“Creative is Chemistry”: DDB’s Susie Walker on Building a Creative Excellence System

Susie> It's been much busier! I naively thought I'd have time to ease myself into it and acclimatise but advertising doesn't really work that way... Working right at the heart of this massive global team was quite disorientating to begin with. I've done a lot of miles, talked to a lot of people. I spent a lot more time talking about creative to clients than I was expecting, too, which has been brilliant. We set the bar really high from the get-go – we had a shared north star which was to build towards winning Network of the Year at Cannes which was definitely a stretch goal but it had to be that way to get everything else we wanted to do – setting a global creative culture, building the sense of a global creative community – moving. So then to actually win it, it was massively satisfying to see all the hard work from across the network pay off.

Susie> Oh it's completely different. Cannes Lions is owned by a corporate, business-to-business media company, and its culture reflects that – it's a brand for creatives but it runs on commercial results, customer volumes, stuff like that. Working at Cannes Lions is like being client-side. Being in an agency, there’s always so much going on, and I knew it was like this, but being on the inside and seeing an absolutely brilliant brief, idea or project springing up from nowhere without warning – it’s exciting, hard work, but fun hard work.  

Susie> My genius. I'm joking obviously – it really came down to everyone having a crystal-clear idea of what they individually needed to deliver to make it happen. I built a clear strategy, and went on a bit of a roadshow at the end of last summer – some of it is how you execute but most of it is obviously about the work. You can't cheat Cannes, the work is always the most important thing... but the satisfying thing for me was that I do really know how the competition works, so I kind of had a feeling that the combination of everything we were doing would make a massive difference overall. 

There is always a bit of luck in awards, especially Cannes, but if everyone believes in the plan, and you have a culture of trust where brilliant creative people are expected to be honest with each other about what is good enough and what isn't, anything can happen. I didn't think it was nailed on going into the festival week but I was cautiously optimistic

Susie> It seems like a big faff getting senior and talented mid-level creatives together for, say, two or even three whole days with the sole intention of reviewing work (ours and others') and spending time together but I have seen just how much of a difference it makes. Creative is chemistry, and to get that trust I mentioned working so people are not only cross-pollinating ideas across briefs but are bringing that discipline on creative evaluation back to their own offices and teams, is the beginning of everything. It makes people feel empowered and important and, crucially, accountable. It's just not the case that creative people don't like targets and don't care about results. In fact my best ‘feedback’ was noticing creatives taking photos of my charts – I’d been told that it would be difficult to get them to get on board – but I found the absolute opposite. In my experience, and we showed it this year, creatives thrive in that kind of constraint.

Susie> It might mean pulling teams together to work on proactive briefs for global clients; it might mean sharing findings and analysis from Cannes or creative councils with regional teams; it might mean working the other way, with the DDB global team, to bring insights back to them that I've gleaned from spending time one on one with regional CCOs about working practices, client wobbles, pitch feedback. It's quite "suck it and see." If anything, I've probably tried to do too much in my first year.

Susie> Winning Cannes is a great start – it's a statement of intent really about how ambitious Team DDB really is. But I always said that this job is not about being hands on with awards, I've shown we can do that, the creative excellence team can run with the system we have now. My role has become much more about strategy, talent, and clients. More by accident than design, I've developed some materials – training and inspiration stuff – that clients have really responded to, and I'm excited to build that out as the DDB product evolves and clients see that what we’re offering at DDB is part of their creative journey rather than only delivering what they ask us to. Our global creative councils have come on in leaps and bounds, the relationships within the agency are even stronger than there were before, but there's so much more to do on talent recruitment and retention so that's going to be a big focus.  

Susie> At DDB, we pride ourselves in creating work that moves people. Moving people obviously includes humour – I like to think we’re a group of people with a GSOH, and we’ve proven that we can, time and again, use that emotional advantage to drive effectiveness. The Marmite ‘Baby Scan’ from adam&eveDDB and ‘Influencers’ Friends’ for AB Inbev from DDB Colombia are both pieces of work for huge brands that cut through the noise in this way. 

We were the agency who took home the most Lions this year for McDonald’s with ideas that move culture: work like the gen z fashion explosion, ‘McDrop’, from NORD DDB Finland, and social-media-product-incubator ‘McDrip’ from NORD DDB Sweden. As a global network, we have the strength to be able to utilise creative talent from different markets to create impact for global clients, ideas that are universal enough to travel.

We had huge success with our campaign for ITV ‘The Last Photo’ at Cannes Lions, it took home the Film Grand Prix and the most trophies across the whole festival and is an indicator of the type of brief we love to answer for our brands – how can they move people, make a difference in the world whilst driving clients’ business forward?