5 Minutes with… Mark Bown
Mark Bown is executive creative director at draftLine Europe, the in-house agency of Anheuser-Busch, where he leads the creative vision for beer brands such as Stella Artois, Budweiser and Corona. Mark has been in the advertising industry for over 30 years, working across different continents and disciplines. He started his career as a designer in the music industry, building a name for himself at Creation Records creating iconic covers for bands like Oasis and Primal Scream. He later founded his own studios working with clients such as MTV, Nike and the British Government.
His career has taken him through senior creative roles at some of the world’s most renowned agencies, such as Ogilvy New York and Paris, Euro RSCG C&O Paris, Badger & Winters New York and Ogilvy Singapore, working on accounts such as IBM, Avon, Coca-Cola and Unilever. Mark has won numerous awards for his work, including Cannes Lions, D&AD Pencils, Effies and One Show Pencils.
LBB’s Alex Reeves caught up with Mark to discuss his focus at draftLine to lead the creative vision for its beer brands and how he’s creating a culture of creativity and innovation within the agency.
LBB> What were your first impressions of draftLine Europe and Anheuser-Busch when you joined as a freelancer? What made you stick around?
Mark> It took me a little while to unlearn the word 'client'. It's totally out of my vocabulary at this point. But when I first joined it was very strange to be constantly in meetings with ‘clients’, discussing projects in a collaborative way. In an agency you present to a client and you try to keep solving in the room to a minimum. Because you're protecting your value. Your value isn't coming up with an idea in two minutes. Your value is to build your brand over consecutive months and years and to become a trusted partner. Your process and talent is a secret sauce that you will engage when you need to. It's not something that is just on tap and available to the client at any time. So it was a strange experience to be completely honest. But not a bad one, just very, very different.
After a few months, I learned that 'client' wasn't the first word that came to my mind. Actually taking the word 'client' out of it – we call them brand teams – brings something much friendlier. Also this is what they do: they work for the brand as a team. So it doesn't have any strange association with needing to be guarded, needing to upsell, knowing that they will only want to receive a certain idea once they've seen certain strategic positionings. Once I had lost that the potential for collaboration really opened up.
LBB> When you want to recruit creatives with a more traditional agency background, what work do you show them to convince them that going in house is good for them?
Mark> When the first lockdown happened three years ago we had to work out how we were going to keep the business going with so much uncertainty (as the entire world did). draftLine was still relatively young. And suddenly, brand teams had briefs that were reacting to what was happening. Stella Artois came to us around the time that we were wondering when it would be possible for small groups of people to get together in each other's homes again. This is something the brand was talking to strategy about. They suggested a partnership with Amazon - a hosting package of 12 bottles in a nice box, a gift that people could buy and bring to your house. Strategy briefed it in and I said, "Is there any opportunity we can go broader than just designing a box?" Because sure, we can design a box, but they're calling it a ‘hosting box’ and there's nothing hosting about the box. It's just a nicely designed box of beers.
We did some thinking and I worked with the team and we came back with 'A Mystery in the life Artois'. We did our research and found that during parties where people host their friends, they like to kill each other! And find out which one is the murderer. So we set ourselves a very ambitious task of writing a murder mystery within the world of Stella Artois within ‘The Life Artois’ campaign, which is very French Riviera 1950s, 1960s.
We partnered with an award-winning murder-mystery game creator and worked out what would be good for the brand, what type of characters we would have. We wrote and created our own murder mystery.
We thought because it's a partnership with Amazon, wouldn't it be good if Alexa could play along as an additional character to give you a different ending?
There was a limited-edition Stella Artois coloured vinyl that came with a curated soundtrack, a murder mystery game, four bottles of Stella Artois and four newly designed chalices. It was a very limited edition box set that we put up on Amazon and it sold out immediately.
The physical product was a joy to make in a world that has become so much more digital, especially in advertising for beer brands. It was also something I was able to show the creatives that are working here now. I knew that the level of talent that I wanted needed to be super high, so I showed them the original brief which was a sentence and I would play the case study film. It was "Look what we did. And this is what you can do. Everything is an opportunity."
I don't think it would have arrived the way it did had I been in an agency. It became a validator for why brand teams should be looking at draftLine more, and it became a great recruitment tool.
LBB> How do you balance the needs and expectations of Anheuser-Busch’s global and local marketing teams when developing creative work for their beer brands? How do you ensure that your work is culturally relevant and resonates with different audiences across Europe?
Mark> We do work for both global and local brands. You would imagine that working for a global brand, Corona for example, has a really locked-in brand identity through what it owns and what it means at a glance. It's the one you put the lime in, it's the beach, the summer. There's a connotation that is really strong. One thing that Anheuser-Busch has done so incredibly well with their big global brands is there's consistency. Don't ever be reckless with your brands. Make sure you stay within what can work for the brand. Don't stray outside. If you have a great idea but it is a stretch for a brand then you've got a great idea and the wrong brand. Obviously you need to make amendments depending on the country. So global Corona is approached a little differently in Mexico, where it is originally from, compared to Italy, which is another strong marketplace. But it's the same brand.
LBB> Creative agencies always wish they could get more involved in the direct businesses of their clients. How does being in house allow you to do that more than an external agency?
Mark> I'm not gonna lie and say I'm in lots of meetings where a creative wouldn't normally be, giving my opinion on how we should be rolling out into new countries. But very often when it is connected to communication, people do recognise that draftLine has become a trusted partner. And I do get asked opinions quite often, even if we're not the agency that has worked on a specific project, I'll get people sharing work with me and asking what I'd suggest. Or figuring out what is the best way to take projects on – is this something that draftLine should do or do we use another agency?
There's more of a partnership relationship, which is quite different from agencies, where here's the business director - they get to have all of the meaningful conversations with the client. You've got your strategist and the client will want them involved from very early on, until production begins. And then there's creative which gets involved after the strategists have done their work and sees the project through to the end. There's a very compartmentalised structure at agencies. Here, less so. At the end of every year, the scope is made available and I'll work on a blueprint and see how I need to adapt and make any changes myself for the year ahead. So I know a full run out of what's going to be happening during the year, knowing that there will be other surprises that come along. It's very refreshing from that point of view. Everyone shares with each other because we all need to achieve the same objective.
LBB> You have a background in graphic design and music. Can you tell us that story?
Mark> I never completed the final year of my degree because I recognised that 'desktop publishing', as it used to be called, was the next big thing. We had a lesson called 'computer studies', a couple of hours a week. I recognised that if I wanted to work I needed to adopt this. So I bought myself an Apple computer and I applied for some work experience at the Neville Brody studio. I basically said "I have my own computer," and that was impressive enough for them. It would take me two years to pay off the loan because they were expensive things back then, especially for a student.
I then went to work and didn't actually go back to college to finish my course because I was having the time of my life. I was asking the people there how I could get a job doing this work. They said I should find a list of small, independent record labels, write to them and say I've got a computer, I've got some experience in designing record sleeves and I'd like an interview. So that's what I did.
I got an interview with Creation Records and [founder] Alan McGee and showed him some of the sleeves I’d done. They had worked out that if they were to pay one person to do the record sleeves instead of a different person for every record sleeve, they could save a fortune. So they hired me. I was 20, didn't have any qualifications, but I did have my own computer. On my first day I was designing ads for the Melody Maker and record sleeves. I learned how to craft and make things not at college, but in my two years at Creation Records.
After two years, I was frustrated that I could only do record sleeves for Creation artists. I mean, they were big ones, some great ones – Ride, Teenage Fanclub, Primal Scream, Oasis, of course. I did a sleeve for Leonard Nimoy! But I wanted to do more. So I left and set up my own company in Soho, and that's where I worked with The Chemical Brothers, The Charlatans and Manic Street Preachers.
One of the success stories I had was The Chemical Brothers. I did their logo and set up their offbeat, strange humour. I would go between New York and London into old photo libraries where before the internet you'd look through the little boxes of contact sheets. I would gather up as many strange bits of non-electronic imagery as I could possibly find. The logo for the Chemical Brothers was in a whole new font that was as non-electronic as possible – drawn by hand. I established something that was completely opposite of what the music sounded like because they were not interested in being a house or techno, electronic-looking band. They were different. Basically anything that would make us laugh out loud would be the album or single cover. I think I did about 14.
LBB> How did that lead to advertising?
Mark> I wanted to get into advertising and essentially, I had to move country because no agency in London would take my request seriously to be a creative. I remember the term being used: "youth culture". I didn't understand it, but that's how they saw me – a designer that has a certain cache with this target audience. I found that incredibly frustrating. So I put a book together and got on a plane to New York with no interviews planned for two weeks and just went knocking on doors. It was Ogilvy that said I could stay so I ended up freelancing.
My first project was a multi-million-dollar campaign for Coca-Cola and I was trusted with it from the very first day, which looking back was so reckless of them because I had no experience of doing advertising. But I worked it out.
LBB> You work on some of the most well-known beer brands in the world. What are some of the perks of working with beer brands in 2023?
Mark> There is a unique culture at Anheuser-Busch. It's a very precise culture, which I think has cascaded down from previous leaders to current leaders, through everyone that works here. It is one where they truly do put people first and they really are concerned about the people that work for them and support them. I can personally speak to that first hand. An agency, of course, loves its employees. But if a business that a team is working on suddenly is lost to a rival agency, then they're not able to adapt quickly enough to be able to save that entire team. Unfortunately, that's where redundancies can come from, because with each brand at an agency comes an amount of money which pays for a number of heads. Here, when you are the brand and your brands are not going away, there's less fear about what will happen. Budweiser is never going to leave us because we are Budweiser. You don't have to worry about impressing your client so that they keep the retainer, or sign a new contract. For me, that's a huge perk. You really are part of a team.
And you're part of a very big company – the biggest brewer in the world – where people come first. I have a team and I put my people first. My boss has a smaller team of people that he puts first and his boss puts him first. For something that is so big, it is incredibly precise and individual, which is not something looking from the outside in that I would have thought.
LBB> How do you foster a culture of creativity and innovation within your in-house creative agency? What are some of the tools or processes that you use to inspire and motivate your team?
Mark> In the same way as when I became a father I decided I was going to be a great father and just do everything completely opposite to my own father. I grew up in advertising under an ECD that was very tough, but I learned more from him than I have at any other time in my career. And I adopted lots of things from him - creative strategies, processes, craft. I'm forever grateful to his mentorship for all of the positives that I took out of it… and for the absolute ‘why the hell would you treat people like that’ approach that he had. So as soon as I was in a position to have the responsibility to manage creatives, I would fully understand what goes through their mind when they need to sit in a meeting with me. Looking at their work, I know what they want from me. The first thing I think they want is not to be micromanaged and to be given autonomy – within sensible guidelines, to be responsible for when they're ready to share work.
I extend all of the things that I wished for myself to them. And I encourage everybody to work together a lot more than you do at an agency. I've got different types of creatives within different departments that I encourage to work together, so we can have the right minds either creating or interrogating work at different times. That's something that I've always done as an ECD. I'll have two art directors working on something and there'll be writing copy together. I'll have a designer and a creative director working on something just because those skills and their personalities are the best fit for that project. So it's less traditional in terms of teams and hierarchies. We need to do the best we can not to let each other down.
The creatives here really get to be their own bosses. I've given them their own brands to be responsible for. So they need to come to me and show me how they are running their brand, not just having ideas, but thinking about where the brand is going in the next six months and having conversations with the brand team. They're an integral part of the process. It works for me because I've always thought that working collaboratively is the best way forward. I'm clear when I'm hiring that there is a type of ego that I think every creative has and is important. But don't be selfish. Lend your support to other people and be open to suggestions.
Creativity is about the creatives, but it doesn't stop there at draftLine. Everyone has an input, a responsibility, a role to play in making the work come to life. That ambition is shared with the brand teams and the most senior people within draftLine Europe. Which is to create the most memorable experiences with our brands that we possibly can. Everyone is open to new tech, new processes. Creatives can take direct responsibility for the creative, but it only becomes something that other people can appreciate because of the entire internal organisation.
The people that need to decide on the destiny of the brands and the marketing dollars are all for it. So our work is strong because of the talent that works in draftLine, but it's only going to be seen by everyone else because of how the senior stakeholders openly encourage innovation. They're always innovating within the brand itself, within the processes of making and distributing the beer. They're equally ambitious about innovation within communication.
It's really important to me because I spent a long time fostering relationships to make sure that we all feel energised and super positive about doing whatever it is - large or small - because when everyone is behind something, we turn things around really fast, at scale, and it's really exciting.
