Do you know why some companies are performing better in the crisis than others? And do you know why those same companies will emerge from the crisis in an even healthier position than before? It’s because they have strong cultures.
It is about having a vision, a belief system, an attitude and a worldview that is shared by the entire company. More than a simple guideline, it is a set of values. When a company has a strong culture, everyone in that organization not only supports decisions made by the CEO – but could have made the same decision in his or her place. In our digitalised, open-sourced society the culture is the brand. You cannot fake it.
Some of our clients have the strongest cultures of all. I have to mention Apple, because it’s such a great example. Thanks to the vision of Steve Jobs, Apple has a culture of creativity and innovation. ‘Think different’ was far more than an advertising slogan. It went to the heart of a way of thinking that has transformed the company. By thinking different, Apple shrugged off the notion that it was a mere computer maker and embraced the idea that it was a provider of tools for creative people. The result, of course, was iTunes, the iPod – and later the iPhone. These were radical new departures for Apple, but they were perfectly in tune with its culture.
Apple is well known for the loyalty it engenders among consumers. Needless to say, its employees are equally evangelical. When you go to an Apple store, you can tell the staff love working there. Why? Because a strong culture attracts the best employees. And when the economy crumbles, you want those people by your side.
So how do you build a strong company culture? For one thing, it takes time. You can’t just bolt it on. When you start a company, the culture is already taking root. In fact, very often, company cultures are created by strong leaders. The system may stay in place long after that person has left, but usually it can be traced back to a single inspiring figure.
At TBWA our culture is based on Disruption, which is all about questioning conventions in order to find a new path towards a larger share of the future. But when we organise Disruption exercises (we call them ‘Disruption Days’) for our clients, we do not ask them to change their cultures. In fact, we ask them to look deep within their cultures and identify their key points of difference, a vision and belief-system that sets them apart, makes them likeable or creates a campfire. In this way, we can unlock untapped potential. Companies often tell us that they have ‘found themselves’ after going through the Disruption process. It’s a liberating experience for them.
Take Kraft, who we recently invited to attend a Disruption Day when the company was reviewing the strategy for its Tassimo hot beverage maker. We transformed our Berlin office into an apartment, with a kitchen, a living room, a bedroom, a kid’s room. Read more…
Roustam Tariko, now a famous Russian billionaire, started out as a distributor of imported premium alcohol brands, including Martini and Johnnie Walker.
As the company grew, he realized that the Russian vodka market – despite its long heritage and the large number of brands on offer – lacked a genuine premium vodka brand with Russian origin. So decided to launch his own product, and in 1998 the result was the first Russian premium vodka brand: Russian Standard.
Because vodka advertising was highly restricted and banned from TV, Tariko came up with a smart trick by creating generic copy for his Russian Standard brand. The following year, 1999, Tariko opened a retail bank, as this was also very young and profitable sector. The bank was also named Russian Standard and Tariko’s company became the Russian Standard Group.
All communication activities, had no direct link to either vodka or banking, instead focusing on the idea of “Making the Impossible.” Only at the very end, in tiny print under the logo, was the bank mentioned. The copy’s main aim was to build awareness of the name and the logo and link them with a premium lifestyle image – which was successfully achieved.
Recently, both the bank and the vodka have followed a more conventional marketing approach. Yet the original trick was so smart and successful that other companies tried to emulate it – such as a brand of mineral water and even chocolate candies with a vodka brand name. That’s one way you can be sure that you’re an innovator: you attract imitators. But only innovators that do not fall into the trap of convention will be able to build sustainable results.
Jean-Marie Dru, the inventor of Disruption and Chairman TBWA Worldwide delivered today a speech at the State Tretyakov Gallery on the occasion of the official housewarming of TBWA Moscow. Here are some sound-bites for all of you who couldn’t attend:
“We are in the grip of a terrible recession. And recessions are always times when we isolate and withdraw into ourselves, when we do not take risks, when we become more cautious.
And yet every day you ask yourself: how to grow, how to create more organic roles at a time when you have less resources.
This is where we can contribute. This is where creativity can contribute. Provided that creativity focuses in the right direction.”
In his first public lecture in Moscow Jean-Marie Dru covered three areas, that he believes are essential for the future of our business: (1) Brand Ideas (2) Brand Initiatives and (3) Brand Content.
“First I will underline the importance of brand ideas, then the fact that brands must take more and more initiatives, and last but not least that brands must create new content.
At his return to the company in 1997, Steve Jobs decided to remind the world of what Apple stood for. You all know the “Think Different” film, it works as well today as it did 10 years ago.
This film has stood the test of time. It works just as effectively at the depths of the worst crisis we have never known. In fact, it may even be more inspirational today
You surely know that the person behind that film is Lee Clow, the creative soul of TBWA. He is at the origin of all our campaigns for Apple. And here is what Lee likes to say on ideas such as Think Different: Brand Ideas Win, Good Ads Don’t.
What he means by this is that we cannot be satisfied merely with advertising ideas. What is needed now are big brand ideas.”
“In fact, communications strategies can sometimes contribute to reinforcing companies’ business strategies. By “reinforce”, I mean that strong communications can create great enthusiasm and more conviction around the companies’ strategic direction. And this happens more often than we think.”
“The old saying « actions speak louder than words » has never been more true. And that’s why we’re not just in the business of telling brands what to say, but also in the business of guiding them in how they should behave. (…) All initiatives that go beyond the mere products and services you brand delivers, initiatives that reinforce what a brand stands for.”
“My last point is that we are going to create more and more brand content. This is a consequence of the end of repetitive advertising.
So we have to come with unexpected or entertaining ways of communicating. All the stunts we are doing for adidas are good examples.
The first one is a billboard campaign in New Zealand for the All Blacks. A drop of blood taken from each player on the team – thirty of them in all – was mixed into the ink used to print the posters.
You can imagine the impact in a country where each citizen sees himself as an All Black. Rather than just being a slogan, “Impossible is Nothing” is actually a declaration that you’re ready for anything. Like playing vertical football: Slide One CNN journalist called it “Sky soccer”.
“For the soccer World Cup in Germany, Slide the Cologne train station ceiling was painted in the style of a Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, featuring the world’s greatest players. And we also built this huge bridge with Germany’s famous goalkeeper, Oliver Kahn, at the exit of the Munich airport. This gives you an idea of the scale of the installation.
Then, at the last European football cup, we imagined this spectacular representation of the Czech goalkeeper, on the giant wheel in Vienna made famous by Orson Welles. The goalkeeper was able to stop all the shots thanks to his numerous arms.”
“We should not underestimate the importance of ideas like these. They accelerate the penetration of the central idea. More than that – they bring it to life. And they make it bigger. And the bigger the idea, the stronger the brand.”
Jean-Marie Dru, the inventor of the Disruption philosophy and chairman of TBWA, will share his ideas on Disruption at the prestigious State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow this Wednesday. The lecture will be public.
Influential business thinkers commented on Dru‘s idea, among them the founder and chairman of the Virigin Group, Richard Branson, who said „Disruption goes way beyond advertising, it forces you to think about where you want your brand to go and how to get there“. The bestselling author Tom Peters simply calls it the „most powerful idea in business today“. Now for the first time Dru share his insights in Russia.
Disruption is both a mind-set and a methodology that TBWA uses every day in developing ideas that help its clients find a completely original way of presenting a brand to the world. It is a driving success for brands, by collaboratively, collectively and systematically interrogating and challenging the conventional thinking that prevent so many brands and companies from succeeding.
Dru is not only the intellectual father of Disruption, he has also authored four books on advertising and marketing, including his latest publication “How Disruption Brought Order” (Palgrave, 2007), “Beyond Disruption” (John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2002), “Disruption” (John Wiley & Sons Inc.1996) and “Le Saut Créatif” (Lattès 1984).
Today Jean-Marie Dru is the chairman of TBWA, which has grown to be the 5th largest network in the world with more than 267 offices, in 77 countries and 12,000 employees. TBWA has been recognized by both Advertising Age and Adweek magazines as Global Agency of the Year in 2008 and by Creativity magazine as the most-awarded Agency Network. Fast Company listed TBWA last year among the 50 most innovative companies and named the company an „Innovation All-Star“ in 2010.
To sign up for a free ticket to the lecture by Jean-Marie Dru, simply send an e-mail to events@tbwa.ru including your name and company.
Donald Gunn asked Jean-Marie Dru to contribute an essay to the latest edition of the Gunn Report, the only independent report on creativity for the advertising world. Enjoy Jean-Marie Dru’s thoughts on mad-blog.com:
The economic crisis on the one hand, the digital revolution on the other…
Our profession has never been so shaken. These two circumstances create multiple effects. And we are all wondering what tomorrow will look like.
Concerning digital, communications groups are developing varied, often opposing strategies. Some, through a series of acquisitions, attempt to create a technological barrier between them and their competitors. Others, like our Agency, are putting digital at the very center of their conventional activities. Neither strategy is, by definition, the winner. There are different ways to succeed. What makes a strategy effective is the quality of its implementation, and the commitment to it.
To ensure that everything starts with digital, the 180 agency in Amsterdam totally reinvented itself. The result of their actions was even more radical than they had imagined, and the price they paid was heavy, with no fewer than 55 out of their total 120 staff changing. This is a dramatic illustration of the size of the task. The path ahead is narrow, and it is difficult.
Too often, we are more comfortable talking about digital ideas than making the inherent changes that are necessary to provoke the right solutions in the digital world. As Colleen DeCourcy, our Chief Digital Officer, said to me recently: “Everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die.”
In an industry faced with such challenges, the relevance of award shows, and even The Gunn Report itself, comes under scrutiny. It is a recurring subject. I remember back in the ‘70s, industry colleagues who announced the imminent demise of the Cannes Festival. We know what it has since become. Its turnover increased tenfold, because today more than ever, the celebration of creativity is essential despite of the difficult environment in which we are operating, or rather, because of it. And it’s why, although they avoided awards shows for over 50 years, the world’s leading advertisers now participate actively in them, and celebrate when their own campaigns are recognized.
In a speech I gave in Cannes last year, I underlined that “Big can be beautiful too.” In 2007, both Procter & Gamble and Unilever were awarded a Grand Prix at this festival. Today, a lot of great work comes from large companies. They have internalized the fact that audiences are not captive anymore. If you don’t entertain and engage people, they will simply ignore you. “Safe advertising“ is becoming invisible. At last.
There’s no getting away from that fact that, today, creativity is no longer optional. It is vital to every product category and to every communications discipline.
In fact, there are two factors that are contributing to put creativity in the center. On the one hand, the imminent demise of repetitive advertising, and on the other, the understanding that each and every touchpoint between a brand and its audiences must be creative.
Advertising is part of how brands behave, but brands are judged on everything they do, not just how they appear in advertising.
We need to embrace all the ways to tell a brand’s story: its packaging, its retail presence, the content of its website, its PR programs, the products themselves. And to ensure that everything is creative. This is why, even when an agency is not directly in charge of one of these elements, it must nevertheless feel a sense of responsibility. There can be no room for compromise or mediocrity if you have the ambition to be a brand leader. Advertising agencies will rediscover their original reason for being; they will again become true generalists.
But contrary to the past, they will only achieve this if they learn how to change rhythm. The problem is no longer just to ensure the coherence between the different elements of a brand’s communication, which some continue to refer to as 360°. But rather, to feed a constant conversation with our audiences, 365 days a year. From 360 to 365…it is the very rhythm of communications that digital has shaken up. Agencies need to move from a quarterly to a daily cadence.
We have to organize ourselves to deliver constant communications. A fleet of small initiatives coming together to create an ongoing communication program, generating more frequent conversation points. We need to own these conversations, not just the creative work.
The theme of the TED conference this year “What the World Needs Now…”. PUR believes the world needs water. Working with TBWA\Chiat\Day LA, is providing all attendees at TED with a Sigg water bottle and water filtration stations throughout the conference in an effort to exclude bottled water from the event and the waste that they produce. Once attendees receive their bottle, they will be encouraged to go to a photo kiosk and have their picture taken with their bottle to post to social media sites.
Every time a photo is posted, clean water will be donated to people that need it. Every time someone tweets about it, water will be donated. And when you visit the PUR Facebook page, you can click to donate water (at no personal cost) on a daily basis.
Here are a few facts about why it is important to get behind this initiative.
(1) A billion people have no clean water to drink.
(2) PUR’s goal is to raise 200,000 liters of clean drinking water during the TED conference.
(3) 200,000 liters = enough water to provide a village of 250 people clean water for an entire year.
(4) 200,000 liters = enough to avert 8,000 days of illness from dirty water.
(5) 100 liters, which is given for each photo taken at the conference, can provide 50 days of clean water to someone who would otherwise go without.
This is one of the coolest examples of todays brand behavior: The Pepsi Refresh Everything Project. See, what they say about themselves: “We’re looking for people, businesses, and non-profits with ideas that will have a positive impact. Look around your community and think about how you want to change it.” and check it out. Simply click HERE for all the necessary information.
FYI: The Pepsi Refresh Project Round 1 Voting and Round 2 Submissions are NOW OPEN! It’s time to start campaigning for the ideas you like, voting for the ideas that will make the world better, and submitting your ideas for Round 2!
If you have any comments or suggestions please email Rob Schwartz.
Rob Schwartz is the Chief Creative Officer of TBWA\CHIAT\DAY in Los Angeles He writes an “Inspiration is Everywhere” to the LA creative department every week. Sometimes, he shares them with us:
Amigos,
I watched the Golden Globes last night. I don’t usually watch the Golden Globes but I happen to love comedian/writer Ricky Gervais and he was hosting.
Yet is wasn’t Ricky or George Clooney or even the ever-prolific and brilliant Meryl Streep or for that matter the ever-prolific and brilliant Martin Scorsese who appeared as a flash of inspiration.
It was Robert Downey, Jr.
First off, he had by far the most genuine and funny acceptance speech of the night. Yup, in a show flooded with tears, thank yous, and seemingly endless shout-outs to various and sundry agents, studio muckety-mucks and hangers-on, ol’ RD,j bounded up on the stage and admitted that he “didn’t have anybody to thank.” And that everyone involved in the production needed him!
Of course, this was simply a rhetorical device. He used the negative to be extremely positive. See his disruptive speech here:
But it wasn’t simply RD,j’s sense of irony or spontaneous energy at the Globes that I find so inspiring. It’s deeper than that.
What really inspires me is his talent, his dedication to craft, his overall creative exuberance and excellence. Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that he had a few rocky years in there. In fact, from 1996-2001, Robert was mired in a black hole of substance abuse, suicidal tendencies and general shit-bag behavior. Yet to his credit, he sought the help he needed and is now enjoying one of the best comebacks in Hollywood history.
Now I won’t dive too deep into his career here. You can go to wikipedia Or imdb to find out more.
I will list some of his most inspired performances that you might want to download and check out:
Sherlock Holmes
Ironman
Tropic Thunder
“Family Guy” (Patrick Pewterschmidt episode from 2005)
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
“Ally McBeal” (episodes from 2001)
Natural Born Killers
Chaplin
Saturday Night Live (He was a cast member 1985-1986)
Less Than Zero
Thanks for reading.
~Rob
If you have any comments or suggestions please email Rob Schwartz.
At TBWA our culture is based on Disruption, which is all about questioning conventions in order to find a new path towards a larger share of the future. But when we organise Disruption exercises (we call them ‘Disruption Days’) for our clients, we do not ask them to change their cultures. In fact, we ask them to look deep within their cultures and identify their key points of difference, a vision and belief-system that sets them apart, makes them likeable or creates a campfire. In this way, we can unlock untapped potential. Companies often tell us that they have ‘found themselves’ after going through the Disruption process. It’s a liberating experience for them.
Then, at the last European football cup, we imagined this spectacular representation of the Czech goalkeeper, on the giant wheel in Vienna made famous by Orson Welles. The goalkeeper was able to stop all the shots thanks to his numerous arms.”
