MOSCOW – The international jury of Red Apple this year has more than 200 Cannes Lions under their belt, 13 of them belonging to Kitty Lan, Chairman and CEO of LOWE China. In an in-depth interview, Lan and Andrey Gubaidullin, founder and creative director of agency “Восход.” (“Voshod”) share their opinions about managing creative people, encouraging them despite the trends.
They say that comfort kills creativity. Considering good working conditions in most creative agencies, what is the main incentive for modern advertising employee?
K.L. It is absolutely true that complacency kills creativity. So the most important leadership style is to create an environment that it is OK to challenge, to argue, to have the license to dare. Fun is important. Fun does not mean comfort. It is a way to stimulate the adventurous mind. Comfort or complacency means falling into a routine, falling into the trap of giving the client what they say they want and falling into the habit of producing the mundane.
A.G. Each creator chooses his comfortable conditions – someone likes to work in silence, someone on a couch, but the important thing is not the conditions, but the result. This is the main incentive – to arrange things in the way that consumers will love a brand as a result of the campaign
What is more important in communication for today: honesty and transparency or innovations?
K.L. All three are important. Honesty and transparency are the same things, aren’t they? And I do not see any contradiction between innovation and transparency. In fact, if you are innovative, transparency will help you recruit the help of others to propel your idea to the next level. There is no need to set priorities here.
A.G. Innovations are nothing without a message which must be honest, otherwise, sooner or later all will be revealed, as it happened with brand WV. Innovations are only a technology that surprise and attract both creditors and consumers, but they are not always needed.
What is the foundation of advertising and will remain it, despite the constant change of trends?
K.L. A lot of people mistook the killing of advertising as a form of entering the digital era. In fact, many are wrong. The foundation of advertising, for over 100 years, is to build brands through mass communications in order to achieve the set objectives, with creativity very much at the core of it regardless of medium. This never change be it new media or traditional media. The ability to identify the very consumer insight to answer our communication challenges, the ability to tell stories that can move people, the ability to sift through different creative approaches to maximize the best encounter with consumers… all these remain very much at the core of our industry. However, all practitioners should be aware of changes and trends. They move really fast and you may fall behind at the blink of an eye. So, keep up but do not lose our core competence! That’s most important for this industry to evolve in the next 100 years.
A.G. The two pillars on which advertising is based: the message and execution. Old fashioned marketers still exaggerate the role of a message by virtue of their old-fashioned education. However over the past 5-6 years the role of execution has grown greatly, there emerged a large number of advertising with a very simple message, and multimillion “WOW” execution.
What are the main principles of managing creative people
K.L. You cannot “manage” creative people. You can only “lead” them. Lead them by example, lead them by giving them the freedom to stretch their imagination, lead them by allowing mistakes but help them to learn through the process, lead them by making them realize the importance of teamwork, lead them by demonstrating the importance of articulating their ideas effectively, lead them by letting them know their dreams will come true if they don’t let go.
A.G. I do not like to press and point out, I’d rather prefer, to guide and clarify. I give a sufficient amount of freedom and cultivate respectful attitude to the working time.
What do changes mean to you?
K.L. Change happens since the Big Bang and is happening every day. It is nothing new. Without the ability to facilitate changes, adapt to changes, flourish through changes, the human race (or any species) cannot evolve. I am happy to live in an extremely fast changing time after the popularization of the internet. I am learning new things every day. I hope I will continue to have a curious mind to find out about changes and decide how to apply changes to my work, and even create changes myself for the improvement of modern communications and contribute my insignificant effort to the betterment of mankind.
A.G. All that makes me change. My son went to school – a change. A new person in the agency – changes. We did a good campaign – changes, we got or didn’t an award at the festival – changes.
