Mark D'Arcy On The Spot

Mark D'Arcy, the 35-year-old CCO of Time Warner's Global Marketing Group, says as a kid he was compelled to rewrite the ads in the New Zealand Herald, where his father was in sales. By 23, D'Arcy was creative director of D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles in Auckland, moving to the New York office as creative director in 1995. He has also been creative director at CMG Communications and Y&R for accounts including Virgin Atlantic and Sony, respectively. Since joining TW two years ago, D'Arcy has helped create advertising programs for companies including Johnson & Johnson and American Express. Q: What are you most proud of since joining Time Warner?A: I'm very proud of the J&J work we did last year [with] Andy Langer [former Lowe global CCO on Johnson & Johnson]. It was called "Having a baby changes everything." We shot about four hours of interviews with people ... and we used the distribution of AOL to get those stories out there. It was run as editorial on AOL, it was run as short-form 15-second advertising throughout the AOL network, it was run as 30-second TV commercials, mixed in with their regular campaign. We did three magazine double-page ads that ran throughout Time Inc. It mirrored the existing campaign. It wasn't an appendage that was bolted on. It flowed naturally. Should creatives feel threatened by what your role represents?I don't believe so. I have so many relationships with creative people who are anything but threatened. If anything, they are intrigued. It's more like, "That's really cool. How can you help with this idea I have?" I remember when I was on Sony and thought [my idea] could be a TV show, but I didn't know who to talk to because it was beyond my realm of advertising. What about the people who don't get it?We have more than enough to do with the people who do. If you understand that the context is becoming as important as the content of what you are trying to communicate, and that the media is how you create context and oftentimes content—that they are not separate things—then you'll find an on-ramp to a company like TW exciting. We are just one part of the equation. Were you worried about leaving the agency world for the world of media?It was terrifying. I've only ever done one thing—write ads. One of the hardest things to do is to reapply your talents. It's harder than doing something completely different.What was your biggest challenge?Wearing a suit. No. Just being ignorant. It's this massive, amazing company with these cool people doing all this stuff and you are in the middle of it saying, OK, we want to create a distinct value through creativity. And how do you do that?It's the same creative intellectual capital. We just focus it in a different way. It's not about ads, it's about ideas. It's a cliché in the advertising realm, but it's actually quite different inside a media company.How did you get people on board?We just did it. ... For example, traditionally the way a group would work is they would get ideas from the divisions, aggregate and present. We said that's a burden on the divisions and we don't think it comes from a holistic point of view about a brand and what needs to be done. We do it from the center.How did you get into advertising? I come from a reasonably working-class background and in New Zealand, to have anything to do with television seemed very exciting. My dad got a job working for the biggest newspaper in New Zealand and one day at the dinner table he said, "You know who makes all the real money in this business? It's those people in those advertising agencies." He didn't say it with great love; it was like, "Those people over there." I remember thinking that sounds pretty good to me. I had never heard the term advertising agency. [I thought ads] just turned up on your TV. What do you miss most about agency life?The focus of having one client or a smaller number of clients to be deeply engaged in. And just being on shoots—some of those craft skills that I don't get to do often. Who influenced you the most creatively?Len Potts [former creative director of Colenso BBDO], the Hal Riney of New Zealand advertising, Roy Mears and Kim Thorpe. They consistently produced some of the best work in the world out of New Zealand. I was hugely impressed that [Mears and Thorpe] had world standards while they were running Saatchi NZ when it was absolutely rocking. They were the benchmark that was well above what a small sheep-infested country should be.What work are you most proud of?"Message from America," which we did with Sony for the troops in Afghanistan. That was pretty cool. [Families recorded messages at Circuit City to the troops, which were also run as PSAs on outlets including CBS, UPN and MTV.] Any ads you wish you'd done?[The spot] "Paint," the follow-up to "Balls," because I worked on Sony for so long.What do you think is the dumbest decision you've ever made?Not buying more Apple stock when it was $7. I bought some, but not everything. I didn't sell my house and buy it. That was dumb.

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Mark D'Arcy On The Spot

Eleftheria Parpis

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Eleftheria Parpis