LONDON – In the highly competitive world of business, being nice can come a long way – this is what legendary UK adman Peter Mead talks about in his recently launched book, “When In Doubt, Be Nice: Lessons from a lifetime in Business.”
Together with his friends the late David Abbott and Adrian Vickers, Mead founded Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO over 30 years ago. The agency has since grown to become the UK’s most enduring – and, as some have proclaimed, happiest – creative agency.
Now chairman of AMV BBDO’s holding company Omnicom Europe, Mead still leads the agency and goes to work every day as he has for 37 years. The agency itself has grown to about 500 people in a buzzing, energetic office in Marylebone Road, London.
Sitting down with adobo magazine editor-in-chief Angel Guerrero, Mead talked about the book, the industry, the importance of forging good relationships, finding and keeping the right people, his journey and friendship with partners Abbott and Vickers, and how AMV BBDO reached its status as the leader of the UK ad industry.
Why did you decide to write this book at this time in your career?
A while ago, – I was interviewed by The Times in London. In the end,’ Raymond Snoddy, who carried out the interview said to me, do you have any ambitions left? I said, a lot. One of them is to write a book to try to persuade people that the decent way of behaving is commercially viable, that you don’t have to run a brutal company to be successful…
So you talk about being nice, it’s hard to compete in the world of advertising and be really nice. I mean, you have difficult clients, the business is cutthroat sometimes, and it’s the pace of what we do now, it’s just so fast with digital–
I agree with that. But a truth of business life is that everything is possible with the development of relationships. If you can develop relationships with the people you both work for and with then any changes, pressures and resultant difficulties can be coped with.
I was reading somewhere that you were worried about relationships with clients now –
Yes, they’re nowhere near as good as they should be.
What’s changed?
Well I think we went through a period where achievement became all, and the means of the achievement were subsidiary to the achievement. So it didn’t matter how you succeeded, as long as you succeeded. We’re also an environment where chief executives and marketing heads and CMOs don’t stay in their jobs for more than two or three years. We are also in the electronic age of communication where it’s easier to send an email than to pick up the phone or better still go and see somebody face to face. So it’s more difficult, to develop meaningful relationships but that just means you have to try harder. And it is much tougher these days, we have ourselves partly to blame because the pressure is on margins in some instances means that some of the services and things we did before, like store checks and factory visits, are less affordable and the opportunity to engage in meaningful discussions about this sort of stuff with clients is been lost.
We’ve lost touch. Clients now describe us as suppliers. I’ve always hated that because in the old days we were partners and had the sort of relationship that lawyers and accountants enjoy nobody ever describes them as suppliers.
The way back, of course, is to reassert with our clients that what we do by sprinkling the magic dust that is creativity into the marketing mix can make an enormous difference.
So what do you tell the people that are at the forefront of client servicing when you know very well that the clients are thinking, “oh, they’re suppliers”?
I want people to understand that we’re very lucky to have our clients, but they’re pretty lucky to have us. I want all of us to be creative in every aspect of the work we do as I said above all develop relationships which generate mutual respect.
All of this should be against the background of decent behaviour.
And that’s worked for you, your entire time here?
Yes it’s always been the bedrock of what the three of us believed. That an essentially happy organisation would be much more effective than a belligerently uneasy one. It’s not rocket science. We’ve always believed that creativity flourishes when people feel good.
How did you create this trio that’s led English advertising to where it is today?
Adrian was at university with David and I worked with Adrian in my first-ever job and then David during my time at DDB. Over a period of time we began to understand that we will believed say things.
Industry-wise, you worked –
Yes, industry-wise we worked but personally as well… So David and I supported the same football team, so we would both go to football and then drive back to his home and I’d have tea with his kids. We just thought at one stage, why wouldn’t we get together because enjoying each other’s company personally should translate professionally and it did.
So what do you like or love about our business?
The people in it. And the ability to make a difference. You know, our business is full of smart, attractive people. I still get an enormous buzz out of seeing a great piece of work that you know is going to make a difference. And we’re so lucky to be in the business that is constantly changing and allows us to be creative.
So you talked about the magic dust, is that how you feel about our business?
Yes as I said earlier I do believe that the very best advertising practitioners can make a real difference. But let’s be clear advertising cannot sell a bad product. more than once. But if we remember as one of the greats in our industry once said “creativity is one of the last remaining legal ways of gaining an unfair advantage over your competition.” So creativity at the risk of repeating myself should be at the heart of everything we do. I’m really pleased with the creative momentum that’s gathering pace throughout the world.
I was going to ask at you about that. In a way, in the UK, running the UK, it’s a big global force. But do you ever look outside and see what’s going on, does it influence you at all?
Absolutely. In the past decades the influence of markets outside of the UK and US in the development of creative work has been enormous. Increasingly, the sort of impetus that moved from Europe to Latin America and Australasia in creative terms is being felt all over the world, particularly in your region. I’m constantly amazed at the knowledge there is about AMV around the world
Do you think you are lucky?
I was lucky to find David Abbott, who’s a genius.
So it’s people, ultimately?
Absolutely. The only asset our business has are its people and they should be cosseted and protected all costs.
In your recruitment philosophy, what do you look for, how do you know that that’s the one or that’s the person?
You know that somebody isn’t right from the moment they sit down, almost… One of our greatest strengths as a trio was that we were quite good at spotting good people. If you corporately have the ability to select winners then you won’t go far wrong.
When you look at people you say, do I really want to be with this guy? Are more clients going to agree with this guy, and can he run a team, are people going to respect him? Is he a nice guy? Someone once said he wanted an agency full of nice and talented people. If they’re nice but not talented there’s no room for them, but equally important if they’re talented but not nice there’s no room for them either. So we want people who can buy in to a philosophy and a way of behaving which has worked well over the years.
You have a high retention rate.
Yes I think it’s up there with the best in our industry, but people are more professionally mobile these days.
How do you define great work?
You sort of know when you see it, actually, and its work that makes a difference. Great work is stuff that stands out within its sector and does it with style and charm and concern for the consumer. We once said that we would never do advertising that we wouldn’t want our family to watch, and we believe we’re a guest in people’s homes so we recognise our responsibilities but we’ve always loved doing things to style.
I’m very interested in the relationship you have with your partners, and how it flourished… How did you endure and remain true to what you started, how you wanted the agency to start, and where it is now? What is it that’s kept the three of you together?
Well, deep, personal friendship… this thing called an umbrella of affection that bound us together. David had a rule that we could never let the sun go down on a quarrel, for instance. And we made sure that that didn’t happen. When push comes to shove, we were great friends. Adrian is godfather to one of my children, David was godfather to another one , but importantly, I think, we laid down a set of beliefs, the mission statement of the place was ‘When in doubt be nice’.
The three of us believed in the same things. We believed in people’s dignity, we believed in looking after the people who worked for us, we believed in trying to empower people, to do great things. All of this makes David’s passing even harder to take.
You like dealing with clients?
I love dealing with clients I used to love it in the old days when people would say, “I see you’ve gotten the X account, they’re the most difficult clients in London.” Fantastic, I’d think. Lovely, I’ll try to change that… I understand clients’ lives are much more difficult these days. When companies have to report their business performance every 90 days. The pressure is enormous.
What’s the most significant change you’ve seen now in the past year or so? From where you sit, where has it changed?
The world and the world is digital. So has, social media, electronic media, made a difference? Of course it has. Does it mean you can target more effectively? Of course it does. Does it mean that the value of the great idea is any less? Of course it doesn’t. The value of the great creative idea is more valuable now than it’s ever been because there’s such a proliferation of media that you have to stand out now more than you ever have.
So how do you feel about traditional media? You come from an era where television and print were so strong, and the print industry is very worried about their livelihood. What are your thoughts on that?
There’s nothing that even begins to approach the power of a major television campaign. As far as the other traditional media is concerned the power of the written word was fading before the advent of digital. Part of that was the rise of Apple. We became a business dominated by look as opposed to content so great creative persuasive writing became secondary to the look of the message. I get the sense recently though the great copy could be on its way back.
I think that traditional media have to work out their own way forward. They have no divine right to succeed anymore, they can succeed if they try and work their socks off. There has to be new, different ways of doing it but at the end of the day the great idea which touches people is still unbelievably potent and the delivery of that depends on the quality of what’s available.
Are you worried about our industry, the advertising industry?
I think healthy paranoia is an essential part of management side always been worried about our industry, our company, our people. I said earlier I think we’re underappreciated and under rewarded but a lot of that is our own fault. We have to continue to work harder to demonstrate we can make a difference.
So what are you looking forward to now, the next ten years probably?
It’s a really exciting time in our business. I think digital will dominate our thoughts but I hope that the time where somebody who is notable in our profession, said recently that we are at a point now where the medium is more important than the message is increasingly proved to be wrong.
I have a son and he’s in the business. I’m looking forward to seeing him love it. I just hope that we are able as a profession to regain some of the lost ground of the past years. In any business, I think the world, not just advertising, has to face the situation where not everything or not everybody can be the lowest cost supplier, because there has to be a profit somewhere.
You know how British advertising is great and has always been. Why do you think so?
I think, firstly, it followed the American Revolution in the 60s where great creative work became the norm, something to aspire to, and we embraced it more readily than anyone else in the world. And we’re not worried about using emotion in advertising. And just as in our film industry, and our theatrical industry, we do have a bedrock of creative talent which has held us in good stead…
There’s a subtlety in the British sense of humour, for instance, which is almost unique. And an appreciation of creativity which is pretty great. And as we don’t rule the world anymore, we have to continue to try harder on our little island.
