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HE: Good afternoon. I am Heidi Ehlers, Founder of BLACK BAG talent attraction + acquisition. Welcome.
Does the world's best talent think about their career the way you do? Is their success a function of coincidence? Or because of a conscious choice to be the world's best?
Let's find out. Please join me in welcoming Tony Granger, Marcello Serpa and Erik Vervroegen to Diary of a Creative Director: An Exploration of the Road to Greatness.
(APPLAUSE)
HE: Thank you for choosing to be part of the first Diary of a Creative Diary in Cannes. The whole spirit of Cannes is about sharing our thinking and our learning. So let's get started. Erik, let's start at the beginning. Did you make a conscious decision to work in advertising?
EV: Um, to me to was more than obvious. I was a little bit lost in my life, as a student I didn't know what to do with my life. I didn't know anything about advertising. And one day I saw an old school layout, you know, done with markers, and I didn't know what it was. So I asked and someone said, you know in advertising, before doing a shoot, you do a drawing to help to sell to the client. And for me it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my life. From that moment, I knew about advertising and the job. I felt in love. So to me it was more than obvious.
HE: You saw it and it was love at first sight.
EV: It was the right job for me. It was that obvious. It was like nothing else. I didn't know about it and to me it was the most beautiful job on earth, you know. Obvious for me.
HE: Marcello, how did you get your first job?
MS: From the beginning I actually always wanted to do something with drawing. Just wanted to be an artist, or something like this. Then I went to Germany to study fine arts and I saw a Brazilian guy, in the Kunst Akademie in Munich, and the guy, he was a Brazilian guy, he was painting Brazilian flags for 6 years. And I saw after 6 years that he was still painting Brazilian flags. Quite a sad career.
So, instantly I changed and I wanted to do design and I started in design school in Munich and then I saw an ad for the first time, an ad done by Michael Schirner by GGK Dusseldorf "SchreIBMaschinen" which was an IBM ad. It won a Gold in Film. At that time there were no Lions for Press. And I remember this was a BIG ad with just the word in the middle, and I saw it and 'Oooh, This is something I want to do.' So I start doing this. So I changed from design into advertising (snaps fingers) that fast.
HE: Didn't you also have a mechanical artist position early on?
MS: Oh yes, I lied about that. So what happened is, I was...
HE: You lied to get the job?
MS: I lied to get the job. We still do it...
HE: Of course.
MS: We still do it.
TG: We're in advertising
MS: We're in advertising. Anyway, so what I did was, I was in design school and I have no idea what were the best agencies. So one, there was a very famous agency in Munich, RG Wiesmeier, very fashionable, and I knew someone they were graphic designer to make mechanicals. And I had no idea, it's was a very fashionable, very big agency. But as a Brazilian in Munich, I had no idea what a fashionable agency should look like. So I called the guy and he asked me, "Can you do mechanicals?" I'm like, "Of course I can." First lie. So I start doing mechanicals for a very small ad, newspaper ad, and I did it for one single ad, and it took about 9 hours to produce. And next thing in the morning he asked me, "You are still doing this?" "Yes."
HE: You liked.
MS: Of course I lied. It was the only way to get in. He kept me on the job, but I also had to make sandwiches for the art director.
HE: Sandwiches and mechanicals.
MS: It was a hard job, a hard job.
HE: Tony, did you always want to be a creative director?
TG: Uh, no, no. Right though school I wanted to be a rock star. Right? So I ...cause you know, it's a lot of money, fame, uh, you know parties.
HE: Chicks.
TG: And then at about 24, 23 or 24, I woke up one morning and thought well, I don't know if I'm good enough to do this and I kept having this kind of recurring nightmare of playing in a restaurant in the corner, playing Kumbayah, with an acoustic guitar and so I thought, "Ok, if I'm not going to be a rock star, what's next?" So I kind of looked around and said, "Hmm, advertising, yeah, that sounds pretty, pretty good." So I joined an art supply center because you know, in those days, before computers, it was about letraset. Do you remember letraset?
MS: Oh yeah.
TG: Anybody here remember letraset?
MS: I love it.
TG: Yeah, see, you literally had to rub down everything, ok? So I, so I joined an art supply shop taking orders from art buyers. You know, "I want ten sheets of letraset, 5 magic markers..." Ok. And I got to know a couple of art directors and I said, "Well, how do I get into this game because it looks really, really interesting and a lot of fun." And they said, "Well, you know, it's easy. Just do some ads and go and knock on doors."
So literally what I did was I tore ads out of magazines that I thought were crap and redid them - equally as badly, to be honest - and then went and knocked on doors. And you know, I think what kind of got me in was that I was really passionate to get in - rather than my work.
My first job was as an assistant to an art director working on an account called the OK Bazaars. And it was this hardcore fast retail piece of business and I was literally given, every morning, a whole lot of products like baked beans, washing powder and what not.
HE: Shoe laces?
TG: And shoe laces and what not. And he said, "Ok you got to stick this all on the page, and you've got to figure that out and then you've got to have really big prices on everything." So that was my job you know, making lots of coffee for my art director, who kept spiking it with all sorts of things. So that's really how I got in and pretty much after that it was just hard work. It's all about hard work. But no, I didn't want to be in advertising. Glad I am. Glad I am.
HE: Good. Eric, do remember the first career goal that you had?
EV: Yes. I'm kind of normal. When you love a job, when you love something, the most normal goal you can have is to try to be the best. Doesn't mean something more than that. Being the best doesn't mean lots of money or fame. Just trying to learn, trying to grow, trying to stay open, trying to go where you can learn. And my goal basically will never change. If tomorrow I decided I want to be a bartender, the goal will be the same. Just try to be honest with the people you are working with, trying to learn, trying to grow, trying to be the best. I mean to me, it's just obvious. If you love something, I don't see other goals than trying to be the best. And it's not easy because you are never the best. I remember Muhammad Ali said one day, he said, "There's probably a guy on the planet who could kick my ass. But he's not playing, he's not in the ring. No one knows that guy but I'm sure that guy exists." So if you keep that thing in your head, I mean, to me...
HE: There's always someone out there that can kick your *ss.
EV: Always. That's advertising. People who are here playing, in the job, that's called advertising. But I'm sure there's a guy on this planet who is better than anyone else. So it's always the same thing. My goal is still the same, trying to be the best and never forget that you will never be the best in a way. Which is the difference, you know. So, that's my goal. Still the same. Didn't change. Not exceptional as a goal. Nothing new, but that's my goal.
HE: Tony, have goals played an important role in your career?
TG: Yeah sure. You know, goals are really important. You have to have short-term goals. I have a list of goals on my computer. I have a year goal, a three-year goal, a five-year goal, a ten-year goal. And literally I read them most mornings. I'll go through my list so I know: What do I need to do? Where do I need to go? And what do I need to achieve? And as I mark them off, I put new goals in.
HE: And you continue to push the goals further in to the future...
TG: Absolutely. It's a very deliberate process, and if you have very defined goals and a very defined mission, then everything you do has meaning.
He: Relative to something...
TG: Absolutely. Every decision you make has meaning. Everyone you employ has meaning. Every idea you create has meaning. It's a little like...someone once told me, if a ship leaves a port, it has to have a destination. It has to have a place where it's going to go. Otherwise it's just going to sail.
HE: Sailing, bobbing along.
TG: And if a storm hits it or if huge swells hits it and it's got to go around or come back. There's a definite point of departure and a definite goal where it's going to go. And that's really what I do. And there will be personal goals, there will be career goals, there will be goals I give to all my creative people, goals for the agency...
HE: Do you ask them to declare their goals to you?
TG: Sure, yeah sure.
HE: And are they quantifiable?
TG: Absolutely. Well, my partner and I, we'll stand in front of the agency every three months and give goals and as we hit them we cross them off and kind of move on to the next goals. You absolutely have to have a goal.
HE: Marcello?
MS: I'm actually the opposite. Just hearing this, it's like white and black, black and white, because I always have problems with goals. I never put any goals in front of me. At any time. I remember as a teenager - I remember I had this vision of being, seeing myself when I was age 85, sitting in a chair, how you call the chair that...
HE: Wheelchair?
MS: Wheelchair. Not wheelchair...
TG: Rocking chair.
MS: Rocking chair, not wheelchair.
(LAUGHTER)
HE: Sorry.
TG: Rocking chair doesn't mean wheelchair.
MS: Something different.
HE: Ok knitting.
MS: Makes a lot of difference. Don't put me in a chair that fast! In a rocking chair, and I saw myself at 85, around 85, - at that time it was '75 - now there's difference; new medicine. Brazil is getting better, so 85. I saw myself watching the ocean and smiling - I had this vision when I was 15, and this is the only goal I have - I want to be at the end, very happy. And that's the only goal I have. And since I did a lot of stuff from the beginning, I was working so hard, everything happened to me so fast that I didn't have a chance to set goals.
HE: Right.
MS: And I have to say, I was very lucky. So I never had a chance to put any goal. My career started in Germany, I was working like hell, and I wanted to have, something like Erik said, I want to do the best ad and not to compare it to other ones, but to compare it to the one I did before, so always competing...
HE: Against yourself.
MS: I'm a very competitive person, but I am always competing with myself. So much that I don't look very much to the sides. I'm always very competitive, but to myself and among us, the people in the agency. So the goal was something that I put...I never have a goal actually, that clear. (And I saw, he was listing to you a goal.) I remember once when we started the agency, we started the agency in '93 and I said, "Let's have a goal." And there is so much work that we didn't catch up with establishing goals. It was a more organic goal than a rational, oriented goal. Maybe it is a little bit more Latin, or Catholic, or something. It's more organic anyway.
HE: You also said fun was an important part of the conversation.
MS: Yes fun. Because if I'm sitting in the chair and laughing I had fun.
HE: Right.
MS: So, fun is important. I think fun is the most important thing because if you don't - I worked in places where fun was not part of it - and I learned the bad way. Suffering, I hate when people let other guys suffer to produce good work. And I always thought that fun produced better work than suffering.
TG: Absolutely.
MS: And maybe if you fail... If you fail, not winning, or not doing, or not winning this business, it's not a bad deal actually. It's just advertising. Nobody dies. If you build a bridge and you fail, someone is going to die.
HE: Right.
MS: Right. So, it's just ads. Maybe it's not selling 10% more. Maybe just 8%. It's not a failure.
HE: You started your career in Germany...
MS: Yep.
HE: How did working in Germany help you in your career? What did it teach you?
MS: Very much. Because it's exactly the opposite way of Brazil. In Brazil we have a mass, this colourful...And in Germany I learned discipline, focus, and how to put the thoughts...And how to do things right. It helped me a lot actually, because it's exactly the opposite. I think, as a Brazilian you should go to work in Finland, not working in Colombia, because it's not a big change. Look for the opposite.
HE: You have to go to the extreme opposite.
MS: Go to the opposite. Open your mind. More chance to compare. I like the contrast.
HE: Erik you had more success in Belgium than most people have in their entire career, but you moved across the world to South Africa for half the pay. You went from living well to driving a beat up car. What made you do that?
EV: At one moment in your life you realize that something is wrong and you have to be honest. I was in love with the work, with the industry and I couldn't, I wasn't able to do the work I used to admire. So my trip, to Cannes, was looking at great work and being unable to produce that kind of work. So, what was the problem? Do I have a problem as creative person?
HE: Is it you?
EV: Or do I need a little bit of help? The answer - Everybody knows where the answer lies. The answer is, if you can't crack it - two options: you're bad or you are in the wrong agency. So, I didn't know if I was good or bad but what was obvious for me was that I was not in the right agency. So I decided to go in an agency where I could learn, because it's as simple as that. Whatever the salary. Whatever, how tough, how hard you work - I agree with Marcello - when Marcello is saying that you have to have fun in the industry; I agree, but it's very very complicated. It's a tough industry so having fun is like a goal, of course. To me, I moved there and it was very, very hard. I've learned and I've suffered. I've loved to have fun, but it was tough. It was tough because I wasn't able to do the work and I've learned that it's all about working, listening and to be honest, it's not easy to do.
HE: You brought your portfolio to Cannes and you met Rich Lascaris...
EV: Well, it was crazy. I took my portfolio with me, I was pretty naive. I took my work and thought, it's going to be so easy to speak to John Hunt or Marcello Serpa or whatever and it was just impossible. I was miserable. No one wanted to talk to me. So here I am with my work, no one wants to talk to me, I'm lying to everyone, "Yeah I've got lots of appointments, everything's fine."
I was drunk and luck was around and I just crossed someone who said, "Do you know Rich Lascaris?" I said, "Lascaris I know, I don't know Rich" It was Rich Lascaris from Hunt Lascaris. John Hunt wasn't around and I showed my work to Rich Lascaris. And in front of me he phoned John Hunt and he said, "Is that guy completely crazy and a little bit drunk? And he's in my room, in my suite in the Majestic." And he said to John, "He wants to work for us". And that was a start. John said - he told me later because I couldn't understand what he said to me because my English was very bad, and he said, "I can't promise you anything. Send me your work, I'll look at your work and if it's good I'll offer you a job." So that's the way it happened. 5 agencies that I wanted to work with and the first to respond was Hunt Lascaris. And in my mind the first one was the right one.
HE: Do you remember your first meeting with Erik, Tony? Do you remember your first impression of him?
TG: Yeah. Erik came in with a partner. A team. He kind of came in and it took me a couple of weeks to hang out with him. So it kind of went into, "Let's have a look at your book." And I quickly scanned though it. But before I did that I sat and chatted to him. You know, the book is important but the attitude, and passion, and the fire in somebody's eyes is more important. So the book was just a quick scan to see if he could do anything. And he clearly could. Erik is one of those guys - you get different kinds of creatives - you get creatives that don't have to try really hard because they're so talented. And then you get creatives that have to try really hard because they want to improve their talent. Erik is one of those rare people who is unbelievably talented and works unbelievably hard. I remember the first campaign that Erik presented to me. I was used to seeing (full sized) comps. He presented a page of little comps. Like ten ideas on a page. So it was really easy as a creative director to go, "Do that one, that one, that one, that one." It's a great talent.
HE: It became a fabulous partnership between the two of you and then you left to go to Bozell New York. What made you decide to go, and what made you choose Bozell?
TG: Well, I'd been with John a long time, John's a great guy. They built Hunt Lascaris from a very small place to something very powerful and the idea was to be the first global/local agency out of South Africa. And I stayed there a long time because it evolved, and changed, and grew so much that my job actually changed a lot. And I got to a point where I wasn't growing anymore. And it was really, really great. But I wasn't growing anymore.
We'd, nearly once or twice, almost opened an agency in New York, we were doing a lot of the BMW work out of South Africa through New York. And New York was always a place that I found really exciting. There's something about the energy of the place, the buildings are so tall, you tend to look up all the time, and I think it does something to your emotions. All religions look up like this. There's a wonderful pioneering spirit about New York that actually was very similar to the pioneering spirit of Johannesburg. Johannesburg is one of the only cities in the world that is not built on a port. It's built on gold; it's a pioneering city. There's still so much gold in the city that they can't get out because it would be dangerous. So the spirit of New York and the spirit of Johannesburg were kind of similar for me.
HE: But why Bozell?
TG: Well, you know, Bozell... I was kind of fortunate because I was looking around the world and I had a couple of offers in New York and I had a couple in London. And Bozell... my headhunter kind of convinced me to go and see Bozell and I kind of walked in and I met Tom and Tom had a Grand Prix, a Cannes Grand Prix on his table, and I looked at the client list and there were some really great clients and he basically said to me, "Look, we're making a ton of money. We have some great clients. I want to make this agency famous from a creative point of view because that's where we're kind of lacking."
HE: Was it a big risk or a small risk at the time?
TG: Huge risk. Huge, huge risk. Because it's never been done. So: huge risk, big reward. So that's what I did because I felt that I could always go back to South Africa, it was my safety net, and if I was going to do the New York thing, why not take the biggest risk possible.
HE: You ran towards the risk.
TG: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It was a very considered risk. You know: goal, risk, consider.
MS: New York.
TG: Yeah, cross it off. It was really considered and I felt that Tom had touched a lot of really good Jeep work. The Grand Prix, just beautiful work. So the guy had a business head and a creative heart, so I did and I joined and we had a lot of fun. We took it to the 3rd most awarded agency in 18 months in the world and that was just fun. It kind of all collapsed after that because it got swallowed up into Lowe's and so at that point it was kind of time for me to leave.
HE: Erik, what questions did you want Tony to answer before you joined Bozell New York?
EV: Honestly not much because I worked with Tony before. What's important for me - because I was still working with someone as a Creative Director at that point - I knew Tony, and what was important for me was a couple of things that can change your life. As a Creative Director, one day, he said two things that changed my life. One was: a good idea has to live. It's very important, it's easy to say but that's important. And the other was: I'm going to make you famous. But like out of the blue. I think I was in the f*cking toilet, like peeing, and he came in and out of the blue he said, "I'm going to make you famous." And it was just something spontaneous, you know. And that's what he does and something that he still does with people he works with. And what do you need more than someone who can take care of you? A good idea has to live and I'm going to make you famous. You can call that trust. You can call that whatever. So when he offered me a job I didn't need to think.
HE: That was what you needed to hear.
EV: I didn't even think. I was like, "Sure" because of what he did before.
HE: Marcello. Do you have a strong gut?
MS: Absolutely. I rely 100% on my gut.
HE: How did you develop that?
MS: I don't think it's development. I think it's 'trust my gut'. I always got a feeling of what is wrong and what is right. Right away. Very fast. So from the beginning I knew exactly what is good, what's right for me. I was always talking about my sense of career. And later on you develop a gut based on experience. You have so much experience accumulated that your gut says, "This is wrong or this is good direction, bad direction." But I always rely very much on my gut.
HE: What did your gut tell you about Almap/BBDO when you were considering joining them?
MS: At that time I was at DM9 and it was a very good agency, we started it from the beginning, winning a lot of awards and my gut told me that I had to move and the reason for that was because I always wanted to be... If I have a goal, besides the one of the rocking chair, it's freedom, and independence. Which is, for me, the most important thing in anybody's life. I want the freedom to decide what I should do or not. I want to be free to make my own decisions. So we had the chance, offered the chance.
I always wanted to have my own agency. I wanted to build an agency and say, "This is my agency." I don't have to say yes, no, maybe or be political to anybody. It was some kind of a goal. And then they offer me to buy shares to buy an agency together with two partners. One copywriter and Jose Luiz Madeira who is still with me and we're still very good friends and good partners. And we bought the agency, together with BBDO and we started the agency. The agency was crap at that time. Really crap. And I said, "Oh, let's go." But I said to the guy who owned the agency, I want to meet before I sign..."
HE: The agency is crap and you said, "Oh let's go"?
MS: Yeah, it was really crap. And if it's crap then you cannot make it worse. You can just make it better.
(LAUGHTER)
MS: So, which is quite safe, quite safe. But I remember and it was a gut decision, by far, really one of the most, the toughest decisions I ever had. The guy who owned the agency Alex Periscinoto - he's very kind and a gentleman, he was about 65 at that time and he built the agency from the 60's, he changed advertising in the 60's, and he asked me, "You want to go to the agency and see it before you sign?" So if I go and see the agency, I won't sign.
HE: Interesting.
MS: Yeah, So if I go there and see the agency definitely I would never sign. So that's the way I signed it, blind and go into it and make it. Because it was a gut decision.
HE: And did you have a plan for the agency when you went in?
MS: Actually, no, the plan was not to repeat the mistakes I saw in the other agencies. To do good work and have fun. Really. I remember we were sitting together and I said, "Let's have fun. Do good work and make money. It's all about that. So, let's do it.". We did it and as I said before we said, "Let's have a goal." But there was so much work to do that we never stopped and said, "Let's do work."
I remember one thing. I was in FIAP a couple of years ago after 7 years they invited me to FIAP in Buenos Aires to make a speech about the history of the agency. And it was, I think 1999, 2000, something around there and I packed all the work that I thought was relevant. Commercials and ads and I had about 70, 75 different ads and maybe 25 commercials. And my presentation was about the work. And I went there and I saw - I was the last presentation - it was two guys presenting their agency, one from Spain and one from Brazil, and they talked about philosophy, work philosophy, goals. And they talk about 45 minutes and they showed 4 commercials. They talked about 30 minutes about philosophy and 4 commercials. 2 were very good and 2 were really average, and the other one took a lot of people on stage and they are discussing about the rules of the agency. There were about 48 rules. They're reading. And they're reading the rules because you don't know it by heart. Which is quite weird. And after that they showed a couple of commercials. And after that I come on the stage and I said, "Guys we don't have..." and I realized that we don't have a philosophy in the agency. We don't have a table of 'we should'.
And this is something BBDO did later on, "The work. The work. The work." And that's something that I had, the work we'd done for the 7 years. It's all about the work. And they've put people, politics - anything else is bullsh*t. It's all about the work. And I said it, this is about the work. And I'm going to show the work I'm proud to present here.
So I presented ads, ads, ads, ads, commercial, commercial, commercial, commercial. And if you produce, like Erik did for you at some time (to Tony), a lot of ideas, you're gonna find good ones in there. And it's about amount, it's about quality.
Quality comes from quantity.
TG: Exactly.
MS: In the creative process you have to sit there and make make make make make make make. And at the end you look and say, "hmmm there's one good one. That's average." And you pick up the best ones. So it's about that.
TG: You know, there's a friend of mine in the U.S. - just on the quantity thing - he's a composer. And he's written many, many great songs. Any he's worked with many, you know, top talent. And there was a composers' gathering and he sat next to one of the best composers in the U.S. and this woman has written songs for everybody, from Liza Minnelli to Bon Jovi and in between and consistent. Every year, every year, every year, he says he sat with her and he said, over a couple of bottles of wine, "How do you do this? I'm kind of talented, you know and I've got a couple of songs that are famous and really great but how do you do this?" and she says, "It's easy."
HE: It's easy?
TG: "It's easy." WHAT!? "I write a song a day"
HE: Discipline.
TG: "I write a song a day."
MS: Michael Jackson came to Quincy Jones for the Thriller Album and he had about 78 different songs. 78. He said, "Can we choose?" He said, "Of course. If you are good, we can."
TG: 78?
MS: Yeah.
TG: Wow. So it's about just getting into the flow. It's about not analyzing it too much and having fun. Just doing it.
MS: Just by doing it and working and having fun.
TG: Write an ad a day. If you can crack an idea a day. Wow. Chances are...
MS: You're going to find something good.
TG: Yeah, find one or two good ones.
HE: Erik, you said, when you joined TBWA Paris, "Give me a year to do what I want or fire me." Why was that so important to you?
EV: It was a first experience for me as a 'boss' in a way. I was responsible for a department you know and I know myself and the thing is, if you want to make a change, you have to do it quickly.
HE: Quickly?
EV: Not that it's nice to make it quick. To change something you have to do it like a Blitzkrieg. It has to be fast.
MS: Yup.
EV: The only thing I know about advertising, everybody knows, the good points and bad points in the advertising industry: there are bullsh*tters and lots of politics and you have to deal with it. It was a crazy deal. And it wasn't a year. It was basically like a hundred days.
HE: A hundred days?
EV: A hundred days. And I asked because I just wanted to be free. Not to waste time. And my methods were a little bit radical for the French market you know. From a cultural point of view, I had to make it that way and it wasn't easy. And again, it was a huge risk which brings us back to what advertising is all about. If you don't take risk you can't make a huge change. If you are not working hard you can't make a change...
HE: Take risks...
EV: We all know that. And the thing we're dealing with most of the time, we all know, in our hearts we all know what's right and what's wrong. All jobs are to make it work, to identify people with potential and to eliminate what kills great ideas. And I did it and I wasn't dangerous. So that's why they let me do what I wanted to do.
HE: It was also about having freedom.
EV: If you can have freedom and you're talented, brave or whatever, everything will be fine. From my experience it's very very complicated to have freedom in the advertising industry. It's a everyday fight. It's not because people are bad or whatever, it's because they have their opinions and if you don't have a power to say this is right or this is wrong, it's a fight. It's complicated. So to have freedom in the industry, you have to create your agency and then there are lots of other problems so it's that balance and it's complicated to find. It's still, today, very complicated. So in that way it didn't really change.
HE: So 'complicated' is the default setting.
EV: Yeah sure.
HE: And how do you work within it?
EV: It's not because you win Agency Of The Year, or whatever, however many times you win it. It doesn't really change the power you have in the agency. You have to start from scratch. Nothing, it's there. You have to start again and it's not that easy. Freedom is like, if you can give real freedom, to a creative person, it's going to change lots of things. That's just the way it is.
HE: Let's talk about money. Let's talk about money and the role it's played in your career. Marcello, what about you?
MS: As I said, I was very lucky from the beginning. I started making 'money' or what for me was 'good' from the beginning, which is, I remember, we were discussing and I remember talking to you before, I remember one moment when I met a guy. And this guy was a little bit, 5 years, older than me and he said, he was telling a story about when he was 15, his goal was to have 30 million dollars. And when he was 20, his goal was to have 20 million dollars. And when he was 25 he wanted just 10 million dollars and then he was 30 and said he was happy if he got 2. But I remember asking myself, there's something wrong with that.
It's important; I always wanted to produce the best ad possible. I won't say the best ad in the world, because it sounds pretentious, but the best ad possible, and then the next day, produce a better ad than this one and then a better ad than the other one and make a stack of good ads. And if I have a stack of good ads, the money is going to come. But if you put the money in front, the good ads won't come up as high. Always put the work first and the money should come behind.
HE: Work first and money behind.
MS: I think in the beginning when you are starting a career, money shouldn't be important. Definitely not. You have enough to live, to have a comfortable life and enough to live and you have to concentrate on the work. Of course, when you pass 40, something changes, you are not making the same decisions that you have done in the past. When you pass 50 or 60, it's going to be worse. Otherwise my rocking chair is going to be sad and poor.
TG: Rocking chair, wheelchair.
MS: The wheelchair is going to change very fast.
HE: Thanks Tony.
(LAUGHTER)
MS: And it would be very romantic to say that it's not about the money, because at the end it is. At the end it is, but it should not be in the beginning. And it should not, never, NEVER, be the reason to change a job. This is my point of view. I never changed a job for money. I always changed for the chance to do better work, or the chance to have more freedom or the chance to be more happy, or the chance to have more fun or to make a bigger agency. But it should not be, never; always refuse offers to get a lot of money to work in a sh*t place or to work in a place where I would be uncomfortable and unhappy or not be able to produce good work. So I had many offers, during my life that I refused. Money's not everything. At the end it is but it should be.
HE: In it's proper sequence.
MS: Do the work. And be sure that someone is paying you, or the business is paying you enough that it's worth the money, but put the work in front.
HE: Right.
MS: And money should follow.
HE: Erik?
EV: Everybody has a point of view about the money. The only thing I can say, is sometimes I'm dealing with people, they want to leave the agency and I'm finding that the only question I'm asking is "Why do you want to leave? Is it to do better work?" And if that's the reason and the agency they are choosing makes sense. If they say, "I want to do good work and that's why I'm leaving". And you know that they're going to a bad place and I know that's not the right thing to do, then they are lying to themselves. So the thing is, if they want to leave at one stage for the money, it's fine, but they have to understand one thing, if you want to make money in advertising, you make a choice, to go to a place, because it happens to anyone who's got a little bit of talent, people are asking you to come and they are ready to pay you big money, or a little bit more than you've got. If you do that you have to be absolutely sure that your portfolio will grow. Because if you make a move and then you don't do great work, then your portfolio is slowly dying. At the end of the day, that's probably the last time you're going to make a move, in terms of money so you have to make sure of the move you do. Because the only thing I know is that if you want to make money one day, the only thing people are paying for in this industry is the quality of your portfolio.
HE: Right.
EV: And it's up to anyone at what moment they want to do that move for money. But obviously, the more you work, the better your portfolio is. The best one you can get. It's as simple as that. People are ready to pay you, the star of the moment or whatever, but at the end of the day, invest in your portfolio and one day you'll be able to have exactly what you want. Freedom to choose your agency. Freedom to move from one country to another. Freedom to get lots of money. Portfolio means money that's it.
MS: Yep.
HE: Tony?
TG: It's all about the money.
MS: One of your goals?
TG: Still haven't ticked it off though. It's still there. It's all about the money.
HE: I don't believe you.
TG: Absolutely. Absolutely all about the money. Clients come to us because they want to make more money, right? If you don't have the money you will be in the rocking chair that is ...
MS: The wheelchair ...
TG: The wheelchair. You just will. And you'll be reliant on everyone else. Here's the trick though: we're not bankers. Right? We're not investment brokers. What we do is, we sell ideas. You have to hunt the greatest idea possible. It will make you money. It just will.
You know, when we turned around New York, well we're trying to turn New York around, we're kind of almost there, but we didn't focus on how do we make the most money out of this. We focused on how to make the very best work that makes people around us famous. That makes our clients' business famous. That makes individuals famous. Why do we do THAT? Because that attracts the best people. That attracts the best clients. And that will in turn make you money. It will. It just will.
A lot of agencies think that they can hire a creative gun, pull him out of a hot creative agency, pay them twice, three times, four times more than what they're earning and then embed them into an agency and think that they can turn the place around. And normally, those guys, you never hear of them again. Where the smart ones come straight out of it at half the money again. The thing is, an agency needs to have the commitment, like what Erik was saying. You put a creative person into an agency to turn it around, but the management of the agency, the owners of the agency need to know that they need to change everything in the place.
MS: But they won't.
TG: And they won't. Very few people do that.
MS: They won't. They won't because the DNA of the agency is not great. They are just putting or buying some one who has a reputation or who has done very good work and give him the sensation, or the feeling that he is going to change the agency. He is not going to change the agency because the DNA of the agency needs to be changed from the top. It's not something a creative person can change. And you're going to go into a place and make a lot of money with the illusion he's going to change the place but after 6 months the account director says he's causing a lot of trouble, oh-oh. He wants to sell something the clients won't buy and we're losing the client. And here the guy is looking for jobs.
TG: You know it becomes really difficult to find anything after that because they failed.
MS: It happens all the time. They are buying the creative reputation to put on the logo for a couple of months, then that's it. After that, it's gone, and the guy is gone as well. So it's tough.
HE: The band is about to start playing but I want to ask you one very quick question: what do you think makes a good creative leader?
TG: Me?
HE: Yep, one sentence.
TG: What makes a great creative leader? Clarity. And the ability to make people believe they can be great. It's to have belief in what we do and to instill that belief in to the people around you. And to the clients that come to you. This belief is the biggest thing for me. There are many many many things that make a great creative director but I guess if there's one thing; the belief.
HE: That's the essence.
TG: Yeah, it's the belief and instilling that belief in the people around you. Clients. And people watching the work that you do. It's all belief in a product.
HE: Marcello?
MS: Many, many things but if I had to put it in one word it would be trust. And trust means that you have to be able to produce good work and be able to know the work. You have done work, and people say "Oh this guy's done this, he's good enough". A bit of trust and don't make false promises. Never make false promises. Don't promise the world if you cannot deliver. And I never make promises, I always say, "I'm not promising you anything. Let's do the work. And if the work is good, we're going to be famous and the work is going to be famous." But it has to be the work. Never promise anything.
Then second, one of the most important things is, at a certain moment when you're still producing ads, and I'm still producing ads; I still like to be an art director, I am an art director; never compete with a better idea than you have. To be able never to compete with someone which at that moment, or maybe for the future, is going to be better than you. You have to be humble enough to recognize that someone has done much better than you and is under you and look and it's just like, "Oh. Ah. Sh*t. Hmm. Ah."
(APPLAUSE)
MS: Much better but you have to be humble. If you compete with the guys you are dead.
(APPLAUSE)
HE: Erik?
EV: Well I guess to me it's a huge responsibility in life. If one day in your life you've got, I don't know if it's a chance, but if you've got the chance to be 'a leader', whatever, to me that means you're a good leader if you've got the ability to make the people working with you better, I mean, like not a better person. If you're coming to an agency I can't promise you anything else than to make you a good creative person. I'm not your dad; I don't want to be your friend. One thing about promises, only thing I can promise I'm going to make you better than you are now. Because that's my job. And if you can do that, if the deal is simple between two human beings. Why are you coming here? I'm coming here because I want to learn and grow. Well, if you can make that you're a good leader. Everything will follow. Money, success and stuff.
HE: Thank you. That's a great thought to close on. On behalf of everyone here, Thanks for sharing your ideas, thoughts, to help everyone here to get on their own road to greatness. I just wanted to give you a little book from me. These are 5 year diaries, and I sincerely hope that you'll use them to chronicle the next 5 years in what, I'm sure we all agree, has already been pretty amazing careers. Thank you.
(APPLAUSE)
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