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Susan Credle and Tyler Turnbull took the helm at FCB a year ago, and in that time they have been working to elevate the storied agency’s creative output. Not that the IPG agency needed a huge overhaul—in fact, it was named Adweek’s Global Agency of the Year in 2020—but Credle and Turnbull knew they still had some pieces to pull together.
While its regional offices, like FCB India and North America, were turning out notable work, not everything was fully unified for success. After a year at the top of the agency, global FCB chair and CCO Credle and global CEO Turnbull think they have everything in place now and see FCB as a cohesive agency network, not just a series of offices around the globe.
Credle started the transformation in 2016 when she came over from Leo Burnett as global chief creative officer. Previous global CEO Carter Murray brought Credle in as part of an ambition to “reclaim” the creative reputation of FCB. Turnbull, who came to the agency in 2014 to head up FCB Canada, moved over to lead all North American operations in 2019.
Their elevations are part of the larger focus that Foote, Cone & Belding has put on sustained growth, including investments in leadership succession to enable smooth transitions, as well as talent development that promotes diversity, and tools that create a shared language for its workers, offices and clients.
“We all agreed to what we wanted to do and who we wanted to be, and we also agreed on how we were going to get there. … When you have to bring people in from the outside, it can be very disruptive to an organization. We’ve been energized and refreshed by Tyler coming in,” Credle told Adweek.
Leadership succession includes elevating deserving employees like Bella Patel to global chief talent officer, Mark Jungwirth to global chief financial officer, Kelly Graves to CEO of the Chicago office and Emma Armstrong to CEO of New York. That internal cohesion has helped FCB land, keep and expand big clients like AB InBev, Kimberly-Clarke, Clorox and Kellogg’s.
Putting creativity at the forefront
As FCB celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, Credle and Turnbull know there is still work to be done to make the network the best it can be. The global team needs to get stronger on how it looks at business and brands and understanding what work needs to be done. Credle said the agency is close to having that figured out, but in doing so creativity needs to come to the forefront.
“I would like to see the value of creativity truly be valued. Somehow it got lost,” said Credle. In her 30-plus years in the industry, she has seen that when great creative goes out into the world, it is financially of value to the client while also helping to pull new creatives into the industry.
“There’s not one thing that you get to do in a day that, if you apply a little creative thinking, doesn’t get amplified, get better, get more meaningful,” she added.
Creative needs to be centered in other industry spaces as well, like media, data, targeting and segmentation, according to Turnbull.
“You’re going to continue to see us lean into some of the new platforms, some of the new spaces that are yearning for creativity,” said Turnbull, including CRM, data and media, which right now are templated and commoditized throughout the industry.
Creatively speaking FCB
One of FCB’s core values is the belief that creative is the business and the business is creative, according to Turnbull. But over the last few years, the agency needed to get to a point where it was doing its best work for its biggest clients, which took some time to implement.
“The first thing we had to agree on is, what do we believe as a company is great work? And great work is not award-winning work at our company,” Credle said.
The agency has a tool called 456 Benchmark to define its work, ranging from 1 to 6: One is damaging, two is invisible, and three is “noticed,” and that’s not where the work should land, though they admit that has been the case from time to time. The good-to-great work has to fall in the 4, 5 and 6 categories.
Four work is provocative, while five is co-creation, and six is a platform idea. Credle states that “4, 5, 6 work” is tough to do, but the agency strives for it, and if it hits it should win awards. But FCB isn’t doing its creative just to win awards.
“If creativity doesn’t drive business or build brand value over time, it won’t be valued,” said Credle, noting that FCB also looks to put its best creative where the client is putting their most money.
Turnbull added that the output from FCB lately has a deeper integration of technical and data with creativity to help bring ideas to life.
“Rather than looking at the creative canvas on a specific set of assets—’What’s my film? What’s my out of home?’—we’re really leaning into ‘what is that 4, 5, 6 platform?’ that Susan talks about, and how does that extend across every touchpoint that a consumer might experience with the client?” asked Turnbull.
Finding a common language at FCB helps it cut through and connect offices around the globe. The agency calls it “speaking FCB,” and it’s a way of communicating across offices that makes things fast, efficient and clear. That bleeds over to the client as well. FCB is currently developing suites of tools and structures that take into account each brand’s assets so that each local office then can creatively do whatever is right in that specific market.
That sense of collaboration has fueled some of the agency’s best work, according to Turnbull, adding that collaborations between FCB Chicago and FCB India, or FCB Brazil and FCB New York, see the work being elevated in their respective home markets. It’s something that allowed FCB India to be named Adweek’s International Agency of the Year in 2022.
A challenge of educating clients
FCB sees one of its biggest challenges in educating its clients about the importance of continuing to market even in a downturned economy. Switching off their marketing efforts during downtimes is counterintuitive.
“We did a major study over the last 50 years in terms of the biggest recessions worldwide. And every single moment brands invested in marketing efforts, or who even maintain their same investment levels versus the previous years, saw dramatic [gains] in market share year-over-year versus their competitors,” said Turnbull.
Creatively, FCB has realized the need to express to clients not to change up tried and true creative platforms just for the sake of changing things.
“We’ve had clients that have almost thrown away a huge platform idea that could last them for the next 50 years because they think they need to refresh the work,” said Credle.
A platform, she said, is the timeless commitment to a point of view that matters, while campaigns are timely expressions of that platform driven by a business problem, a cultural moment or a business opportunity.
Plenty of wins, including beer
FCB has partnered with AB InBev since 2015, working with Michelob Ultra, but as it has added Budweiser, the agency and brand have hit a stride, doing work that helps extend the brand to unique places.
One of those places recently was at the 2023 Brit Awards, where FCB helped turn Bud’s traditional advertising billboard into a pop-up stage in a bid to place a spotlight on up-and-coming artists and engage the public. When the biggest music award in Europe essentially denied women a stage by nominating only men for Best Artist, the brand turned a London billboard into a stage and opened it for everyone. The agency scored this work highly on its 456 Benchmark scale.
Other successful campaigns from the past year include Michelob Ultra’s “McEnroe vs. McEnroe” and Virgin’s “Dyslexic Thinking,” which helped land FCB the No. 2 network in the world at Cannes Lions in 2022.
As FCB leans into creativity across all its disciplines, Credle and Turnbull know their clients will see continued success, which will help the agency keep growing and thriving.
“I always say great creative, it’s like a drug. If you give anybody a little taste of it, they’ll never not want it,” Credle said.
