It took six months to coordinate 35 calendars, but Publicis Dialog finally got all its global creative directors together to compare notes.
Publicis Dialog’s London office hosted the two-day summit in September to find out who’s good at what across the network. The agenda: Share case studies, especially on shared clients; build a directory of creative staff credentials (by discipline, product category and global experience); begin an internal awards program.
It’s the benefit — and the bane — of a global agency network to have creative talent across a wide range of disciplines around the globe. The trick is knowing who they are, and how to tap them for global pitches or current projects.
Arc Worldwide creatives meet annually and showcase their top work quarterly. Momentum Worldwide’s dozen creative chiefs meet quarterly and on the spur of the moment to tackle global briefs. And 141 Worldwide last spring adopted Fuel, an intranet database based on sister shop Ogilvy’s intranet Truffles.
Publicis Dialog has had an influx of creative talent since it hired 50 to 70 of 141 Worldwide’s alumni in 2003, when Allied Domecq shifted its global account to Publicis from 141 and its parent Cordiant Communications. Among them was Worldwide Creative Director Danny Kellard, who organized Publicis Dialog’s creative summit.
“There was no [formal] creative contact in the Dialog network until Allied Domecq came on board,” Kellard says. “We’ve organized global pitch teams, and brought specialists in different disciplines to regional pitches in other parts of the world,” including an ongoing pitch in Mexico for a soft-drink brand. But “the forum will help us get more faces on the list, in addition to the usual suspects we know from our 141 days, and those we’ve been introduced to here.”
Creative directors presented case studies, focusing on the 10 or so clients that use multiple Publicis offices globally, including Nestlé, Renault, Hewlett Packard and Allied Domecq (now owned by Pernod Ricard and Fortune Brands). Offices often work on the same brands separately. “The agency prides itself on local entrepreneurship, as a federation of local agencies,” says Publicis Dialog CEO Colin Hearn. “There’s some commonality, but a lot of the business is local.”
Jonathan Butts, executive creative director at Publicis Dialog’s San Francisco office, brought four case studies to share, from Hewlett Packard, Sprint (pre- and post-merger with Nextel) and Geyser Peak. His spare: a nine-language, 13-country campaign for former client Microsoft Corp.
“The major agency networks are seeing how significant it is to provide holistic marketing,” says Butts, whose office specializes in direct marketing and interactive.
Creatives from San Francisco and account service staff from New York collaborated to win the Bermuda Board of Tourism, and the offices share some clients, but it’s the tip of the iceberg, Butts says: “There are so many things we could be doing proactively for global clients, but we can’t because we’re not connected with each other. The summit gives us a chance to do that.”
Hundreds of Arc Worldwide’s creative staffers meet next month for their second annual Practical Magic Summit, including an internal awards program.
North American creatives (associate creative directors and above, about 40 in all) meet twice a year to share case studies hand-picked by Chief Creative Officer Bill Rosen. “We work across so many disciplines that I want to represent great ideas in different disciplines as well as ideas that transcend disciplines,” he says.
Rosen — who oversees all of Arc’s creative worldwide — travels regularly to regional meetings outside the U.S., and initiated the Practical Magic awards last year, working with then-CEO Nick Brien to pick winners that best meld creativity and accountability. That set the bar for staffers to nominate about 15 campaigns per quarter; finalists are acknowledged each quarter, then vie for Grand Awards given at the December meeting. “There could be zero winners or everyone wins. It’s not about a quota, but about achieving a level of work,” Rosen says. All entrants get feedback from judges “so they can elevate their work moving forward,” he adds.
Momentum’s four-year-old Creative Council has evolved into a global SWAT team: Its 12 creative directors meet quarterly, but also convene to tackle client briefs in real time. The team met in London to brainstorm how to launch American Express’s Wimbledon sponsorship in 2003; it ended up floating a tennis court down the Thames with John McEnroe and Monica Seles playing on deck.
For quarterly meetings — in high-culture cities like Paris and Rio de Janiero — the team brainstorms, unasked, for clients. A Paris summit spawned repositioning ideas for a current client’s luxury brand; Momentum is cold-calling the client to present those ideas. “Our worst-case scenario is that we don’t sell the idea. But the process still lets us fine-tune our own creativity, and it’s a good way to perpetuate new business,” says Kevin McNulty, regional director for Momentum EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa).
For brands’ own creative briefs, “our council can land in whatever city makes sense for the brand and do two days work, and our response is very different from other agencies on the brief,” he says.
Momentum’s Creative Mix program sends deserving creatives to a Momentum office overseas for three months. It’s a perk — the agency’s H.R. folks talk it up when recruiting — but it’s work, too: A U.K. staffer now visiting St. Louis is lending his 3D design expertise to work for Microsoft and Intel. And two St. Louisians now in Gothenburg, Sweden bring Coke expertise to the Swedes’ work for Nestlé. “It’s a great way to reward our best creatives, but the offices get rewarded, too. These people hit the ground running,” McNulty says. “It’s not just a ‘thank you’; it’s very business-oriented still.”
141 Worldwide uses its intranet, Fuel, to tap specialists in its network and keep staffers connected. Each worker fills out a profile — where they work, what brands and clients they’ve handled, what disciplines they’ve mastered — that goes into a searchable database. 141’s Chicago office has called on experts in other offices on projects for Kraft Foods, Heineken and Glaxo SmithKline, says Regional Director Jay Farrell. A collection of “communities” (kids, sports and entertainment, brand-specific) uses bulletin boards with commentary, white papers and idea swaps to keep colleagues in touch. Fuel also has an e-concepting service that lets creatives pass around an idea for comment worldwide. “It’s brainstorming over the intranet,” Farrell says. Fuel also hosts 141’s internal creative awards, now in its third year.
Still, an online community is only as good as its updates, so 141 offers incentives (think concert tickets) for staffers to maintain and use Fuel. A separate incentive, parent WPP Group’s Collaboration Program, gives WPP stock to agency staffers who collaborate across the network; 141 (U.S. and U.K.), Ogilvy & Mather and Fitch earned stock for work on Boeing last year.
Even online connections work better once colleagues have met face-to-face.
“We’re very e-mail-driven, but nothing beats having a name to a face,” Kellard says. “Even with a language barrier, once you’ve met someone, even on the phone you can get your message across.”
Ryan Spin-off Forms $30 Million Catapult
Ryan Partnership has spun off its channel marketing division to form a sister agency, Catapult Marketing, with 100 staffers and $30 million in billings — nearly a third of the $100 million in billings that D.L. Ryan Cos. claims — from Ryan clients Subway, Mott’s, Timex, Pedigree Dannon, Dole Sunbeam, Sunkist, Baker’s Square and Village Inn Restaurants.
Three Ryan veterans run Catapult. COO Paul Kramer had been president of channel marketing at Ryan Partnership; Peter Cloutier, now president East, and Matthew Jonas, president West, had been executive VPs.
The spin-off was prompted by client demand as the channel marketing group handled more integrated work, Cloutier said. “Clients prefer one person sitting at the table; they asked us to simplify the engagement,” he says. One key “engagement manager” brings resources across the agency to the client.
Westport, CT-based Catapult took over Ryan Partnership offices in Los Angeles and Phoenix, and shares the Bentonville office, called Retail Zone, with Ryan Partnership. Ryan Partnership maintains its Wilton headquarters and offices in Columbus, Chicago, Dallas, Minneapolis and Toronto.
Both Ryan Partnership and Catapult are owned by privately held D.L. Ryan Cos., which is based in Wilton.
— Betsy Spethmann
Network
