Tom Bernardin, Chairman and CEO, Leo Burnett Worldwide, says creativity is the core asset of a business and understanding a client’s brand purpose has been key to unlocking the growth potential in markets all over the world
His father was a creative director, so he had “creativity inside”. however, it did not make him a creative leader. instead, he became a champion of creativity to help people who are creative to succeed, recounts tom Bernardin, chairman and CEO, Leo Burnett Worldwide, who has been leading the agency’s global growth agenda, riding on the ‘humankind’ philosophy of understanding people’s behaviour.
“there have been times in my career when i worked with extremely talented creative people who can’t present an idea for their life. they can create the idea, but they can’t present it and i would say, ‘Look it’s a great idea, don’t worry i’ll present it, i’ll sell it, you just make the work and i’ll sell it’ and i had a lot of fun doing that. and there were some big ideas that we sold – I didn’t create the ideas, but i would have probably helped sell them and put them on the board… that’s what i still love to do. i still love working with clients as much as i can, i enjoy it and hopefully the success is there to prove it,” says Bernardin.
THE ‘HUMANKIND’ FACTOR PAYS
indeed, Bernardin’s hands-on approach has paid for Leo Burnett and its clients: the agency has achieved year-on-year growth all through the past few years, thanks to smart acquisitions, consistent double-digit growth in emerging markets and progressive stewardship by the agency’s Chicago headquarters handling key global clients.
Leo Burnett has also been one of the most-awarded networks in the world, thanks to the leadership of Bernardin and Global chief creative officer mark tutssel, co-authors of the agency’s ‘humankind’ philosophy.
So how much has the talent pool of Leo Burnett delivered on the ‘humankind’ factor, in india and worldwide? “humankind has been the philosophy of the agency - how we express, how we work and how we develop our creative product - for a number of years and it’s been played out all over our workforce. The power of it is simply understanding people’s behaviour and a client’s brand purpose… a combination of those two makes for transforming human behaviour and it is working very well for us in all major markets,” says Bernardin. So what’s next? is there a new philosophy waiting to be unveiled? another book, perhaps? “no, no new philosophy, because the important thing with humankind is that it is organic. mark and i have something called the humankind quotient, which uses the Global product committee scale to measure brands, market by market, in global environments” Bernardin says.
BREAKING SILOS, MANAGING TALENT
one of the initial challenges for Bernardin when he took over as chairman and ceo nine years earlier was breaking down some of the silos prevalent in the organization. “We successfully did that,” says Bernardin, “talent management was another challenge, because we are only as good as our people and i think having the right kind of talent in the right job where people can excel and help our clients move forward has been very important.” it was a challenge, but in a positive sense, to create the management teams. Getting the entire organization, not just the creative department, focused on the most important thing at the agency - creative ideas – too was a challenge. “that focus has allowed us to increase our reputation globally year after year through cco mark tutssell’s leadership at the top, because i put him in place as soon as i became the ceo. having him as CCO has really paid off from a reputation and growth standpoint,” observes Bernardin.
CREATIVE SHOPS TO HAVE MEDIA PLANNING
Bernardin describes the creative agency of the future as one with media planning as part of its offering. “i don’t mean media planning in the traditional sense. i mean experiential planning, because in the creative process, we have to have that as a component - understanding experiences that people have with technology. creative agencies are already at the centre of creativity; encompassing digital, mobile and social. the future of creative agencies is very strong, in terms of being the facilitator, the coordinator of all of these tools because the great thing about technology is allowing people to interact one on one.” What brings it all together, says Bernardin, is big ideas coming from the creative agencies. “Lots of people have creative ideas, but creative shops have the unique ability to bring these points together and collaborate for the sake of clients.”
‘India team tripled the size of the agency in the last couple of years’
Tom Bernardin, Chairman and CEO, Leo Burnett Worldwide talks to Srabana Lahiri about expectations from Team India, working with global blue chip clients, growth in spite of the economic downturn and more…
Q] What is your sense of the level of creativity and talent in India? How happy are you with the progress seen in India in terms of global achievements and business wins?
It’s nice to see the quality of the creative improve in India… to see Goafest go international... We have a good management team at Leo Burnett India. They have tripled the size of the agency in the last couple of years, which is obviously very, very good. We want to continue to grow at a respectable rate, which I’m sure we will. We’ve made some acquisitions recently… Indigo for example… which I think is very good for the portfolio we have in India. We’re headed in the right direction, but I want more growth… we’re among the Top 5, I’d like to be No. 1. We are going to focus on that.
Q] What is your assessment of the leadership in India?
Well, you have to look at the track record of growth in this market and the creative reputation. Both are on the increase, so my feeling is that we have strong leadership here that has helped to grow the agency exponentially over the past few years, and we have creative leadership that has helped us grow our creative reputation as well.
Q] What has been your experience of working with global clients such as Coca-Cola, Kellogg’s, McDonald’s, Philip Morris, P&G and Samsung – does their and philosophy always match or in any way impact the core Leo Burnett philosophy?
I enjoy working with all of those clients. We have a great base of clients and we work with each one of them differently. We don’t have a standard approach for multinational clients. How those clients like to work is how we work. We develop great work for every one of those brands, work that has helped those brands become famous in many cases and worked for us too, so it’s good.
Our philosophies have never clashed. The service we provide is one of creativity and to be able to do that most effectively, we need to thoroughly understand our client’s brand purpose, human purpose...
As long as we’re doing that part of our job, there can never be a clash.
Q] There is a debate about the trust factor in advertising… and claims that it is on the decline… Your comment?
Several clients have been with us for more than 50 years and that is not because we are nice people. We have partnered our clients to create some of the most iconic brands in the world. Trust is a very powerful thing because if you are my client and I know that you are going to trust me either with all of your business, all of your brands, your most important brands or whatever it is that buys from me a deep personal commitment to do the very best job that I can, because it’s an honour to have that kind of trust being put in the agency.
Q] Which is your fastest growing market?
North America is growing at a very good rate at the moment. From a percentage growth standpoint, we have very strong growth coming out of Latin America, particularly out of Brazil. We have got Russia and China doing relatively well, India’s doing well though here the economy is only growing by about 5%, we get our share of that market. We want to beat the growth rate of last year even with the economic downturn. That’s the nature of the work. It’s early in the year, but it looks like we are on track to deliver the growth that we had anticipated, but it is a very volatile economy and anything can change overnight these days.
Q] Are your big clients tightening their purse strings?
Not at the moment.
Q] How much of your growth is on account of existing big clients and how much comes from major account wins in a year?
I can’t tell you the percentage, but we have good organic growth coming from within existing clients and we have good growth coming from decent wins that we have had. One of our open categories was pharmaceuticals and we recently won globally a nice piece of the Pfizer business.
Q] At Goafest, a prominent marketer said that we should do away with creative awards, because agencies create ads and people from those same agencies judge them. Would you like to comment?
I do not think we should give up creative awards and eliminate them, that’s ridiculous. If we need to do anything at all, we need maybe better policing, monitor better what awards are entered and how they are judged. But, in my experience for the most part, the judging is pretty intense and there was a time not too long ago when it was a club of people, all friends with each other, all conversant with one another’s work. We are quickly moving away from that now. The world’s attention on the power of creativity is too high and the value of creativity is too high for it to lend itself to more scrutiny, and we have to be more transparent. It’s a good thing. But we should not abort the awards altogether as that is one of the ways to attract talent; one of the ways we demonstrate the power of creativity that helps forward our businesses.
Q] What are the challenges in growing the business in the India market?
Well, I think it is going to be having the ability to tap into some of the new, obvious ways of communicating with people, which are mobile devices. That’s a huge opportunity in India and everywhere else in the world for that matter… monetizing that, the impact of social media that will come through the mobile devices. We want to reinforce further the sharp marketing expertise that we have, because right now, we generate about 12-15% of our revenues internally. The challenge is continuing to bring in India either through acquisitions or by talent infusion in the areas of specialization and segmentation, so that we help the business grow.
Q] Are you looking at any acquisitions just now, since you mentioned acquisitions?
There is none at the moment specifically, but we are always open, we always look all over the world for the right thing to complement our portfolio, which means bringing in expertise that will complement something that we are just beginning to build internally or something that will come in and give us a capability that we don’t have at the moment.
(With inputs from Simran Sabherwal and Saloni Dutta)
Feedback: srabana@exchange4media.com
