‘The truth is our client’ Saatchi & Saatchi strategy boss tells planners at Google event
Planners need to refocus on understanding humanity and be “obsessed with the truth” according to a panel of industry leaders at the first Google Firestarters event to be held outside the UK or US.
At last night’s event in Sydney Saatchi & Saatchi executive planning director Jason Lonsdale said agencies need to move away from advertising-based solutions.
“I would argue the truth is our client, the truth is our responsibility at an agency,” he said. “Creatives are obsessed with awards and doing cool stuff, suits are obsessed with keeping the clients happy, we should be obsessed with the truth.”
He added: “Our default tendency is advertising shaped problems, we will see things through that lens if we don’t change that lens and be less myopic about what our outputs could be we will see everything as a potential TV ad and we can do way more than that.
“It’s a mindset shift.”
Lonsdale was speaking on a panel which included Google’s head of strategic planning Abigail Posner, Isobar executive strategy director Simon Small and Droga5 CEO Sudeep Gohil talking about the future of planning and strategy and how the industry is shaping itself following the digital revolution.
“Understanding humans is one of the future aspects of planning,” Gohil told the audience.
“Being part of culture is more important than any strategy you can come up with because no one turns around and says I love that strategy or I love that ad, instead they talk about things they love which is generally not the stuff we create.”
He added: “Digital is just another part of popular culture – it’s not a thing anymore. As such the most important thing is understanding people, understanding culture and figuring out where those two things intersect.
“That’s the stuff people care about.”
“The world is changing and planners need to stop and think about the impact of that,” Lonsdale said. “Our survival depends on our ability to adapt, to evolve.”
Posner said planners want to impact culture and asking the questions: “Why do people do what they do, why do they care about what they care about, why do they live the way they live? Why are we dying from car accidents? Why do we have such high rates of diabetes?
“At the core of what we care about is humanity. At the end of the day why are we doing what we’re doing? We want to impact culture.”
Both Posner and Lonsdale emphasised the importance of action, doing something as opposed to just saying something.
“We’re a maker culture,” Posner said about Google.
“In our planning department we force ourselves to come up with things, we turn everything into a thing. Words are cheap, you have to codify it, have a name for it, turn it into something real, something tangible.”
Posner suggested to the audience that it is ok for these things to be in “beta” mode.
“You don’t have to be perfect, just get it out there, 80 per cent is fine,” she said.
“The assumption is you’re going to evolve it, you’ll be open to feedback because you haven’t killed yourself or extended so much effort to make it perfect.”
Saatchi & Saatchi’s Lonsdale placed emphasis on briefs getting creatives to do something as opposed to just saying something.
“We have to have an orientation to action, briefs that start with do something, celebrate something, prove something; anything but say something. Revolution starts with language and asking creatives to say something gets you to ads and that’s a terrible thing,” he said.
Miranda Ward
These are wise words.
If only they would be taken up by those to whom they’re directed.
The advertising/marketing business has for too long fostered a culture of narcissism, while rewarding sociopathic behaviours.
“Oh look, someone with a beard and up-himself attitude – hire him!”
More rigorous hiring processes like some advanced by corporates practise would be a start. Some of the global leaders require 6+ interview stages, and on-the- job monitoring in order to weed out the narcissists and the self-important.
Less talk on this, more action. It may mean firing 50% of the people in the advertising industry, but it’s worth it.
User ID not verified.
Wow! I don’t remember ever reading an article that makes so little sense. Seriously, have a look at any qoute in the last half. I’ll get youse all started…
“The assumption is you’re going to evolve it, you’ll be open to feedback because you haven’t killed yourself or extended so much effort to make it perfect.”
And then there’s…
“In our planning department we force ourselves to come up with things, we turn everything into a thing. Words are cheap, you have to codify it, have a name for it, turn it into something real, something tangible.”
Surely it’s a pisstake of seudo intellectualising. If not, it confirms what a lot of people have been thinking about the highly paid planning and strategy industry. .
User ID not verified.
“…asking creatives to say something gets you to ads and that’s a terrible thing.”
What if an ad brilliantly solves the business problem? Yes, let’s be open to the wonders of technology, but for such senior planning leaders to be slamming advertising because it’s not trendy at the moment is irresponsible.
I really like the sentiment of truth being a client, but surely a client’s business problem is what we should be ultimately serving.
Being so biased against one communications output, makes the promotion of other outputs less credible.
User ID not verified.
Two comments to previous commenters:
-yeah, it reads funny on the page, because it was people speaking, not writing. But it all made sense if you were in the room
-there was also a lot of talk about being focussed on problems… just not reported here
User ID not verified.
If every chat he’s having with his creative department is leading to ads then they are not really doing the job.
It’s also going to be quite hard to chat with them from now in, given his lack of love for the art.
And Gohil – people do talk about strategies – bold, new, interesting ones.
And ads too. either the really good ones or the really shit ones.
No talks about the in between. I’m guessing that’s what you’re referencing?
User ID not verified.
Just for clarity, given that this is a short article excerpting a much longer and wider conversation:
For the record, I love our art, which is why I am passionate about preventing our industry sliding into irrelevance (no one wants to be the colouring-in department).
I was not saying that ads are always the wrong thing to do, nor was I “slamming advertising”. But I am saying that it is deeply f*cking dangerous for us to start from a position where we assume that advertising is always the only/best solution.
As Sudeep said on the night, the days of people clustering around the family TV and obediently watching our broadcast messages are gone. We need to create things which are more about entertainment &/or utility, and less about interruption. Yep, sometimes these things may be ads, but sometimes they’ll be something else entirely.
My point has always been that planning needs to look at how we as agencies can use creativity to help solve the real upstream business problem, as opposed to just taking the easy path of only ever trying to solve the problems which can be solved with ads. You’ll find that client CEOs rarely lose sleep over brand awareness or engagement metrics.
User ID not verified.
When I see articles or talks such as these, I just feel compelled to call bullshit. So bullshit. It just misses the point. Lonsdale says ‘Our survival depends on our ability to adapt, to evolve’. Spare us. The question shouldn’t be ‘what planning should be doing to stay relevant (and paid inflated salaries, I might add)’ but ‘why it even exists in the first place?’
Fortini-Campbell’s definition of planning – ‘Planners are involved and integrated in the creation of marketing strategy and ads’. Isn’t that what the marketing departments should be doing? The birth of planning, it seems to me, was not out of necessity but laziness on the part of marketing departments. If planners are supposed to be ‘obsessed with the truth’ as the panel of industry leaders surmise, then you need to at the very least know how to get there.
Let’s get real here. The truth is marketing departments should and are better equipped at having all of the information at their disposal on their business. So solving their internal business problems with a marketing strategy or whatever you’d like to call it, is their job. But it seems that at some point in the 60’s, marketers palmed that off. And now everyone’s a planner, everyone has a strategy. More bullshit just layered onto bullshit.
It’s simple. All agencies should be doing is coming up with creative and account managers should be project managing and ensuring it stays on strategy. As provided by an informed, skilled and intelligent marketer. In fact marketing departments in EVERY company should have a planner or better yet how about they just do their jobs.
So again, I struggle to understand why we even need planning departments in agencies anymore? This is 2015. Let’s move on and in the process save some time and money.
User ID not verified.
Hi Graham,
Er, I think you’ve answered your own question: agencies have a planning function because clients don’t, and someone needs to do the strategic thinking.
But, you know, feel free to jump back into your time machine.
User ID not verified.
Hi Mr Obvious,
There’s a word for that.. what it is again?.. oh yes a rhetorical question.
My point on strategic thinking – maybe clients should be doing it because I don’t see planners being very effective or impactful.
But, you know, feel free to continue taking that massive salary for watching youtube videos all day.
User ID not verified.