reception into a private ca. Pale wooden fooring, amberspotlighting, beautiul Eames chairs and tables, a wonderul kitchenand thepice e sistace, a magnicent steel and chrome Gaggia

espresso machine.All o us received training in making great coees. The rerigerator

and the bar were always kept well-stocked. Suddenly nobody wantedto go out or lunch, and everyone we worked with outside the agencywanted to come to our place or meetings. There were quiet socialgatherings every evening ater work, or those who worked 10 to 6.

We learned the value o service and entertainment, and we gained adierent outlook on our clients and one another.

6.5.5 t sl sdin hai

There is such a thing as being too comortable. It is just too easy to allinto a daily routine.

Live Local,

Think Global


33/44

Arrive at the oce, make your greetings, grab a cappuccino or two,settle in ront o the computer, hit your avourite news sites, checkthe e-mail and answer the ones that seem to be urgent, and beoreyou know it hal the day is gone. Do your morning round o meetings.Time or lunch at 1PM. Come back at 2.

Whoops, youve just lost the best part o the day, the one thats greator thinking. Work the rest o the day and into the evening in order to

catch up, and eel your brain cells stretching thinner and thinner.Habit has its good and bad sides. I have always elt its negative side

was a little too strong.

6.5.6 on gd hai

First week I arrived at the agency I set up an open door routine. Twicea week, Mondays and Fridays, in the mid-aternoon I set aside an hourto see creative talent and their agents, oten at short notice.

When I was contributing editor orBack+Wite I had oten heardrom photographers established and new about how hard it was to seeadvertising agency art directors. Stories o appointments six monthshence were common.

My role included introducing the agency to photographers anddirectors in my magazine editorial little black book, as well as ndingand encouraging promising new talent.

This open door habit paid dividends many times.

6.5.7 binin clin y

Adidas English oce was situated well outside Greater London, like

many corporations that did not need a visible presence in the innercity. But that presented problems or their sponsorship program.They were always signing up new athletes, and supplying shoes,

clothes and accessories to up and coming pop groups. Adidas couldnot ask people to come to them, so we supplied Adidas with the meansto do the opposite. We gave the Adidas sponsorship program managerher own oce and store room in the building.

She was not there all the time, but I made the most o it when shewas. I met some o the people Adidas was sponsoring, chatted abouttheir view o the products and the brand, learned more about comingnew styles and lines, and began to understand the people or whom I

was commissioning so much work.Having her there made it much easier to grab products as props or

shoots or other clients. Cross-ertilization o the best kind.

6.5.8 c am & cal in AiThe renovations continued at the Leagas Delaney oce in Shatesbury

Avenue, and it was the turn o the basement dwellers.The airless and dirty old basement was where all the production

people had been consigned to, as well as our 8 or so Mac operators. Iwas ensconced on the creative foor second to the top, the one whereTim Delaney had his distant corner eyrie and beyond the creativeteams closed-door oces.

Live Local,

Think Global


34/44

In time I gained a second perch, in the renovated basement betweenthe editing suite and our new library. The production people each hadan undersized cube, Dilbert-style, within a mass o them that lled allavailable space between the staircase down rom the ca through tothe Mac operators glass-encased air-conditioned tomb.

I was always on the move, on the principle o management bywalking around. I got to see the eects o all the dierent kinds o

spaces on how people worked.The good and the badclosed oces, cube arms, the creatives and

website designers castles in the air on the very top foor, the warmthand the riendliness o the ca, and ront o house where our tworeceptionists held court.

The good and the badclosed offices, cube farms,

castles in the air

One o them was a German-Australian blonde goddess romMelbourne with a design background, and who eventually returnedto Australia to head up the marketing department o a major energycorporation. The other was actually a tag team o two who took it inturns, and both o whom were supporting their other careers as neartists until they each began selling enough o their own work to quit.

(So many o my co-workers outside the creative department werecreative in their own right, but outside o the agency.

My assistant went on to work in the art world, my two interns wereCourtauld Institute graduates who went on to run galleries in Mayair,Productions administrator was a painter, the oldest Production guywas an excellent classical guitarist who kept his instrument under his

desk, and there were novelists, poets, and a journalist or two workingin other departments in jobs unrelated to their avocations andprevious positions.

My theory is that this continuous presence o creativity in allits various orms boosted the creativity on the top foor eyries byosmosis.)

6.6 No tIMe LIke the preseNt

Now is probably the least likely time start up a new agency or launcha radical new initiative within an existing one. Or at least most people

seem to think that way. Times o economic trouble are when wegenerally sit on our hands, pull our heads in, and wait it out.

That is the last thing we should do.

Ni cn, Mad D & enlimn:Tee was a ecessi. nb was stati a aecies. Te weewsizi tem.

(Mad Dogs & Englishmen started up operations in New York in 1991.)

It was 1999, the height o the dotcom boom, and Euro RSCG waswinning all the awards in Sydney, with the Creative Director o itsInteractive division the rising young star. He soon rose up the ladderto Creative Director o the whole agency.

Live Local,

Think Global


35/44

Anews published this comment during one o Euros award-winning runs.

Eu rSCg is i a eaue its w, ai successutasme itse it e te mst wa-ki a aeciesi Austaia.

Many other Sydney agencies pondered Euro RSCGs success across

all advertising media then, wondering just how the agency managed towin so much o their business, and are still pondering it now.

Few agencies have begun to ollow the same course that ensuredEuros successull integration o the Interactive, Direct Marketing,Promotions, Media and Recruitment disciplines. Strategy as anessential unction o each. An engagement with their clients businessto the extent that they have become partners in word and deed, takingthe relationship well beyond that o client and supplier.

Euro RSCG now is a ar cry rom Euro RSCG when I rstencountered the group via their London oce. They were the urthestrom techno-literacy o all the London agencies at the time. Their 180-degree turnabout is an object lesson in that act that it can be doneand in record time.

Their 180-degree turnaboutis an object lesson

St Lukes advertising agency in London was another rethinkingsuccess story. Former chairman Andy Law has shared their tale in hisbook Ceatie Cmpa. He resigned recently, just ater completing asecond tome bombastically titledExpeimet at Wk: Expsis a

Expeieces at te Mst Fitei Cmpa o Eat. 20

From Te guaia o March 27th.Te ue St lukes, te mu-beaki aetisi aec,as esie ate citicisi te cmpa becmi tcseatie ue ew maaemet.

St lukes w