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- [00:00]
A
This special series is brought to you by the Effie's for over 55 years, Effie has been the global authority on marketing effectiveness. They lead the way with the largest, most prestigious marketing effective awards across 130 markets worldwide. And the EFFIE Index ranks the most effective brands, marketers and agencies globally. But EFFIE is more than awards. They're dedicated to helping all marketers understand what makes marketing effective by equipping them with the insights, tools and inspiration they need to succeed. Learn more@effie.org that's e f f I e.org and by tracksuit if you're a regular listener to our show, you already know there's a difference between having a good strategy and knowing whether it's working. That's exactly what Tracksuit is built for. Always on Brand tracking means you get continuous visibility on where a brand sits in the category, how awareness and consideration are shifting from month to month, and how that stacks up against the compet. It's not a snapshot from six months ago. It's current data updated monthly that shows whether the strategy you're executing is actually building what you think it's building for agencies. That changes the conversation. You're not just defending your recommendations with logic, you're backing it with hard evidence. You can have your tracksuit up and running within 30 days. Check them out@gotracksuit.com that's gotracksuit.com welcome back to OnStrategy Showcase. Hope you had a good week last week. I'm excited about a couple of things to announce that I wanted to share with you. I am going to be in Cannes for the very first time, so I'm not known as being a great person in terms of being able to tolerate trade shows. So I am building up as much courage and stamina as I can to go there. But I will say that I'm excited to be there for the first time and privileged to be there with the EFFIE organization. We are doing three roundtables on June 23rd. We're in the Audi A theater in the Palais. It's June 23rd from 2 to 4:30. And what we're doing is we are going to be talking about building a culture of effectiveness through the lens of some of the world's best campaigns, talking with clients and talking with agencies about what it is in the DNA of these organizations that makes them effective. And it's not just the work. I mean, we always talk about the work as of course being the manifestation of it all. But to get to the Work, you've got to have a culture on the agency side and the company side that better assures your chance of actually generating that sort of an outcome. So we have clients and brands from Uber, eos, Aldi, esaf, which is a brilliant case out of India. So we're going to be doing this during three different roundtables. 30 minute roundtables, 2pm to 4:30 Tuesday, June 23. Hope you can make it if you're there. I know most of us won't be there, but if you are, I would love to have you be a part of it. I also want to mention that we are live at Carmichael lynch in Minneapolis before Cannes. We are going to be at Carmichael June 18, which is less than two weeks away. And we're going to be talking about the brilliant legacy of creativity that is in Minneapolis. If you're not familiar with the great agencies that have been there and have been there for decades, this is your chance to hear about it. Obviously, if you're from Minneapolis, you probably already know that. But we're trying to bring the community together to sort of celebrate that legacy and talk about how that legacy now manifests because that market is still doing brilliant work. So who do we have around the roundtable? We have the CEO of Fallon, we have the CEO of Carmichael lynch, we have the Chief Strategy Officer of Carmichael lynch, and we have the CEO of Carl McFoy. So this is actually the first roundtable where I've had predominantly CEOs and so it's going to be interesting to get a sense through the lens of the CEOs. And for example, the CEO of Fallon was their former Chief Creative Officer. So we're going to get a really good blend of the business side and the creative side and the strategic side. And these are folks that I think are really powerful in being able to share what makes their cultures so great today. So I suppose in many ways it's going to be a great lead in to our work at can so back. So if you want, if you want to get tickets to go to the Carmichael lynch show, you can get them on our website. It's Thursday evening, the 18th of June at 5:30pm at Carmichael Tickets on our website at onstrategyshowcase.com under the Live tour tab. So I hope to see you there. Now back to today's episode. We're in the middle of our on planning for effective outcomes. This is episode three. Now in the first two episodes we heard from cmos. In the second episode we heard from chief Strategy officers And today we're hearing from strategists and I wanted to explore a couple of different things just with those strategists to understand a couple of things. When we're in the strategy development process, how do we reframe problems when we're in the strategy development process, what do we do when there's multiple truths? Because that happens an awful lot. How do we decide which is the best direction to go to when we've got multiple directions in front of us? And we're also gonna talk about how to deal with what I think is the stickiest challenge and effect. And it's not talked about enough. In fact, it's probably never talked about. And that's the relationship between strategists and creatives. If you do not have a productive relationship and a bond there, a trust there, and a strong partnership there, and you have a way to deal with each other, well, that is the point, I think, where things can get off the track. It's not talked about in terms of the principles of effectiveness. This is the human side of it. And it's a very sticky subject. We did get some great learnings from these guys about how to deal with that as a culture within an agency and also as a strategist. Because sometimes the strategists don't connect with the creatives or the creatives don't connect with the strategists. And it can lead to pretty non strategic creative work getting produced. We also talk about the briefing process and I love something that Johnny Korpas says in this episode. BBDO in New York have developed, been sort of experimenting with new ways to brief creatives. And I love the idea that Johnny shares later in the episode. Be sure not to miss that part. I'm really thrilled and excited to see where that goes. So we're going to be talking about all of these things in this episode. We've got. Asmir Davis is the founding partner and president of Majority out of Atlanta. Gunny Scarfo joins us, the co founder of nonfiction research out of Brooklyn, and he's also in Nashville. And Johnny Corpus, head of comm strategy at BBDO York, joins us. Enjoy. Do you have a way of working where you have sort of a kickoff process that generally has worked well for you and explain to us what that might be a way of working?
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B
Yeah, I think there's a personal element to that and obviously the, you know, working with the teams and who you're with on the project, I think at a personal level, something I like to do is kind of Go back to the beginning and ask myself, what don't I know? What, what don't I know about this problem or category or what bias may I have that I've got to figure out whether it's, you know, relevant or not? Because I think we all go into briefs or responses with our points of view. And I think I like to know that kind of beginner mindset of what might I. What, what might I not know or how could I be wrong about this category is my own personal start point. Because then I get to check the gaps in my knowledge, some of the things that I'm really excited about, or some of the things I've got to figure out. And then at a team level, we always start at what is the core of the problem? What is the business problem we're trying to solve? I think we've kind of all heard that saying, a problem well defined is a problem half solved. And I think so often there's a rush to get to the answer. Whereas we like to sit in the problem and investigate in the problem and even say, have the clients identified the right problem for us to solve. So that is kind of our initial starting point is always really, really tight definition or a reframing of the problem.
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A
So how do you sit with that problem, though? What are you guys doing? Is it a group discussion or how do you get to the point where you feel you hit the right problem?
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B
Yeah, I think part of it is, you know, we ingest the client brief. We sit around and we almost have like an informal kickoff of, hey, this is what we heard. Hey, this is what we think. What are your initial reactions? So it is a bit more of an informal kicking of it around to figure out what is the center of gravity, what do we think the right thing is? And then it's pointing people to run at certain elements. Do we need to do more research, for example, or do we need to figure out these elements of the brief to then get to the are we solving the right challenge and point before we even point creative teams at it?
- [09:18]
A
Asmir, how does it work for you guys?
- [09:20]
C
We move relatively fast, so most of the time I like to have that initial conversation is with the client account lead, strategy lead, and creative lead, if available, but not necessary. Because I think that, to Johnny's point, defining that problem really starts at sort of interrogating what the inputs are that we're getting from the client first. And strategy can start to articulate some beginning thoughts of what that is and then bring it to the creative team to really just nail it and clarify it and codify exactly what it is before we start working on fleshing out a brief specifically to solve that problem. But it usually is just a really small, nimble team and getting to the root of it, asking the questions up front of the client and starting to communicate and articulate exactly what that problem is very clearly. Because if you don't understand it well enough to communicate it clearly and simply, then you gotta start back from the beginning. So a conversation with the core individuals involved in the client and strategy side and as well as account and creative, if available.
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A
So, Gunny, with you guys, it's different, I would guess, because I've heard it said that you guys like to start with a burning question, right? Tell us about that.
- [10:50]
D
Yeah, exactly. So I think there are at least two traps that agencies face when you're starting on a project like this. The first is that oftentimes agencies have just sold their experience and their expertise in a category we have profound experience in chips and salty snacks. Like, you do that to win the pitch. But now you need to somehow pivot and get the beginner's mind that Johnny was talking about. And I think that it takes an act of courage for someone in an agency to say, hey, now let's have beginner's mind. And even though 10 minutes ago we said we're experts on this, now let's come at it clean. I think the second trap is that advertising is obsessed with what's new. It's like, oh, there's a trend. We read about it 34 minutes ago in someone's report and we feel like this might be the future. And that can be a trap too, because with so much emphasis on what's new in advertising, it's easy to forget what's already known. And so the first thing that we like to do when we jump into the research phase of a project, which is the only phase that we do, is to do something we call edge finding, which is just a made up term that we came up with to describe finding the edge of what's already known. Right. Like whatever your audience is, whatever your topic is, whatever your category is, whoever your client is, there is a wealth of information out there. There's a documentary that's made back in 86, before half your staff was ever born, there was a book written. There are research reports that are already done. And just being able to start a strategy engagement or a research engagement by admitting that you don't know all of the answers, starting with the beginner's mind and then voraciously devouring everything that's already known, whether it's on the conversation on social or some crusty book that was written in 1898 or whatever, that is really key to being able to come in and have context to understand what will work today.
- [13:02]
A
It's interesting because I think that we always talk about, we have to define the problem well. And I always enjoy the behavioral sciences because they sort of point to reframing things and understanding human behavior versus advertising solutions. And one of the classic ones is, and this feels like kind of a Rory Sutherland thing, but it's kind of, I think it's important to remember, like, if you think about, you know, if you have a problem such as somebody comes to you and says tenants are complaining about the lifts are taking too long or they're too slow and they're frustrated by it, the gut reaction would be that the problem is there's too few lifts that we need to get people down faster, that it's an engineering and it's a product led problem. But the smarter mind realizes and studies what's actually going on with those individual people to understand what exactly are they feeling emotionally. So the flip side of that is that people aren't complaining about the lifts, they're complaining about frustration. And one of the ways that you can alleviate frustration is putting mirrors in the lobbies of the floor so that they can look at each other or they can examine each other. And that sort of deflects from the anxiety of standing there and waiting. So the instinct is to go one way, but the strategic mind goes a different way to look at human behavior. I worry that as an industry, Jonny, we go too quickly to the product based problem or the immediate problem. And we don't take either the time to reflect on the dimensions of the human problem and how we could solve that without solving what seems like an impossible issue.
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B
Yeah, yeah. And I think this, this builds on Gunny's point around the traps of an agency. I think one of the traps of strategy is that the reality is strategy is an outdoor sport. I think it's best done when you observe people buying the product, interacting with your brand.
- [15:08]
A
But that is huge. What you just said is huge. And it's not the way that the industry is today. It's not the way the momentum is going. It's brilliant to hear you saying that. But is that something? Because what I'm hearing more often is we don't have time.
- [15:25]
B
Yeah, yeah. And I think to your example of the lift, I think if you were A strategist investigating that problem. You would look at people in the lobbies and you'd say, hey, they actually all look really bored. If we gave them something to look at, either themselves or a cool screen with, you know, a piece of content or something, they might be more willing to wait the two minutes for the next lift. It's boredom is actually our enemy, not a lack of lifts, but you get that from observing them in the wild and how they're interacting with that. I think you're absolutely right, Fergus. Time is the constraint. But I think AI has also played a role in this, in that there's an assumption that as we sit at our desks, we can have more information and more summaries on a category that it's given this kind of over rotation on, hey, we can get everything now by sitting at our desks and working with an LLM versus go to the grocery store and go to aisle seven and see how people are making that choice on cereal or crackers for their kid. And I think that notion is what we try and instill in our strategists, especially some of the younger ones who are coming in into this world where it isn't just Google and desktop research. An LLM can find every single thing you need to know about a category, but we encourage them that, you know, it's an outdoor sport, take field trips, go outside and see the consumer living real life because that's where you're going to find the hidden behavior or inside hiding in plain sight. That's probably going to unlock the brief in a way that you normally wouldn't if you're just kind of using your screen and your laptop in front of you.
- [16:57]
C
I actually think we do have time. I just think we use it poorly. I think that.
- [17:03]
A
I think you're right.
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C
And that's part of, you know, going back to what I said. We. We move really fast. That's part of the model of how we work at majority, of getting to the best idea as quickly as possible. And how that plays out in strategy is the thing that particularly I feel like we do in our discipline as strategists is we overcomplicate things unnecessarily in an effort to. To either, you know, show the rigor behind our thinking and defend, and be able to defend it to those who weren't in the rooms and didn't read the research papers. And also, I think that just like we don't ask better questions initially because we get so many inputs from the client to begin with, right? And we feel like we need to look at all of those inputs with the same amount of rigor and priority. As you know, each one deserves some level of consideration. And what I find, I'm just going to be honest with you, is that 90% of it doesn't matter. 90% of it is irrelevant to the problem that we're trying to solve.
- [18:23]
A
I agree with you, Azmir. It's kind of like there's so many distractions for strategists. And that's why I think some of the best are coming from the outside in. In other words, they're looking at qualitative, gunny. And I think qualitative is the new gold in our industry because it gets us away from the artificial nature of proxies of knowledge like trend reports and allows us to bring the outside in. And that is a currency that's more valuable than ever.
- [18:53]
D
I think the idea that that sort of work lacks rigor, which is, I've heard, I feel like agencies get it, but sometimes clients, especially clients with less mature marketing functions, sometimes mistake rigor, you know, as we were saying for, I don't know, stats on a piece of paper. But it's a lot more than that if you want rigor. Rigor for what? How about rigor for understanding the human beings who are going to buy your product or not buy your product or use your service or not use your service? There's a. The goal in those situations in understanding the consumer is intimacy. And if you are not actually achieving intimacy in your understanding of them, then that's not really.
- [19:49]
B
And just to build on Azimir and Ghani's point, I think it's really obvious when you are writing strategy or telling stories in a confident way. I think there's. We have this saying, are we playing offense or defense? And a strategy that's playing defense is. I need to validate every single thing with a data point. I need to show the rigor, to me is more about evidence versus implication. And I think that's when a lot of our strategies or strategists in the industry, I think a lot of us have to play defense, given the clients we're facing some of the stresses they are. But I think where we are most effective is when we're confident, when we're telling stories, when we're saying this is what we know about people and this is the gut instinct of how we think we can change behavior and playing offense and riding and telling strategic stories when we're playing that way. I think it's just a Whole different way of interpreting what we have. I think that's what we've really encouraged our teams to do is play less defense, stop defending every slide with a stat and start showing the impact of what this thinking or what this path that you're taking clients on will lead them to. What are the possibilities versus hey, we've checked ourselves because we know this particular client's going to ask us about, you know, this particular category. And I think to your point, Fergus, it does take a mind shift to say, how do we then play offense? As it relates to research, as it relates to finding our core consumer, as it relates to taking time. I love Azimir's push of this whole we have less time is false. We have more time. If you think about some of the things LLMs can streamline for us, it's that we're still used to doing things the old way and we haven't rediscovered the joy of strategy outdoors and what it's like when we actually get out in the field and see what people are doing to inform what we think the strategy is.
- [21:36]
A
Azmir, when you think about, you say you guys like to work fast, but there's that contradiction in speed versus quality of insight or strategy because it's kind of this weird tension between those two ideas. How do you reconcile that? In other words, what are you doing to get to something fast that others could learn from?
- [22:01]
C
Just the simple act of having creative and strategy collaborate on the brief from the beginning removes a lot of that tension. And you, you get back that time where you can build as you're progressing. Right. And, and, and also be comfortable with redirecting midstream. You know, one of the things that I tell our strategists when they first start is that you, you have to be comfortable with not having the right answer. And maybe the answer to what the strategy needs to be is born out of a creative idea that wasn't at first connected to your original thought, but through the collaboration with the creative team and sort of re interrogating what the problem is that you're trying to solve and the best way to solve it creatively, then you get to your solid strategy and a better creative idea faster.
- [23:04]
A
Sometimes it's better to be interesting than to be right. Not everything can come out of data. Not everything has to be fully justified. Sometimes just interesting works. And it may not feel meaty from a strategic point of view, but damn, is it memorable and it's going to meet that goal better than an overly rationalized strategy.
- [23:29]
B
Yeah, I mean, oftentimes when we're looking at work or if we're looking at strategy, we're kind of like, oh, that's correct, but not compelling. And I think it's really the magic of those two things when you feel like you have something. I think building on what Azmir says, I think strategy is such a funny retroactive process of logic, too, because of how we have to sell stuff to clients and how they have to sell stuff to their stakeholders. But an interesting series would be how did it like, if strategists told the truth and the deck was just like, similar to what Azmir said? Yeah, we thought it was this, then we sat in the room, then the creative said this and it was that. So we did that. And you're like, oh, that was it. But in our retelling of it, it's, well, the strategist found this great point around 90s culture, and then you retroactively fit it, and sometimes you brainwash yourselves after the fact and you go, oh, that's how it happened. And I think you want to allow for that magic, that kind of alchemy of strategists playing creative and creative playing strategists. And sometimes that just comes together. I think you said it just then, Fergus. Like, some of the best strategists are creative, but in my experience, some of the best creatives are strategic. Like the types of strategic conversations I've had with ECDs or with CCOs. And I think the people at the top of their field can play both roles. And a client said it to us most recently on the pitch because we kind of flip things a little bit. And, you know, strategist presented some creative, and creative presented some strategy stuff. And the client said, we loved how you did that. It's always so weird to us when you walk into a room and this title means you can only speak to three slides, and that title means you speak to those, because you should inherently be able to speak to both elements because to Azimir's point, they're so interconnected and fundamental to each other. So I do think that kind of notion of being correct and compelling is an act of playing both roles as strategist and creative to land that sweet spot.
- [25:24]
A
So let's talk about the way that we get to strategic directions, because I really think it's important to just sort of share literally how you're doing it. I mean, for example, Johnny, you talked about you get a group of people together. Asmir, you said the same thing where you're sort of bringing people what Are those people doing to contribute to the whole. What are the sources that are always go to places for you guys? And then I want to talk about how you get to the truth in terms of making decisions. But is there a sort of a BBDO way of coming at it? And then I want to bring Gunny in too, because he's a pretty critical aspect of this.
- [26:06]
B
Yeah, I think the way we like to think about it is we have tools, but not all the tools you should always use for every brief. I think there are some things where we use certain, like brand positioning type tools. We have a tool called focus, where based on implicit associations, we map where a particular brand is, you know, is the center of gravity of your brand. Are you most implicitly associated with safety and security or adventure? And then seeing where the other category players are. And if we want to be a more modern brand, we're thought of as security, but we need to be more in the quadrant of where adventure is like. We have a capability and a tool, primary research tool that helps us do that, but it's not right for every client, you know, and sometimes we use different ways of investigating audiences, either real or synthetic audiences. So it's really about figuring out from the outset the problem that we have to solve. And then where are the insights hiding in plain sights and what are the different tools we can use within our kind of vast array of things. Because I think strategy is its worst, is strategy by the numbers. We do this tool which tells us this thing, we put it in this framework which spits out this very lovely thing. And I think it's more about what are the tools that we have to find out the things we don't know and connect the dots to find that compelling story. So that's. We have a way, we have a BBDO way, but it's not a prescriptive way. It's here is, you know, six to seven tools, what's right for your client and your problem, and we apply that specific tool and we kind of follow the signals that those outputs give us.
- [27:37]
A
Asmir. How about with you guys from a
- [27:39]
C
tools perspective, Our tools, again, it varies on what we need, but we do a lot more of desk research than anything. I'll cite Reddit 15 times more than I'll cite a research or trends report, to be completely honest with you. The information, the type of strategy that we build that leads to the most inspirational creative ideas and effective creative ideas for the work that we do, it has to be so relevant and timely that we don't find that the tools are often as helpful as we wish they were. It's much more impactful for us to understand what real people are saying and doing about a particular product, brand, or even topic in culture and use that as our inputs. And that's the data that feeds a lot of the narratives of our strategy.
- [28:36]
B
Fergus, I think it's also about living an interesting life as a strategist. Right? I think, you know, to be a strategist, it's not a job that you just turn on and off. I think you have this natural curiosity that where you consume new things or you have new experiences, those things kind of act a little bit of what Gunny said you might make some natural connections around, oh, I did this. I know I went bungee jumping. And it taught me something about how I feel when I lose control. And interestingly, I'm working on a brief that's all about, you know, AI powered cars, which is all about people losing control. So how can I apply my lived experience in bungee jumping to that brief? I think that's a responsibility that you take on as a strategist, is to try and live an interesting life. It's to try and consume content. You may not usually it's to go to an event, not just for work, but it's this whole thing of garbage in, garbage out. If you fill your brain with the same thing, the natural inputs or connections or those sparks will be made of the same material. So I think if you want to be a good strategist, it's dependent on there is a responsibility to go and do things and be uncomfortable and collect experiences that you may not necessarily gravitate to because it will make you a better strategist. And I think if this notion of time is of our biggest enemy and we may not have time to do some of that deep intimacy with consumers, I think we can have that deep intimacy in the types of things that we do in our lives that we can then apply to strategy. I think think some of the best strategists that I've worked with or have hired have had unconventional backgrounds before. In Australia, we hired a strategist that was an ex professional football player, an Aussie rules player, and some of the insights he brought to corporate brands or this was so interesting because of his lived experience as a football, as a professional football player. So I think as we think of the next generation of strategists, I also think it's incumbent on us as the leaders of strategy community to hire people with different perspectives and different experiences because if you hire from the same VCUs and all of this and you all come in and they're all interns that known that they wanted to do strategy from the age of 21, you'll get a particular type of strategist that may not have the different connections and experiences that get you to interesting jumping off points and interesting strategy.
- [30:57]
A
We all know that there's no one truth. And I'm curious how you guys address that, because I'm sure what we're all dealing with is that whether the ideas are coming from creatives who are thinking strategically or from others, how do you decide which direction to go in? Is it an issue of consensus around the table, which in and of itself is a dangerous way of going at it? Does anybody got any thoughts on that? How do you decide which is the right direction and how do you decide which is the right truth to follow?
- [31:26]
B
I don't think you decide which one to follow. I think you dig in all the places and you see what comes up and then you figure out where which feels that perfect mix of familiar and fresh. I think sometimes it'll be a cultural truth that unearths it. Sometimes it's a consumer truth, sometimes it's a category truth. Like to your point about the lifts earlier, Fergus, it's like we've been thinking about this the completely wrong way, and it had nothing to do with culture. It had more to do with people are bored when they're standing in the lobby. So I do think it can be a trap to say that everything must be driven by culture or a consumer truth. Because the fact is that all of these are openings. These are all doors that you should explore as part of the conversation or the beginning of a brief to then find what's the most interesting launch pad for creativity or the idea. It's a trap if you're only looking at it through one lens. So I think it's less about how do you decide which path to go down. I think it's about going through all paths and then figuring out what's the most interesting, familiar, but fresh lens that you think the creative can kind of
- [32:31]
A
jump from to the point of creativity. I wanted to just talk about what many, many strategists struggle with is dealing with creatives who have a very strong point of view on their own creative idea and aren't necessarily willing to and comfortable with taking feedback. I think it can be the death of many strategists in their career that they can't figure out how to work with creative people. So let's talk about that for a minute. What are some of the tips that you guys have on how you can redirect teams? Because we may see the heart of the strategy not represented in the work and not feel that what's in the work is better than the strategy. To Asmir's point earlier. Asmir, any tips and I'll go around the table. How do you, how do you redirect when you feel you're not quite there yet?
- [33:27]
C
Yeah, the number one rule that I myself use and I tell all of the strategy team as well is we don't talk about why something doesn't work. We focus on what does and then we navigate the conversation of now how can we build on it to solve for what is missing from a strategic standpoint? And that tends to get us to a good place. But even if you struggle there, the other thing that I say is that it goes back to be comfortable as strategists, be comfortable with not being right. I am of the mindset that it is our job as strategists to make sense of a good creative idea as well. So sometimes it's not just about like the creative idea needs to change in its entirety. It may be a missing piece of the strategic narrative that we have not addressed or articulated clearly to see how it does answer the brief or solve the problem.
- [34:41]
B
Just to double down on that, Azmir, I think a CCO once said to me, I care more about what you like because I couldn't give a fuck about what you don't like. And I think it's so true. So that whole thing about let's shape with yes, yes, I love that. Yes, I love that. I think a trap that maybe more junior strategists or even account people fall into is what you described Azimir, the need to go through. Well, Idea one was great because of this. Idea two wasn't great because of this. Just say why Idea one and Idea four were your favorites and leave it at that. So I think that as the golden rule, shape with yes, we much more like hearing yes than no is a great, great tip. I think the other one that I like to kind of tell my folks is to save your bullets. I think what we're trying to do is build relationships and give grace and we don't always have to be the ones to kill the idea. If we think that someone else is going to kill it, let them take the fall. Let them be the bad guy. And if it's a non starter and the account person is going to point that out, as they rightfully should. Let's not pile on like, let's save that bullet. Because when we do kill work, it's more meaningful if it's at a later stage. And I think the other thing is just more human nature. We're all people. People, especially creatives, are putting their heart and soul for you to judge. If you have a personal relationship with them outside of that creative review, they're less likely to take your critique as, you know, personal. So get to know your creatives, hang out with them. Get to know what their taste is, what their movies are. If they like to get, Grab a beer. Grab a beer. If they want to hang out, hang out with them. Because then once you're friends and once you're connected as people, if you say, hey, I don't like this thought, or hey, can we work on that? It's less of a personal attack because they say, oh, I like Johnny. We have this and that in common. So when I'm getting this feedback, it's really just based on the work. But if you haven't built a relationship with a creative and your only interaction is judging the work, it's a very personal act to put your soul on a piece of paper in a room. So I think it's knowing that the relationship exists beyond the creative review and that you need to cultivate those relationships as you do with everything else, because creativity is an act of trust. I'm going to put my soul out there, and I trust you to know the right thing to do with it. And if not, to at least appreciate that I put my heart and soul out on that page. And I think having more friends as creatives helps you see that point of view. Whereas I think sometimes a strategist, we're okay when a strategy, we're sad when a strategy doesn't move forward. But it's not as much of a personal thing as when a creative loves this idea because of their experience, and then the whole room doesn't buy into it. I think it's acknowledging that creativity can be a vulnerable act. And I think the final thing for most strategists to learn is that there are different types of feedback to give at different points in the process. So the trap is to give too tactical feedback or to kill an idea too early, when it's still developing, when it's still a little germ of what it can be. And there's sometimes an instinct to speak in a meeting, just to speak. And you put the kind of tactical magnifying lens on an idea that hasn't fully bloomed yet. So I think it's learning what kind of feedback is helpful at this point, because that tactical feedback is great further down the line. But if we're just seeing potential, only talk about potential, don't talk about. Let's keep this in mind because of XYZ guardrail. So I think it's something that isn't talked about enough. And I know, Azimir, when you're with your strategist, I know that we kind of do a. Hey, you know, let's. Let's do a little roundtable on who. Who's got the best tips on creative feedback. And it's a really popular thing. So I don't think it's instinctively taught as well to strategists as it should.
- [38:19]
A
Tell me more about that. What you. You do internal departmental conversations about tips?
- [38:24]
B
Yeah, yeah. Especially with our younger strategists, you know, they say, hey, I'm having real, real trouble this. And we would. Would we say exactly what Azimir just said, like, hey, maybe in the next one, just point out with the yeses and the no's, hey, have you tried having a coffee with them and getting to know them as people, or have you shown them? You know, a lot of the times I think creatives want to know you have the same taste level as them because they're bringing taste. And so you might be, hey, I just saw this film. I thought it was really cool, and you might like it. And the creative might say, oh, yeah, Fergus is cool. I love that film. So we have the same creative taste, so we'll be aligned. So there are these little things that you don't get taught that we sit as a department and some of the younger strategists ask these questions, and, you know, some of the more senior strategists kind of share their best tips. So for us, it's a critical thing that we don't think other agencies perhaps focus on. So we use it as the competitive advantage, because the stronger that creative and strategist relationship is, the better the work is in the end.
- [39:18]
C
I'll add to the point of, like, the tip on, if you just focus on what's working and then build upon that, it's at. I didn't realize that I had been doing that for years, but it was pointed out to me by a colleague, like, you're so good at that. Like, you just automatically. And when I thought about it, I was like, oh, I do that. That's part of the speed upon which we work I do it because I don't have time to focus on what's not working. Like it's not helpful or productive for me to try to fix something that I already see as broken. It's much more. It gets a little us closer to the end goal and get to progress. If I take something that is working and say, okay, now let's build on it and make it better, I will say this.
- [40:05]
A
This may sort of be the choke point of effectiveness. I mean, we're doing this as part of an EFFIE series. And having come from the industry, I think it's very, very valid to say that the relationship between the strategists and the creative are maybe the greatest determination of the effectiveness of the work. And it is the most dysfunctional, potentially dysfunctional part of the entire process. Because it's humans dealing with humans, it's people with egos. It's so critical that you have a relationship with a good creative. And a good creative is not just a creative. It's somebody that you know is going to be open to working well with you, to conversation, who's strategically curious. But you do have to find a way through that. And it's not, Jonny, as you said, it's not taught in the schools this way to deal with people. Because unless you can get a creative that is willing to work with you to make the best of your strategy in the most creative way, if there's tension, all of the potential value of a strategy is lost. Creative ideas get produced that are not endorsed by strategists. And it happens every goddamn day. And the ideas that are driven from a creative department that are not strategically oriented is a detriment to a client's business. And as an example of that, I'd say that in our industry we're now saying that the majority of the work isn't as effective as it could be. And I look back at my career and I think that point where you can be pure minded and idealistic when you're developing strategy, but then when you have to bring it into a team and then it gets either pulled apart or it gets morphed or it gets replaced is the immense danger in the industry. So the question becomes, I suppose the question is you can never have your creative team involved too early. No, it is an absolute shame that as a strategist that you don't have them out now. The reality is that's not always possible because they're not only working on your piece of business, they're working on five others.
- [42:28]
B
Yeah. And to build on that. Fergus, I think the creative briefing shouldn't be the first time a creative sees a brief and just like at a creative review, shouldn't be the first time that a strategist should be seeing the work. I think to your point, around a highly functioning relationship, that in itself will tell you whether there is a strong relationship. I'll ask my strategist before the review, did the creative show you the work or have you guys jammed on it together? And if the answer is yes, I'm like, okay, great, it's going to be a great review. But if they say no, this is the first time we'll be seeing it, there's a disconnect with that. And similarly, we need to run our, not run our briefs, but work together to write the briefs that creatives are excited to receive. And I think some of the things we've been experimenting with at BBDO as well is what is the format that is most interesting? Or how can we subvert this one page thing that we read out like it's gospel and that becomes the thing? So we're messing around with, do we make like a podcast version of the brief that creatives can listen to like in the morning on the way so they have a sense of it? Do we give them like a little, hey, here's what you call it, a brief narrative. Here's more of a story driven thing that you read to prime yourself before you come in. So. So we're experimenting with making the briefing itself much more of a creative act.
- [43:45]
A
And why are you doing that? Why do you feel the need to do that? I love it, by the way. But why did you.
- [43:51]
B
I think you need to always find different ways to do things because we're so used to the creative brief as a, is a one or two pieces of paper. It became a deck, you know, a couple of years ago, which is great too. But I think now it's like, people love podcasts. People love the act of listening to things on the subway. We're like, why don't we try and see if people like hearing a brief that way? Or what if we just wrote a narrative that's more of a story to prime them and then they get the briefing. So this is all in the act of how can we do different things to get different outcomes? Because I think it's that beginner mindset, even to our own craft, that helps us upskill and up level what we do. So that's just some of the ways we're experimenting. I don't know if it'll all work. But so far the podcast thing has been, you know, people are excited by that. So. So we're going to keep doing it and see where it gets to.
- [44:39]
A
That's brilliant.
- [44:41]
C
Yeah, I agree with you, Johnny, on that. I actually recently implemented a rule. I will cancel an IR if I get on there. And the strategy and creative team, whether it's a strategy brief review or a creative review, if they have not met, collabed and are aligned, canceled. You all obviously need this time to do that and whatever the implications are from the timeline, figure that out. But like it, it forces people to get in that mindset if they aren't already. And then two, like, you know what the brief looks like. I think we, we have a similar approach in the sense that we do have a way that is sort of the preferred majority way. But we try to keep into consideration the team that we're brief everything as well, like who's the lead creative and the team involved with it and how do they best like to receive information. Some are more open to a lot of like, sort of like nebulous strategy to begin with and they really like to co create with the strategy team from the beginning. Some need a little bit more guard rails and kind of some like the long story narrative because it inspires them. It gives them a lot of stuff to pull from. Some just wanted in one shoe. She give it to me in three bullets so that I can just go and I may or may not look at the supporting information later.
- [46:09]
A
Listen, thank you guys. I really appreciate it. It's Asmir Davis, founding partner and president of Majority in Atlanta. Gunny Scarfo is co founder of nonfiction in Brooklyn and he's now in Nashville. He's got all country on us. And it's the great John E. Korp is head of comm strategy for BBDO in New York. Thanks for your time guys. Really appreciate everything.
- [46:31]
C
Thank you.
- [46:32]
D
Thanks Fergus.
- [46:32]
B
Thank you.
- [46:33]
A
And we will see everyone on the next episode.