In interviewing a cross-section of the industry over the past year for our “Then, Now and Looking Ahead” series of features leading up to SHOOT’s 50th Anniversary, we have had divergent views yet some recurring themes–prominent among the latter being the paradox of needing to embrace change while not changing mainstay principles; in other words not changing or compromising on certain valued fronts can in some respects affect meaningful change.
Consider Rich Silverstein’s observations on Goodby, Silverstein & Partners (GS&P) being a showcase example of an ad agency evolving to successfully span traditional, digital and integrated forms of marketing and communications. Silverstein, co-chairman/creative director of GS&P, noted that the inherent paradox of such change is that there are unchanging tangibles and intangibles that are needed to bring it about.
Indeed Silverstein sees his agency’s oft-cited transformation as representing both a willingness to change and a steadfast commitment to not changing one’s core values. “Some years ago, it was out of fear that we felt that we had better start embracing the Internet,” recalled Silverstein. “We had to in order to stay relevant. Showing a reel of great commercials over the years means nothing in a media changing marketplace. Yet at the time we embraced interactive, the Internet was banners–not exactly the most inviting option. How can you win a gold medal for a banner?
“But for us the key is that we were able to change and delve well beyond banners because we didn’t change who we were. We just applied our values to new technology. Our values run deep as storytellers. Jeff [Goodby–co-chairman/creative director of the agency] grew up as a journalist. I grew up as a designer. Neither one of us started in advertising. I did graphic design. Jeff was a reporter. We applied our skills to advertising and when you look at it that way, the web was just waiting for those kinds of skills–storytelling, design, art direction, theater, writing, creative concepts. To help our agency adapt to the web, we did bring in fearless young people who didn’t have a 35mm reel. We learned from them but we also applied our values to them–values which include respecting the intelligence of our audience and bringing them something of value.”
Bernbach
Director Bryan Buckley of Hungry Man also believes firmly in core creative principles because of their lasting relevance. He cited the late luminary creative director Bill Bernbach of Doyle Dane Bernbach who said, “The riskiest thing you can do is play it safe.”
Buckley believes the substance of this quote has finally taken hold and been taken to heart by most clients.
“I see clients trying to push things as best they know how,” assessed Buckley. “That doesn’t mean everyone is going to do it successfully but clearly the idea of being complacent has come to an end. That era is, I think, finally over.”
Hastening the end to that era, noted Buckley, is the fierce competition among advertisers to get noticed, and the power wielded by consumers to tune into whatever content, message and/or brand they want.
“You have to entertain people, provide value to viewers in order to be able to hold an audience,” affirmed Buckley. “Name any brand and you see the change, sometimes quite dramatic, in their approach. Procter & Gamble may have the same strategic foundation but their content is quite different from what it was 10 years ago.”
Yet with change comes at times an even greater, more pressing need to adhere to some essential constants.
“You need to tell stories, to study, develop and have characters that people can relate to. Character is still essentially the centerpiece of anything I get involved with,” said Buckley. “Whether it’s a big visual effects piece or two people in a room, the human factor is vital. It’s an intangible that hasn’t changed one bit–except that now it’s easier to go against stereotypes, and to get interesting casting and characters on the screen.”
Another change has also paradoxically underscored the continuing value of mass media, observed Buckley, who noted that while audiences have become fragmented across multiple choices and platforms, that has made those television events able to draw large viewership all the more coveted and invaluable.
“This year’s Super Bowl telecast set a record for number of viewers which is astounding these days,” noted Buckley. “It’s like having the coldest winter in the midst of global warming. But sports and major events like the Academy Awards are kind of like the last frontiers, reminders of the power of being able to reach a mass audience. Television can still be a force, and in the case of the Super Bowl it’s a force that’s enhanced by the web, the blogging, the different polls, the post-game analysis of all the commercials.”
Big ideas
Big ideas aren’t confined, though, to a mass medium that can deliver a huge Nielsen share. Stephen Dickstein, global president and managing director of The Sweet Shop, is enthused over multiple platforms.
“Even though there’s fragmentation, there’s been no death of the big idea,” he affirmed. “Now a big idea can be bigger when it works across different platforms. The big idea guides all facets of a brand campaign. Ideas need to work in different media and ad agencies will still have a strong place at the table in this mix. Not too long ago, integrated media, online digital content and events were an afterthought or ancillary to major ad campaigns. That’s still the case at some places. But the leading agencies today are from the outset exploring and bringing together all aspects of media that can come into play and work for a client.”
Stimulating conversation
As for how agency creatives and their mandate have changed over the years, Lee Clow, chief creative officer/global director of Media Arts, TBWA Worldwide, and chairman of TBWA/Media Arts Lab, observed, “Back in the day it used to be that the high threshold for a creative person was to do TV. Lower down the food chain there was print, and further down there were dealer ads. But today creative people and creative departments have to be part of an all-media thinking creative group. Creative is not just about a TV commercial.
“Today,” continued Clow, “creatives have to consider what kind of conversations are going to start up around the idea they’re putting out there for a brand no matter what the medium. You don’t have control over conversations in social media, blogs, chats, on Facebook and Twitter. But you can do things as a brand, take actions that beget conversation, beget interest, that tap into the power of people wanting to spend time talking about you, your brand, what you do. We have never sought to seed or try to force conversation on the Internet. It’s the brand that does that and the conversation is spontaneous. ‘How do you like your iPhone?’ The brand has to be smart, likeable and trustworthy. Everything a brand does is advertising.
“Ultimately,” affirmed Clow, “brands are going to become media, with people choosing to seek out a certain brand and spend time with it. If the brand has done a film, people want to see it. They want to see their product, their store. The Apple Store is probably the best ad Apple has ever done. The store is an audio-video experience with passionate kids at the genius bar, an inviting design, interaction with the products, a theater in back where they teach and where other forms of film are shown that engage, inform, tell stories and sometimes entertain. Apple’s packaging tells as much of a story about that brand as a TV spot. The experience of getting an iPhone, opening the box, how reverently that packaging is designed, the words and pictures taking a dimensional form on the package. People want to touch, feel and see a brand. Our task is to help build a brand that’s strong enough as a medium so that people will want to interact with that brand’s stories.”
Yet with all the changes, there remains a constant for good agency creatives. In fact, because of the ever changing landscape and the fact that people are more discriminating, selective and have more control over their media and the brands they spend time with, this constant is arguably even more essential. “I still believe we are all storytellers–words and pictures, art and copy remain our tools,” said Clow. “We’re telling stories and using media to share those stories. The media forms have broadened dramatically as have the length of films. But it all comes down to creatives being good storytellers, having and crafting a relevant, entertaining story worthy of a person’s time. I don’t think people dislike advertising. They dislike bad advertising. I don’t buy the concept that people don’t watch TV commercials anymore. They are just more selective about what they watch and decide what messages they are willing to spend some time with. So it’s incumbent that our creativity is notched up or people will blow right past you.”
An educated perspective
Bob Giraldi, whose directorial career has spanned the decades and is still going strong, also touched upon the storytelling theme–from his perspective as an educator. Giraldi teaches two undergrad classes at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York–The Project Class, and Evolutionary Dynamics In Advertising.
The former class reflects the enduring relevance of classic filmmaking. “I have 18 scholarship students who are directing, casting, producing, editing in the narrative short form,” said Giraldi. “No music videos, no experimental films, no abstract stuff, just an old fashioned short film with a story arc, human relationships and characters. Shorts have become a hot property because of the web and other new media. But the overriding reason I believe in the class is that simply there’s something beautiful about crafting an emotional, character-driven short film. It’s still the foundation of what we do.”
On the flip side, Giraldi’s Evolutionary Dynamics class is completely contemporary, centering on what he described as “social media, the new media, any media–wherever a brand needs to market itself outside of traditional media. There’s no television, radio, print or outdoor in this class. What’s allowed are new ways of thinking encompassing apps, other mobile content, Twitter, Facebook, both the more and less obvious of emerging outlets.”
Perhaps a key to Giraldi’s longevity has been his ability to be contemporary–redefining himself over the years and showcasing his talent in TV spots, music videos, shorts and features while maintaining his self-described “foundation” in classic storytelling.
Well trained
Bob Jeffrey, worldwide chairman and CEO of JWT, feels fortunate to have started out in the training program at Doyle Dane Bernbach, one of the great classic agency storytellers. “I was very lucky to begin my career there,” Jeffrey recalled. “It was prior to Omnicom, at a point when Bill Bernbach was still very much part of the agency’s culture and the work. You could go into his office and talk to him. To be able to work alongside Bill, Phyllis Robinson, Bob Levenson, Bob Gage, Helmut Krone, all these legends, was inspiring. My success in the business is attributable to having been at Doyle Dane Bernbach and the principles I learned there. It was all about the work and the ideas. Clients look to an agency to solve a problem, to create an opportunity with brands at the center of it. Doyle Dane Bernbach did that with the highest level of creativity and craftsmanship. They created work that was successful both creatively and from a business standpoint. When you think about the great successes over the past 60 years, that agency’s work for Volkswagen, Alka Seltzer, Polaroid, the American Tourister gorilla ad are all part of the discussion. It’s work that came out of relevant insights into the brands, the products, the audience.”
The value of those insights, of great ideas and creativity hasn’t changed, noted Jeffrey. “What’s changed–and it’s one of the single biggest changes over the years–is the complexity of the media landscape, all the channels you now have to express your ideas and creativity. It used to be so straight forward–TV, film, print, maybe radio and outdoor. Now technology penetrates deeper and deeper into the population, Young people are digital natives. That doesn’t mean that traditional media have gone away but rather have become part of a diverse mix of channels and platforms.”
Mixing it up
Director/DP Lance Acord of Park Pictures welcomes this diverse mix, noting that longer form opportunities beyond the :30 format and the reach of the Internet offer new possibilities for creatives and filmmakers.
At the same time, he sees great promise in mainstream commercialmaking, which still requires actor performances exhibiting humanity, emotion and/or comedy.
Paradoxically these ads are sponsoring primetime network programming that often requires no actors or writers as the reality-based genre increases in its prominence. The outlets for programs containing production value, actor performance and storytelling are the HBOs, AMCs, the Showtimes while the traditional ad supported broadcast networks opt for a larger percentage of shows that are cheap to produce like reality TV.
“I’m finding that when flipping through the channels, the commercials are more interesting than the programming in terms of story and character,” assessed Acord.
“Where’s the beef?”
Legendary director Joe Sedelmaier is a classic storyteller who created buzz before “buzz” became a buzzword, turning out work that remains part of pop culture to this day, such as senior citizen Clara Peller’s spirited “Where’s the beef? proclamation for Wendy’s, and “Fast Talker” for Federal Express.
Yet Sedelmaier isn’t one to pine for the good old days.
“I have people tell me, ‘You lived in the Golden Era.’ But the fact is that we had the same hassles back then. And if you look at today compared to then, you still have some good work, some bad work, and a lot of mediocre work. The quality from bad to good and how much you have of each hasn’t changed all that much.”
No matter the era, he observed, “It all starts at the top…I think of John Kelly, the marketing manager at Alaska Airlines, who was right there on the set with us all the time. John gave us the freedom to be funny and to do the very best advertising we thought was possible. He eventually became the president of Alaska Airlines.
“I think of ad agency creative people like Carl Ally and Emil Gargano [Ally & Gargano]–along with the client’s marketing director Vince Fagan–who made the Federal Express work possible, back when the dominant notion was that humor wouldn’t work, that people would only remember the joke but not the product. That was a pile of crap and guys like Carl, Emil and Vince destroyed the myth that funny doesn’t sell. You could make fun of businessmen–and businessmen would laugh because they thought that guy wasn’t them. But there’s a key distinction to be made. It’s not just the joke, it’s the storytelling that gets you to the joke. Good comedy is all in the telling.”
Sedelmaier, who stopped directing commercials some 11 years ago, has remained active, helming the short OpenMinds which was a Sundance Fest selection, and teaming with producer Marsie Wallach on a new DVD retrospective of his spots and shorts.
As for his take on today’s filmmaking landscape, Sedelmaier marvels at the amazing leap that technology has taken in recent years–yet that too is a constant dynamic as it was technology that played a part in his own coming into prominence decades back.
“Technology got me into the business a little over 40 years ago,” he recalled. “You had the Mitchell camera, enormous, unwieldy lights, the cost was prohibitive trying to enter the marketplace and being able to do something professional.
“But then the Arriflex camera came, you didn’t need a massive sound truck anymore, and I was able,” related Sedelmaier, “to start my film production company in Chicago in 1967 for about $30,000.”
Fast forward to today and the cost of entry has become even more affordable, opening the door for new voices to be heard which is a healthy dynamic, Sedelmaier affirmed.
“Digital has allowed new talent to break in, enabling them to show what they can do. Innovations like the digital cameras, Final Cut Pro, have opened up opportunities and access. To me what’s important,” noted Sedelmaier, “is that young filmmakers can now experiment and grow because they can afford to fail.”
Talent scout
Indeed technology begats change–sometimes profound change–but there are at the same time enduring essentials such as the talent using that technology, related editor/director Larry Bridges, founder of Red Car.
Advertising and filmmaking are fueled by innovation, affirmed Bridges. “The facial animation you will see in Avatar comes to mind–innovation in software and technology that causes us to rethink how we do live action, and view differently the way we pay for talent.”
And innovation in the ad/marketing sector encompasses such areas as how to create viewer engagement and positive impact, and how to best embrace social media. Yet, observed Bridges, “I believe there’s still a place for passive advertising. It’s just one part of the picture, though, with all these different communication touchpoints becoming significant.”
At the same time, innovation requires a perennial dynamic that continues to be the lifeblood of the advertising/filmmaking industry–talent. “Yes, there’s been a loss of pricing power in today’s economy but talent is still at a premium,” said Bridges. “Artists who can tell stories–from directors to cinematographers to editors, visual effects artists, composers, writers, art directors, producers and other varieties of artists–remain the currency. Those cast members haven’t changed ever since I entered the industry in the 1970s. Talent is a form of insurance the advertisers pay for to make sure the quality of their advertising is optimal.”
Talent is certainly a major part of the Red Car equation as are a local boutique approach and the marshalling of resources so that any boutique in the family can access what the others have to offer.
“Ninety percent of editing is local,” observed Bridges. “Our clients are very loyal and treat us in a very warm way with regard to the service we provide. It’s like having a dry cleaner or a dentist or restaurants in your community that you swear by. That sense of our being part of the local community with all our boutiques has stayed unchanged over the years.”
What has changed, though, continued Bridges, is that “more clients are relying on the web for approval and for saving time and travel expenses. Yet at the same time, there’s something to be said for creatives getting out of their work environment to be different and original, collaborating face to face with artists. It’s healthy to occasionally get out of your own environment; [agency] in-house editing will always lack that aspect.”
Another key change has been adding to the local community experience by being able, through technology, to access resources from all over the map. “We have clients,” said Bridges, “who are editing here [in Santa Monica] yet able to tap into graphics in our New York and Chicago boutiques, to do mixing in our Dallas shop, color correction in Chicago…True connectivity among our facilities–which wasn’t possible years ago–has opened up more possibilities for the advertising and filmmaking communities.”
Star search
Like Bridges, Steve Simpson–who joined Ogilvy & Mather earlier this year as chief creative officer for North America–referred to the dynamic of talent as being a constant. Asked to identify his prime responsibilities at Ogilvy, Simpson related, “The job is the job it’s always been in the creative business, which is talent hunting. You have to be in relentless pursuit of the best and most interesting talent always–through recession and recovery. Goodby [Silverstein & Partners, Simpson’s prior roost] has been brilliant at this–they never let up seeking out talent no matter if clients were coming or going, if the economy was up or down. They always had a full court press on talent.”
However, the nature of the talent being pursued has changed. “You really have to broaden the aperture of where you look for talent,” observed Simpson. “For a long time, the good agencies had a little recycling club amongst themselves–trades between Chiat, Wieden, Fallon awhile back. You had people going back and forth. But now there’s a much more expansive field, going well beyond just people with advertising backgrounds. We are now looking at people who come from performing arts, journalism, academia. A chief creative officer has to find that talent no matter where it resides. It’s challenging but it’s also exciting. Having more sources to tap into enables you to make some great discoveries. Talent is so much better than it was before–you have people who are more diverse, more open, more flexible, more confident and experimental. They are much more open to experimentation and the risk of failure than we ever were.”
This key difference is simpatico with the times. “Everything is changing so fast that no one really knows what is going to be lasting,” said Simpson. “The best brands are going to have to spread their bets across more media than ever before and set up a certain percentage of their budgets for communications R&D. You will have to experiment and accept a certain degree of failure and then learn from that failure. There are no longer hermetically sealed successes. That’s the era we’re entering and you have to find talent that isn’t driven crazy by that.”
Connectivity
Creating the optimal working environment for that talent is also crucial, related Phil Geier, chairman of The Geier Group and former CEO of the Interpublic Group who sees technology getting in the way of building relationships as well as brands.
“In these days of the Internet and e-mail, everybody is doing business and connecting with each other through technology,” Geier observed. “We are losing sight of the fact that to be successful you have to maintain personal relationships, to see people and get to know them. If I have a problem with the advertising business today, it’s that people don’t get to truly know each other–their clients, their competitors, their suppliers, their customers, even people within their own companies. Without these relationships, you cannot find out people’s real needs.”
Being out of touch with those needs makes risk taking harder. “You have to be able to take risks to do breakthrough work. I was a great believer in having our people try new things and experiment,” affirmed Geier. “But you have to know one another in order to build the trust necessary to take risks together. And taking them together is important–people will feel more free to take risks if they know management is behind them.”
Caveats
While they have embraced the opportunities and possibilities emerging in an evolving marketplace, leading artisans on the agency and filmmaking sides still strike a note of caution when it comes to preserving art, successful communication and branding.
Director Noam Murro of Biscuit Filmworks, for example, cited obstacles along the path to successful storytelling. “I’ll never forget being on a flight from Europe and seated next to me were two French businessmen working on some really complicated charts,” said Murro. “I was sure they were looking at blueprints for an atom bomb. They seemed like serious mathematicians. I finally mustered enough courage to ask them in broken French, ‘What kind of math are you doing?’ The answer: ‘We’re doing marketing research for an ad.’
“The stuff they had on paper looked like mathematical equations,” recalled Murro. “This seems dangerous to me–not because it’s not successful but because at times it is successful. When you use the same research, this can lead to homogenous content and homogenous points of view. There’s a danger in mathematical or scientific answers to things that aren’t scientific or mathematical by nature. So much in our industry goes through the filter or prism of research. At the end of the day, it can be a killer of instinctual ideas. We can’t forget that ‘mistakes’ can be the fuel to create and make great things.”
For these “great things,” Murro embraces the increasing number of distribution conduits.
“Whether on the small screen, streamed, on the iPhone, on the subway or at home on television, these different outlets are all welcomed as progress,” he assessed. “To have more avenues, more places to tell stories that people can access in a less cumbersome way is great. I’m up for it and I love it.”
Director Tom Kuntz of MJZ, who earlier this year won the coveted DGA Award in commercials, said in relation to longer form opportunities beyond the :30 opening up in the ad/entertainment culture, “On one hand, having more time to communicate and entertain can be a wonderful opportunity for directors and creatives,” he noted. “If it’s exciting and well written content, if it feels like entertainment and not an ad, there’s great value there.
“But sometimes I worry that clients, agencies and directors are being delusional if they think people are just going to automatically tune in. There’s relief in knowing that a commercial, good or bad, will be over in 30 seconds. It’s like hearing a joke. I’m happy to hear it, but I might not want to sit down and hear a 10-minute joke. Just because we have the Internet and are not confined to the 30-second format doesn’t mean we can be long-winded and someone on the other end will care.”
Susan Credle, chief creative officer of Leo Burnett North America, also believes change has to be put in perspective–embraced without losing tried and true values essential to the curious mix of art and commerce. Credle remembered when she was a teenager watching television and by chance came across director Ridley Scott’s Chanel No. 5 “Share The Fantasy” commercial for the first time, with arresting imagery unfolding to the Inkspots song “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire.”
“I had never seen anything like it before,” recalled Credle. “I had never heard music like that. I had never seen people like that. Shortly thereafter I bought Chanel and I am still buying their products today.”
The commercial took Credle to another world, and made a lasting impression, sparking not only her imagination but also what has become a most notable career in advertising.
Today that classic piece of filmmaking still provides a spark–for concern on her part.
“I’m not sure that where we’re currently taking marketing would allow for that 15 or 16-year-old girl to see that commercial and open up communication with that brand,” she related. “We are so specific now on who we target for our brands–we’re often stereotyping and not allowing society as a whole to grow together. In the process we’re limiting those whose attention we seek to connect with. We’re limiting those who could become believers and participants in a brand. At times I’m a little thrown by that desire to find that perfect target for that perfect message. It makes me nervous. You can end up shutting out people who might not seem perfect but turn out to be just that for a brand if we reach out to them.”
The Chanel commercial also underscores Credle’s love for craft, which triggers seeking out talented directors, designers, artists and actors.
“Craft makes us more civilized,” she said. “Craft like any art can help us to be better people. There’s a saying that ‘porn sells but thank goodness people make other movies.’
“You can have a particular marketing solution that sells,” continued Credle, “but was it responsible to the brand in the long term? Was it responsible to the public? I’ve always thought of advertising as architecture. It’s there in some form whether people ask for it or not.
“Our responsibility is to be out there in a way that not only sells product but does something bigger and of service to the world. A well designed house makes you behave differently than a poorly designed house. Well crafted pieces of marketing make us better as people. Yes, ugly, obnoxious advertising can work but we should aspire to do more.”
And it’s that “more” which helps to build brands and connects over time with people. Driving sales over the short haul doesn’t build a brand. Building a brand is a long-term proposition. Credle affirmed that if you have a voice in public, that power carries with it important responsibilities. What are you doing for people through your voice? The brand’s voice needs to mean something that’s lasting and carries meaning and value for people.
Credle explained, “We try to look at a brand and determine how it touches people’s lives in a way that makes their lives better. Sometimes that’s product specific. Sometimes it involves a bigger voice that serves the product, the brand, the people we reach out to and their communities.”
Credle went on to observe, “I don’t care so much for ads because they’re fleeting. I do care that these ads add up to a brand that is strong. With all the different ways we have to greet and meet consumers, they mean nothing if they don’t add up to a strong feeling for a brand, a brand’s purpose and a purpose for the people we’re trying to connect with.”
Relative to the green environmental movement, in which she’s glad the ad industry has taken a proactive messaging role, Credle sees a bit of irony.
“There’s talk about sustainability everywhere but no one talks much about the sustainability of brand message,” she said. “Coming in with a whole new campaign every nine months, recasting brands, is a luxurious position to be in. But the long-term big picture can suffer when working this way. There’s sustainable marketing versus short-term marketing.
“What work are we leaving behind that the next generation of marketers will be able to play with and build upon? I’m not so sure how much we’re leaving that will be around in twenty years,” she observed. “That says to me that we can do a much better job of building brands.”
