5 Minutes with... Mick Mahoney

5 Minutes with… Mick Mahoney, ECD / Euro RSCG London
Interviewed by LBB editor, Gabrielle Lott 

 

MM > I’ve always worked in an integrated way, even before I knew what that meant and I always believe that having separate departments within an agency is a big problem. They become divisive; people act like they belong to a department rather than belong to an agency. I think if you can stop people thinking about the department that they are in and get them to engage in an idea, then that is the best form of integration. 

 

What we, at Euro RSCG London, have done is we’ve taken that a few steps further. All the elements that we have, whether it’s PR, Social, digital… regardless, is all on one P&L, which is unlike most big agencies where there are separate managements and separate P&Ls for each facility, sections. We don’t have that. Literally, this is just one company. So, whenever we want to look into PR, events, brand entertainment; whatever it might be, we can look into it without having to bring in other people. As such, clients can see that we mean what we say, that when we recommend a new media approach that we are not making that suggestion to make money out of them, that we are doing it because we genuinely believe it is the right thing to do. It makes it all the more interesting just having those people in the building. We learn stuff all the time, new ways of doing stuff. Sitting in a kick off meeting with a whole bunch of different people from different disciplines, they’ll say and suggest things that you would never have thought of, which can then send you off in a different direction. 

Now we are collecting some really lovely eclectic integrated case studies for our work, we can start to prove the case. I think it’s a mindset. I think that is what makes us so uniquely integrated. 

 

MM > That was one of those lovely projects to work on. You’ve got an incredibly famous brand. You’ve only got to say Durex - everyone knows them. 

 

MM > No, everyone says, “Can I work on that?” But, actually, that is how we approached it. It what was one of those wonderful creative opportunities, where we did something we never normally do… I got everyone in creative together and sent an email out to the whole agency saying that there was going to be a briefing on a new product for Durex: A new condom which is lubed to slow guys down and is ribbed to speed girls up. Usually these products only ever work for one or the other, but this is about bringing people together. You never get products with such great RTBs (Reason to Believe). It so rarely ever happens. Literally, we did an agency briefing and got everyone working on it. So much lovely work was generated but then the idea that we went with, you could just see it, it was a diamond and it was the route we presented. From day one the client loved it. They researched it; research loved it. We sent it out to all sorts of directors; they loved it. It was just one of those lovely, strong, guiding ideas. 

 

MM > I think that’s why people got into it. We made a little test film because, as a script, it looked dreadful. You’d read it and think ‘that sounds boring’ but I could see there was such a lovely thought in it. So we made a little test film here and then showed that to the clients. Everyone got behind it and it has been lovely to develop, especially the game. That was its natural home - as a game. You can now play with friends, partners, you can flirt online and play ‘in-synch’ with anyone you like. 

 

MM > It’s been great. They have been really positive about the work and they really liked it. It always really helps when everyone is excited about an idea and I think that they felt that it was one of the single strongest pieces of single-minded copy that they had seen in a while.

 

MM > The TED award is fantastic because you can’t enter it; it is bestowed upon you. Any accolade that you haven’t had to pay a certain amount of money to enter is a really lovely thing to have. TED is so well known and is very well respected. The team on Dulux did such a fantastic job and I think it’s a shame that it didn’t win more awards.

 

MM > Oh, it did do well and it was a really lovely piece and it definitely put Euro RSCG London on a much stronger creative footing. I’m enormously grateful to it for that. We do, increasingly, put a higher value on awards because it’s currency. Not just for creatives to feel good about themselves, but in new business, clients will ask what awards we’ve won. They want to work with interesting and creatively strong agencies. There are all sorts of reports, whether it is The Gunn Report or the IPA awards that say that the most awarded work outperforms non-awarded work in business terms. They put a number on it, something like by up to 10 or 11 times. I don’t know how you prove or disprove that exactly but I think it does go to show that there is a really strong correlation between award-winning work and the stuff that people like, engage with, talk about. That’s what it’s all about, the work that people want to talk about. Again, it goes back to being an integrated agency. We have to think whether our ideas will be picked up, whether they will be spoken about. That is what it is all about. Yes, we’re very happy to win awards. It’s always good. 

 

MM > Like so many people, by chance. I don’t know that many people who at 16 thought ‘I want to be a Copywriter’ - I didn’t know what one was. My sister knew a guy who was a Copywriter and he seemed like he was a really cool bloke. I asked him what he did and he told me what it was and it sounded like a good idea. Better than I was doing at the time - I was working at a butcher’s shop! I found out about Watford (that was the college at the time, it still is, but it was one of the few at the time, to do an advertising course) and I got my qualifications. Never looked back, really. I’m so lucky to have found something that I’ve been engaged with for all this time. 

 

MM > There is no one way to how we select or find talent. I think it’s just trying to see as many people as possible. I probably receive something between 10-15 emails a day from people wanting internships, placements or requesting that I see their book. It is really hard at times because you want to see as many people as you can and help them, give them some advice because if people don’t bother to do that, where are they going to get it from. It’s just not possible to give over half of my day, every single day to do that… I’d get fired and then they wouldn’t want to show me their book anymore. I try and see people as much as I can and I get my creative directors (I’ve got five that work into me) to make sure they see people. I judge Cream every year, mentor at the LCC (London School of Communication) and I’ve just gotten involved recently with the Ideas Foundation. In a few weeks we have some fifteen year olds coming in for a week and I’m really keen that they spend time within creative, production and planning because they are creative kids and they’ve no idea how an agency works. So it will be a mini crash course/ grad scheme for 15 year olds. They can see different areas of the agency and see where their talents might lie. Ultimately, I think you have to see people. I don’t care where they come from, how old they are, what their background is, I couldn’t care less. I just care about their work and how interesting and good it is.

 

MM > Actually, no I haven’t. I spent two years in France when I was 24. When I first started, I worked for a little place called Still Price Court Twivy D'Souza and they got bought out by Lintas and it became Still Price Lintas. I really didn’t like it. I’d gone to this really cool, boutique place which then got bought out by Lintas and suddenly it’s this enormous, dull thing with grey carpet tiles. I didn’t think that was what I was supposed to be doing, working somewhere with grey carpet tiles! I was asked to do a pitch for the agency in Paris and the creative director of that place was a guy called Alan Laurant, who was from Marseille. People who come from Marseille are so different to anyone that I had ever met in my life at that point. He was so passionate about things. I was a 24 year old. I was born on Goodge Street. This is literally where I come from (Goodge street is around the corner from the Euro RSCG London office) and this man from Marseille, who talks with his hands, grabs life, so passionate about life and I thought ‘this guy is great’. He suggested that I stay in Paris, so my girlfriend and I stayed there for two years. We had a great time, travelled around the country. I didn’t seem to do a lot of work. I don’t know if I took it all that seriously until about 28, 29 and then realised that if I didn’t start taking the job seriously I was fucked. I had a lovely time, though. 

 

MM > The opportunity, at that time, for the quality of the work. That’s the one thing that I am driven by – how good is the work? Heg (John Hegarty), my old boss at BBH would always say ‘All roads lead to the work’ and he is right. It is about the output in the end. Of course it all matters. The talent across every department, the processes to get there, everything matters, but at the end of the day, it is all about the work. I’ve always been driven by it and I think I took my eye off the ball probably for a year or so in Paris, having such a lovely time – it was kind of like an extended holiday. You do get to a point where relaxing isn’t fun anymore because you’re not getting to do the work that you want to do and so we came back and I got stuck into. That was about 18 years ago. I’ve been concentrating ever since. 

 

MM > Probably the same answer that anyone that knows London would give, it never stops changing and it is never afraid to move on. London is a shot in the arm each and every day. I find NYC to be the same. New York is another city that I love to go to. But London is relentless, it’s restless – I’ve spent 20 years just trying to keep up with it. You never feel like you get the better of it and I think it’s that… isn’t it? 

 

MM > I love it. I’m still as driven as right at the beginning of my career. There is always something new to do. There is always a new project. I think, maybe, somewhere between five, six years ago, it started to feel a little bit repetitive, it started to feel like it was running out of steam. But then the game has changed, because of social and because of all the opportunities the internet now brings. Advertising has changed beyond all recognition - it literally isn’t the same business that I joined. I think the core skills are still the same – in that brands need to be able to talk to consumers… its just become so much more exciting. There’s nothing that isn’t advertising any more. Last year, we were out shooting two fifteen minute, branded content films for Chivas and we are looking to create a branded content platform where we can upload film content and all sorts of other things. That’s really exciting. We shot that with the guy who won an Oscar for his short film the year before. You know, if you can’t get excited about stuff like that, then you really are in the wrong business. I’ve been all over the world, and met the most incredible people. Lots of people say it when they get into my job. Genuinely, when you see young teams coming through, that constantly remind you of all the things that you don’t know - that is fantastic too. You are either threatened by it or you embrace it. I find it incredible. 

 

MM > Whichever I say, I’m going to get a nasty email from a client. Genuinely, I don’t know if I can answer that. I enjoyed the process of creating the films with Chivas because I love film as a medium and to work with a film crew and director, to write film scripts; that was just extraordinary. We shot in the Atacama Desert, Chile, in a mining village. It’s a life experience, a phenomenal thing to do. For the output, at the end, to be so lovely, was just incredible. Durex was wonderful for completely different reasons. Mainly, because it made everyone laugh the whole way through and it was just one of those lovely, lovely jobs. Also something that will hopefully come out later this year, for a new client, Ideal Standard bathrooms. The work is a really lovely mixture of experimental, event, PR as well as print and TV. It’s having clients that are allowing us to move into new areas – Durex allowing us to use gaming, Chivas with film, Ideal Standard with events. I love that… Always something new.