Dr. Sven H. Becker, CEO of TBWA Germany on why disruption is about so much more than advertising.

What is your personal view of disruption?

Many people outside the agency associate disruption purely with advertising, which is a very one-dimensional way of looking at it. Of course we produce disruptive advertising at TBWA, but that is only one facet of what we do. Disruption is a much broader philosophy that has far bigger implications for brands and their behaviour, not all of which is visible from the outside.

Do you still think of yourself as working in advertising?

I don’t even think I work at an advertising agency! That’s what we were about 25 years ago. Today our job is to help companies take their brands in exciting new directions.

Can you give me some examples?

The classic example is Pedigree, which we transformed from a brand that made dog food into a brand that loves dogs. That insight produced some great creative work – but more importantly it changed the behaviour of the entire company: employees were given permission to bring their dogs into work, and so on. More recently, our work with Nivea has enabled the company to look beyond traditional concepts of beauty. Most beauty brands have a very superficial, external view of beauty. But Nivea presents beauty as a state of mind. Not to forget that both companies outperform their category.

It must be quite a challenge, meeting a company and saying: “We’re going to change the way you think.”

Well, of course we work in partnership with them. We don’t just come up with an idea and force it on them. Disruption is a step-by-step process. We work together to unlock the ideas that were lying dormant within their brands. Disruption is about identifying the self-imposed restrictions that can stifle creativity. We call these restrictions “conventions“. The “disruptive idea“ is one that overturns these conventions and allows a company to adopt a unique standpoint, which we call the “vision“. From that, they discover a new truth about their brand, referred to as the “brand belief“. This is a fundamental statement about the brief and should guide all aspects of communication all “brand behavior“.

Clients find this process liberating – it’s as if they’ve discovered something that they were instinctively aware of all along, but were unable to formulate and put into action. We free those ideas and then polish and shape them.

Not all clients are comfortable with the idea of change.

True, and I would never say that disruption is for everyone. A client that wants to carry on doing the same thing year after year without testing new possibilities – and the increased success that those might bring – is probably not the client for us.

The same goes for clients who don’t want to look beyond conventional advertising?

Classic media – TV, print and radio – still have their place, but they are playing a reduced role within the bigger picture. Audiences now receive messages from many different places, so part of our job is to steer clients towards solutions that they might never have considered before. We refer to as Media Arts.

TBWA still makes traditional ads, though?

Traditional advertising is only one of many Media Arts skills. In the past, advertising was all about interrupting or begging for the audience’s attention. But that’s not what we do at all. Our job is to engage audiences in new and unexpected ways, through a wide variety of media. Actually we consider everything between brand and its audience media, just remember what we did for Labello during the New Years Celebrations earlier this year at Times Square New York and the Berlin Brandburg Gate and how we turned the these parties into the celebrations of kissing.

It’s almost as though you’re saying that brands must be more respectful of audiences.

I feel there’s a new seriousness within the industry. Today’s communications professionals should not be interested in artificial, short-term solutions. They should solve problems for clients in a durable way. That’s why we use disruption to form the brand belief and media arts to change brand behaviour rather than just to inspire witty ads. The end result is ultimately more sophisticated and, inevitably, a richer and more rewarding experience for consumers.

You come from a planning background. What difference does that make now you’re running an agency?

I can’t speak for others, but I believe my job is to take clients degree by degree out of their comfort zone. And as a planner rather than an account man I may find it easier to do that. I’m less concerned with diplomacy. I don’t mind pushing clients towards a path that they might resist a little at first when it’s in the interest of the brand.

And what about the agency employees?

Well, my goal is simply to hold everyone at the agency to account and ensure that we apply the philosophy of disruption to everything we do. That’s not a constraint. Disruption is not a series of rules, but a way of looking at the world differently. Once you accept that, it’s very liberating: anything becomes possible. Disruption gives everybody the chance to make a contribution to our client’s success.

If you have any comments or suggestions please email Dr. Sven H. Becker.