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Advertising chiefs often say that they are in the business of commercial creativity and are putting their creative skills to use in helping brands grow. But is that always the case? As a whole, we often feel as though we are in the business of doing business, with the creativity that should be our beating heart sidelined as a nice-to-have.
No amount of reporting, from Cannes Lions to Kantar Millward Brown, stops our relentless and self-destructive move toward the industrialization of what we deliver with diminishing returns and no long-term lift. Short-term tactics are no way to build long-term, sustained growth in any industry. It’s become the tyranny of “or” rather than the democracy of “and”—and somehow, we are often blind to the data and just focus on the shiny shortcuts and efficiencies.
Make no mistake, when most successful, our business delivers strategically powerful and differentiated creative products regardless of what we do—whether that’s the latest AI, media placement or “classic” advertising (thanks, Cannes Lions for the new category, because it sounds better than “traditional”).
Short-term tactics are no way to build long-term, sustained growth in any industry.
—Laura Jordan Bambach, president and CCO, Grey London
Similarly, this “or” not “and” approach is the same we take with our own businesses. We’ve sidelined the power of creativity in our own agencies, and principally, we operate very much like-for-like across the board. Creativity is seen as something outside our core business and the creative department as a function that almost has to be kept from the hard stuff like business growth, profitability and budgets.
The effect of the serious side of the business is seen as polluting the creative product. Nothing could be further from the truth. Creative people and products benefit hugely from being connected to the growth of the business. And, conversely, creativity is seen as having no place in how we shape what we do operationally or financially.
So how do we kickstart our creative heart? Make the kind of work we know we need to deliver for our clients’ success and for our own growth? Create businesses and cultures that are uniquely different to be proud of and offer our clients a real choice in partnership? By being more “and” and bringing creative people and processes into the heart of what we do.
After all, what is innovation and business transformation if not a description of the creative process itself? Every part of our business can benefit from letting creative people loose across the board—it’s a powerful advantage we have over every other industry.
Operational innovation is creative innovation
From design thinking to going big and refining down to experimentation and trying things off-brief, our creative processes are just as powerful at getting to great operational ideas as they are at getting great work to our clients.
The creative behaviors around collaboration, openness to new points of view and building on ideas—and even the concept of test and learn—are all things that are standard ways of working in creative departments. Take these ways of working out of your creative department and into your business, and you have a blueprint for new ways of working, rapid business transformation and managing risks that conventional operation models don’t touch the sides of.
Agency culture is creative culture
Do you want to create a culture where innovation thrives, where there is a sense of belonging, joy and every person is empowered and energized? After all, why would you work in advertising if you didn’t love what you did? The salaries and hours are often brutal. Take yourself down to the creative department and see how they do it.
We’ve lost the sense of play that makes what we do truly wonderful, but there’s a place that is bursting to let it out and spread it across the rest of the business if you let it. It might mean looking at different ways of working, embracing flexibility and personal responsibility, talking and sharing more and feeling less like you have to do everything yourself.
It also may mean different ways of building a team, a crew, a family—not just a management structure—and playing to each other’s strengths. We can be both serious and joyful businesses, and there is so much that’s second nature to creative people to take into your agency.
Get over that fear of failure. Learn from those in your agency for whom the majority of every great idea they have is rejected and the rest don’t get made the way they first envision it. Resilience, camaraderie, flexibility, taking feedback gracefully and giving it constructively—you have experts on your team already.
The most effective product is a creative product
And as for client relationships and retention? Growth? And delivering incredible results? Ultimately delivering the best returns for our bottom line and our clients’?
Bringing every part of your business together—being more “and” and less “or”—welcoming creative thinking into the whole business delivers that. And, of course, a more wonderful, differentiated and effective creative product too.
