Kevin Roberts is the CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide and he thinks marketing is dead. He also thinks big ideas, management and strategy are pushing up the daisies. We know this because he told the Institute of Directors Convention at the 02 yesterday.
This would be an interesting position for any business leader, but coming from the big cheese at one of the world’s best known marketing and advertising agencies, it’s a right old jaw-dropper. Could this master marketeer really believe the whole shebang is over and we should all sleeve our iPads and get off home? Possibly – but probably not.
Here’s what he said:
“Strategy is dead. Who really knows what is going to happen anymore in this super VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world? The more time and money you spend devising strategies the more time you are giving you rivals to start eating your lunch.
“Management is dead. To win today you need a culture and an environment where the unreasonable power of creativity thrives. Ideas are today’s currency not strategy. Martin Luther King did not say ‘I have a vision statement’ did he? He had a dream. You have to make sure you have dreams and your brand also needs a dream.”
Phew! That’s a mighty big drum Kev’s banging there. Leaving aside the crass insensitivity in comparing the U.S. civil rights movement with corporate advertising, he seems to be tangled up in contradiction. To hear an executive at the very top of a company’s management tree decrying the archaic, stick-in-the-mud nature of modern management causes more furrowed brows than inspired delegates (unless it is followed by his resignation, which it wasn’t.)
His point about strategy also has a hollow ring. ‘Strategy’ is merely a fancy word for a plan. And if Mr. Roberts is really proposing businesses should abandon planning in favour of some kind of creative anarchy, a trading playpen where hierarchy and forethought are replaced with a riot of free thinking, the outlook for Saatchi & Saatchi will be uncertain to say the least.
I’m pretty sure I’m no stuffed suit, wedded to the status quo and resistant to radical change, but I do know that any successful campaign requires careful planning and, more importantly, clients know it too.
Perhaps the most extraordinary phrase in the quote above is the flippant question ‘Who really knows what is going to happen anymore in this super VUCA world?’ Well, I hate to ask, Kevin, but aren’t you supposed to? Unless I’ve got this all wrong, clients sign up with your agency because they believe you have insights and abilities which will benefit their marketing needs. If you don’t have a clue where we’re going, who does? And there’s that tricky contradiction problem again. If you are such an innocent abroad, bobbing about on a sea of uncertainty, how can you be so sure marketing and strategy are dead?
Roberts continued:
“Business leaders need to become creative leaders. Who wants to be a Chief Executive Officer? It sounds like you work for the government and who would want that? Being a Chief Excitement Officer would be better. The big idea is dead. There are no more big ideas.
There is nothing new anymore. If marketers are just hearing about something going on then it is already old in today’s world. The further up in a company you go, the stupider you become and the further away from new things.”
Kevin Roberts had obviously hit his stride at this point, having gone from banging a big drum to running riot amongst the entire percussion section. Who wants to be a CEO? Well I don’t particularly, but Kevin clearly does. You know, what with him being one and all. What’s more, I never, ever, want to work for a firm with a Chief Excitement Officer. Good grief, this is Saatchi & Saatchi, not Wernham Hogg.
For someone who believes there are no ‘big ideas’ any more, many of these assertions sound awfully like ‘big ideas’. ‘Marketing is dead’ – big idea, right there.
Then the massive contradictions kick back in. “The further up a company you go … the further away from new things (you are).” Fortunately, that’s not really a problem because – as Kevin has just told us – “There is nothing new anymore”.
So if Kevin is right, where do we find his new universe of excitement and random conceptualising? Take a peek through the door of Saatchi & Saatchi. Do you see an environment resembling a joyful blend of an arts workshop and Disneyland? Or do you see an advertising agency, with studios, offices, planners and strategists? And if you were a client, which would you prefer?
Reading his address, I think there’s a strong possibility Kevin Roberts wasn’t actually revealing a profound new paradigm for the creative business. Rather, he was going for a bit of flourish, some heavy impact and a smattering of showboating. In short, I suspect he was showing off.
Nothing wrong with that, but he should be careful. Gerald Ratner tried something similar at the same event in 1991 when he described one of his products as ‘total crap’. Wiping £500m off the value of his company and torpedoing his career in the process.
Magnus Shaw – writer, blogger and broadcaster
Find more: http://blogs.creativepool.co.uk/blog/is-marketing-dead-saatchis-ceo-thinks-so/
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