Boyle’s Stop-Start Ten Commandments
JWT’S global planning director, Sean Boyle, was one of 8 winners (from 84 entries) of the Transforming Advertising competition hosted by the American Association of Advertising Agencies. He recently presented his Stop-Start Ten Commandments at the 4As annual conference held in San Francisco. Listed below, the Commandments are “five things we need to stop doing; and five things we need to start doing, in order to transform the ad business and make the world a better place.”
1. START TELLING THE TRUTH
To each other. To our clients. About our brands.
2. STOP THE BLOODY POLITICS
Becausewe’re an industry run by bankers, it is the conniving crowd pleasersrather than the cream that tend to rise to the top. A general rule: inmost agencies, those with vision who ‘get-it’ are bullied andundermined at every turn by those with no vision, who don’t.
3. START HAVING FUN AGAIN
Weused to be the envy of the salary-man. Why have we let it become soserious and dull? The greatest work ever done in our industry, hasalways come from places where people like each other and enjoy…reallyenjoy… playing and partying together as a team.
4. STOP OVER-THINKING EVERYTHING
Whatwe make doesn’t really matter. If we accept this, we get somewhereimmediately! It is also true that what we make matters less when weover-analyse it in order to appeal to lowest common denominators.
5. START DOING SOMETHING!
Insteadof taking 8 months to do 1 thing…we need to be doing 8 things in 1month. Many of these things may fail. Allow. Today, one in tenmeetings are necessary, one in ten people at those meetings actuallyget it, one in ten jobs get made, and one in a hundred are any good.
6. STOP THE INCESSANT RESEARCH
Putten industry professionals who know what they are doing into a room,ten people who know what makes people tick, and who understand a goodpiece of communication from a bad; and whatever comes out of that room,can and should go straight into the media. We absolutely do not needto waste time obtaining prior validation from a postman, a bus-driveror a housewife.
7. START DOING GOOD
We need tobring our clients to CSR programmes…all of them…not just the cigaretteboys, the oil companies and the huge conglomerates who make sugary,cheesy comestibles…all of them…doing it cos they want to, not cos theyfeel they have to.
8. STOP BANGING ON ABOUT “DIGITAL”
There’sno such thing. We are all one and the same now and have been since thestart of this century. Agencies need to start walking the talk becauseright now, clients are leaving.
9. START UPS AGAIN, PLEASE
Goout there and do your thing. Don’t suffer it…change it. Make itbetter. You’ve learned how not to do things…now put that learning intopractice. Be ethical. Be creative. Be nice to other people. Protectand care for your staff. Be the next Clow or Hegarty or Chiat. Bebrilliant.
10. STOP USING ANIMALS IN COMMERCIALS
Adswith chimps, dalmatians, koalas, ostriches, mooseseses, rhinos,warthogs, water buffalo, lizards, clydesdales, horses that aren’tclydesdales, dolphins, the list goes on. These are today’s equivalentof Two C’s in a K. And we really can do better folks.
You can link to his speech HERE
36 Comments
It all makes a lot of sense.
Great post. I love that Sean always tells it like it is, bad hairstyles and all.
So true.
Bad new for Optus then. But sooooo true Sean.
It’s all true Sean.
Only problem is, if you believed any of it, you wouldn’t work at JWT.
Another smart person with beliefs that doesn’t match their job.
Great. Why doesn’t every JWT office just call all their clients together and tell them what the new JWT rules are. JWT Melbourne can tell Ford to start telling the truth and stop with all their research. Maybe JWT Sydney could remind all their clients that the ad industry used to be a lot of fun to work in but all this over-thinking and appealing to the lowest common denominator has sucked the fun out of it? Maybe he should demand a meeting with Kraft [the makers of cheesy ‘comestibles] and tell them its about time they started doing good things in the community because its the right thing to do not because they’ve been forced to? Then they can close each meeting by saying their world-wide head of planning wants JWT to encourage all the best people working on their business to leave the agency and start their own business.
Why not start with this truth.
Was that a typo in line one of point 2: bankers…
Hey 1.54pm, what you say is true but maybe he’s trying to change things at JWT.
Give him a chance.
Indeed. Sean, time to start your own agency?
points
1 agree but obvious
2. Agree but obvious
3 agree but obvious
4. I dont think people are thinking enough. The time dedicted to socling problems and developing creative solutions has reduced massively. We need to THINK MORE not less
5. No shit – of course
6. We need good research more than ever. The demand on human insight is now magnified significantly
7. yes
8. Hmm how many tvcs vs ‘digital’ do u do?
9. Yes you should
10. Why not. If its effective animals can be great
You’re in the business of flogging other people’s stuff. Anything that assists in that task is good. Anything that doesn’t is out. I’m way past having ideals and pretending that advertising is different to other professions.
Yep Kellogs does all of that.
We should stop using people in ads too. Blondes, brunettes, redheads etc. We really can do better folks.
I’m still laughing at “not using animals in commercials”…
Come on Sean…you’re a smart bloke, but this is all a lot of fluff.
Apart from the majority of it being damn obvious, there is nothing really ground breaking here.
Plus, you work for JWT. Do you honestly think the “bankers” that run JWT (or WPP for that matter) would be happy with your take on things?
Why don’t you start your own shop? From what I know you have mainly worked for the monolith shops and haven’t been with any innovative start up shops…so maybe, instead of telling people what they should be doing, you should do it yourself.
As a creative I hate research, but research that unearths invaluable insights is more than welcome. Researching concepts is not welcome. But I am sure JWT research the hell out of stuff, so are you now going to tell all JWT clients not to do that? Good luck.
Stop using animals? Ok, that will make selling dog and cat food a bit harder, but you must be right.
And I love the part about politics…I’m sure you have managed to eliminate that at JWT New York.
Anyway Sean, am eagerly awaiting the new version of JWT, the one without research, no politics, better productivity, less meetings, that has more fun and doesn’t care much about digital.
darren, so true. that’s a speech dan wieden could legitimately make – not a wpp salaryman.
Actually, the people that control the cash flow of a company are the life blood. The wankers that spend all day on this blog aren’t.
Advertising used to be fun until planners came along and over-analysed and researched everything which gave clients and easy way out from making decisions or being brave or both.
woof-wooof!@
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWVYego3Fjc
I found the ‘stop banging on about digital’ call amusing. Lots of fuckwits in Sydney like to shout about those that ‘get’ digital, and then there’s those recruitment ads that scream ‘DO YOU GET DIGITAL? If you don’t get digital then stop reading here right now!’.
And there were all those smug digital creatives that thought that bells and whistles are more important than a strong concept.
Good on this guy for speaking his mind. Although I don’t agree with him that seeking out the opinion of the average person walking down the street is a waste of time. The ad industry’s world and the world of the average person are very different. One is full of people trying to act fucking cool, shouting ‘Do you get digital’ and thinking that advertising is the most marvellous art form ever (it’s not. Sorry) the other is people that see advertising as an annoyance.
I’d like to a point 11.
Stop spending your days writing lists about how work should be done.
None of you sour fucks bagging this guy will ever run your own shop – no matter how much you secretly crave to.
And as for the money guys, your talents and training while necessary, are vanilla. You are plug-ins and you would have no money to count or spend without the suits, creatives and planners who do the work, so um, go fuck yourselves.
I feel better now.
Hey 10:37 PM, 10:18 AM here. I run my own shop and do quite nicely thankyou. And what I wrote earlier still stands.
So when is Sean going to start telling himself the truth that he’s not transforming himself or the ad business at JWT or making the world a better place?
Sean, keep your solutions to the world to yourself and transform you own miserable underperforming network.
WHat? No comments about the Miami Vice outfit?
@9:23 AM
EL OH EL!
Why doesn’t he focus on changing his jacket before he decides to reinvent the wheel.
Oh, the jacket…
I think by “over-thinking” he means concentrating on the minutiae as opposed to not thinking enough in the big idea sense. Maybe you should think more before you blog, eh!
sounds like he’s going to be starting his own business…..
Welcome to Australian Advertising folks.
A man comes along with some valid points to help the entire ad industry
change for the better. Not overnight, admittedly, but a few things for some board directors to chew over and perhaps help raise the level of integrity in this business. (OK. Apart from point ten.)
Instead of it being taken as a clarion call towards combating the spineless paralysis endemic in most Australian agencies of acting in fear of upsetting those in the agency heirarchy threatened by brave thinking, or maybe even the client.
Probably not.
Instead. As per. it’s drowned here in a flurry of sledging NIMBY’s
Australian advertising is so busy bitching it’s no surprise it finds it hard to be taken seriously on the world stage.
2:51 I must disagree. Not about how lame the industry in this country is – I admit it’s utterly woeful. But it’s this meaningless clap trap, when, like all industries, the most important thing is making as much money as possible, that are the problem. What this guy is proposing is neither economically sustainable or strategically achievable. Start doing good? There’s no money in ‘doing good’. Stop the bloody politics? You’ll never stop politics, especially in an industry that is built on deception and spin. Furthermore, this member of the Australian Adland oligarchy wouldn’t have been in this position to produce this diatribe without years of political maneuvering.
And one more thing. I keep hearing about ‘bravery’. Bravery is the sort of trait that is required in a soldier, not someone who is tasked creating propaganda for various companies. If you decide to be brave all the time, you’ll find yourself out of a job. This is an industry of doing what you’re told. Not fighting against the system. The system is fragile enough these days. It would be rather foolish to rock the boat. We’re lucky to have such jobs, even if we’re underpaid.
I think a lot of people commenting should pay attention to points 2,4 & 5.
“Stop the bloody politics”
“Stop overthinking everything”
“Start doing something”
Back to work slackers.
4.49. If this is what you really believe, you are indeed lucky to have a job. However I doubt very much that you are underpaid.
4.49 doesn’t even have a job. He writes copy for the dole office.
Get back to work 4:51 I’m not paying you to tell people to get back to work!!
4:49 why do you have to bring up beliefs? We’re having a nice discussion about this Boyle character (whomever he is) and you say something like “if this is what you really believe”.
Why don’t you go door knocking if you believe in something. We people in advertising believe in percentages, bottom-lines and moving units.
There is no room for beliefs in this industry!