What Charles means is…

Stimulated by some photographs of the early days of Saatchi & Saatchi, the first meeting of the Garland-Compton board with them after the ‘merger’ in 1974 came back to me.

At the head of the table at 80 Charlotte Street was Charles Saatchi. On his right brother Maurice and on his left Tim Bell.

It fell to Charles to speak to us. He mumbled for five minutes or so. I don’t recall anything that he said – I’m not sure that I could decipher a word of it. Not his thing at all.

Silence fell over the room. What had we got into? This seemed like a visit from Cosa Nostra.

Then Tim spoke up.

‘What Charles means is that Saatchi’s is the fastest growing, most creative advertising agency in Britain. And our intention, together with you guys, is to become the biggest, most creative agency on the planet.’

Oh, well that’s all right. And that’s what happened.

 

How's your German?

 

I am currently steeped in German Romantic poetry – in particular Schiller, Schulze, Mayrhofer, Hölty, Heine, Müller and the Schlegel brothers ‒ preparing for concerts in Oxford filled with Schubert’s settings of their work.

 

This brought to mind one of those forks in the road that confront us from time to time. I was working very happily for Garland-Compton in its pre-Saatchi days, running our biggest client, Rowntree.

 

They had recently taken over a leading competitor, Mackintosh’s, and the brilliant, glamorous young Tony Mackintosh had become leader of their merged European division.

 

Tony would sweep into our offices in Charlotte Street, brought there in his black-chauffeur-driven white limo, a vision, all blue jeans and fur coat. The latter he would hand immediately to our receptionist, she on the verge of meltdown, and ask for me.

 

It was all very 1969.

 

In due course, Tony summoned me to his offices – not in Halifax or Norwich or York, where the major factories and offices were (and are), but in a fine Georgian house in Park Lane, Mayfair. There he invited me to leave the agency and join his team in a senior marketing role. I was flattered, of course, but turned him down ‒ graciously, I hope.

 

At one point in the meeting, we discussed European languages. The plain fact is that, although I have some words and phrases in most of them, I am reasonably fluent only in English.

 

“How's your German?” he asked.

 

“Well, I’m familiar with a good deal of Romantic poetry,” I said, “but I’m not sure that the vocabulary would be very useful in marketing meetings.”

 

Here’s a sample, useful in recent days in Oxford: Abendstern (evening star); Einsamkeit (solitude); Abschied (farewell); Klage (lament); Weinen (tears); Heimweh (homesickness); Sehnsucht (longing); Erwartung (anticipation)…

Hyperventilating with Lord Carrington

Everyone associates Saatchi & Saatchi with Mrs Thatcher and the Conservative Party, but in fact Garland Compton, in the days before it became Saatchis, pitched and won the business in the run-up to one or other of the previous 1974 elections. Both were effectively won by Labour, so it’s not surprising that there’s no residual memory.

But I recall the pitch. It was one of the most frightening experiences of my life. The great and good of the party, led by the terrifying Lord Carrington, were lined up in front of me, waiting for my words of wisdom. I hyperventilated, scarcely able to get a word out.

How on earth did we win the work? I've no idea.

Afterwards, I told one or two people what had happened to me and got consistent advice, best summed up as: ‘You’d probably be better off not doing presentations. Stick to what you’re good at, whatever that is.’

Of course, that made me determined to get better at presenting – and at dealing with my nerves in such scary situations.

Leaving Saatchi

The recent serialisation of Lord Tim Bell’s memoirs in the Daily Mail with its exposé of the ‘backstabbing, booze and screaming rows’*, put me in mind of the difficult time I had had in leaving the firm.

At thirty-one, I’d come to the conclusion that, to get experience as a CEO in the advertising business, I needed to leave Saatchi and Saatchi, the hottest agency on the planet at that time.

I had found another, smaller, agency that was looking for someone to succeed the dashing Rupert Chetwynd as MD. And they wanted me to do that.

Back at Saatchi, I was quite surprised, when I told Tim Bell of my plans, that he didn’t follow my reasoning at all. In fact they wanted me to stay. And so I found myself in the presence of the legendary Charles Saatchi.

What would it take to keep me at Saatchi’s? The offers came thick and fast. Salary increases, trains, boats, planes. Anything you like. Oh, and by the way we’d like you to be managing director.

The problem with that offer was that the agency already had a whole raft of people called chairmen, deputy chairmen, managing directors, deputy MDs and so on. I couldn’t see that becoming MD would have any reality to it. So I declined his kind offer as graciously as I could.

As I was leaving his office, Charles stopped me: “I’d just like to say one thing to you… It won’t be as easy out there.”

How right he was. In those days, winning business at Saatchi’s was a walk in the park.

But how was I to know that?

*http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2777199/The-Saatchis-Mad-Men-look-tame-Screaming-rows-Dirty-tricks-Backstabbing-booze-galore-Just-ordinary-day-surreal-world-ad-land-s-controversial-brothers-LORD-BELL.html

 

Vincent Nolan RIP

I first met Vincent Nolan some forty years ago. He came to teach Synectics to a group of us at Garland-Compton (shortly before it morphed into Saatchi and Saatchi). I was in my late twenties and had risen quickly in the advertising business, but learning from Vincent undoubtedly transformed my life.

It dawned on me that one of my main skills up to that point was in identifying weaknesses in other people’s thinking and wielding the scalpel, and that this approach, while it had helped me to be successful, was of very limited value in promoting real creativity and innovation (the lifeblood of marketing communications). Vincent taught us that a better approach was first to articulate the value in emerging ideas, then going on to identify the key issues and problem-solve them.

This may seem simple, even obvious, but it required some complete personal rewiring in myself, changes that have lived at the heart of my life and work ever since.

Following that early encounter, I brought Vincent into each successive new role I found myself in – training my new teams in the whole Synectics bag of tricks. Perhaps most powerfully this was achieved at Lintas in Sydney, where, in a succession of visits from him, most colleagues in the agency were given the treatment. This was a major factor in enabling us to work together more effectively and creatively – and as a consequence we were able to rise from eighth in the local league table to second in just five years, quadrupling profits in the process.

Eventually I joined Synectics myself, as Vincent gradually wound down his life's work, concentrating more on his cello and his golf.  

At 85, Vincent Nolan died last Sunday, 17 August.

Focusing on the trivial

Pace Professor Parkinson, there are occasions when it’s really useful to focus on the trivial.

My largest client at Saatchi’s, Rowntree, could so easily destroy new work – strategic or campaigns – by re-discussing the fundamental pillars of the thinking behind it. In truth, they were not very good with new ideas.

So the tactic I evolved for dealing with this was to ask their considered opinion on some trivial, inconsequential aspect. This could easily be spun out to occupy the majority of the meeting.

Doing nothing (and doing it well)

At Saatchi’s our very intelligent and articulate Schweppes client, Keith Holloway, became notorious for wrecking newly-shot TV commercials. At the first viewing he would get stuck into the supposed inadequacies of the script, the edit, the performances, the music. Whatever was there. All rather demoralising for our terrific team.

And I came to realise that he’d done this before with previous agencies.

So my strategy for dealing with the problem became three pronged: first to tell him that he’d raised some important issues for us to consider; second to go away and do nothing; and third, at the next meeting, to show him exactly the same stuff that he’d seen previously, prefaced by: “Take a look at this, Keith. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

“Oh, that’s so much better…” would be the invariable response.

Job done.

Mavericks and leadership

I was to discover rather early in life - in my teens - that having maverick tendencies is a serious barrier to being promoted to leadership positions.

I think the basic issue is that bosses can’t predict what you’ll do in any particular circumstances. Mavericks seem to them to carry more risk than reward.

And yet, when an organisation is in trouble and needs new directions, the creativity of mavericks is exactly the place that good solutions are likely to come from.

My own approach to this problem has often been to team myself with more sensible, structured, reliable partners. I think I did this for the first time at Saatchi and Saatchi. It worked well.

Are there other approaches that work?

Leaving Saatchi

At thirty-one, I’d come to the conclusion that, to get experience as a CEO in the advertising business, I needed to leave Saatchi and Saatchi, the hottest agency on the planet at that time.

I had found another, smaller, agency that was looking for someone to succeed the dashing Rupert Chetwynd as MD. And they wanted me to do that.

Back at Saatchi, I was quite surprised, when I told Tim Bell of my plans, that they didn’t follow my reasoning at all. In fact they wanted me to stay. And so I found myself in the presence of the legendary Charles Saatchi (above, right).

What would it take to keep me at Saatchi’s? The offers came thick and fast. Salary increases, trains, boats, planes. Anything you like. Oh, and we’d like you to be managing director.

The problem with that offer was that the agency already had a whole raft of people called chairman, deputy chair, managing director, deputy MD and so on. I couldn’t see that becoming MD would have any reality to it. So I declined his kind offer as graciously as I could.

As I was leaving his office, Charles stopped me: “I’d just like to say one thing to you… It won’t be as easy out there.”

How right he was. Winning business at Saatchi’s was a walk in the park.

But how was I to know that?

Getting to grips with Art

Walking through the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris (with its fabulous collection of Monets (above), Renoirs, Cézannes, Matisses, Derains, Picassos etc) together with a friend some years ago, I was astonished when he completed his inspection in less than five minutes. “Oh, yes,” he announced. “Seen 'em all.”

Recent research confirms that visitors to art museums spend just a few seconds looking at each painting. Most people then take considerably longer reading the information labels. Not my friend.

I wonder why it is that people really don’t take the time to look at the works of art themselves.

The process that I use started when I began to teach myself something about art history some four decades ago. I was working at the time at Saatchi & Saatchi in Charlotte Street and could interrupt my twenty minute walk back to Charing Cross Station (on my way home) by dropping into the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square. This I did most working days.

Each visit I would look at just three paintings: the one I had studied yesterday, the one which was to be the main focus for today, and the one that I would turn to tomorrow. So, over time, each painting presented three substantial opportunities for me to look (and to think) – about composition, colour, light, brushwork, subject, idea, intention, context and so on.

It gave me the possibility of beginning to understand, accompanied (it goes without saying) by one of the finest collections of Western art in the world. And it was the start of a lifetime of looking at paintings.

Not sure one can achieve that with just a glance.

Can Manila do a Barcelona?

Last week I gave a masterclass on Brand Renovation for a group of senior managers from diverse backgrounds in Manila. And at the heart of it was a case study on the transformation of Barcelona in the years running up to the 1992 Olympic Games.

I was lucky enough to be consulting for the International Olympic Committee through several Games and later I was able to research the impact and heritage of Olympic cities for this masterclass. I interviewed a range of personalities who had been involved in various capacities, with Barcelona emerging clearly with the “Gold Medal”.

Historically, in the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, that city had been substantially passed by – a sleepy, scruffy, post-industrial conurbation, full of traffic jams.

Under the leadership of its mayor, Pasqual Maragall, a comprehensive new strategy was developed which involved:

the cleaning up of the historic parts of the city, including the wonderful and unique boulevard, Las Ramblas;
the redevelopment of the port area;
the upgrading of the airport and the transformation of the city's main road system;
the building of new sports stadia of various sizes, with the main one earmarked as a major venue for gigs, and home for the city’s second football team, Deportiva Español;
the positioning of Barcelona as a centre for creativity and the arts, with the great architect, Gaudi as the figurehead, plus the artists Picasso and Miró;
a hub for design, fashion and the advertising industry.

At the heart of the strategy, the city competed for and won a whole series of major international events – sporting, entertainment, business, expo and so on. The cherry on the top of the cake was winning the Olympics and the city used that as the lever to get all the urban renewal done.

The consequence of this exciting project has been that Barcelona is no longer a place to be avoided. In fact, for many years now it has become the number one city in Europe for “quality of life”, in the Top 5 for “doing business”, and a Mecca for tourists and (especially) honeymooners.

In post-Olympics research, visitors have described the city as “enchanting”, “exciting”, “cosmopolitan”, “my favourite”, “vibrant” and “oozing style and culture”.

At the masterclass in Manila, we used the Barcelona story as stimulus for thinking creatively together about how their own capital might be similarly transformed – in its own particular way.

So fifty fine minds brainstormed a wide range of possibilities, from which they selected eight ideas as being of particular promise, developing each of them into draft parts of a new strategy for the city.

Hopefully, these will be presented some time soon to the newly-appointed Secretary for Tourism in the Philippines, Ramon Jimenez Jr. There are high hopes for this visionary appointment – unusually Mr Jimenez is regarded as something of a guru in creativity and marketing communications. He was with Saatchi and Saatchi before founding his own creative businesses.

Manila has such enormous potential – if it can be tapped!

Einstein and Procter

I learned much from working on Procter and Gamble's business at Saatchi and Saatchi many years ago.

Not least to condense one’s thinking into concise, clear sentences.

That master of the one-liner, Albert Einstein, said: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Video killed the radio star?

At a recent interview in Hampstead, writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg (above) was asked what he thought was the future for printed books in the age of the ebook.

“There is this strange idea that when something new comes along it knocks everything else on the head,” he responded. “When film came it was supposed to kill theatre; it didn’t. When television came it was supposed to kill film; well, it didn’t. Television was supposed to kill radio; it didn’t.”

How that intriguing list could be extended: aircraft vs ships, the promised paperless office…

The worldwide CEO OF Saatchi & Saatchi, Kevin Roberts, recently wrote: “I am amazed at the resilience of television. For fifteen years the cool kids have been trying to kill it. But TV thrives in a world of choices.”

Of course, there are genuine casualties of innovation. For example, who now uses the fax machine?

Did video really kill the radio star?

Promise, large promise: the soul of an advertisement

I have been lucky enough to have had a number of teachers and coaches who were very influential in my life, none more than David Bernstein. He was then Creative Director of Garland-Compton (who were to become Saatchi and Saatchi). They had hired me at twenty-three to be an assistant account executive on one of their biggest clients, Rowntree. And I was in deep need of help and guidance.

At the heart of David’s approach to advertising was a simple mantra. To be effective, ads (in any medium) had to have four qualities:

V: Visibility (they must stand out from the crowd - if folks don’t notice them, there’s no point in spending the money)
I: Identity (your ads must be clearly, inextricably, for your brand and no other)
P: Promise (as Dr Johnson put it in the 1750s, “Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.” Nobody said it better than the doc, Bernstein would add.)
S: Simplicity (so many ads try to do too much and fail in consequence)

VIPS. Clear, memorable. Bang on the money. It served me well through a quarter century in that business. And, since that time, working in innovation.

Ahead of its time?

In my first blogpost, I wrote about how much I had learned about innovation from working intensively on the launch of Jellytots for Rowntree’s back in 1967. Jellytots passed its fortieth birthday in 2007.

In that same year, the agency I was working for, Garland-Compton (which was later to become Saatchi and Saatchi), ran a competition amongst staff members – the aim being to create an innovation of some sort or other in the petfood market. I came up with the winning entry – a new product geared specifically to feeding puppies and kittens. There was nothing of that sort on the market back then.

And last week, sorting out an old file, out tumbled this photograph of me, a cocky twenty-three year old assistant account executive, being given the winner’s cheque by the agency chairman, Leonard Garland.

I was a bit dismayed that the agency didn’t immediately call Mars Petfoods to pitch my idea. No, they said. Although it was a good idea, well argued and well presented, they thought the market would be too small to be of interest to any major petfood manufacturer.

Of course, you know what happened next. Within a few years, all the major players had entered the market, fighting day by day for share.

Was it a question of “ahead of its time”, or just plain short-sightedness? Either way, it’s a syndrome that blights innovators and their best ideas constantly.

M&A – respect and contempt

Why are some mergers and acquisitions brilliantly successful, while most under-perform miserably?

In my experience, it has nothing to do with the numbers – critical mass, cost-savings etc.

It’s something to do with mutual fit. But it’s much more to do with mutual respect.

When Saatchi & Saatchi merged with Garland-Compton - the hottest creative ad agency in the world (but with a somewhat iffy reputation for strategic thinking) went to bed with an excellent strategic agency, who served Procter & Gamble and Rowntree, two of the most demanding and professional clients. So certainly there was a good fit, but, more than that, the people inside the merged business respected and valued each other for their complementary skills and talents from day one.

The result was an inexorable rise to number one, first in the UK, then worldwide.

More recently, when the Interpublic holding company merged two of its global networks, Lowe and Lintas, there were apparently the same ingredients. A leading creative agency with a strong strategic one. But there the comparison ends. Contempt, “sharper than a serpent’s tooth” (as King Lear puts it), was the order of the day. Particularly on the side of the dominant partner, Lowe.

The result? Two plus two equals one. Mass exodus of clients and staff, and a slump in all key markets around the world. (The agency I had chaired in Sydney went from Top 5 to bottom of the Top 50 inside two years.)

It’s never struck me that M&A marriage brokers know this, focused as they are on the numbers (and in particular their own bonuses).

Pitching Schweppes

We were pitching the Schweppes business against JWT and Ogilvy. The bluest of blue-chip accounts at the time. (Where are they now?)

It was the first really important new business opportunity after the merger of Saatchi & Saatchi with Garland-Compton. I was leading a mixed team from both agencies - another first.

We had some terrific creative work – and an excellent presentation. So now to get down to rehearsal.

“No,” said managing director, Tim Bell (above, now Lord Bell), he wouldn’t be able to rehearse with us. Just too busy. And he didn’t.

So on the morning of the pitch, the clients settled in the meeting room (led by the redoubtable Keith Holloway), I went to pick up Tim from his office.

“Tell me about it,” he said. I briefed him in about forty-five seconds, the time it took to walk to the meeting room. And we walked in.

The presentation went like clockwork – and Tim blew them away with his deep grasp of the strategy, his understanding of the power of the creative concepts, his empathy and his insights. We won by a country mile.

Rehearsals? Not for Tim.

Strategy first?

We had a Creativity Research Network meeting yesterday at beautiful Kent University in Canterbury – Creative Campus was the theme of the day – and it was followed by the opening of the newly transformed foyer of their Marlowe Building, just one of the Creative Campus initiatives.

Making the necessary unveiling speech the Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor David Nightingale, observed that many of the most interesting innovations are born out of individual and team passion, not resulting from any particularly well-formed strategy. In fact, he went on, so often the strategy is only formed once a new idea has been both born and successfully implemented.

It made me think of my time at Saatchi & Saatchi. I had been brought up before Saatchi in highly disciplined, “professional” advertising agencies, where the strategy would be sweated over for months, sometimes (as with P&G) years. When, and only when, that phase was totally complete would the creative people be approached to start work.

What I discovered at Saatchi’s was that, invariably, the best, the most exciting and salient work would be created in exactly the opposite direction. Long before a strategy had been formulated (or even thought about in any depth), the creatives would be presented with the product or service and challenged to come up with something brilliant. When they had achieved that, the strategy behind their work would be formulated and researched.

The work was then presented to client in the usual sequence: strategy then creative. After all, that’s what clients imagined to be the only “professional” way. How shocked they might have been if they had discovered the truth.

It changed my own thinking dramatically. In fact, there may be something profoundly dulling in the traditional sequence. How inspiring that Professor Nightingale should know all that.

Do you have examples of brilliant new ideas preceding strategy?