A dispatch from the front line of creativity where skills honed in advertising are being generously applied.
Adrian Mills and Matt Lawson left McCann Melbourne, where Adrian was managing director and Matt ECD, two years ago to grow the creative, brand and advertising teams at Deloitte.
I caught up with Adrian, a partner at Deloitte Digital, in the Sydney office of Deloitte. Matt, a partner and APAC chief creative officer, joined via Skype from Melbourne.
“We hope that this is our last job,” says Matt, indicating that anywhere else wouldn't measure up.
Part of the attraction is being with, and having access to, experts from different fields, like the Renaissance when artisans from many disciplines worked side-by-side, cross fertilising ideas.
“At Deloitte, this is where we can test that theory of seeing what creativity can do and how much impact it can have," says Matt.
Adrian says that at his previous gig he had a sense everyone was fighting for a dollar but at Deloitte each partner is incentivised to make each other more successful.
Matt: “I've never been valued more in any company that I've worked in and I’ve only ever worked in creative companies. Deloitte really does see that (creativity) as its great differentiator and as a way to supercharge everything.”
The duo were warned by many that moving to Deloitte would never work because the culture was too different.
Matt: “What was the culture of advertising? Beers and ping pong?”
He says it’s all about creative people trying to solve problems.
Chris Pash: “So two years in the new gig, this huge global professional services firm. Don't they wear grey suits?” (Apologies for the cliché.)
Adrian: “They don't, really.”
Matt: “Some of them are charcoal.”
Chris Pash: “I've got charcoal, today.”
Matt: “There you go, you're a maverick.”
Adrian interprets the question as: “What are creative people doing in a place that is traditionally built on rigour and has a very different offering to the market?”
He's found genuine creativity at Deloitte.
“A very creative business, it just doesn't call itself that,” he says. “While they may be well-uniformed in what they wear, it doesn't define how they behave and think. They're very warm and down to earth. Culturally, it's a marvellous place.”
The video connection with Melbourne starts to go. Matty says we sound like “a very deep robotic whale”. The fuzziness fixes itself.
Adrian says David Droga, founder of Droga5 which was recently bought by Accenture, was on stage at Cannes this year in a grey suit.
“I'm not sure whether he was having a slight piss take or not,” says Adrian.
Matt: “He's a pretty sharp dresser. He wears shirts.”
Adrian: “He's a pro.”
Matt says he and Adrian came into Deloitte Digital, a digital agency as the name suggests.
“The DNA is a little different to the wider group,” he says. “And so the dress code is a little more relaxed. But at the same time, no one looks you up and down. No matter what you're wearing.”
Chris Pash: “I suppose you dress for your client?”
Matt: “Totally. We would expect our creatives to have a certain level of maturity, depending on who they're seeing. Maybe a pinstripe baseball cap. But that's definitely right, you dress for the client you're seeing or the idea you're selling. It's as simple as that.”
Chris Pash: “What about the work? You've been there two years, is it still fun? I see you’re both smiling. It can't be just my jokes.”
Matt: “You’re right, it’s not just your jokes. It's hard for our enthusiasm to not seem like a sell. But both of us are finding the work more interesting. I haven't had this much fun and work this interesting in a long time and I have had an interesting career, so it's wonderful.”
Adrian says there's an astonishing amount of opportunity for creative people to expand influence.
“A huge part of what we do is advertising and then there's another significant part which is just being part of the broader Deloitte business,” he says.
“We are part of different kinds of cross-functional teams. We’ve worked on projects as crazy as trying to fight corruption in a Third World country, to trying to turn businesses that want to save the ocean into good businesses.” (Deloitte Australia scored its first Cannes Lions shortlist nomination and award for its work on the Great Barrier Reef.)
Matt: “The fact that we lose 20% of Earth's most precious resource in the current plumbing network is just a problem that people aren't talking about. And the fact that we can take a swing at solving that is incredibly interesting. But then at the same time, we've got our advertising clients doing arguably what you would say is traditional work, is also still interesting. That's why I'm so excited because I think I got into advertising because, for someone who wanted to practice a pretty dexterous form of creativity, it allowed me to help solve so many different problems.”
He believes creative people can apply themselves to more than advertising.
Matt: “And everything that we have learned in advertising, not that we've left, is applicable. That way of thinking is applicable to so many different problems. Whether they're client problems, societal problems, or environmental problems.”
Chris Pash: “The underlying benefit from what you say is Deloitte has a lot of resources, so you don't have to worry about sending out invoices or stuff like that. Or vacuuming the office. So you can call on people from different areas to help. Would that be right?”
Matt: “Yeah. Well, we like not having to pretend anymore.”
Chris Pash: “Pretend what?”
Matt: “It is a weight off your shoulders to be able to say to a client, ‘I don't have the answer for that, but I'll get it for you.’ And you'll be able to call the top data scientists in Australia. You'll be able to tap on some interesting shoulders who will provide those answers for you and put some real rigour behind it. And so it's the access to those resources, but also the technological resources. The fact that Deloitte Digital is a mature tech company, with some depth. There are just so many interesting people doing interesting things. That's the culture that inspires me.”
Chris Pash: “Let's talk about culture. Having been here only eight minutes in the industry, I noticed that many of the agencies I go to have dogs. Do they have dogs at Deloitte?”
Matt: “We don't have a dog, but we do have a robot that we can probably program.”
Chris Pash: “Has the robot got four legs?”
Adrian: “It's got four wheels, mate. It's evolved.”
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