Nils Leonard looks right at home in the National Arts School in Darlinghurst. He is a cool looking guy and the first thing he told me was that he got hammered riding a surfboard at Bondi Beach a few hours earlier.
Don’t imagine, though, that the chairman and chief creative officer of Grey UK is casual about work. His agency has won 25 D&AD Pencils in two years, grown from 120 people to 500 in 5 years, and Leonard is about to give his second D&AD President’s Lecture in two cities on two sides of Australia in two days. On a fly-in fly-out tour. That’s three days in Australia, the third spent opening the D&AD New Blood workshop at The Glue Society from 9am to 1pm , then flying home at 3pm - his choice.
When Leonard joined Grey London it was not so much 'Famously Effective' like its slogan, but rather famous as the place where creatives go to die. Or, to be blunt, be killed.
But Leonard believes that agencies are just buildings full of people. The only difference between dull agencies and vibrant agencies, he says, is how those people decide to work with each other.
Leonard changed how Grey people work together. He – famously – removed offices and departments and sign-offs. Cleverly, he removed the jostling for power between agency and client - Grey works hand in hand with its clients. And he restored the power of account service - “I need business partners”. Creative work in teams they put together the way they want to. And everyone in the room has the right to have a voice.
He killed off big egos - “If you have the word 'creative' in your job title you are the most powerful person in the room. So stop being a doosh.”
And the foundation of advertising since the 50's. At Grey London, no one is fighting for big ideas any more. “Everyone wants to have a big idea. No one agrees what it actually is. So we aim for long ideas – ideas that people care about, want to engage with and share for the longest possible time.”
Let’s be frank, behind Grey’s success is Leonard’s self-confidence. Self-confidence allow you to persevere. Leonard pitched relentlessly for two years to rebalance the agency’s client roster. “Nothing good can happen from a relationship in which you’re someone’s bitch.” He has the confidence to admit he hasn’t always got it right. The first two weeks without sign-offs were chaotic, he admits. And creatives, he knows now, are the people least open to change. Grey lost people during its transformation.
He has the confidence to tell advertising people to stop making ads. Grey London is underlining Volvo's consumer promise safety with Lifepaint, a glow in the dark spray for cyclists and pedestrians instead of “wanging on about safety in a TVC”. It made a chart topping music video for Lucozade. A live theatre show called The Angina Monologues for the British Heart Foundation, that ran at the Theatre Royal. Digital kittens for McVities…
He has the confidence to tell a client, “Grey does ambitious work - get on board or reject the agency”, in a pitch.
Again famously, one year ago Leonard wrote an article about what makes a great creative substituting the pronoun, she, for he. He didn’t mean to become the women’s advocate, although he does work in an agency in which the CEO, MD and ECD are women. So, of course, Leo Burnett’s recent six white men hire came up. Leonard’s response is a flawless example of creative thinking under pressure. It goes like this: “The people you hire, the people you hold up as the best in class, the people you put out there, say represent you: it’s a badge of what you believe in as an agency. It matters greatly. So if you hold your hand up and say I believe these people are the future of our agency, you better make damn sure that’s a mix.”
AdNews’ full interview with Nils Leonard will appear in the next AdNews magazine. If you’re frustrated by a shift in the balance of power between marketer and agency; if you are uncomfortable with the idea that the client is god; if you’ve wondered, even for a moment, whether ad agencies need a confidence boost you’ll want to read Leonard’s views about how advertising can and will triumph.
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