A recent article in The Economist attempted to reveal the secret to Apple’s extraordinary powers of innovation. A bit like the design of Apple’s products, the answer was perfectly simple. That innovation can come from without as well as within (the idea for the iPod was conceived by a consultant hired to run the project).
Not before time, Asia’s communications industry is trying to do the same. But is it working? Patrick Stahle, the Asia-Pacific head of Aegis Media, has made a point of picking non-media people to fill the top jobs as the network repositions itself as a communications planning outfit.
Himself from a curious background (a stint as a dotcom entrepreneur and a pilot in the Swedish navy bookend a colourful CV), Stahle gave a man with no media experience the job of running the Singapore and Hong Kong offices last month: Richard Leong from BenQ Siemens. “Advertising is more conservative and inward looking than any industry,” says Stahle, who has experience of several. “The business is converging quickly, and we need fresh thinking to break people out of their silos.
“We need to take lessons from the likes of Procter & Gamble, who bring in inexperienced people and encourage them to question what they’re doing.”
In no area is imaginative recruiting more necessary than digital. Ogilvy & Mather Singapore has been proudly telling the world the story of Mark Seeger, its head of digital, who was a Nasa rocket scientist (no, really) and a designer at Apple before he decided that advertising was more his shtick.
“We have to take more risks and be prepared to fail with new people we bring into the industry,” says Stephen Mangham, the agency’s group chairman.
But that’s easy for him to say, Mangham’s rivals object. “Ogilvy is a rich giant that can afford to gamble with the odd off-the-wall hire,” says one.
“I need people with ideas that are immediately executable. I have revenue targets to meet. Ever tighter deadlines, shrinking budgets and impatient clients are not conducive to risky hires.”
Neither are the quirks of agency culture, says the chief strategy officer of McCann Worldgroup Malaysia, Pratik Thakar, who has been busy staffing his planning department with bloggers, content producers and ethnographers.
“There’s a risk that outsiders will feel alien in an environment they perceive as inescapably advertising,” he says. “Often, ad people don’t know how to talk to them, and the biggest task I have is helping them fit in.”
But Aaron Lau, once the regional head of DDB, now the head of Bravo Asia (an agency which uses industrial architects, visual artists and product designers as well as regular ad folk) thinks such changes are cosmetic. “The problem with the big agencies is that there’s no immediate need for them to evolve.
If a client approaches Omnicom’s John Wren with a problem, he’ll cobble together a team of 50 or so specialists if he needs to. The best these agencies can give their clients is a 360-degree solution, which is rarely the most effective answer.”
Happily, Leong, the new face at Aegis, would agree. He argues that for agencies to really evolve and start behaving beyond their traditional means, they should bring in the ultimate non-industry outsider: the consumer.
“Why not start with the end user?” suggests Leong. “Design company Ideo famously believes in seven-day product design — from concept to prototype — thanks to direct contact with the consumer.
There’s no research. No data. Just intuition and an ear to the consumer. Who’s to say we can’t do the same?”
