‘Australia is constipated’ and needs to apply innovation and creativity to the economy: Russel Howcroft
“We are constipated”, declared Russel Howcroft at Interbrand’s Best Global Brands event. “Hands up who finds it hard to get stuff done? Fuck how hard is it to get stuff done? It’s actually become endemic. It’s actually become a core part of our culture is to deflect and to defer.”
Howcroft’s keynote addressed the issue of the lack of innovation and creativity in the Australian economy, which has become more apparent in light of shrinking marketing budgets.
“There’s a problem right now. We’re not going to be a highly complex economy… We do however need to apply innovation and creativity in order to get our economy more complex by simply adding value to what it is we’re good at,” Howcroft said.
He also explained that the problem stems from the Australian attitude that creativity relates to art instead of the economy.
“Here’s the problem with the creative word: in the Australian context people think that creativity is about art or the arts,” Howcroft said.
“Around the political table, in particular with a – let’s call it right-wing government, a conservative government- they go ‘Oh’. They don’t see it as an economic word.”
As a result it is up to marketers to bring creativity front and centre of boardroom discussions.
“It is up to all of us to get this creativity thing front and centre in all of the dialogue not in a sandpit sense, in a business sense. Unless you apply it across the board you are not going to succeed, you are only going to continue to go backwards,” Howcroft said.
Howcroft displayed a chart of the current sources of GDP to explain how Australia needs to innovate the top line
After showing a chart that laid out the sources of GDP (gross domestic product), Howcroft explained that to grow the top line, Australia needs to innovate the base of its economy, natural resources, and attach brands to sources of GDP.
“We are a gift to the world – the world needs our stuff. There’s an issue. We don’t add a whole lot of value to these gifts that we have… That’s where we need to innovate,” Howcroft explained, going on to give the example of developing driverless cars for mining.
“Like okay, mining… driverless cars in mining. Driverless cars are awesome, we’re brilliant at making driverless cars awesome in mines. That’s really good technology that we can take around the world. We can brand it even and turn that into a great brand on your chart. There’s so much that we can do as long as we recognise what it is that we’re good at.
“That’s what we need to be doing – build these brands so that then we can position them and then they can move into other territories around the world,” he said.
In doing so, this will enable businesses to grow the top line, a responsibility Howcroft placed on marketers.
“Energise the economy. That’s that’s our job. I don’t know what we’re all doing. We’re sitting back. What are we doing? We’re just sitting back waiting for our own Zuckerberg or something. It’s all of our jobs to energise the economy. It’s all of our jobs to grow the top line,” he said.
At an organisational level, this requires creativity to be at the core of the business and not just “the sticker on the box”.
“What tends to happen is the idea of creativity becomes, I like calling it the ‘Sticker on the box’. So if we think that the box is the business that we’re all in and then someone comes along who’s creative and they just put a sticker on the box. Boom. There it is. That is not what we need. We need the creative brand to be absolutely at the core of business,” Howcroft stated.
Howcroft also said that the marketing services understand that need better than others and that they need to help clients recognise it too.
“It’s around brand purpose. It’s around the proposition. It’s around what we do every single day. I think those of us in the marketing services business understand it for ourselves. We’ve just got to get a whole lot better at getting our clients to recognise that it’s creativity throughout the organisation. I’m not just turning up here to give you a new logo. I’m turning up because I want to reshape every single thing that you do at the core.”
To “find the collective laxative” that will resolve these issues, Howcroft instructed to audience “to get on with it”.
“We’ve got to get on with it everyone. What is our opportunity? Find a way to build value recognising that’s who and what we are. That’s our economy.”
He had me, spot on, right up until the point he reminded me that he literally sees everything through the prism of “brand”. I spose that’s his strength. On a side note, this isn’t a criticism, but Howcroft reminds me of that old Bobcat Goldthwaite joke when he visited some years ago: “Australia only has like 5 celebrities, they just keep changing jobs.”
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To be fair this talk was given at ‘Interbrand’s Best Global Brands event’
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Point taken.
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Right on, Russell. You’re not hard to disagree with at any time, but you’ve hit the nail on the head.
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Some good points from Russell.
There is no reason why Australia shouldn’t lead the world in areas other than mining and exporting raw materials such as solar power for instance.
We could be the ‘Smart Country’ rather that the Lucky Country.
It just requires a bit of political will, a change of collective attitude and a few tax breaks.
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Just a reminder that the ad agency planning role was launched in Australia in 1966 and, together with the two UK pioneers’ efforts in 1967-68, was recognised as the most important and powerful management innovation in the advertising industry in the past half century or more. By the way, Russel, the new role was conceived at Unilever Australia in 1965, the year of your birth!
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Russel’s keynote was eye opening in terms of the opportunity that sits in front of all Australian Marketers & brands. The battle of reduced budgets, the push to do more with less, conservative ‘play it safe’ decision makers and very few brands being “bold” is REAL. Strong work Nathan Birch and the Interbrand team.
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None of this will ever fly while we have right wing governments whose every action (let’s not call them policies, unless attributing them as such to their creators, the IPA) is designed to to dumb down and divide the public, because a dumb populace is far easier to manipulate and control. Given the way Labor is moving steadily to the right, Russel needs to establish his own political party to try and get his ideas implemented.
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Hmmm, that’s very good, Russel, but it seems that apart from some world class medical and IT innovations, Australians are not very good at adding value. Turns out that we can’t build cars or even run a major brewery, for instance, although our wine industry has done very well. Our retailers are being slaughtered by global newcomers, our banks cheat us, our national sports teams no longer dominate on the world stage and our educational standards decline year on year.
And you think ‘more creative’ advertising and marketing are the solution…..
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Regurgitating the same old nonsense since 1983.
Game has changed Russel. Time to retire mate.
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Does anyone know where to get the original version of the GDP chart? I’d love to look closely at it
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Russel Howcroft and “iconic moves”.
They’ll get you moving.
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what a shame commentator hasnt the balls to put a name to the comment obviously mr howcroft has seated coward commentator
many times in the past .l found his presentation honest,intellegent
and confronting
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