CHANGING OUR WAY MEMO

After sharing this memo the most comments I got was "good luck with that". Sometimes it's the impossible ideas that are interesting to pursue...


MEMO: CHANGING OUR WAYS
From Didi Sutisna


At JWT we’re all about ‘creating ideas that people want to spend time with’.
Because we believe there’s a strong connection: Time = Bonding = Buying.

What we produce, what our audience see, experience and do as a result, is the only real measure of our value that counts. But while the world is rapidly moving away from the ‘attention economy’ towards the ‘attraction economy’ where engagement, involvement and participation are now the name of the game, our ideas are one way messaging to people, and people have not been invited to speak back.

Our current Issue?
Simply put, our creative output is not good enough: it does not do justice to our brands or today’s audience.

Therefore, to honor our own purpose, we have an individual and collective responsibility to change our ways and ensure we deliver consistent creative excellence across all media.


WHY CHANGE?

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
- Albert Einstein

The future of brands is dependent on ideas, many of them. And to contrary believe not on us (big networks) that need to break even our overheads.

Our ‘change’ is a response to the widespread recognition in the industry – whether related to advertising, media or entertainment - that "our network models are all broken" and "the traditional communication solutions are all becoming less and less effective."

The Creative Idea – whether that is advertising, content, new product development and fashion - is the only product we will deliver. Not processes, systems or dozens of bag carriers. If it doesn’t benefit the creative idea it should be eliminated.

With ideas, we also mean how we do business. New ideas for revenue streams, new ideas for production, new ideas for handling clients, new ideas for writing strategies etc. Innovation is essential for our future. The reason we are a creative business is because of our new ideas.


WHAT OUR THINKING SHOULD BE

“The real fact of the matter is, nobody reads ads. People read what interests them. And sometimes that’s an ad” – Howard Gossage

Interestingness is the new value.

The received wisdom is that to build a brand, you keep doing the same thing. You tweak here, or there, but basically you keep telling the same story, until people get it.
But we should think of brands not as unchangeable, but as people.
How often do you hear “boy that’s an interesting guy I’ve met. He’s completely consistent and on message”?

Advertising and brands are competing in the cultural big leagues. Competing for attention with Rihanna and Modern Family. We’re not in a special little box. This makes us realize that we have to be interesting.

And interestingness is the brand’s most important equity where the audience is not an audience anymore, but co-creators and instigators. Because if people are not interested in your messaging, if they do not find it worth it thinking about it, you going to have a lot of trouble.

So our work must author culture-creating stuff as interesting and engaging as the moviemakers, TV networks, comedy writers, etc.


WHAT ARE THE IDEAS THAT WE WANT?

“We think it's better to make something great or really bad than do something average. Because nobody will see it or talk about it.” – Erik Kessels

Communications don’t build brands, conversations do. When your brand is interesting it is more played with, more thought of, more shared and more talked about.

With all the great work done by our competitors, a new bar has been set for advertising. Not only must our output be fresher, cleverer, edgier, but our communication ideas must become an art form in their own right, or at least move closer to the entertainment space. SO the challenge is to stop interrupting what people are interested in and be what people are interested in.

Because being interesting is being more played with, being more communicated with, being worth thinking about.
And the only way to do really interesting work is to experiment. This means doing something new, something that hasn’t been done before. Sometimes it is a twenty-four hour television channel. Sometimes it is a piece of furniture. And sometimes it's a cricket club start up.


WE SHOULD LOVE TO DO STUFF. EVERYDAY.

Creatively, our instincts should be drawn to the unknown. But venturing there is, by definition, unnerving, sometimes fearful. And that’s fine. Because sometimes, impossible ideas are the ones you should make.
So we should execute things that seem right. We should do it quickly and do it often. Don’t cling onto anything, good or bad. Don’t repeat much. Take what was good and do it differently. Everyday.

One of the reasons we started this conversation about change is to create the freedom to do whatever we want that challenges the usual methods of communication. To do whatever creates the conversations around brands.
That’s what should keep us fresh. That’s what should keep us running.


HOW SHOULD WE WORK?

“If what you are doing seem like work, you’re either in the wrong industry or you’re not doing it right.” – Crispin Porter

The idea remains king and getting to the best ideas is why we should embrace diversity of disciplines and backgrounds.

The idea dictates the plan, not the media.

So we can’t label the things according to the media they appear anymore.

Sometimes that’s online, sometimes it’s via mobile, sometimes is with an event and sometimes it’s a sit-com. We can’t deliver all this by our own. So we need to create participation with other disciplines by any means necessary, or at least any means that’s fun.