Interesting things people from different agencies said at Eurobest 2013

Tor Myhren, Worldwide Chief Creative Officer at Grey, talked about the boring history presentations which are held for new clients, which may take up to 45 minutes. In order to be more efficient, Grey created a 3 minute dynamic presentation clip to use when dealing with new clients. 3 minutes and nothing else to say.

Another aspect from Grey is that every Thursday from “9 to noon”, there are no meetings with clients for the employees to have some time just for themselves, in order to be more focused on their work. They believe that in the creation process, it is better to have some “radically uncollaborative” moments.

…

Silla Levin, Art Director, and Anna Qvennerstedt, Copywriter, both Senior Partners at Forsman & Bodenfors Sweden, exposed their agency organizational model, which doesn’t include any Creative Directors. If you assume this is strange, reconsider that Forsman & Bodenfors are the creators of the Volvo Truck commercial with Jean Claude Van-Damme.

So it’s not strange, it’s effective. They have observed that the advertising industry players have more or less, the same flat organization as in the beginnings. After a survey they have conducted, the structure of advertising agencies comes second, after the Russian Army structure, followed by the one from the Catholic Church.

At Forsman & Bodenfors the percentage of creative people is 49%. Their teams are mixed, not only copywriter and art director, and are usually formed by three or four members. Each team is fully responsible for their projects. Then, who is going to evaluate their work? Well, instead of presenting their work to a single Creative Director, they present it to the entire office. In this way, they will receive more feedback and it’s up to team members to decide how to use it.

Another important aspect is for them to create a non-competitive environment between the employees. The “listening process” is important as well, since the employees have to listen the feedback from the other ones upon their own work and they also have to listen to the others work. The age is not relevant. A senior employee will give and also receive feedback from a junior and viceversa.

Employees can actually become managing partners in this agency, without changing their  job status. At this point, more than twenty employees are partners within the agency.

…

Karen Corrigan, Co-founder and CEO at Happiness Brussels, exposed a process called PR&D – Prototype Research & Development. It consists in finding the concept, bringing it out as a prototype, test it within the online communities and if successful, monetize it. This is how they’ve applied it:

keysave.be / Your keys are always here. from Happiness Anywhere on Vimeo.

 

Material written by Lucian Talpes