Media agency exec turned entrepreneur: ‘Media firsts are not innovation’
Nic Hodges to agencies at Mumbrella360: “Stop saying agile”
Ad and media agencies are often mistaken and shallow in their understanding of innovation and how to cultivate a startup-like culture, a media agency executive turned tech consultant has said.
Nic Hodges, who left MediaCom Australia where he was head of innovation and technology in May to launch two brand tech consultancies, said at Mumbrella360 that agencies have a tendency to regard novelty campaigns as evidence of innovation in advertising.
“This industry is happy to see novelty as innovation. That’s fine. It won’t cost you your business,” he said during a talk on what agencies can learn from startups. “But if you’re a startup, you’ll be out of business if you take that attitude. Bright shiny objects are not innovative.”
Hodges founded agency-startup consultancies Swarmdeck and Blonde3 when he left MediaCom after a four-year stint last month. He was formerly creative director of Clemenger Proximity and technical director at M&C Saatchi.
“Media firsts are not innovation,” he said. “Snapchat and Dropbox are innovation; things that are new and unique, that get real people excited about them.”
Hodges suggested that agencies needed to change their definition of innovation.
“Agencies look at campaigns to be innovative. But they need to look at themselves to be innovative,” he said, referring to the famous quote: “We’re too busy running the business to fix the things that are putting us out of business.”
“Advertising campaigns are almost never innovative. That’s ok, because advertising at its core is about communication. But there’s more to innovation than drones and QR codes,” he said.
Ad agency group giants like WPP “have to be everything to everyone”, but there’s a big opportunity for independents to move into unchartered territory and innovate within the industry, he said.
Hodges also suggested that agencies have a false idea of how to build company culture.
“Early Fridays, yoga and a well stocked fridge is not culture. Perks are good, but they’re not culture,” he said.
The activities agencies typically lay on for staff are what he called “fluffy” stuff that “doesn’t mean much in the real world,” Hodges said.
Agencies need to adopt and build around genuine values to successfully build culture, Hodges suggested.
“It does really not matter what those values are, as long as the company is aligned around them,” he said.
“Free beer is not what keeps people working 16 hour days for three years straight for bugger-all pay.”
Hodges used what he called “the fluffy mantra around ‘happiness’ that Coke has put together that absolutely nobody who works there believes in” as a misunderstanding of what company culture should mean.
He pointed to Spotify as a model for company culture. The music streaming service has created a series of “guilds” around its staff’s own special interests to build culture.
“Agencies go for things that are fancy rather than things that really create community. A strong culture allows massive change, which is imperative for startups,” Hodges said.
Spotify’s motto is “Think it, build it, ship it, tweak it,” an agency’s motto would add “then move on” to the end, Hodges said, referring to agencies’ reluctance to validate what they do.
His presentation echoed the sentiment of a film made by advertising creatives, launched last week ahead of the Cannes Lions, that mocked adland’s preoccupation with novelty in the pursuit of awards.
Robin Hicks
Unfair to compare start ups to agencies … start ups (especially the ones mentioned) are losing 100’s of millions per year … agencies have to make a profit. This impacts the ‘culture’ fostered as it’s easier to foster an innovation culture without the necessity of profit.
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History is littered with examples of incumbents who disregarded or underestimated small , innovative (and often unprofitable) newcomers — until those newcomers gobbled up their businesses. It’s Clay Christensen’s theory of Disruptive Innovation. Sure incumbent businesses, including agencies, have to make a profit. But there should still be room for them to experiment with true innovation. Why would the two (ie being innovative and making a profit) be mutually exclusive?
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they’re not mutually exclusive – agencies are innovating, they are different businesses to what they were a decade ago and that is a fact. No they are not making products like Spotify or Box but I don’t see how that is the remit anyway. Innovation is more than making technical products, there is innovation in business models, hiring, retention, pitching, structure etc.
Do we begrudge legal firms and accounting audit firms for not making the next Square?
The romantic notion that start ups are this organisational utopia is not entirely true. The ad world seems obsessed by it which has always struck me as odd. If you want to tinker around, iterate etc and break things go start your own thing. It’s very hard to do it in a listed business serving hundreds of other listed businesses.
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@Shamma – Who says startups don’t have to make a profit? They (The successful ones) work tirelessly to ensure investors are fully understand the value proposition of their innovation. Revenue generation, P&L, everything. Everything’s connected to an ultimate goal, and most of the time it’s profitability.
IMHO, Technology is and always will only be an enabler.
Enabling more ways to understand our audience better.
Enable teams to unlock resources to work less hours.
Enabling our creativity to ‘innovate’ even further.
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News Flash… Advertising agencies are all about the perception of innovation, not innovation itself.
Clients don’t pay their agencies for the risk of innovation. They’re inherently conservative because they get fired for sticking their necks out more often than not…
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@AK Just like Shamma said, client and their work aren’t the only area innovation can be applied to. Perception of innovation? Drive ‘innovation’ in the way business work, the way you resource, shaping business model. Once the practice of this drive sets in – that’s your culture. These aren’t just fluffs. You can value and cost these and make them into something procurement can understand. We are salesmen and women after all.
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Seems like Nic’s strking nerve’s HAHA love it!
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KK raises valid point – how can industry innovate to
– become more efficient
– retain more staff, reduce churn
– increase training for staff
– develop meaningful career plans
– reduce churn of clients
– make the business a better place to be
– satisfy and hold curious minds within the business
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Agencies make adverts for products and services, Agencies dont make products and services.
self indulgent media types thinking their pretty pictures and easily accessible tunes are changing the world again.
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@offalspokesperson your adverts is made of blood and sweat of 10s and 100s of people. If you cannot call that journey of ‘make adverts’ a product of your agency, then boy, I don’t know, that’s probably when your competitors decided to kick your ass.
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Reading these comments kind of prove Nic’s point.
I totally agree with this notion, and all I’ve read are a bunch of excuses.
As agencies, we’ve become complacent. Our industry is built off creativity and innovation and that’s why we all got involved.
Thanks Nic for shaking it up and getting people thinking. It will be great to see the innovators emerge from this discussion.
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Spot on Nick…..
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