The ad agency was in trouble. Morale was low, our creative product sucked, and our clients were bullying us into making some really crap ads. We just didn’t seem to be able to do anything right. It’s not like we didn’t have creative or strategic talent. We did. We lacked the leadership to stand up to the bullying clients. And, to make things worse, money was tight, which meant our MD refused to say no to anything the clients wanted.
On Friday afternoons many of us would adjourn to the bar that was the heart of the agency, drink way too much beer and wine and lament our career choices the led us to this place. We would complain about the dick clients we had or unload our frustrations on the more senior people in the business about what a tool the MD was. And when we got really drunk, we’d talk about starting our own thing and winning pencils and lions and redefining the advertising landscape.
And then everything changed. Our holding company asked the MD to move on (I suspect the leadership team had a hand in this – we bitched incessantly). They appointed a new MD who cared more about the creative and less about the accounting. And then they went on the hunt for a new Executive Creative Director.
The new Executive Creative Director
He’d worked at Abbott Mead Vickers in London on iconic campaigns that were immortalised in advertising annuals. He’d owned two Porsches, he boxed, had an impossibly hot girlfriend, and played the guitar. Peter is one of the coolest people I’ve known.
Peter and I bonded over food. He was amazed to discover that I had spent time working in Roger VergĂ© ‘s kitchen and wanted to know everything I knew about cooking. We would get drunk and discuss meals we’d had, ways to cook fish, great restaurants we’d heard of, and on and on. Pete had a thing for Portuguese salted fish (bacalao).
The new ECD was old enough to be my father. He’d rubbed shoulders with legends in the industry. He was a creative and I worked in client service so, there was no reason for him to acknowledge my existence and yet, he made time for me.
Pete was brought in by ‘head office’ to fix the creative product. I suspect the pressure on him was immense, but he never showed it. He was always generous with his time, and I never saw him lose his temper.
The first piece of advice – don’t wear khaki chinos
“Don’t ever wear chino’s, ever.” It was just before 10 in the morning. I was wearing a pair of pleated khakis and a blue button up shirt. We were headed into a meeting room for a client meeting and those were the words he whispered to me as we walked through the doors. I never did find out what the issue was that he had with khakis, but I pieced together my own meaning.
Khaki chinos are what’s wrong with business. They are a bland excuse for business casual attire. They say nothing, make no statement, stand for nothing. But they’re insidious because they give the wearer a false sense of self-expression, that they are taking a risk. However, therein lies the danger of wearing chinos. They give the wearer the false impression that they are taking a risk. It’s a metaphor for the illusion of innovation in corporates. When businesses think they’re innovating, taking risks, but in reality just iterating on what’s safe, that’s what chino’s represent.
When chinos are as risky as you’re willing to get in your work environment, chances are you aren’t taking any risks as a business.
To this day I don’t own a pair of khaki chinos.
The second piece of advice – trust your creatives
I’m the one who drove Peter to the airport when his stint at our agency was over. One of the last things he said to me before he walked into the airport terminal was ‘trust your creatives more.’
As a client service person, it was my responsibility to manage client expectations after we received their briefs. It was my job to tell them when they would see work and how good the work would be. I did the selling before the selling.
And because that was my job, and it was my number the clients called if they weren’t happy, I would hound the teams working on my briefs. From the day a brief went into the creative studio until presentation day I would check in with the creatives daily to see how they were doing, if they were on track, if they needed any further information relating to the client’s brief. These were all not-so-subtle ways to police their progress, to gauge if we would meet deadline. And a passive-aggressive way to apply pressure.
It’s difficult to trust other people when you rely on them to keep your word with a client. But that is what Peter told me to do, trust the team, trust that they know what they’re doing and that they won’t let you down. Let people get on with what they must do. They trust you to manage the client, and in many cases to sell their work to the client. The least you can do is show them the same courtesy and trust them to do their jobs and give you decent work, on time.
I still struggle with this one. I no longer work in advertising, but I still have to rely on others to do my job well. And I struggle with letting go, with allowing others to go away and come back to me with good work before a deadline.
The third piece and the most important
I’m not across all the details of what happened to Peter towards the end of his stint at the ad agency we worked at. A few months after he joined the agency our largest client made it clear that they weren’t happy with the quality of our work, or the level of service they were receiving from us. And shortly after that they put their account out to pitch. As the incumbent we were given the opportunity to win the account back.
I never spoke to Peter about it, but I’m sure he felt the same way I did, that our largest account was strangling the agency like a weed. As an agency we were only as good as this one account allowed us to be. The work we did for them was defining us and they were becoming increasingly unreasonable in what they wanted, which never leads to good creative work. I believe Peter knew that the best thing for the agency was to lose the account.
That said, head office made it clear that they expected us to win the account back. All eyes were on Peter – how was he going to pull this one off?
I was there, I saw the preparation for the pitch. There is so much more the teams could have done, but Peter never pushed for it. I believe he went into that pitch as the ECD looking to lose the account, despite it being his neck that was on the line. He did what he believed was right for the agency, for the creative teams and for the advertising industry more broadly, he sacrificed himself to let a shitty client go.
We lost the account. On his last day at the agency, he gave his farewell speech. It was a short speech. He said goodbye and then asked us all to do one thing, that we be nice to one another.
I was a chef before I went into advertising. All the great chefs I worked with were arseholes. They screamed abuse and some were violent in their kitchens. I assimilated a lot of their behaviour into my professional life, even after I left the kitchen. And now this man was telling me not to be that arsehole.
I only came to understand the lesson in his final words to the agency about a decade after Peter and I parted ways.
Peter had gained my respect through being kind, authentic and open. He shared himself, he made everyone feel welcome at work, he wanted what was best for all – and he never let seniority dictate how he treated people. Humility and generosity are the most important lessons my mentor taught me. So, be kind to the people you work with. Making others and yourself miserable might deliver good work, but it will never create an environment for great work.