Agencies Should Act Like Gangs Who “Fight For Each Other”: Kevin Chesters
Whether you’re a Swiftie, on a sports team, or a member of Hell’s Angels, Kevin Chesters says you’re in a gang.
And if you’re an agency employee? According to the former strategy head at Ogilvy, Wieden + Kennedy, Saatchi & Saatchi, and Dentsu, yes, you’re definitely in a gang.
“The problem with gangs is that they need a PR agent – the same way the word ‘creative’ needs a PR agent, because creative isn't a department, it isn't a job type. It's a way of thinking,” the strategist told the room at an event in partnership with the Advertising Council Australia on Thursday.
“If you popped home and told your parents you joined a gang, it wouldn't necessarily be a moment for a fist bump or a private twerk – you wouldn't necessarily be that happy if you heard of it.”
However, he noted the dictionary definition of a gang is “a group of individuals who share a name and objective or a set of beliefs.”
“Now, what does that sound like to you? That sounds like an organisation, that sounds like a department, that sounds like an agency or any company. You share an aim, you share an objective or a sense of beliefs, and that's where you are.”
He argued this shared value system can be broken down into 10 common traits found in any community: code, aim, loyalty, pride, enemy, icons, place, fear, damage, and swagger.
During his time at Wieden + Kennedy London, Kevin said there was “a secret thing you don't ever see after the word ‘Kennedy’ on its business cards.”
“It wasn't written. It was completely unwritten, but it was there. If you looked hard for it, it was the phrase, ‘fuck you’. You would drop your business card down, someone would ask ‘Hi, who are you with? I’m Kevin Chesters from Wieden + Kennedy. Fuck you.’ You just walked in with that level of swag.”
Pride creates fear in competitors. “When people see your name turn up on a pitch, do they think, ‘Oh, fuck, we’d better up our game today. We’d better be good.’
“You should be feared. This is the thing, if people are worrying about what you're doing at the pitch, they're not worrying about themselves. They're playing the opponent, not the board. And as any coach will tell you, that's the way to lose.”
Whilst it may sound intense to have an ‘enemy’, Kevin said it can be a competitor an agency sees on a pitch list and think, “‘We can beat them.” An agency “who's on your turf, who when you lose a pitch to them, you think ‘Why did you go with them? Rubbish.’”
The Royal National Lifeboat Institution in England, which saves lives at sea, is the gold standard for loyalty, he said at the event, held at Clemenger Group’s Sydney offices.
“Now, I'm in no way ever claiming that any agency would ever get to this level of loyalty. And by the way, if you're a chief exec, or anyone with a ‘C’ before your title, you shouldn’t demand it either,” he laughed.
Looking back to “the dawn of time,” Kevin explained humans have always been “connected and connecting creatures,” so the 10 traits of a gang are a necessary part of survival. In a time of “no police force, no supermarkets, and no Tinder,” people had to rely on communities and the connection they brought for protection, resources, and opportunities to reproduce.
Connection is just as important in agencies as it was in pre-historic tribes, Kevin argued, even if it looks different.
“You know those moments when it's two o'clock in the morning, there's a shitty cold pizza, you haven't cracked the idea, and you think, ‘Fuck, I want to go home?’ But you stay for the people that you're with. There are people who spent a lot of time with me in a big oval office in Wieden + Kennedy London wanting to go home, but we shared a value system.
“Any one of us who has been part of an agency collective, whether independents or part of a network, you feel like you have something in common with the people. You don't fight for the name, you fight for each other.”
See Also: Kevin Chesters Laments Agencies Becoming “Slimy Spivs and Yes Men”
