Make Work That Impacts "Culture Culture" Not “LinkedIn Culture”, Top CSOs and CCOs Urge Aussies

Australian agencies and brands need to make work that isn't designed to primarily win awards, holds onto a streak of “mongrel” defiance, and shapes “culture culture” not “LinkedIn culture”, leading CCOs and CSOs from Droga5, Special, BMF, Ogilvy, and DDB have implored.

Tom Martin, chief creative officer and partner at Special, said the industry has a habit of separating a small stream of work that feels creatively ambitious and potentially award-winning, and trickier work attached to big clients with knotty problems.

“We have a tendency in this market to put shiny things at the forefront of what our job is,” he said.

“And then what we do is, as an industry, is we go, 'Oh, these clients are big and hard, I'll push them to the side, and I'll have this track on the side, the smaller jobs that can win awards, and that's all I need'. And the majority of the work in Australia can get very dull, because we don't look at that. We just let that go through.

“I sort of wish we saw awards and saw shiny things as a byproduct of great work, and we actually just did great work for real clients and big clients. And if it ends up being great, and ends up being clean and single-minded and wins awards, that is a wonderful thing.

“But I do think our desire to win awards is a bad part of the industry now a bit. I think they're great if they're a byproduct, I think they're a problem if they're a priority.”

Good work builds clients’ confidence to take risks in pursuit of more good work, Tom added, and gets the attention of other creatively ambitious marketers.

“We love to do work that impacts culture. And I don't mean ad culture or award culture or LinkedIn culture. I mean, properly, culture, culture. So we do attract clients that are similarly-minded.”

Tom's comments were made on a live panel recording of Fergus O’Carroll’s ‘On Strategy’ podcast, hosted last night at WPP’s Sydney offices. The panel agreed creative agencies need to focus less on making advertising and more on solving problems, which usually results in untraditional, or differently-shaped, work.

Fran Clayton, Ogilvy’s chief strategy officer across Australia and New Zealand, observed that because Australia doesn’t have a Super Bowl, a wintry Christmas, or the same “cult of celebrity” as markets such as the US and UK, great Australian advertising should create culture, versus reacting to it. Otherwise, a client risks becoming “the 50th brand to ruin Brat summer.”

Milla McPhee, Droga5’s CSO, noted the size of Australia’s addressable market, and therefore the reach of each production dollar, means brands “cannot buy their way to effectiveness here … we can't spend or craft our way to success here. The idea itself has to be better. It has to work harder.”

Because of that, building a brand platform over time will always be more effective than reacting to internet trends, Fran added.

“Create your own cultural moments. Because if you're just jumping on the latest thing in the feed, it's not just that it won't get noticed and remembered. It's an enormous waste of all of the time and effort that you could have been spending solving a more interesting problem.”

Australians are particularly good at getting to the heart of a problem, according to BMF CCO Stephen de Wolf, who has led iconic Australian work such as ‘Meet Graham’ and ‘Hungerithm’.

“It's felt like Australian creatives and strats have been open to getting to the purer kind of problem that we're solving, versus it being a comms challenge,” he said of his experience working in Australia versus the UK.

“We've always had a lovely mongrel attitude towards creativity and what we do. I think that's part of who we are as Australians.

“We've become a little more scared to fail recently. We're doing more with less, so every dollar spent is more important. But when I started, there was a bit more exploration … In the early days, when I was attracted to the industry, we were rogue, but in the right way.”

To find marketers willing to embrace a bit of ‘mongrel’, agencies should focus on the people they want to work with, not the brands they want on their roster, or the category gaps they want to fill, Tom argued.

“People talk about clients like they're a brand, but they're actually just people,” the Special CCO said.

“And if the people change in a client, they can change instantly. A while ago, people probably wouldn't think about Telstra, where now Telstra is phenomenal. Because the people change. I do think it's about finding the right people. And so whenever we work with a brand, it's not really about what the brand is. It's finding the people who want to do great stuff.”

To quickly establish whether a CMO has that appetite, Milla said, “one of the best things to do is level with clients.” In a pitch setting, she’ll test five provocations to uncover the true problem. Fran’s favourite chemistry sessions are those in which the client has a big problem they’re willing to discuss, because that indicates an ambition to solve it. Tom pitches the work he wants to make, not the work that perfectly responds to the pitch.

“Don't pitch the work you think they'll buy or don't pitch the work you think your competition is going to present. Pitch the work you want to make. And if you pitch the work you want to make and they buy it, you're probably starting from a good place.”

The alternative is dull advertising the agency barely cares about upon launch, so unsurprisingly fails to be noticed or remembered by consumers.

“I worked in big agencies in big markets, and two years could go by before you put anything in market,” Rupert Price, DDB Group Sydney’s CSO said. Originally from London, Rupert worked in the UK industry before relocating to New Zealand, then to Sydney.

“And even then, it would be so watered down that actually everyone had lost interest in it, and no one had any passion for it. Whereas here, there's a real commitment to actually do good and put stuff into the world that's going to make a difference, because we don't have the big budgets, we don't have the opportunities to tweak it, rethink it.

“It has to work [the] first time, and because of that, you have to have an element of bravery and risk ... because if you don't, you can converge to the middle, you'll create predictable, and nothing will happen.”

Ensuring an idea doesn’t get watered down involves resisting some feedback. Milla believes Australia has “the hardest focus groups in the world”, which makes it difficult to defend and protect work throughout the testing process.

“No idea survives unscathed in Australia. And it comes back to the fact that we have this serious bullshit detector. People will not deal with the sort of prideful, nationalistic work that might fly in the US. No Clydesdales will run through any ad here. And this sort of 'sadvertising' that goes really well in the UK, it's hard to get that past anyone here.”

Yet the blend of a smaller population and a similar sensibility to other western markets makes Australia “a perfect test market for global ideas”. Global brands “can test an idea or even a product here and kind of be okay to fuck up,” Milla said, because a mistake won’t be disastrous to the bottom line. But if an idea finds success, it can “go on to be replicated globally”, like Ogilvy’s ‘Share a Coke’ campaign or Special’s Uber Eats platforms.

It’s that culture of experimentation that means creatives and strategists who head overseas often realise, “we’re better,” Stephen quipped. The US and UK has caught up to the kind of “interesting shaped” work Australian agencies were doing a decade ago.

“You go to those bigger markets, and you realise how progressive we actually are. The job we have actually is to continue to be that, and lead the industry in that way. It's not to shame markets I've worked in ... but you go to those and you go, 'We're [Australians] actually probably there for a reason', and it's because of what we bring to those markets and our thinking and our way of working.

“So yes, it lacks all modesty, but you do sit in these hallowed halls of big agencies with wonderful people, and they are wonderful, and they know lots of great things. But you also go, 'We're pretty different in a great way as well, and we're fresher, and we solve problems more often than not, not just answering briefs.”

Yet Australia has fallen out of the Cannes top 10, and its reputation for leading the world on creative innovation has softened. Stephen encouraged leaders to “lift our standards”, but said the widespread dullness offers an opportunity too. “It's pretty easy to stand out right now.”

Tom agreed, suspecting a swing back towards big TV ads was necessitated by the pandemic, but observing green shoots.

“I think we're only sort of getting back to the type of work that Australia's known for.”