Colleen DeCourcy Will Receive Cannes Lions' Lifetime Honor

Colleen DeCourcy, the ad industry trailblazer and former creative leader of Wieden+Kennedy, is this year’s recipient of Cannes Lions’ prestigious lifetime achievement award, the Lion of St. Mark. The organization gives the honor each year to someone who has made outstanding contributions to creativity in communications. DeCourcy will receive the award during the next Cannes Lions festival in June, when she will also serve as jury president for Glass: The Lion for Change, the award celebrating culture-shifting creativity. DeCourcy announced in December that she would be stepping down as president and chief creative officer of Wieden+Kennedy and retiring from the industry. One of the most influential women in advertising history, her achievements include leading Wieden+Kennedy through one of its most successful eras, advocating for a more equitable industry and being named Adweek’s Creative Leader of the Decade in 2019. In an exclusive interview, Adweek spoke to DeCourcy about the industry’s biggest challenges, how it should evolve and what qualities the next generation of creative leaders should embody. Adweek: You’ve achieved a lot in your career, but what are you personally most proud of? By the time you get to the stage I’m at, the things you become most proud of are not objects but connections. One of my most proud moments was a text I got from a Wieden+Kennedy creative director who said, “All of this work was possible because you made a space for us to do it.” That’s what I always tried to do: hold a space. Space isn’t just about time; it’s psychological space, support and safety. As a leader, I’ve always tried to bring people forward and help them believe in themselves, to nudge and prompt. That is the best service you can give to a group of creative people, to help them self-actualize. When Adweek named you Creative Leader of the Decade, you said you had “conflicted feelings about leadership.” What did you mean by that? My conflicted feelings about leadership came from a couple of things. One is that I’m a quiet person. I never wanted to be the person in the room who everyone felt you had to laugh at their joke or agree with what they said, which is a form of leadership I saw in the industry—a veneration of gods. There was a lot of feeding of egos. It’s something I never liked to work under and never wanted to be when people worked under me. Leadership meant something different to me. I was incredibly vulnerable. I said what I thought and I challenged authority, even when I was the authority. I believe empathy takes you a long, long, long way. For me it was always focused on people— and the work came out of that. [Wieden+Kennedy co-founder] Dan Wieden said that people make the culture and culture makes the work. You have faith that with the right people, if you feed their souls and send them in the right direction, what would come out the other side would be extraordinary because it would come from the souls of those people, that dynamic and culture. Among agencies, there’s been much discussion about how to maintain culture in the wake of the pandemic. What does culture mean to you? Culture is a set of values, beliefs, intentions, how you think and the way you treat each other and other people. It’s more important than ever, because we won’t be going back to our offices in the same way. It used to be that agencies created a culture of presenteeism and being in the trenches together. You were away from home so damn much, so the culture meant that you needed to feel you belonged there. That is not shaking it anywhere anymore— no one is accepting that trade. That’s one of the factors fuelling the industry’s talent crisis—many agencies are struggling to find and retain talent. Why is this happening and what needs to change? The biggest crisis in the industry is that it’s a model built on owning a large proportion of the best talent. What I’ve seen is this transition, where freelancers used to be the people who agencies would bring in as safe, extra hands. They opted out of that agency system that kept you away from home, but they were so talented that they could sit outside and charge their rate. During the pandemic, many more people realized they could do that. It calls into question how we have created our business model. What do you do when every agency can tap the same person as freelance? You have to be a company that values that person and shows them you can offer the best opportunities to make the work they want to make. You have to be willing to accommodate their new set of needs as workers. Wieden+Kennedy President Colleen DeCourcy Will Retire From Advertising I fear that when we talk about getting back to the office, sometimes it’s about getting back to the power structure, because people feel the sand is eroding beneath their feet and their talent bank is falling away. It’s human nature to feel that, but oh, the possibilities. You’ve done so much to advocate for greater gender equality and fight harassment in the industry. Has much changed on this front since you started your career? If I’ve learned anything in the process of working with [industry advocacy group] Time’s Up and standing for anti-harassment, it’s that it won’t be me who knows if it’s over. I look to the women who are coming up and still in the trenches—ask them. Constant regeneration of talent, and inviting in people who have not before been invited, can only energize change. Colleen DeCourcy The change is that it’s known: the women or men working for you are smiling and laughing at your jokes because you’re their boss, not because they want to be flirted with. [Harassment] is not just part of the fun of working in advertising; it’s fireable as an offense. And when you look at the female representation at the top of many agencies now, that was unheard of before all this started. Still, many other groups remain underrepresented or shut out of this industry. It’s incredibly frustrating. As leaders, we have to stop talking about how much it matters to us and start putting skin in the game. Often that means not hanging onto your role until you’re 100 years old. I’m not being ageist; it’s like nature: blooms come in the spring because the leaves fell off in the fall. You have to make real room, not pad your lower ranks or make up roles. You have to decide that your open slot is part of the solution. It might not mean giving your job to the person directly under you, but it’s about organizations constantly having movement. We have to make sure we have people ready to move. If you’re doing it right, every time someone comes off the top, hopefully 16 people will move up. It makes the blood flow through the body of your business. Are you optimistic about the industry’s future? The industry has been on death watch since I started working in it. One of the most endearing qualities of advertising people is that they are never satisfied, but the pandemic was a major dampening force. The future is bright; it just won’t be the same as what it is today. If there’s anything I wish were different, it’s that in a business that contains such an extraordinary number of creative people, we have at times been hesitant to embrace the great adventure that change brings you. Constant regeneration of talent, and inviting in people who have not before been invited, can only energize change. What we have to do in this moment when everybody’s afraid is create a safer environment in which people can flourish, and they will do that. Wieden+Kennedy President Colleen DeCourcy Will Retire From Advertising

The Future of Agencies

Creative Trailblazer Colleen DeCourcy Will Receive Cannes Lions Lifetime Achievement Award

The 2022 Lion of St. Mark honoree shares her rallying cry for a new wave of leaders

Brittaney Kiefer

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Brittaney Kiefer