“Honesty Is a Gift of Clarity”: Aaron Starkman on the Meteoric Rise of Rethink
Rethink, the Canadian-founded independent agency, has been on somewhat of a roll in recent years. Its accolades are lengthy but worthy of listing: it was named AdAge's creative agency of the year two of the last three years; it was the highest awarded company in Canada in the past two years of the Immortal Awards; the number one independent agency in the world at the Clios 2022; the number two ranked independent agency of the year at Cannes Lions 2023; ranked in the top three independent networks in the world in Cannes for three years in a row, the only agency to accomplish this; Campaign Magazine's 2022 global independent agency of the year; and the Effies' independent agency of the year for North America.
NBC and The Huffington Post have called Rethink "viral specialists" for hyper-shareable work, such as Heinz 'Draw Ketchup'. That particular campaign also picked up numerous Gold Lions in Cannes. Other recent Gold Lion-winning work includes 'Fraud', also for Heinz, 'Unburnable Book' for Penguin Books, Decathlon 'Ability Sign', Molson Coors 'Passport Fridge', and Westjet 'Desert Roulette'. What's more, the agency spread its wings to New York in December 2021.
Aaron Starkman, as Rethink's global chief creative officer, has had a firm hand in all of this. Prior to Rethink, where he joined in 2012, Aaron led Crispin Porter + Bogusky in Toronto as CCO.
On top of all the industry accolades listed above, Aaron's work has been regularly singled out by the mainstream press. Buzzfeed names one of his commercials as its number one in the history of Cannes Lions, CNN and Jimmy Kimmel have discussed work that he's led numerous times, and Ellen Degeneres declared one of his TV spots as her 'favourite of all time'.
Which is all quite unsurprising when you learn how he and the rest of Rethink approach their craft. LBB's Addison Capper was over the moon to pick Aaron's brains on all of that.
LBB> I think it’s fair to say that Rethink has been on a bit of a prolonged hot streak, which seems to have garnered the agency promper international attention and recognition. What do you attribute this to?
Aaron> Everyone at Rethink embraces a culture of passionate creativity. It’s not just the creative department. It’s my partners, every account person in every office (I think we have the most creatively motivated account people in the game) traffic, PR, production, all the way down to accounting. Yeah, accounting! This sunk in for me while talking to my partner and our CFO Andrew Monaghan about budgets. He was talking about the importance of doing award-winning work and how it’s led to so many positive tangible things for Rethink: more staff, more revenue, more fun.
Creatives that come to Rethink and creatives that stay here know we have their back. They know they can show their craziest ideas to a creative director, they know their ambitious ideas aren’t going to get murdered by ultra-safe account people, and most of all, they know our clients are expecting bold thinking on every brief — not just on big budget briefs with plenty of runway.
Our clients fully expect creatives to share work that’s ownable for their brands at a moment that is highly relevant in culture. Sometimes these culturally relevant opportunities don’t appear on a planning chart. They just pop up. Our creatives know to actively seek these moments, but what’s even more important is that our clients expect ideas that come ‘off schedule’. There are long standing briefs (Kraft Heinz, Ikea to name a couple) and budgets held back for culturally relevant ideas. Our clients are diligently planning for the unplannable.
I’ve never been a part of any agency at any time where everyone is singing from the same song sheet like this, clients included.
We work really hard to get in lockstep with our clients. At the beginning of our partnership, we host a ‘Relationship Accelerator Session’ with everyone on the business. In these sessions we have really open conversations about ways of working, and prepare clients for the kind of ideas they’re going to see from us, and the frequency in which they happen. It’s a moment to be honest about anything — from the way they were burned or annoyed by their previous agency. Venting is healthy and it ensures we don’t make the same mistakes. And, we’re honest about our preferences — like no beating around the bush. We want relationships where we’re never afraid to be open and honest. ‘Just say the thing!’ is a thing we say. Honesty is a gift of clarity.
LBB> You have touched upon it there, but how do you support a culture of creativity at Rethink?
Aaron> It starts with being empathetic as leaders. I’ve been a young creative and I know firsthand the effects of taking advertising way too seriously. If you’re burnt out from working late every night and weekend, you’re going to be less passionate and, frankly, less good at your job. So, we are actively trying to create repeatable moments to help avoid burnout, no matter the cost. To name a few:
- No Meeting Mondays. Our entire agency knows about this. When there’s a Monday client presentation, it’s 100% certain that people will be working on a deck during the weekend. That totally sucks, so we just don’t have client presentations on Mondays.
- Independent’s Week. Sometimes even when you’re off on vacation, it’s still mentally hard to completely turn off. People wonder how their projects are going or have some form of vacation guilt, so this summer we introduced a week off for all staff. Plus, in our four offices in North America, winters are cold, long and tough, so this week is really just a scheduled sunny calm before the storms. We worked production schedules and client meetings around it, and gave all of our clients plenty of heads up that It was happening. It worked really well and this is now going to be a forever thing at Rethink.
- Culture Checks. These are vital to our agency. It’s important to know how Rethinkers are truly feeling. We have two extensive culture checks a year. There’s about 50 pointed questions. Everything from ‘are you learning and growing?’ to ‘do you feel you can speak up here?’ to ‘is this a fun place to work?’ These culture checks go back to the early days of Rethink so we’re quantifiable, and we’re relentless about addressing anything that would cause a score to dip.
- Zero forced in-office days. So many companies have mandated that staff work a certain number of days in the office. We will not do that here. We gather with intention. If you prefer working at home or by a lake, that's cool. If you thrive from being at an office, that’s also cool. But we won’t force anything.
LBB> What processes do you follow that get you to the kind of work you do?
Aaron> First of all, we set agency-wide goals every year. Let’s say we set out to win Independent Agency of the Year in Cannes. We identify the number of awards needed, and then we go after it.
We have creative meetings regularly with every creative in the company to share work and show how we’ve been doing. There’s always a theme. Finding the win. Relentlessness. Turning coal into diamonds, etc. Ultimately, it comes down to feeling inspired and being accountable.
I meet our creative directors 12 times a year to discuss the good work that’s transpired, tips and tricks, how clients are feeling, where we’re light, what we need where, what clients aren’t doing enough social or enough broadcast, etc. It’s also just a good opportunity to hang out — there just happens to be an extremely detailed goals spreadsheet that we go through for 30 minutes at the start.
Then there’s our Rethink creative process which I talk about a lot internally and externally. In a nutshell, it goes like this: all work should be peer reviewed under CRAFTS (clear, relevant, achievable, fresh, true, shareable). If it passes CRAFTS, we present four to seven ‘Shallow Holes’ to the clients. They get in the kitchen early to help guide the direction and be a major part of it. At this stage, we narrow down Shallow Holes to one or two ideas and dig deep for an eventual familiar ‘ta-da’ meeting, but there’s no surprises because the client was involved in the process early.
LBB> As a global CCO, what is your focus?
Aaron> In the almost 20 years I’ve been working on Molson Coors, I’ve gotten to know their brewmasters. As crazy as it sounds, our roles are strangely similar. At the end of the day, it’s both our jobs to ensure quality and freshness in the final product. The way we make that happen is through a repeatable process that can be followed by everyone who touches the product that gets to consumers.
To get more specific to advertising, I can sum it up in three points:
- Upping the creative competency in every office through teaching and mentorship. It could be anything from individual chats with creatives about 30-second comedy broadcast to more structured process-oriented things like leading CRAFTS learning sessions in our various offices.
- Protecting ‘Brand Rethink’. This takes up most of my time. It’s making sure we’re doing everything we can to achieve our yearly creative goals and trying to ensure nothing goes out the door that’s not up to ours and our clients’ expectations. If anything goes out the door that smells off-brand for our client partners, it’s definitely off brand for Rethink.
- Making sure our senior creative leaders can thrive in the work they lead and also in the relationships they have with our senior clients. Sometimes the best way to allow this is to simply shut up and get the hell out of the way. Mike Dubrick, our CCO in Toronto (who is, in my opinion and many others, one of the best creatives on the planet), has been leading Kraft Heinz and that work has been some of the best we’ve ever done as a company. In fact, our ‘Go Then Grow’ approach, which was established with Kraft Heinz, is something we are doing with all of our clients thanks to Mike and the amazing Kraft Heinz team.
LBB> It feels like the past five years or so have been particularly positive for the agency. Why is that?
Aaron> I already mentioned Mike and I touched on our account people. I think they’re the best in the game. Caleb Goodman [global COO] is the best account person I’ve ever worked with, and he’s led an army who are incredibly passionate and creatively minded. I’m blown away by what Marie Lunny, Karen Pearce, Chelsea Stoelting, Melanie Chateauneuf, Alex Lefevbre and Glen Charlcraft do day in and day out and how they set the conditions for every Rethinker to be able to do the best work of their careers.
The other thing that has turbo-charged our creative product has been a transformative approach to planning led by my genius-level partner Sean McDonald [global CSO]. Creatives and planners at Rethink have a special relationship. When I think of creative teams, it’s not just art director and writer. It’s art director, writer and planner. Sean has made sure planners also use CRAFTS when it comes to briefs and it’s been amazing to see how insights, tension and a bunch of crazy smart people work together to make us all win. Every time I’m in a room with Sean, Nicole Rajesky, Pascal Routier, Julian Morgan, Crystal Sales and Elyse Sanders, to name a few, my jaw drops at the nuggets of wisdom they’re dropping. This kind of strategic firepower didn’t exist at Rethink a decade ago. Rethink is now known for creating culturally relevant, attention-grabbing work that makes people say, “Oh shit, I’ve never seen that approach before,” and Sean and our entire planning team deserve so much of the credit for that.
LBB> You were at Crispin Porter + Boguksy in Toronto for more than nine years before you joined Rethink almost 12 years ago. What lessons from your time at CP+B did you bring with you to your current role?
Aaron> Well, I think a lot of former CPB creatives religiously follow Alex Bogusky’s press headline approach. Rethink is no different. On my first day here, I made sure this is how we approached ideas - to write them the way the mainstream press would write about them. If you look at all our work, you’ll notice it gets a lot of earned media coverage, and the way the press writes about it looks similar to how the ideas were first shared: ‘Molson sends beer fridge to Europe that can only be opened with Canadian Passport’,’“Heinz creates the world's slowest puzzle that’s just the colour red’.
This is also a creative filter (like CRAFTS) that creatives use every day to know if their idea is something that’s going to cut through the noise.
LBB> Which pieces of work from your career, both from before and with Rethink, are you most proud of?
Aaron> Before Rethink it’s Vim Prison Visitor’. And a bunch of Ikea work, but I had the most fun doing a crazy rug spot about IKEA free delivery.
Vim - Prison Visitor
IKEA - Rug
For recent work, I’m so proud of everyone at Rethink who touched Heinz Ketchup ‘Fraud’, ‘Unburnable Book’, Ikea ‘Troll’, Decathlon ‘Ability Signs’ and our first work on Tangerine Bank, ‘Hoops’.
Heinz Ketchup - Fraud - Case Study
Penguin Books - The Unburnable Book
IKEA - Troll
Decathlon - Ability Signs
Tangerine Bank - Hoops
LBB> I’ve seen you say before that Rethink is not for sale and never will be. Why?
Aaron> We genuinely try to prioritise people, product and profit, in that order.
Once you sell, that prioritisation goes out the window as revenue and profit margin take centre stage in the eyes of the holding company or buyer. If you have a bad quarter, you’re forced into all kinds of scenarios that cause people to be overworked and miserable.
LBB> What do you get up to when you’re not working?
Aaron> I host a podcast called ‘It’s Only Fucking Advertising’ where I talk to other leaders and try to provide creatives with tips and tricks to get to great work. The name of the podcast is revealing with respect to my life. It’s important to not take advertising too seriously and not bring a bad meeting home with you. I’m really lucky in that I have an amazing wife, Beth, and three healthy kids, and I find myself appreciating all of them more than ever these days.
