Random Thoughts from the Back of the Room

I attended a breakfast seminar to launch my friend’s new book – Creative Strategy. If the strong style and substance of the discussion reflects the content of the book, then it should be a good read. It explores the relationship between creativity in business and vice versa, The contributions to the discussion yesterday by Sir George Cox, ex Chair of The Design Council and Vikki Heywood, the Executive Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company were particularly impressive.

Two thoughts occurred to me while listening to both the panel and the audience who were made up of academics, those from arts and business quangos, business people etc.

One was that these guys knew how to express and talk richly about an idea.

And in stark contrast, in agencyland we pay lipservice to the idea of the “idea” but not only some of the ideas are not that rich in content but there are a lot of people who cannot communicate an idea adequately enough to convince a client of its relevance. Maybe we should be looking outside the industry in the arts, education and philosophy to be able to do this better. You'll see some good examples in recent TED vids.

And the other thought was around recession and recruitment - what other less obvious characteristics define a recessionary time?

It is acknowledged that good emerging companies take risks and seize opportunities in a recessionary marketplace which can be quite nervous otherwise; small companies can become big and strong through sharpening their teeth in a recession. Nothing new there - think of all the successful agency start-ups that thrived in previous such times to become recognised brands: Rainey Kelly, Partners Andrews Aldridge, Naked are just three examples that spring to mind. This is true of clients as well - it's all about the confidence and about the desire to build a better moustrap for customers and the excitement around doing so.

What was touched on in the breakfast seminar was the difficulty of recruiting the right skills for the emerging companies. And I got to thinking of this phenomenon may be a characteristic of a recession. And this is what I am hearing throughout our industry - those agencies that are doing well are looking to fill important roles but there is a lot of nervousness among those who would be potentially be looking so there are fewer candidates out there. In the meantime, the roles are not being filled and the agencies are not doing as well as they could be. The really good companies still manage to attract new recruits as well they do new clients. But those a level down - not so maybe high-profile - are suffering through lack of high quality candidates. So maybe recruitment consultants hold the key to our short term success if they concentrated their efforts on the harder briefs?

Just a thought ..or two.

Account Man's Best Friend

I am the account director and my boss expects me to responsible for all aspects of the account but the creative director goes off and racks up a whole of time by doubling the number of teams working on a job or dumping a whole load of his time on my account job numbers. I don’t have a great relationship with him, he is a partner in the business and yet he seems to be unaware of profitability issues. He is making my job a misery – what should I do?

This is similar to a previous question which I answered last year. Have a look at the previous post but let me look at things specific to your question:

Firstly don’t take it personally. Just see it as something that needs sorting out like if a process is not working out. It would be very easy to slip into the trap of demonising him when in fact he should be your best friend. As you know, we can be extremely buttoned down account handlers working our hearts out on the client relationship, but what will really excite and inspire clients is the creative work and a good creative director can come in with all his/her non-account handling techniques and make all that happen. So you need to allow that creative spirit to flourish – with the client and within the account team.

However, you seem to have a tough situation. A partner in the business who is not conscious of profitability and someone to boot who does not know that his client services staff can be such strong allies in the pursuit of good creative work (if treated correctly) sounds very old-school.

You obviously need a conversation with him but you will need to couch it in his terms. Therefore anything which gets better work through the client, makes him look personally good and his department more famous is something he will listen to.
He may not realise what his actions are doing to the account profitability. A few choice examples may show him that he won’t be able to afford his new Harley at the end of the year if money is being wasted in this way.

Don’t forget there is going to be a healthy tension between an account director’s view of tidy finances and the desire to do speculative creative work. I find if that the rules for creating speculative work to excite the client can be agreed within teams, then some of the tensions are dissipated. And the account planning process can make sure that everyone is in agreement why speculative work should be undertaken and to what budget.

The account planning process also allows you to expose some of the issues to the wider management team and get agreement on how much time is going to be invested in new areas – without giving the creative director the impression you are ratting on him to his peers.

Experiment with these ideas. And good luck - just see it as an easier form of liontaming...

The Pitch Aftermath Will Not Be Televised

We’ve just lost one of our main flagship accounts. I am not affected directly but it is obvious that they will have to make redundancies or people will leave through TUPE. I was thinking of moving on next year as I am fairly enjoying the work but not immensely. Should I think about leaving now as things are going to change for the worse in the next few months?

This is one of the typical times people review their own current job situation. Your question coincided with the news this week about the Virgin Media pitch – sad news for my old friends at Rapier (I thought their Samuel L. Jackson “The Revolution will not be Televised” style TV ads a few years back were particularly impressive) but exciting times for other friends of mine at DDB. And that’s the thing about these things – all is fair in love, war and pitches. Some agency’s loss is another’s massive gain.

At this stage of the year, the DDB management team will be very pleased with fulfilling a good chunk of their new business target and welcome the headache of resourcing such an account. Rapier on the other hand will be working out what it does for their income, morale and their new business drive.

In your situation, you are maybe using an external factor to accelerate your jobhunting. It doesn’t sound as though you are massively happy on the account so it is highlighting an issue. However I would look closely at whether it is the account or agency which is not working for you. If it is the agency, then yes you should think about moving as the forthcoming months will require a tenacity from you as a loyal employee; the agency will undoubtedly dip for a few months but the good agencies bounce back and sometimes the energy that a replacement account brings makes things even better. So it may be worth staying – in fact there may be new opportunities for you.

However if you are thinking of moving, then bear in mind that in addition to those whose jobs are directly affected by the loss, there will be others in your agency who will be dusting off their cvs. When recruiting for new roles, I have often encountered a glut of cvs from one agency which is either imploding or affected by a big loss. And because of this it is probably inevitable that your cvs will be viewed collectively rather than individually. In fact last month I interviewed separately two candidates from the same agency working on the same account and it was interesting to see where their stories agreed and diverged.

If you do decide on moving, maybe apply directly to the winning agency who took the account off your agency or DDB and Rapp. I am sure they are on the lookout for good people.