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.”
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.
John Hunt is an award-winning playwright, author, and Worldwide Creative Director of TBWA. He presented his new book “The Art of the Idea” in a presidents lecture at the Berlin School of Creative Leadership. Prior the festive event he had a personal conversation with Michael Conrad. Join the insightful conversation.
(Part One)
(Part Two)
Hunt was born in Zambia and educated in England and South Africa, he was the Creative Founding Partner of TBWA Hunt Lascaris. TBWA Hunt Lascaris has now grown to be South Africa’s premier advertising agency – named Agency of the Year six times in the last seven years. In 1993 John was intimately involved in Nelson Mandela’s first ANC election campaign. Three years later, he joined the South African Advertising Hall of Fame – the first working creative to be so honored, and in 1997 he received the Financial Mail’s Long Term Achievement Award.
TBWA has been named by Adweek magazine as the “Global Advertising Agency Network of the Year” in both 2007 and again for 2009. Led by CEO (and Berlin School Board of Governors member) Jean-Marie Dru, the full-service agency has more than 250 offices in 77 countries. Some of its major clients include Adidas, Absolut Vodka, Apple, Henkel, Mars, Nissan, and Sony PlayStation.
Happy Holidays. Mad-blog.com will pause for a couple of days. We have started this blog to celebrate Media Arts and Disruption in February 2009 – after ten month up and running we are very happy about the outcome. But even more important is the fact that all of you are happy with our online publication, the numbers seem to prove this. Our visitors come from 143 countries. Over 6,000 have been visiting mad-blog.com from more than 100 times, I would call them regulars and more than 6,700 have subscribed to our RSS feed. Thanks for all the support. I am looking forward to seeing all of you again next year.
Recently Jean-Marie Dru spoke with the French international news channel, France 24 about our industry.
The communications industry is considered a bellwether for future business and consumer trends, and is also seen as a lead indicator of boom and bust cycles. Raphael Kahane talked the Chairman of TBWA Worldwide about the need for creativity, Disruption and Media Arts.
Jean-Marie Dru is the Chairman of TBWA\ Worldwide. He writes a “Thursday” to TBWA’s worldwide staff every week. Sometimes, he shares them with us:
We all know that, sadly, a very large number of advertising campaigns are mediocre. And this is what most people outside of our business believe. But they have not realized that good advertising can inspire people, and great advertising, though rare, can impact the world.
This is why The One Club, the organization that recognizes excellence in advertising in the US, has asked Director Doug Pray to shoot a new documentary feature to promote those ads that are truly innovative and inspiring. It’s called Art & Copy.
The film also celebrates the people who made these ads. It is not only about the craft. It’s about artists. It’s about pioneers. And it’s about people like Lee Clow who come along and change the way people see advertising.
“What’s different and perhaps surprising about this movie, is that it isn’t about bad advertising, that 98% which so often annoys and disrespects its audience,” says Doug Pray. “I didn’t want to make a doc that just trashes trashy advertising. Too easy, too obvious, and why bother? Instead, [I was]granted access to a handful of the greatest advertising minds of the last fifty years. I felt it could be a more powerful statement to focus the film only on those rare few who actually moved and inspired our culture with their work.”
Doug Pray takes an in-depth look into the creative processes involved in some of the most renowned American ad campaigns of the last half century such as “Just Do It,” “I Want My MTV,” “Got Milk?,” and “Think Different.” He delivers this through the eyes of some of the most influential people in the business including George Lois, Mary Wells, Dan Wieden, Hal Riney, and of course, our own Lee Clow.
Here’s what Lee had to say about his involvement with this film:
“Being in a movie was fun. Going to Sundance, hanging out with Robert Redford, signing autographs, what can I say! But seriously, if you see the film it will make you proud to be in this fun creative business. I think it will inspire young people to want a career in ‘Advertising.’”
Art & Copy recently premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and is currently making its way throughout festivals and cinemas around the world. I encourage everyone to watch the film. Hopefully it will inspire you to do better work. To watch the trailer and find out more about the film, click here.
I’ll end with another quote from Doug Pray:
“Yes, I’ve made a positive film about ads. I’d once believed that our systems of commerce might go away, and with them, all unwanted commercial messaging, but they haven’t yet, and won’t soon. Advertising, in fact, may actually be an innately human act itself. But like all creative endeavors (books, paintings, movies, architecture) most of it is mediocre. Ultimately, I hope ‘ART & COPY’ inspires artists and writers to strive to make more meaningful, more entertaining, or more socially uplifting ads. With so much advertising surrounding us these days, it would be great to get that 2% figure a bit higher.”
Jean-Marie Dru, the inventor of Disruption and Chairman TBWA\ Worldwide delivered today a speech at the TBWA Creative Academy at this years Golden Drum Festival in Portoroz (Slovenia). Here are some sound-bites for all of you who couldn’t attend:
“Disruption has been invented in the mid 80’s. So you could ask: is it still relevant in the current decade? And is it still effective in the middle of the digital revolution?”
“The answer is without any doubt YES, but I will make two observations:
In the last 15 years, the focus of the methodology has moved progressively from convention to vision. Adidas believes that impossible is not a fact, but an opinion. Visa encourages to go and do things, in spite of the tough environment we are in. Nissan explains that “everything they touch, they try to shift”. Pepsi revitalizes the Pepsi generation theme by reminding us that “every generation refreshes the world”. And Absolut makes us discover what would be a perfect world, the world of Absolut.”
“As a summary of this first point concerning Vision, I would say that in this turbulent world, the role of Disruption has pivoted. Today it is more about creating a rallying point for a company or brand, a focal point, and this despite the increasing tribulations of the market – or rather, because of them. We need to create a reference point that we can constantly look back to, whatever unexpected directions the market may have taken us in.”
“The second observation I would like to make about the status of Disruption today is coming from the fact that we are living in a totally new world. In the digital world, we don’t talk to targets anymore, not even to consumers, we talk to audiences. Audiences who are not captive anymore. Audiences who judge brands on everything they do, on all the initiatives they take. Today more than ever, “actions speak louder than words”.
So the way a brand engages the audience in this new media world is key for its success. Therefore Disruption which is about brand belief must be augmented with another discipline, a discipline about brand behaviour. We call it Media Arts.
It starts by repatriating part of the media thinking into the agency. We can no longer think of media as just a means for brands to talk at consumers, but rather as all the places, spaces and experiences where people live their lives. It is time for advertising agencies not to be media neutral anymore, but to be media passionate.
It’s also time to understand that each and every touch point between audiences and a brand must be creative. And this whatever these touch points are: the packaging, the retail presence, the content of the website, the PR programs, the CRM initiatives etc. And we called this Media Arts because we believe each point of contact must tell the brand’s story, gracefully, artfully.
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…”
“Brands are judged in the way they act and in all the initiatives they take. That’s why Media Arts is so important.”
“In a nutshell, Disruption is about brand belief, whereas Media Arts is about brand behaviour.”
Jean-Marie Dru (Chairman TBWA Worldwide) will join the TBWA Creative Academy at this year’s Golden Drum Festival. In his speech “DISRUPTION in a disrupted world” he will reflect on one of the toughest periods in the history of the advertising business and offer his thoughts on creativity and how brands should behave in the future.
Bestselling author and the inventor of Disruption – a way of unlocking the hidden potential of brands – Dru is a passionate believer in the power of big ideas. In his speech he will explain why brands now have an even greater need for smart and innovative thinking. And he’ll offer insights into how that thinking has helped mega-brands such as Absolut, Apple, Pedigree and Adidas.
With Disruption, Jean-Marie Dru gave TBWA an idea that has consistently set the agency apart from its competition. Both Advertising Age and Adweek magazines named TBWA Global Agency of the Year in 2008. And Fast Company magazine placed TBWA 24th on its 2009 list of The World’s 50 Most Innovative Companies.
Disruption is both a mind-set and a methodology that TBWA uses every day to create the ideas that enable its clients to present brands in entirely new ways. It drives success by collaboratively, collectively and systematically interrogating and challenging the conventional thinking.
October 7, 2008; 10:30 a.m., Kodak Hall (Grand Hotel Bernardin, Portoroz SLO)
“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.
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.”
Jean-Marie Dru, the inventor of Disruption and Chairman TBWA\ Worldwide delivered today a speech at the TBWA Creative Academy at this years Golden Drum Festival in Portoroz (Slovenia). Here are some sound-bites for all of you who couldn’t attend:
Jean-Marie Dru (Chairman TBWA Worldwide) will join the TBWA Creative Academy at this year’s Golden Drum Festival. In his speech “DISRUPTION in a disrupted world” he will reflect on one of the toughest periods in the history of the advertising business and offer his thoughts on creativity and how brands should behave in the future.