Few people have as much experience in marketing as he does. He has been on the global advertising scene for more than 60 years. He founded Saatchi & Saatchi and BBH and has been instrumental in the success of brands such as Levi's, Audi, Axe, Johnnie Walker, and many others. Sir John Hegarty will be speaking in Prague for the first time this autumn, specifically at the Brand Management conference. With Jan Patera from Blue Events, the programme sponsor of the conference, he talked about how to explain to people the importance of creativity in business or what he regrets the most.
The ad for Levi’s Mr. Bombastic jeans with music by Shaggy that aired in our country in the first half of the 1990s is one of my indelible childhood memories. The brand has been a client of your agency, BBH, for over 20 years. Am I right?
Yes, you are. We acquired them in 1982 and parted ways sometime around 2006. Most client-agency relationships last five to ten years. So, I think that’s really exceptional, even more so for something as fluid as a fashion brand. We’ve done something like 30 campaigns together, fabulous stuff! I’ve always said to them, “My goal is for you to stop trying to be fashionable and start trying to be timeless. Make Levi’s jeans iconic, because that’s the only way they’ll never go out of style.” But I'm not sure that’s entirely met with understanding. My point is that when you are a fashion brand, you are always reacting to fashion trends and other brands in the industry in some way. As an icon, you become a classic.
Do you think brands lack self-confidence?
I like to remember the Rolls Royce tender in the late 1970s. We were working for Range Rover at the time, so I thought it might make for an awkward meeting. I wanted to leave out the information about the other clients altogether, but it didn’t work, and no one said anything at the meeting at that fateful moment. I said, “Excuse me, but do you mind if we also do Range Rover?” And the guy stoically replies, “There’s nothing like a Rolls Royce.” Wow, that’s it! I thought. To have that confidence as a brand and not be compared to anything.
And did you win the contract then?
No, not in the end, I was sorry after all (laughs). But it was a great show of self-confidence. I think that is still one of the purposes of advertising: you give a brand confidence and the courage to do things differently. So many brands lack that, instead, they are afraid. We have recently seen that in the iPad Pro. (In the launch campaign, a hydraulic press crushes objects like books, musical instruments, cameras, a sculpture, or paint cans; the result of the ‘squeeze’ is the iPad Pro, and the campaign promotes the tablet’s new creative features. Apple drew a lot of backlash because some of the audience interpreted it as a disregard for human creativity and art. Apple subsequently apologised publicly for it. – ed.)
The fact that Apple apologised... come on! It’s pathetic. Instead of having the courage to do something provocative, not being afraid of hyperbole, do I rather say, “Sorry, we shouldn’t have done that”? Instead of having the courage to do something provocative, not being afraid of hyperbole, do I rather say, “Sorry, we shouldn’t have done that”?
But how to maintain timelessness while not losing relevance for new and new generations?
To me, being iconic means you’re still relevant. The answer is value and consistency. No matter what you do. Rolls-Royce is the standard bearer of luxury, Volkswagen of reliability. You simply need to communicate in a way that is a level above how everyone else communicates and to become part of people’s lives. A really great campaign doesn’t end up just standing out in the world of advertising. It becomes part of the culture and then it becomes all the more important. I actually don’t like advertising. The world of advertising is boring in itself, horrible! But the ten percent that get it right, that’s amazing. That’s why when I create, I look around, I want to know what people are reading, what they’re listening to, what they’re talking about. What they have a passion for. And I want to be part of all that. I really don’t want to live in the advertising world, ugh! Waste of time!
A really great campaign doesn’t end up just standing out in the world of advertising.
What is the biggest killer of this kind of creativity that has the potential to become part of culture?
Compromise. And caution. What I mentioned a moment ago with Apple. Real artists never speak to the full mass, to everyone. There’s always somebody who gets upset. But that’s the ambition of being different. Not for the sake of being different, but for the added value. I always tell people that the most successful car model was the Volkswagen Beetle. Yet only ten per cent of people liked it. But that 10 per cent absolutely loved it - and to have a 10 per cent market share? That’s bloody brilliant! Today we’re moving towards everything becoming bland and faint.
Do you really get that feeling? Let’s find a positive example.
It seems to me that social media is actually a kind of factory for perpetually dissatisfied people, but it’s only a minority. We are becoming paranoid and worrying too much about what’s happening on social media. Because of that, we lose the courage to do interesting things. But there are exceptions, of course. I was talking to the founder of Liquid Death recently. That’s just a great name! And it’s ‘just’ water. The brand was founded in 2017 and is now worth $1.4 billion. But if you did your research on such an idea at the beginning, I bet it wouldn't suggest such success. And the magic is in the brand’s added value. When you are putting all your efforts into inspiring people, there is always going to be someone who gets upset, but you must ignore that. Otherwise, you can’t do anything. And don’t forget the humour.
Real artists never speak to the full mass, to everyone. There is always going to be someone who gets upset.
Ten years ago, you founded The Garage Soho, which doesn’t work for big brands as you were used to but for start-ups. How does your agency work?
We call ourselves an “early-stage investment company”. Entrepreneurs come to us when they have a great idea and need money to get started. And we help them build their brand because that’s where the value is. But to be honest, I was a little disappointed. Businesspeople usually don’t understand how to build a brand and what the value is. If I could turn back time, I would do a simple test during initial meetings with potential clients. There would be a can of Coca-Cola and a can of Pepsi in the middle of the table. I wouldn’t comment on it. I would just conclude by asking, “If you could get a five percent stake in one of these companies, which would you choose? And by the way, Pepsi wins in blind tests. I bet nine out of ten of them would still choose Coca-Cola because they realise it has more value. Now here’s why: because of brand value, of course. I consider it my big failure that I wasn’t able to explain that.
You can do so at the next meeting.
I’ve been doing something a little different. I don’t quite know what to call it. I don’t like “master class”, it makes it too pompous, “courses” sounds too boring. Anyway, we made a series of films, I called them “Business of Creativity”, it’s almost documentary style. And I try to explain the importance of creativity for business growth in the films. At the end of each episode, I interview a major marketing figure. Greg Hoffmann, former CMO of Nike, designer Paul Smith, and others. And I talk to them about how they approach creativity. Coincidentally, around the time we published this programme, McKinsey came out with research that confirms the real impact of creativity on business growth.
You see, I meet entrepreneurs who, in their arrogant attitude, are convinced that they don’t need anything like investment in creativity. That they have such a great idea and product that they just need to present it on social media. I’d like them to understand that having the best idea won’t protect them from someone stealing it and building a more successful brand around it. The value of the brand, the fact that they are investing in their brand building, is the best protection. How else would it be possible for a guy to build a multi-billion-dollar brand on selling water?
Could this approach to creativity be due to the fact that it has become a commodity for advertising agencies? In the same way that you buy printers or pens for your company, you approach the purchase of creativity. And that’s why clients sometimes don’t consider agencies to be their equal partners. They want a tender for every campaign. When you mentioned five years of client-agency relationships – it’s wishful thinking for us. Here it’s more like five months. How do we break that?
You have to show people that creativity is not a cost but a benefit. We forget that advertising has two phases: to persuade (persuasion) and then to motivate to buy (promotion). We are obsessed with promotion, but we forget that first, you have to get people to relate to your product, your brand, and the values it represents. And this is very difficult to quantify. You can’t measure it well enough. You can’t measure creativity as a cost item. And so, when companies cut costs, creativity goes with it. If you can’t measure it, get rid of it! Conversely, when it can be measured, we automatically think of it as something essential. But try telling someone to stop investing in innovation. They’d laugh at you. Yet innovation is a direct result of engaging creativity. How do you measure an idea?
When companies cut costs, creativity goes with it. If you can’t measure it, get rid of it! Conversely, when it can be measured, we automatically think of it as something essential. How do you measure an idea?
Could this be partly the result of the rise of evidence-based marketing?
It depends. When Apple started making its iPhones bigger, the data suggested that people wanted a smaller phone. When James Dyson came out with the bagless vacuum cleaner, people didn’t complain about the bagged ones. He just wanted to make a better vacuum cleaner. And he had no data for this particular innovation.
One solution I hear from agencies is a desire for trust. They want a client to trust a brand for more than one campaign, so there’s a chance that a long-term relationship will form. You’ve experienced this not only with Levi’s but also with Johnnie Walker and Audi, which has worked with BBH, the agency you founded and led creatively for many years, since the 1980s. How can agencies achieve something like that today?
I’m asked that question from time to time. People ask me if I were starting an advertising agency today, how would I approach it. It’s not an easy question to answer because I just don’t do it anymore. But I think of the revolutionary 1960s in New York and San Francisco. People in the business were progressing step by step. Take Volkswagen as an example. It’s a giant today. But back in the 1960s when DDB started working for them it was a small German car company, not a miracle in America. Same with Avis, a long-time number two in the market. Nobody approached it back then with the goal of making millions. And that’s it. Today, I get the feeling that people in the industry want to get rich quickly and are more concerned with money than ideas. I understand you have a mortgage to pay and kids to support. But if your main motivation is money, you’re not going to do a good job.
By the way, you’re the same age as Paul McCartney who recently said he may not have written his best song yet. How do you feel about that?
I admire the passion, the idea that there is always something in front of you that can be achieved. But I’m already doing different things than I used to. It’s hard to say. On the other hand, I’m still helping brands and I enjoy it. So, as they say, “keep going”.
John Hegarty
In 1970, he was one of the founding members of Saatchi & Saatchi. 12 years later, he and his colleagues founded their own agency, Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH), which now has offices in London, New York, Singapore, Stockholm, Shanghai, Mumbai and Los Angeles. Its most notable clients include Levi’s, Johnnie Walker, Audi, Axe and others.
He has received countless creative awards including the D&AD President’s Award for outstanding achievement. In 2007, he was awarded a Knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II, and in 2011, he was presented with the Lion of St. Mark at the Cannes Festival of Creativity. In 2011, his first book “Hegarty on Advertising - Turning Intelligence into Magic” was published, and three years later, “Hegarty on Creativity - There Are No Rules” followed (it was published in Czech in 2015). In 2014, John co-founded The Garage Soho, which invests in startups and their brands. He has just launched a new online eight-week course, The Business of Creativity.
He will be a keynote speaker at the Brand Management conference organised by Blue Events on 3 October at the Cubex Centre Prague.
Interviewer: Jan Patera, Blue Events
Source: mediaguru.cz
