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An exploration of the practices of the most widely admired advertising agencies
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Tim Williams ignition consulting group www.ignitiongroup.com
The Best and All the Rest
What Makes Great Agencies Great
What Makes Great Agencies Great
Part 1 (of 3)
PurposePrinciplesPositioningProductPeoplePromotionProcessPlacePerformance
12,000Agencies in the U.S.
“There are perhaps as few as 40 or 50 agencies in the United States that can actually manufacture a good campaign, and possibly 10 that do it consistently.”
Richard Kirshenbaum and Jon Bond“Under the Radar”
If you just copy, you’ll always be left behind
Exponential differences
Total Awards
1 Crispin Porter + Bogusky 695
2 TBWA Paris 335
3 Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, London
290
4 DDB London 270
5 DDB Chicago 220
6 JWT London 185
7 Dentsu Tokyo 180
8 Forsman & Bodenfors, Sweden 165
9 Taxi, Toronto 165
10 Goodby Silverstein & Partners 155
*Total awards in major worldwide award shows, 2007
BestPractices
NextPractices
Lagging Indicators
Leading Indicators
(Effect)
(Cause)
What are the leading indicators
of agency success?
Purpose
WHAT SEPARATES THE BEST FROM THE REST
They know what drives them from inside.
“Every employee should feel that he or she is contributing to something that will actually make a genuine and positive difference in the lives of customers and colleagues.”
Gary HamelHarvard Business SchoolAuthor, “Leading the Revolution”
7 to 1
Purpose-driven companies outperform
traditional companies by up to
The market
The competition
The numbers
The client
OUTSIDE INSIDE
Purpose comes from the inside
Business Movement
Money Meaning
“Profit isn’t the purpose of a business, but rather
a test of its validity.”
Peter Drucker
THE BIG IDEA
THE BIG IDEAL
To be a catalyst for changing
popular culture.
To create and own ideas and products that allow us to share in our clients’ success.
What business are you in?
Purpose:
To organize all of the world’s information.
“Do you want to sell fizzy
water, or do you want to change
the world?
Testing Purpose
1.Is it inspiring and motivating?
2.Does it make a contribution to something greater than earning a living?
3.Is it a purpose or a platitude?
WHAT SEPARATES THE BEST FROM THE REST
They set extremely ambitious goals.
“The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.”
Michelangelo
So how good do you want to be?
Pretty good.
Good.
Very good.
The best in your region.
The best in the world.
Source: Paul Arden, “It’s Not How Good You Are,It’s How Good You Want To Be.”
Remarkable agencies aren’t just trying to create advertising, but in some small way change
the world.
1.What would we like to create that never existed before?
2.What would we like to accomplish that would be considered extraordinary?
3.What could we do that’s insanely great?
Ambitious Goals
“A big problem with working at ad agencies is that management is too often unwilling to stand up for their own people if it means taking on the
client.”
74% agree
2004 Study of advertising professionals by Euro RSCG
Principles
WHAT SEPARATES THE BEST FROM THE REST
They know there’s something more
important than money.
The things we will never do
The things we will
always do
Principles = Rules of Engagement
“We don’t believe in defending current clients in a review.”
*Written six months before the agency opened in 1981.
One Set Of Core Values* Drives Everything And Everyone.
• The single-minded devotion to, and the belief in, the power of creativity.• The unconditional belief in the dignity of the individual.• The belief in “family” as a business model.• Seeing risk-taking as a friend.• Success as a business imperative.• The importance of remaining humble.• The necessity of having fun.
Charge for ideas instead of time.
Put some skin in the game.
Focus on building a catalog of intellectual property.
Allow individual employees to keep some ownership of great ideas.
Bruce Mau Design
Make mistakes faster.
Don’t enter award competitions.
Avoid software.
Don’t clean your desk.
No spec creative in new business presentations.Among top ten biggest agencies in U.K.
Among top ten creative award winners.Among top ten in IPA Effectiveness Awards.Most profitable agency in the U.K.
“A principle isn’t a principle until it costs you money.
Bill Bernbach
WHAT SEPARATES THE BEST FROM THE REST
They value greatness over bigness.
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of a cancer cell, not a strategy for a professional services firm.”
Savings through “economies of scale”
Agency Holding Companies
= .25%Source: Study by Professors Alvin Silk And Ernst Berndt, as published in Admap, September 2005
“Market share has nothing to do with
profitability.”
Herb KelliherFounder of Southwest Airlines
BAKER’S LAW:
Bad clients drive out good clients.
Ron BakerFounder, VeraSage Institutewww.verasage.com
Tim Williams ignition consulting group www.ignitiongroup.com
The Best and All the Rest
What Makes Great Agencies Great
What Makes Great Agencies Great
This concludes Part 1 (of 3) of this free slideshow version of “The Best and All the Rest” from Ignition Consulting Group.
More information about seminars for marketing communications professionals on the Ignition website at www.ignitiongroup.com
www.ignitiongroup.com
Please direct inquiries to [email protected]
