The Innovation All-stars report specifically calls out TBWA for getting “huge props for its work over the past 10 years – Adweek called “Get a Mac” the Campaign of the Decade; and iPod “Silhouettes” the Out-of-Home Ad of the Decade. Ad Age named TBWA the decade’s third-best agency also citing its work for Pedigree and Mars.”

Fast Company’s annual Most Innovative Companies issue honors major brands including Cisco, Disney, and GE along with such rising newcomers as Spotify, Gilt Groupe, HTC, and the Indian Premier League. Facebook leads the annual ranking of the Top 50, after growing its user-base from 150 million to 350 million in just one year.

Overall, Fast Company recognized 250 plus companies, including more than 75 non-U.S. businesses.

To create this year’s Most Innovative Companies issue, Fast Company’s editorial team analyzed information on thousands of businesses across the globe. The result is a package unlike that of any other business media. It’s not just about revenue growth and profit margins; it’s about identifying creative models and progressive cultures – to define the many forms of innovation that exist across the business landscape.

“It was invigorating to engage with so many exciting new ideas and developments,” said Fast Company editor Robert Safian.  “Our goal was to offer a snapshot of the creativity at work in the global marketplace, and to inspire the Fast Company audience with illustrations of how powerful and effective business can be.”

(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.

Check out reviews of the book on adage.com and mad-blog.com.

More background, click here.

If you have any comments please email Ulrich Proeschel.

A New York Snaxi

There are approximately 5,000 different languages spoken in the world today, each with its own unique set of words, phrases and expressions and ‘SNICKERS Speak’ can be added to that list – allowing Americans to have a whole new dialect for ‘satisfaction’ that they can drop into their daily conversations. 

Campaign launch: Muhammad Ali

We launched “Impossible is Nothing” on the corner of 125th Street and Malcolm X Avenue in New York. I remember it well, because I was there at the time. I was surprised to see that kids still perceived Mohammad Ali as a star. Of course, he has a big personality – which enabled him to become a legend.  

Rather than just being a slogan, “Impossible in Nothing” is actually an affirmation that you’re ready for anything. Big ideas have another advantage: a strong brand idea can inspire a lot of executions. 

For example, we constructed a giant “Oliver Kahn Bridge” – an enormous image of the German goalkeeper – over the road near Munich airport. And the Cologne train station ceiling was painted with a celestial soccer match in the style of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.

Athletes impress us by succeeding against the odds. This is the “Impossible is Nothing” spirit. The manifesto is very simple. It says that “impossible” is not a fact, but an opinion. 

We also launched a manifesto for Pedigree (as well as a book called Dogma). People love their pets so much that they’re often featured in family photographs. Who better than Pedigree, the biggest pet food brand in the world, to celebrate the affection that people have for their dogs? 

So Pedigree adopted an ambitious stance: “Everything Pedigree does is done for the love of dogs.” That changed a lot – not only in the brand’s positioning, but also in its behavior. For instance, Pedigree employees were now invited to bring their pets to work. Salespeople could visit their clients with their dogs. The company even changed its Tokyo offices because dogs were not allowed in the building. It would be hard to find a stronger example of commitment to a brand idea. As Paul Michaels said, Pedigree went from being a “dog food company” to a “dog company”. 

To “Impossible is Nothing” for Adidas and “Dogs Rule” for Pedigree I could add “Shift” for Nissan and “Think Different” for Apple. All these ideas are “big”. They’re big because they have an internal as well as an external effect, and because they work across media, from a billboard to a TV screen to a CEO’s speech. 

So what about a brand like Apple? For me, Apple is an example of a company that has grown big, while staying in touch with its small side. It combines the innovation of small with the energy of big. 

In the 1960s Bill Bernbach taught us that, in the words of his legendary ad for the Volkswagen Beetle, “Small is beautiful”. But Cadillac ran a much older ad, in 1915, called “The penalty of leadership”. It suggested that when you are at the top, everyone wants to knock you off. So you have to try harder. The result: big becomes beautiful. 

I talked about P&G at the beginning. Not only because it was named Advertiser of the Year – but also because it stands as genuine proof that big can be creative.

Click here to read Part One.

When Procter & Gamble was named Advertiser of the Year at Cannes in 2008, TBWA chairman Jean-Marie Dru celebrated with a speech about why it’s great to be big. Here’s the first of two abridged extracts.

Cannes is a place where creativity is celebrated unlike anywhere else. But the source of that creativity does not remain the same. In 2007, something happened in Cannes – something extraordinary. Both Procter & Gamble and Unilever – two giant FMCG companies – were awarded the print and TV Grand Prix.

For decades, neither of these companies had much of a reputation for winning creative awards. In fact, it’s fair to say that some of us had gotten used to making fun of these big, unwieldy clients with their big, traditional agencies. But here’s the reality: A lot of great work comes out of big clients and large agencies. At TBWA, global clients generate 85% of our awards.

The fact that both P&G and Unilever were awarded a Grand Prix the same year was no coincidence. It was a historic turning point for our industry. Bigger is better.

For one thing, big companies have large budgets. And they are using them more effectively. Some of them used to think that, with all their advertising dollars, they could simply repeat the same film over and over until the message got through. That era has passed. As you all know, audiences can now watch whatever they want, whenever they want. Mediocre advertising gets zapped. It’s the beginning of the end for repetitive advertising.   

Mars is one of the companies that have realized this. Five years ago, nobody would have imagined that Mars would make films as edgy as the Skittles “Touch” and Combos “Fever” ads we made for them in New York.

So the question is: why has Mars adopted this edgier style of advertising? Obviously, they saw the writing on the wall. There’s no getting away from the fact that, today, creativity is vital to every sector, without exception. More than ever, big ideas matter. Big has become beautiful.

Read the second abridged abstract tomorrow on www.mad-blog.com.