Co-founder and founding editor of Fast Company magazine, Bill Taylor is the author of a new book about disruptive businesses. He took time out from a tour of TBWA offices to talk to us.
How did the book come about?
To a certain extent it was provoked by nostalgia. Fifteen years ago, when we founded Fast Company, we organized a meeting based around the premise “How do you overthrow successful companies?” The participants weren’t young dotcoms, but companies that were already large and successful, and wanted to consider ways of engaging with the exciting new landscape that was emerging around them. It struck me that you could organize the same meeting today and ask exactly the same question. The book is an attempt to answer it.
What for you then is the key to success? Is it enough to be disruptive?
It’s no longer enough to be pretty good at a lot of things. You goal should be excellence in a chosen field. The most local, the most global, the most exclusive…the point is to stand for something. Too many leaders want to stay in the middle of the road, which is the road to nowhere.
Thanks to the digital revolution, we live in an age of transparency. Do you find that the most disruptive companies are also the most authentic?
It’s certainly true that you can’t behave one way in the marketplace and another way internally. Your brand must be a reflection of your culture. In that context, your hiring policy and the way you treat your employees becomes vitally important. I’d even say that the “power couple” in this new environment are the marketers and human resources department, because your talent strategy and your brand strategy must be in synch.
Can you give a concrete example of this?
One of my favourite brands in the US is Zappos.com. In just ten years it has become an iconic brand, by doing something is banal as selling shoes on line. The way it uses customer service, performance and theatricality to make technology more human is outstanding. A lot of this is based on its hiring strategy. When you join the company, you embark on a five week training period. Then they offer you 5000 dollars to quit. It’s a way of acknowledging that the company isn’t for everyone, while ensuring that only those who are truly committed to the brand stay on. That’s just one of the reasons why it’s become a passion brand of the highest order. The staff believes in it as well as the customers.
Is being “practically radical” – or “disruptive” as TBWA would call it – essentially about taking risks?
During my research, I unearthed an academic study that identified two different forms of risk-taking. The first might be termed “sinking the boat”: taking a risk that didn’t work. But the second is “missing the boat”: failing to take a risk that might have worked. Too many leaders fail to innovate because they’re afraid of sinking the boat.
In advertising, there’s sometimes a feeling that originality requires big budgets. How do you feel about that?
If you look at any truly creative organization, it’s not about how deep their pockets are, but how original their ideas are. Once again, that stems from their people. And by the way, these people don’t have to work FOR you. It’s enough that they work WITH you. You need to find people who excel in their field and get them involved. It’s the team that counts – I’m a firm believer that you’re never as smart alone as you are together.
Having said that, there is an element of self-help to your book. Can individuals apply your ideas to themselves?
Absolutely. In the last third of the book I talk about how to become a high-impact individual in your field. Just like brands, we should all consider what we stand for and what legacy we want to leave.
TBWA is famous for its work with brands such as Apple and Pedigree. How do they fit in with the theme of your book?
For me, the key to Apple is that it decided that it was not going to be a company that introduced new electronic devices, but one that reshaped what was possible. It doesn’t allow what is currently known about technology to limit its imagination. Instead, it imagines the impossible and then endeavours to make it happen. It’s the ultimate example of starting with a blank sheet of paper.
Pedigree is a completely different example in that it’s a company with a long history. The temptation in this case is to disavow your past in order to carve out a new future. Instead, Pedigree rediscovered and reinterpreted its heritage. The company was started by people who genuinely loved dogs, but somehow over the years that message had gotten watered down. All large but somewhat stodgy companies were based on an original innovative idea. Sometimes you need to go back to that idea in order to reinvigorate your business. Never be afraid to seek inspiration in your past.
Adidas came to TBWA\London with a big challenge: reach the active football-crazed kids who aren’t sitting in front of their TVs. So, they brought the world’s most famous football player, Barcelona’s Lionel Messi, to London. With only three hours allotted, they skipped the TV spot endorsement idea and unleashed him to the public via an adidas-branded helicopter.
In the weeks leading up to his arrival, TBWA\London seeded content and cryptic messages throughout the web, hinting where Messi will be. The first stop was Hackney Marshes where local teams were in the midst of a game. The second was Brick Lane in East London where they held an on-street “kit amnesty.” Here fans were able to trade in their old boots for new F50 adizeros whilst shaking hands with Messi.
Thousands took photos and video and shared it throughout the web. 368,000 tweets, 3.5 million new adidas Facebook fans and 41% of the entire UK saw it. More proof that a unique idea can earn more media than a pre-planned schedule could ever buy.
For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel.
Whether you’re cheering, crying, jumping for joy or doing the Mexican Wave, supporting your nation’s team during the World Cup consumes a lot of energy. In order to stay in peak supporting condition, you need a bite from time to time. Which is why McDonald’s – the official FIFA fan food – came up with the entirely relevant idea: “Feed the passion.”
With the help of TBWA, McDonald’s set out to disrupt the conventions of sponsorship communications. Rather than plastering the stadium with logos, it chose to address fans directly in a highly contextual manner.
Posters set the scene for the pan-European campaign. Showing a massive Mexican wave by supporters dressed in the brand’s gold livery, they carried the line: “Cheering takes a lot of energy: Feed the Passion.”
Soon after that, the fun and games began.
To entertain fans and stimulate conversations, McDonald’s and its agency decided to run newspaper ads commenting on each match. Obviously they couldn’t create the ads at the last minute. But how could they predict the outcome of each match?
Answer: they couldn’t. The agency created hundreds of ads in advance, predicting many possible results. This was pure Media Arts dedication.
Things kicked off gently enough, with ads that were trailers for coming clashes, such as “Italy v. Paraguay? They’ll be hungry for a result.” Or “Portugal v. Brazil? Classics don’t come much bigger than this.” (Alongside an image of a Big Mac, naturally.)
But the campaign moved into high gear when the ads were able to capture the full drama and unpredictability of soccer. How about the moment when the Netherlands took on favourites Brazil – and won? An ad the following morning commented: “Netherlands 2, Brazil 1. That’s a tasty finish.”
The executions showed a relish for visual puns. Accompanying an image of a milkshake: “France 1. Africa 2. That’ll shake up the group.” Or with a picture of a cup of coffee: “Slovenia 0, England 1. It’s a real ground out result.” The words amusingly summed up the gruelling match fans had sweated through the night before.
The magic of the campaign lay in its being able to comment on victories and defeats almost in real time. Serbia asked their fans how good it felt to beat the Germans 1:0 (the score was spelled out in fries and a couple of blobs of ketchup); France’s disastrous showing was rewarded with an image of a McDonald’s dessert – a sweet cure for the post-match blues.
Even countries that had not qualified were able to join in the fun. Ireland had been eliminated thanks to a notorious “hand-ball” by France’s Thierry Henry. So when France went out of the tournament, the Irish papers contained this ad: “French fries.” Other non-qualifying countries asked themselves questions such as “Who says we still can’t lift the cup?” or pledged to keep the faith until 2014.
Nearly every aspect of victory and loss was addressed. When Germans woke the morning after celebrating a 4:0 victory over Argentina, McDonald’s suggested a hangover cure.
And then, of course, came the final. Spain asked their fans to show pride in their colours, which neatly mimicked those of McDonald’s! The last ad in the campaign read: “Jump, jump and then jump some more. Congratulations Spain.” The image? An empty carton of fries, its contents scattered all around.
RESULTS
This was a campaign shaped by the World Cup itself. It fused a relevant idea with contextual advertising to speak to and involve the fans. All in all, 25 countries participated. Hundreds of ads were published, millions Macs were sold and many more fans participated.
And the campaign proved that even in media as traditional as newspapers, a disruptive idea and Media Arts skills score big with the public.
For any comments or suggestions, send an email to Ulrich Proeschel.
TBWA’s top creative says brands must resonate emotionally across media or face the consequences.
A year ago, Lee Clow gave up the title of Chairman and Global Creative Director of TBWA Worldwide and designated himself Worldwide Director of Media Arts. In his first major interview since adopting the new role, he explains why brands must take an emotional approach to communications.
Lee warns that brands face becoming “irrelevant” or even “the focus of online contempt” if they fail to express a consistent identity every time they come into contact with consumers, whether it’s via advertising, packaging or the store experience.
“Finding the disruptive idea for a brand, which usually comes out of its emotional centre, and which we call the ´brand belief`, is the first step to creating a powerful multimedia brand”, he explains.
It used to be very simple.
Brands did advertising: they talked at people; they bought television commercials and held you captive. Now they must interact with their audience in a multifaceted but coherent way.
Everything a brand does is basically a medium and a message. And it needs to be true to a simple, single-minded idea. Using the example of Apple, Lee observes: “There isn’t a single thing Apple does that isn’t a message that confirms or reinforces how you feel about the company. I often tell people that the best ad we ever did was the Apple Store. We do great TV commercials, we do wonderful billboards, but you walk into an Apple store and you’re now immersed in a brand that’s going to change your life.”
“If you buy a product, even the process of opening it becomes a brand experience,” Lee emphasizes. “Think about any brand that you like; any brand that you spend time with; any brand you go online and check out. It’s usually a brand that has touched you from a number of different points. Because it’s true to its character, you like and admire it. You actually want to go online and find out what’s going on, or if you drive by a billboard it reinforces how you feel about the brand.
“Successful brands are not cold: they have a soul, a character. But thanks to the power granted to consumers by the internet, brands that betray their characters risk getting slapped around”, says Lee.
“The reality of the new media world is that if your brand does not have a belief, if it does not have a soul and does not correctly architect its messages everywhere it touches consumers, it can become irrelevant. It can be ignored, or even become a focal point for online contempt. This insight lies behind the expression Media Arts. You are studying the science of how to bring brands to market. But I think you’d better keep your intuition, your instinct, and your emotional compass intact. Because the emotional centre, the belief of a brand, has to inform its behaviour, and this can’t all be done with the left side of the brain.”
“Ultimately”, concludes Lee, “You’re going out into the media world and creating something that I call art, it happens to be the art of communication. It’s storytelling.
“Great brands have a story, our job is to tell them.”
Mor Cati (Purple Roof) is one of the oldest associations in Turkey providing free shelter to women suffering from domestic violence. One out of every three women in the country is a victim of domestic violence, but awareness of their plight is low. The challenge was to remind people and encourage them to act.
The agency made cutout outdoor posters of women and placed hidden cameras to document people’s reactions. The cutouts were placed in strategic locations in the busiest part of towns. Very quickly, vandals broke the arms and legs of the women in the pictures – which enabled the advertiser to reveal its real message. A viral video was created and posted to many social media networks.
The cutouts underlined Mor Çati’s message that women are victims of physical aggression by men. Instead of just talking about the problem, the project demonstrated it in a graphic way. The videos were placed on Facebook, Twitter and Vimeo, with the result that hundreds of bloggers from all over the world posted the link, some even voluntarily translating it into their own language. The campaign was launched in April 2010. More than 30,000 people watched the videos over the first five days. Donations increased about 35% during the campaign period.
If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions please email Toygun Yilmazer.
Writer at large Mark Tungate finds himself trapped in Argentina – and in the past.
You want Disruption? You’ve got it: a giant cloud of ash sent the world spinning back in time, to an era when foreign travel was long, difficult and mostly over land.
Personally, I was stuck in Buenos Aires. The situation could have been worse, especially as I was stranded at the Alvear Palace, one of the most glamorous hotels in town. On Sunday night, the lobby bar was full of wealthy stragglers from around the world. It really did feel like an episode from an Agatha Christie novel.
After a bit of research, I discovered that pre-aviation travellers from Buenos Aires to France – where I am based – usually took a steamship to Bordeaux. The journey took three weeks. What a luxury it would be to have so much time today! One could read, think – or simply stare out at the ocean. And being so close to the waves, rather than soaring high above them, would remind us that nature is wild and dangerous.
The volcano disruption has served the same purpose. It has brought home the reality that the Global Village is virtual rather than actual. The networks that make the physical world a smaller place depend on technology that – apparently – is almost as sensitive to the caprices of nature as steamships were.
The difference, of course, is that we have the virtual world to rely on. Throughout my extended stay in Buenos Aires, I was constantly in touch with Air France, friends and relatives and news from around the world via the Internet. Ironically, this made me feel even more frustrated. At least the travellers of the past knew that they were cut off from civilisation, as did their loved ones. Today we can communicate with the entire world in an instant, and yet still feel very far from home.
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…
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.”
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 
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.”
