We have a lifetime of ideas

Part 1: Ideas about being an in-house creative leader of influence

 

As a Chief Creative Officer, you advocate for the importance of creativity in business culture. What does an effective creative business culture look like, and what are some key factors that help foster it within an organization?

 

I joined what3words when it was still a startup, and I had the belief that creativity could add a huge amount of value to the business with both Intellectual Property as well as Marketing impact.

Studies from McKinsey and Adobe have found the correlation between more innovative and creative business cultures and return on investment to shareholders which can be between 3x and 10x higher. Basically, more creative companies adapt faster and take advantage of more opportunities. Perfect for a start-up model.

In practice that means everyone in the company should feel safe enough to offer up innovations and ideas they aren’t asked for, that leaders can respond in a consistent and thoughtful way, and that systems and processes can and do change.

That’s possible with leadership, a great brand story, values, behaviours and inclusion.

Marketing and Studio is a small part of the bigger operation, but I believe we have a responsibility to be creative champions for the business. To show what3words how insanely world-changing it is, and to help maintain that spirit of ambition and genius that started the company. We demonstrate it through the things we make and how our team engage with their colleagues and client partners.

what3words is a creative company.

 

From your experience, how do you demonstrate the business impact of creativity to CEOs and other stakeholders? What kind of metrics or results resonate most with leadership in evaluating the success of creative initiatives?

 

I’ve worked with Ogilvy, Unilever and Philips and I’ve learned that good CEOs keep things simple, they need to see their North Star [IP1] graph go up and to the right. At what3words linking the work we do in Marketing to that graph is easy since everything must fit into the company strategy. We are Growing Users, Growing Usage or Growing Revenue. Ideally all three at the same. Our copywriters know the business impact their creative decisions about ad headlines have on the business because we work with a well organised Growth team. We measure only what’s important. The what3words North Star and other key metrics are shared monthly with the whole company. We do deeper dives into specific areas of spend like country marketing campaigns or in-app push notifications every few weeks. When the thinkers and makers understand the finances, that drives results.

I do think there is too much talk about the C-Suite not understanding the impact of creativity, I don’t think that’s true. The better question is what does the word “creativity” mean to the C-Suite? Creativity is a tool to solve business problems, it’s so much bigger than a campaign or tactics. We need to elevate the discussion to strategy and outcomes.

 

What advice would you give to emerging creatives who want to build a career that spans both agency and in-house roles? How can they develop both their creative and business acumen to succeed in today’s industry?

 

Be patient and focus on the work.

Trust yourself to come up with a lifetime of ideas.

Understand how the organisation makes money. Especially if you don’t like to think about money – get good-enough at it.

Time is the most valuable thing you have. Take the time to say thank you and give back to strangers when you can.

Read, listen and discuss a wide variety of subjects that are not your day job. Your friends and your career will thank you.

Finally, focus on the work.

 

How do you see the role of modern technology in the field of creativity and marketing? Does technology help push the boundaries of creativity or can it sometimes be a hindrance?

 

The role of technology hasn’t changed much in the last twenty years for marketing. The useful stuff still does things like help us get meaningful feedback, improve communication and make and distribute things faster. The distracting stuff is still overhyped tech that burns brightly then finds itself in the “metaverse”. As a maker for mass audiences you should invest the majority of your time in the cutting edge of popular tech. The things your clients and audiences actually use. That’s the area where creativity is most needed to stand out, and therefore most powerful.

Technology is just a tool. Touch screen or pencil, it’s all the same. I see the hindrance as our human tendency to get stuck in familiar ecosystems and avoid friction or confusion. Yes, I think struggling with your materials and adapting to what is in front of you is a good thing. It’s an age-old ingredient to finding individual style and original execution. Limitations force us to come up with novel solutions. The what3words Studio probably think I’m eccentric because I use a PC and they all use Macs. It’s minor example to encourage anyone to break out of the comfort zones it’s so easy to fall into. Get a different phone, use digital brushes with erratic features, try an AI assistant but don’t rely on it, add some difficulty to your craft so it doesn’t all look like the same pattern.

 

How do you balance the need to be creative with the pressure to deliver business results? How do you convince management of the value of bold creative ideas?

 

This question supposes that business results and creativity are on opposite sides of the equation. It’s one equation: creativity equals results. If you need to convince management about an idea it isn’t rooted in a business objective that matters. A creative leader is invested in the business as a whole and works with their team to make the right bold ideas.

 

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing marketers today and how should they prepare for the future?

 

From my perspective, I’d say:

I think over relying on the social media platforms for audiences is a risky position to bet on. Diversify your channel portfolio with small experiments and prepare your ability to deliver messages beyond social media while you can.

Economic and social volatility is endemic it seems, so have a strong brand story that the whole organisation understands and can use to do their jobs through the good times and the bad.

If you’re bringing creative services in-house, I’d avoid recreating an agency model. There is no “accounting firm model” in-house, there’s just Finance.

Be continuously creative with the future.

 

 

Part 2: Ideas about creating in-house work that inspires

 

What was the most unexpected challenge you faced when moving from the agency world to leading an in-house creative team? How did your past experience as Worldwide Creative Director at Ogilvy London and adam&eveDDB influence your approach to in-house marketing at what3words?

 

  My experience with world-class agencies gave me confidence in the business impact creative work can make, and I learned how to communicate that from some great client and agency leaders. I also saw wastage in the agency/client process, so with Giles Rhys Jones (former CMO of what3words), we were determined to keep the best parts and dump the things that frustrated us. That helped us build a creative capability that perfectly fit what3words culture and objectives.

From a personal perspective, adapting to the geospatial tech industry, even if my job description was basically the same, was surprisingly hard. All of us marketing people had to learn how to change our language and working approach to fit into the culture and norms of the business to be effective. That took a few years to understand deeply and get right.

 

what3words has an award-winning in-house marketing team. What principles and values did you apply when building it? What do you think makes the team truly special?

 

It takes a creative team to do this, and the leaders of Marketing and Studio are exceptional: Jane Stephenson (Marketing Director), Michelle Dunne (Head of B2C Marketing) and Giles Rhys Jones (ex what3words CMO). Plus, our gang of creative champions (and I include the founders in that group).

One key change we made from agency process is that our creative work is open to view at any time. No surprises. No big reveals. No hiding work away until a writer, editor or designer think’s it’s perfect. Everyone associated with a project can view the work in progress, including the CEO checking on a script he’s interested in while it’s being written. We’ve had to become very as an organisation at giving and receiving feedback, but it’s really made us stronger as creative people and more understood by the business.

 

You’ve discussed the "Ready Fire Aim" principle in building the what3words brand. Could you elaborate on what that means in practice? How does this approach differ from traditional brand-building strategies, and how has it shaped the success of what3words?

 

“Ready Fire Aim” is a what3words company value and basically means that we use the best information that we have to create the best thing we can in the time we have and send it out into the world. Then we observe what happens and learn where and how to improve. We balance the risk of error against the risk of missing an opportunity.

It does encourage cycle of continuous improvement, and when you’re building a brand from scratch it is, in my opinion, the most efficient, open-minded and creatively exciting method of doing that. At the project level, things like newsletters or brochures, this generates weekly and monthly improvements. At a Brand level we now audit the previous 18-24 months’ work, and based on the company’s present objectives agree on what evolution is needed. I like to judge the assets on a spectrum of “more of – less of”. For instance, we’ve updated our Brand Principles to create “more of” the campaigns that were most effective and loved.

“Ready Fire Aim” means that if something doesn’t turn out as intended, we aren’t judged negatively for trying. The worst thing to do is not make the attempt if given the opportunity. I’ve been a part of some insightful company projects that missed their mark for a variety of reasons, and then we add that knowledge to our strategy and processes, and keep going. 

 

You mention "Make new mistakes" in your talk, which is a refreshing take on the value of creativity. Could you explain how making mistakes has impacted the way what3words approaches innovation and marketing? How do you create an environment where new mistakes are seen as opportunities for growth?

 

The value of “Make New Mistakes” describes a culture of innovation with research. The emphasis is on NEW. As you can imagine, most everyone who joins what3words has the same kinds of ideas about where the system could be used, or which organisations would be great clients. These ideas seem blindingly obvious at first glance, but we encourage new colleagues to ask why something hasn’t been done before proposing it should be done. When a company is ten years old and has had some very smart mathematicians, AI specialists, language jedi’s and business development masters build it, a new, good idea is incredibly valuable and worth trying.

Or, if it’s an old idea but the context has changed so it may work differently, research will explain how and justify the risk of making it a new mistake.

We apply the same approach to marketing. Researching an idea makes it stronger, less easy to dismiss, and when the context changes, or a new client partner joins, technology changes, or fashion changes, old ideas can become new again.

 

As the co-founder of Truth & Spectacle, you focus on inclusive creativity. What role does inclusivity play in driving creative success, and how can organizations integrate inclusive practices to co-create effectively with their teams and customers?

 

Research by George Land shows we are all born with imaginative problem-solving skills and life teaches us to be uncreative. We lose our skills as we grow up due to rules and regulations, judgement, fear, criticism, and even brain development.

People stop participating. It’s incredibly sad.

Organisations that want to tap into that brain power need to create a space with less fear and criticism, teach some basic creative skills that open up the ways people can express themselves, and co-create stories that lead to actions.

We are all comfortable with different levels of sharing our thoughts, organisations can facilitate that. It takes experience to listen carefully and to support participants to link up all those individual stories into collective stories that matter to them.

That’s what we mean by inclusive creativity.

 

Ivan Pols
Creative guy who draws.
www.ivanpols.com
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