by Johanna McDowell. “How did you help your clients thrive during the pandemic and lockdown” is essentially the theme of this latest AdForum Worldwide Summit, 30 November–9 December 2020. Because it’s been virtual, we’ve been able to meet with agencies from Cape Town to Helsinki and from New York to Madrid while still not moving from our offices or our kitchens.
It’s remarkable to think how much more we’ve been able to connect at AdForum because of the accelerated use of technology — and we’ve met agencies that we otherwise might not have had a chance to encounter. Apart from the agency presentations, we’ve also had daily catchup sessions with the consultants only. This serves to reinforce the longstanding relationships that we’ve built across the world over the last 13 years that I’ve personally been attending these summits.
Embracing the theme, the agencies have generally shown us a lot of work that they’ve been producing during the past nine months. They’ve also been able to share results; it’s no longer just about the empathy needed for brands to cope during the pandemic but it’s much more about the recovery, the rebuilding and the way in which we can come out of the global recession that covid-19 has created.
Accelerated
Several of the independent, localised agencies are actually producing global work for global brands; there’s no question that this has been accelerated by the coronavirus.
For example, &Rosas in Madrid showed us work for Boots/Walgreens, SEAT, Bacardi and Pepsico. This agency prides itself on being independent, with 75 staff members, and being one of the top five agencies in Spain and top three independents. It’s never lost a client in 16 years of being in business through poor service or lack of creativity and delivery. Case studies from sports brand, Decathlon, and alcohol brand, American Gin, were shown to us. Regarded as the “Wieden & Kennedy” of Spain, it completed its session with some work for automotive brand, Cupra.
We also heard from the top global team at Wunderman Thompson, which focused on “inspiration” as its theme. During the lockdown period, it’s been able to create a series of tools, both for creative and measurement purposes, on a platform that’s shared among its 20 000 staff worldwide. This has enabled staff to remain connected throughout this period and to be able to continue their focus on creative work based in data.
We saw case studies for British Telecom regarding soccer; Red Cross; Avon Brasil’s This is My Colour, relating to cosmetics produced purposefully for black women; Burger King Italia’s Social Distancing Whopper, using extra onions and breath as a social distancing method; and Kit Kat Amsterdam taking a break from its “Have a break”.
Wunderman Thompson has won 450 new business pitches this year globally — very, very impressive during such a period as this. It’s also focused on its Unilever relationship and how this worked during covid-19. “For Unilever to win in business [it] must win in ecommerce” is the belief that’s been followed this year in particular and we were shown work that demonstrated the various brand commitments to purpose at the speed of culture for Vaseline, and for human and authentic connection for Lux.
Independent agencies
We saw five independent agencies, all belonging to the Network One group of 1 200 agencies worldwide. This association of independent agencies has been built over a 16‑year period; 50% of the agencies are creatively led, 20% media and the balance in PR.
Over these five ‘speed-dating’ sessions, we met with King James Group Africa, which got us off to an impressive start with its wonderful agency reel showing clips and highlights of its very best work with commentary from agency founders, James Barty and Alistair King. This was the first time a South African agency has featured at the AdForum Summit and the feedback from my consultant colleagues was very favourable indeed. Flying the flag for South Africa, let’s hope we see more SA agencies participating in future summits — our creativity and quality of work are world-class.
Kurio, based in Helsinki, is a social media specialist agency but its winning recipe, which has garnered it many Cannes Lions wins, is based on something happening (action), as well as something being said. It works globally and its case study for Microsoft’s Surface the Woman as IT influencers was a good demonstration of its capability.
Zulu Alpha Kilo is based in Toronto and showed us some extraordinary and brilliant work for Cineplex. It’s also initiated an industry ad, Say No to Spec, extolling the dangers of agencies falling into the trap of providing work for no charge to prospective clients. The creative leader and founder, Zak Mroueh (hence the agency name/initials), was formerly at TAXI, a very well-known and highly creative agency in Canada which we’d met previously at AdForum in Copenhagen several years ago.
Despite the name of this agency, London Advertising, 92% of the work it does is for overseas clients with global and international briefs. Some excellent new business wins during lockdown, many of which happened as a result of the agency campaign it ran to support the “keep advertising when there is a downturn” which agencies advocate to clients. This time, however, the agency put its money where its mouth was and ran the campaign for itself. It worked.
Humanise is a collective of eight agencies under one roof: all independent but with a single culture. With offices in Toronto and Montreal, this agency philosophy is “human-first creative”, making them very relevant for this particular time we’re living through. It was the final Network One group presentation we viewed.
Herezie is a 100% independent agency based in Paris, with 80 employees, and we saw the work that it did during lockdown as setting a context for some of the brands it works with, such as FREE (second-largest French mobile network), for which it ran a campaign all over France. Les Voisins (“the neighbours”) featured relatable amusing and typical covid-19 instances. In addition, one of its clients is Amazon Prime. It launched a number of commercials for the various shows that were starting, such as Jack Ryan: Season 2, where it also included Amazon Binge Shopping through very clever tech that enabled viewers to spot things they wanted to buy in the Jack Ryan movie, and then actually click on them and purchase in real time. Extraordinary tech and creativity.
Some other excellent case studies were shared for Superwear, Unicef and Vileda, all produced during covid-19 and using the more amusing aspects of the situation we’ve all found ourselves in over this period. Some really brilliant work.
By The Network, a new agency network, was started nine months ago alongside covid-19!! Launched and owned by creative leaders and founders of their own agencies, including Herezie for example, this network is designed to completely disrupt the network model which is now felt to be too “corporate”. By The Network is now a network of 450 creatives of 40 nationalities in 17 agencies in 21 markets. It’s happy to work on a project basis, and will work locally or globally. It’s proud of the fact that it has no “layers of people” but is rather a carefully curated and exclusive group of highly creative independent agencies. It has a customised and unique IT platform so that members may all communicate and share work.
I have a list of the agencies that are part of this — they’re all over the world, independent and with different disciplines. And, yes, an agency from SA is going to be invited to join the network. Watch this space.
RAPP, Proximity merger
The Omnicom Precision Marketing Group (OPMG) presentation was powered by RAPP and Proximity. We looked ‘Through the Keyhole’ for this presentation, which focused on work that stood out as a beacon of positivity during lockdown. More and more clients are needing to make their first-party data work harder along with creativity and, during the pandemic, RAPP (well-known for data and direct marketing) and Proximity (tech) merged to create this group that will transform businesses. Once again, it’s all about data and creativity. We’ve seen this model operating very effectively in SA already in the area of digital creative AND media.
Wendy Clark, former DDB Worldwide CEO, joined dentsu some 99 days ago . She’s an extraordinary leader and has already powered her way into the dentsu network, creating change every day. It tracks its internal successes as well as external — continuously. She was happy to report that it’s recorded the highest level of employee engagement within dentsu for three years. Client referrals are at their highest for two years, too. An impressive start to a great session.
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